How Baseball Showed Me The Way

Filmmaking FOR ALL™ | Building STORYSMART STUDIOS, Part 1

The Insight Was Right. The Model Was Wrong.

Some of the most important business lessons of my life came from an old ballpark.

More than twenty years ago, I helped monetize the final season of an iconic baseball stadium – Busch Stadium II. We were a bit shameless in selling off whatever we could that final season. We were so successful that we developed a whole new memorabilia business for the team called Cardinals Authentic. I had so much fun working on that project and I learned lessons that profoundly influence me to this day. 

Looking back now, it’s clear to me that baseball showed me the way to build a modern media company.  Those lessons are the foundation for the studio we are building. 

That final season of Busch Stadium in 2005 is when I fully understood the power of owning intellectual property. It shaped everything that followed.

During my seventeen years with the St. Louis Cardinals, I watched one of the most successful organizations in sports and the league itself turn stories, traditions, personalities, and experiences into durable, compounding media assets. Broadcasting. Licensing. Publishing. Sponsorships. Merchandising.

The lesson was impossible to miss.  IP ownership matters.

We acted on it. We restructured contracts with photographers to secure ownership of work the organization was already paying to create. We invested in digital archives because we understood their future value. We expanded owned media and produced original television. We kept looking for assets that would go on generating value long after their first release.

I took those lessons with me when I left the Cardinals in 2018 to launch the company now known as STORYSMART®.

A Better Model

While my time in Major League Baseball was crucial to nurturing my love of storytelling, the seed was planted long before I knew anything about IP or media economics.  As a kid, I made Super-8 films with my friends. That fascination with creating by collaborating with others never left.

My career took me through politics, professional sports, media, television production, and entrepreneurship. It would be easy to read those as separate chapters. I see them as the ideal training ground for what we are building now.

When I launched STORYSMART, I believed two things deeply.

First, professional storytellers (specifically journalists and documentary filmmakers) can help people tell better stories than those people could create on their own. 

Second, clients should own what they paid to create if they hired those journalists or filmmakers to undertake a project for them.

Most people assume they already do. Most are wrong. When you hire a photographer or filmmaker, the creator typically holds the copyright unless a specific agreement says otherwise. (More on that in Part 2 of this Building STORYSMART STUDIOS series.)

So, I set out to build a better model as a start-up company.  I became an entrepreneur and start-up founder at a time when most of my peers were thinking about retiring early.   I jumped into a world I knew little about, where people through around terms like pre-capital, iterative, pivoting, minimally viable, Angel Investment, SAFE, series A, and exit strategy. 

I threw myself into the deep end. 

I joined accelerators, pursued grants, built partnerships, and assembled teams. We built a nationwide network of storytellers spanning 36 states. We produced meaningful work and gained real traction. But, along the way, I learned a hard lesson.

The Hard Lesson

I cared deeply about ownership, but most of my clients did not make buying decisions with us based on owning the copyright to their video storytelling. While it was important to me, it wasn’t important to them. 

We were solving a problem the market didn’t fully recognize, and what is worse is that we had significantly undervalued the service we were providing. I had way undervalued it.   

That forced a rethink, and an honest look at what had and hadn’t worked.

The insight wasn’t wrong. The business model was.

The Question That Changed Everything

My ambition from the start was to build a media company capable of producing high-quality film and television anchored in valuable story IP. I naively assumed I could bootstrap my way there through a video storytelling services business that would generate the revenue, infrastructure, and relationships to support a studio later.

While the vision was sound, the business model proved incomplete.

Those lessons, from both success and failure, pushed me to think harder about ownership, audience development, financing, rights management, and distribution. They also pushed me to ask a more personal question: what do I really want to do with the rest of my life?

Around that same time, I was preparing to invest nearly $100,000 in a proof-of-concept project with Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith. I had spent years building toward a moment like that. A beloved St. Louis legend. A real story. A chance to prove what my company could do.

I diligently spent over a year navigating a global pandemic putting it all together, but I ultimately didn’t move forward.

It wasn’t because the project lacked promise. Quite to the contrary. By then, I’d learned enough to know I didn’t need that validation.   What I learned from all of my startup training was that I already had it. 

The work leading up to that decision had already laid the foundation for our independent filmmaking and for developing our STORYSMART® Framework, a systematic approach to turning true stories into copyright-protected source material. 

Fulling committing myself to documentary filmmaking clarified everything. Independent media development is where I thrive, and it’s where my talents create the most value. 

I started asking a different question:

Instead of working tirelessly to convince other people to own story IP, shouldn’t I be building and owning it myself, while creating a more equitable model for the creators, rights holders, investors, and collaborators who make those stories possible?

That question changed everything.

What I Found

In the years since, I’ve kept consulting and taking on selective production work while going deep on independent filmmaking, entertainment finance, licensing, IP strategy, and the creator economy. I’ve conducted customer discovery interviews and learned from filmmakers, investors, distributors, attorneys, and creators across the industry.

What I’ve found is both encouraging and frustrating.

There’s no shortage of talented storytellers, compelling stories, or audience demand. What’s consistently missing is a system designed to create long-term value.

Most independent projects are organized around a temporary effort. Teams assemble, money is raised, the project is completed, and then everything dissolves. Hard-won knowledge disappears. Audience relationships scatter. The next project starts from zero.

This isn’t a people problem. It’s a systems problem.

And it’s exactly the problem STORYSMART® STUDIOS is being built to solve.

What Comes Next

STORYSMART STUDIOS is designed as a modern independent media company built to bridge the gap between the legacy Hollywood model and the fast-growing creator economy. We will develop, finance, and own a balanced portfolio of story IP over the long term, positioned intentionally at the intersection of film, fandom, and finance. And we will do it the STORYSMART® Way. 

Over the next several weeks, I’ll share more about how we’re building it and why:

• Part 2: Why you probably don’t own what you paid for, and what that means for anyone who tells stories

• Part 3: Why treating every film like a standalone startup keeps independent filmmakers starting over

• Part 4: Why audiences should be partners, not just customers

If you’ve followed this journey, you know the studio has been a long time coming. It didn’t come about the way I first imagined. The destination never changed. Only the route did. I’m grateful you are part of our journey.

About Ron Watermon

Ron Watermon is a creator, builder, media entrepreneur, filmmaker, and the founder of STORYSMART. He writes about professional storytelling, media entrepreneurship, filmmaking, and the business of turning stories into valuable assets.

Ron is the author of STORYSMART Storytelling for ALL and is currently building STORYSMART STUDIOS, an independent media company dedicated to developing, producing, and owning profitable, enduring original media properties.

The STORYSMART® Way

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About My STORYSMART® Perspective

At STORYSMART, we approach storytelling, filmmaking, and media development as a long-term, rights-first business rather than a project-by-project creative exercise.

Our focus is on understanding how stories create value over time through ownership, disciplined development, audience relationships, and thoughtful risk management.

The articles, commentary, and educational materials published here are intended to contribute to broader conversations about storytelling, media, and intellectual property. They are provided for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as investment, legal, tax, or financial advice.

Nothing contained in this publication is intended to promote or solicit investment in any specific project, company, or security. Any discussions regarding potential business or investment opportunities are conducted separately and, where applicable, pursuant to appropriate agreements and offering materials.