Today we’d like to introduce you to Matthew Miller.
Hi Matthew, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Creativity has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My dad is a professional artist, so I grew up surrounded by art and the process of making things. I joke that I had a paintbrush or camera in my hand before I could walk, but there’s probably some truth to it. Throughout my teens, I was constantly experimenting with photography and video alongside traditional art, eventually taking AP Art in high school. Looking back, that’s where I started developing an eye for composition, color, light, and storytelling that still influences my work today.
That interest really took off while I was attending the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I bought my first drone while living there and suddenly had this incredible environment around me to constantly shoot and experiment with. I dove deeper into photography, video, aerial work, and editing, and began to realize that something I had always done creatively could become much more than a hobby.
My path from there wasn’t exactly linear. I spent several years exploring different avenues, traveling, and pushing myself outside of what was familiar. I had the chance to live and work internationally, including time in London and Dubai, across business development and marketing. Being immersed in different cities, cultures, and creative environments gave me a much broader perspective and ultimately helped me realize I wanted to combine the strategic side of marketing with the creative side I had always gravitated toward.
When I returned to the Twin Cities, those pieces started coming together. I began building my freelance work across photography, video, social media, events, restaurants, and nightlife, gradually developing relationships and a body of work that expanded beyond Minnesota. Since then, I’ve been fortunate to land clients in Chicago and Los Angeles that I still work with today, while continuing to collaborate with brands, venues, events, and creatives here in Minneapolis.
Today, I work full-time in video production and content for Kaskaid Hospitality, creating and overseeing content across a portfolio of restaurant, nightlife, catering, and event brands, while continuing to grow my freelance work alongside it.
There wasn’t one defining moment that got me here. It’s been a collection of different places, people, projects, experiments, and a willingness to keep learning. My career has evolved pretty organically, and I think that’s what continues to make it exciting.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely hasn’t been a completely smooth or linear road. For a long time, one of my biggest challenges was figuring out where I fit. I’ve always had a lot of different interests, and there were times when I viewed that as a lack of direction. I explored different industries, moved around, traveled, and tried different versions of what I thought my career was supposed to look like before realizing those experiences were actually shaping the way I work today.
Another challenge was learning to take my creative work seriously as a business. There’s a big difference between being good at photography or video and knowing how to build a client base, price your work, advocate for your ideas, and create something sustainable. Creative work can look exciting from the outside, but there’s a lot behind the scenes: long hours, tight deadlines, constant problem-solving, investing in yourself, pitching your work, keeping up with an industry that changes incredibly fast, and sometimes having to create even when you don’t necessarily feel creative.
Now, one of my biggest challenges is managing growth and knowing my limits. Balancing a full-time creative career with freelance clients, travel, shoots, deadlines, and personal projects can become a lot very quickly. I spent years learning to say yes, and now I’m learning that knowing when to say no is just as valuable.
I still don’t have everything figured out, but I’ve become much more comfortable with that. Some of the best things in my career have come from changing direction, taking risks, and trusting that there doesn’t have to be one perfectly mapped-out path.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My work lives at the intersection of video production, visual storytelling, and marketing strategy. I specialize in video production, photography, creative strategy, and brand storytelling, with much of my work centered around hospitality, nightlife, events, food, and lifestyle. Depending on the project, I can be developing the initial concept, behind the camera shooting it, editing the final piece, or thinking through how that content ultimately lives across digital platforms and connects with an audience.
I think what I’ve become most known for is capturing energy. Whether it’s a packed event, a restaurant on a Friday night, a plate coming out of the kitchen, or a quieter lifestyle moment, I want the final product to make someone feel like they were there, or make them want to be. I’m drawn to movement, people, atmosphere, and the small details that give a brand its personality rather than creating content that feels overly staged or disconnected from the actual experience.
What sets me apart is that I approach projects from both a creative and strategic perspective. I’m not only thinking about whether something looks good through the camera; I’m thinking about who it’s for, where it’s going, what catches someone’s attention, and what we ultimately want them to do after seeing it. Having experience across video production, photography, marketing, digital strategy, and design allows me to see the bigger picture while still being very hands-on in the execution.
I’m most proud of the trust people and brands have placed in me to help tell their stories. There’s something incredibly rewarding about seeing an idea that started in my head become a campaign, fill an event, introduce people to a new concept, or simply make someone stop scrolling for a second. I’m also proud of the versatility I’ve built along the way. No two projects or days look exactly the same, and being able to move between creative direction, production, strategy, and execution keeps me constantly learning. More than anything, I’m proud that after turning something I genuinely love into a career, I still get excited to pick up a camera and create.
Any advice for finding a mentor or networking in general?
I’ve never really approached networking with the goal of finding one specific mentor. Some of the people who have influenced me most have been bosses, coworkers, other creatives, clients, and people I’ve met completely organically along the way. I think mentorship can come from a lot of different places if you’re willing to listen, ask questions, and pay attention to how other people work.
For networking in general, the biggest thing that has worked for me is simply putting myself in the room. Go to the event, introduce yourself, reach out to the person whose work you admire, and genuinely take an interest in what other people are doing. I’ve found that the strongest relationships happen when you’re not approaching every interaction thinking about what you can get out of it.
I’m also a big believer in following up and staying connected. Minneapolis has an incredibly interconnected creative and hospitality community, and you never really know where one relationship might lead. Some of my best projects and collaborations have come from someone I met months or even years earlier.
My advice would be to surround yourself with people who are better than you at something and don’t be intimidated by that. Ask questions, be curious, offer value when you can, and be someone people genuinely enjoy working with. Your work can get you into the room, but your reputation and the relationships you build are often what bring you back.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattmillrr/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-miller-h16/
