Play
Build your studio on purpose.
Principals in motion, animation, VFX, live action, experiential, and sound who are ready to operate at the level their creative work deserves.
Become just as exceptional at the business side as you are at the creative side.
Book an Invitation Session. Bring a real situation. See how decisions get made inside the room. Then decide.
Find the next project.
Price the work.
Lead the client.
Build a team.
Run a business we were never taught to run.
Forum exists because these pressures don't resolve on their own. They multiply.
The founders here have stopped waiting for experience to catch up and started operating from a different room entirely:
How we win.
How we lead clients.
How we evolve in our changing industry.
How we produce our greatest creative work.
Sharpened through pattern recognition. Forged through real decisions.
Members include Already Been Chewed, The Booth, Coupe Studios, Cream, Form Play, MAKE, Nocaut, Polyester, VERSUS, Zookeeper, and dozens more.
Your business is the most interesting project of your career.
You've spent your career making the work. Every project sharper than the last. Every move more carefully made.
And while you were focused on the work, your studio kept asking you for decisions. Like positioning. Pricing. Hiring. Direction.
You answered them as best you could so you could get back to the work.
The work wasn't the project. Your studio is.
Forum is where founders treat it that way.
Forum is built for the journey. Knowing where you are tells you what to build next.
The room where insights are revealed and decisions get made. Every week, live with Joel and your peers alongside you.
The floor is always open. Post what's actually happening. The room responds.
24/7 studio intelligence built on battle-tested wisdom.
Direct access. Bring what's on your plate. Walk away with a plan.
Private rooms. Invited guests. Priority access to all live events including Fuse dinners.
Choose your level of participation.
Book an Invitation Session to see how Forum works and decide if it’s right for you.
Most members invest roughly 1% of annual revenue to unlock the other 99%.
Principals and operators running studios and production companies in motion, animation, VFX, live action, experiential, and sound. Team sizes range from 1–30, generating between $500K–$20M annually, based in 40+ countries.
1. Book an Invitation Session and get a personal tour from Joel.
2. Bring your situation.
3. Start a free trial, decide if Forum is right for you.
Forum is priced as infrastructure for running a creative business. Members use Forum to make better decisions about clients, pricing, sales, and leadership. Those decisions affect every project and every dollar the studio earns.
Many founders think about it this way: invest a small percentage of revenue in improving how the business runs, so the rest of the business performs at its peak.
Those organizations are built for general business leadership. Forum is built specifically for studio and production company principals — the problems, language, revenue stages, and peer context are entirely different.
A $500K studio founder sitting in a YPO chapter with a regional bank president and a manufacturing CFO is surrounded by people who cannot pressure-test a creative pitch strategy, diagnose a client causing scope creep, or tell them whether their positioning is generic.
Forum members work on real situations with people who are living the same journey. The peer context is the product.
On price: EO, YPO, Vistage, and TEC typically run $10,000–$25,000 per year in dues, plus chapter fees, events, and travel. Forum has no chapter fees, no mandatory events, and travel is strongly encouraged but not required.
Forum isn’t about consuming content. It’s about installing operating systems that remove friction from how you lead, sell, price, and position your studio. Members often:
• raise prices and command higher budgets
• win better clients
• regain control of sales and operations
• build more profitable, resilient companies
For serious founders, the ROI is often transformative.
Forum operates on a quarterly commitment to support focus and execution. Annual options are available.
Accelerators run separately so founders can install the operating systems most relevant to their current stage. Examples include Jumpstart®, Brand Direct™, Derail the Pitch™, Saleskeeping®, Scout In Action™, and Studio Flight Deck™.
Forum members receive priority enrollment and alumni access.
Free access has been replaced by Signals, the bridge tier. $19 a month. Read and write access to Situations, the live decision space inside Forum.
Yes, in limited cases:
• Annual pricing
• Partner seats
• International adjustments
• Forum scholarships
Reserve is Joel’s advisory lane for founders who have matured beyond the group dynamic and are hungry for his help reaching their next season of growth.
Joel works closely with these founders as an advisor, strategic partner, and guide. Reserve includes full Forum access for you and your leadership team.
Yes. Many founders add producers, executive producers, strategists, or partners so the entire leadership team shares the same operating language.
Cancel any time; your access continues through the end of your current term.
