Upper One Studios: Helping small businesses and nonprofits find a marketing niche.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa

While working for the Alaska Department of Corrections, Rick Mallars and Tom Karpow were given the opportunity to create a probation/parole orientation video that could spread a consistent message across corresponding state offices. After spending a month creating the project, the duo discussed how much fun it would be to make videos for a living. Thirteen years later, they're doing just that--and much more.

"We made the video, which was well-received, and that gave us the idea to start a video production company," says Mallars, president and CEO of Upper One Studios. "I walked into my supervisor's office and asked him if they would have hired me if I had my own company and had come in at a reasonable price, and he said yes. So I put in my two-weeks' notice."

Mallars cashed out his retirement and bought three cameras, audio equipment, and an editing program. He also came up with the name for the company, which refers to Alaska being the "Upper One state" above the Lower 48.

"Once we had a basic concept of what to call ourselves and what we wanted to do, we got a business license and decided to see where it would go," says Mallars.

While they were extremely motivated, the two soon realized that they were going to have to do something different to make money. "You can be the most talented person in the field, but that doesn't matter if you can't find clients," says Karpow, who was still working for the state at the time. "We started out doing weddings and picked up work on Elance and SmartShoot," platforms for freelance hiring and video crowdsourcing, respectively.

"The market was saturated with video production companies that had been around for decades and had their claws in every large company," adds Mallars. "Two podunk guys like us didn't have the connections."

Upper Hand

Instead of quitting, Upper One decided to turn to the small businesses in Anchorage to see if they could meet their needs.

"While we were networking with small business owners, we realized that they wear a bunch of hats and don't have time to try to figure out how to use video to grow their businesses," says Karpow, noting that these smaller companies also had smaller budgets.

"We'd get budgets of $500, $2,000--we'd be lucky to see a $5,000 budget," he says with a laugh.

Both men had backgrounds in improv and realized that they could use those skills to create high-quality videos as quickly as possible. "When you only make $500 from a client, it can't take three months...