SKATE IQ

Skate IQ pulls 25-40 million monthly YouTube views. Revenue streams are growing. The programs work. The audience keeps expanding.

The question wasn't whether things were working. They clearly were. The question was how to keep the momentum going as complexity increased. More ideas, more collaborators, more tiers of production. The founders wanted to see their own operation clearly enough to refine it, not fix it.

One founder described the production dynamic: everyone was "15% the production manager." Not broken, but diffuse. The engagement was about giving their instincts something concrete to work with. Clarity that lets ideas keep moving.

• Where time actually goes versus where it should go
• What's present when a project clicks and absent when it stalls
• Whether everyone who says "I own production" means the same thing
• How to document instincts without killing the energy behind them
• Whether structure creates space for creativity or constrains it

Individual discovery with each founder. Joint retrospective comparing projects that clicked against projects that stalled. Pattern extraction. Then: mapping the production system.

• Week 1-2: Individual sessions (7 total, 2 hours each)
• Week 3: Joint session mapping success and struggle stories
• Week 4: Production flow synthesis and role mapping

The Tier System

The founders had already intuited that not all videos require the same structure. A solo tutorial needs a few hours of planning. A multi-skater competition needs days. A contest series needs weeks and a production team.

The engagement formalized what they knew: four tiers, each with different planning requirements, team sizes, and workflows. The structure matches the complexity.

The Production Phases

Five phases from idea to published video. Each phase has a trigger, an output, and a done signal. Not process for process's sake. Reference points for identifying where things break and where to refine.

The Core Pattern

The founders already operated from strong instincts about what made production work. The engagement made those instincts visible and documented. Transferable to a growing team.

Cross-reference tooling. When one founder said something about production, the system surfaces what the other founder said about the same topic. Alignment checks built into the infrastructure.

Alignment checks. Before anything went into the final documents, both founders' positions were verified. Where they diverged, the gap got flagged for the joint session rather than papered over.

Production Flow Templates. All 4 tiers documented with phases, handoffs, and role definitions. Not one-off files. Built on structured data, so when roles change or new tiers emerge, the documents update.

Interactive Production Flow Visualization. Operational tool for ongoing use. Select a tier; see the phases, handoffs, and gaps. Reference for planning any video.

The deliverables aren't hand-offs at the end of an engagement. They're infrastructure for ongoing operations.

The generative art draws from skateboarding itself: arcs, carves, the feeling of riding transition.

In the thumbnail, trajectories cross like a crowded session. Everyone carving their own line through the same space. Energy without coordination.

In the hero, those lines find the transition. They get pulled toward the ramp curve, then carve along it together. Structure that doesn't flatten the movement.

The tooling follows the same principle. No static documents that go stale. Systems that cross-reference, check alignment, and regenerate outputs. Frameworks that adapt as the operation grows.

The art honors both: the energy that built the channel, and the clarity that lets it scale.

The production flow maps aren't strategy decks. They're reference points.

When a video stalls, identify which phase broke. When bringing on team members, hand them documented processes instead of tribal knowledge. When scoping a new project, know which tier it falls into and what that tier requires.

One founder said it clearly: video production works when you're ready to start the next one after finishing the last one. When you know what to do next. That's what visibility makes possible.