I am Ryan Mayiras, Founder and CEO of Candid Studios, a wedding and event photography and videography company that I founded in 2016. I am based in North Miami Beach, Florida, and Candid has crews in 14 cities across six states. I care about making a complicated business simple for our clients and our crews. I replaced GoHighLevel with Candid’s own portal CRM, which I built with AI coding agents and keep the code for in my own GitHub. I trained more than 50 contractors on the staff and client apps. Candid bills hourly with no subscriptions, and every delivery includes the RAW files plus the final gallery. You can find me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmayiras and learn more about the company at https://candidstudios.net.
Company: Candid Studios
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Ryan Mayiras: I am Ryan Mayiras, Founder and CEO of Candid Studios, a wedding and event photography and videography company I founded in 2016. I am based in North Miami Beach, Florida, and we have crews in 14 cities across six states. I run Candid with a focus on keeping the experience simple for our couples and for the crews who serve them.
What was the moment you realized that complexity was holding your company back, and how did that shift your approach to product, operations, or strategy?
Ryan Mayiras: I realized it when customers were writing to 27 phone lines and several inboxes, and each wedding’s status lived in one person’s head. That made it hard for anyone else to know where a couple stood. I shifted my approach toward putting everything about a wedding in one place that the whole team could see.
Can you share one specific example of something you simplified (a product feature, process, pricing model, or customer experience) that delivered outsized results?
Ryan Mayiras: I replaced GoHighLevel with Candid’s own portal CRM, which I built with AI coding agents and keep the code for in my own GitHub. The inquiry, contract, invoice, crew, and every text, email, and call sit on one project record. I also trained more than 50 contractors on the staff and client apps. On pricing, Candid bills hourly with no subscriptions, and every delivery includes the RAW files plus the final gallery.
How do you systematically identify and eliminate complexity across the organization without oversimplifying in ways that hurt quality or value?
Ryan Mayiras: I enforce simplicity with clear rules and I adjust them when something breaks. After two automations followed up with the same clients in August 2026, the rule became one outbound message per client until they reply. On 10/12/2026 a follow-up repeated the same check-in to three couples, so the fix now sends any question that has already been asked to a person instead.
What’s the biggest resistance you’ve faced when pushing for radical simplicity, and how did you overcome it?
Ryan Mayiras: The biggest challenge has been keeping the system working for the people who depend on it. On 10/13/2026 a photographer saw “0 active, 10 in your queue” and could not upload. The team fixed it the same day with a crew password reset. Fixing problems quickly and training the crews on the apps has helped people trust the simpler system.
For other CEOs who struggle with feature bloat, process overload, or confusing customer journeys, what’s the most important principle or first step you would recommend they take?
Ryan Mayiras: My advice is to put everything about a customer on one record so that nobody has to rely on memory. Then add a firm rule for each failure you see, such as sending any question that has already been asked to a person instead of repeating it automatically.
