Corey Olson is the Co-Founder and CEO of Vanilla Video, a video production company based in Chicago employing several full-time videographers. The company serves thousands of customers nationwide and has been in business for 12+ years. Corey is an entrepreneur at heart, near always working on a side project. His entrepreneurial endeavors usually focus on problems he encounters in his daily life. Vanilla Video was created after a work acquaintance could not afford a wedding video. He set out to create an affordable video production service by bucking industry trends.
With a skillset in software engineering, Corey is a self-taught full-stack developer. As an apprentice of his parents, Corey was introduced to computer programming (Visual Basic) by his Dad at age eight. Taking special interest in websites, he was handed an HTML book, and given the task of building a company website for his parent’s business. His interest in web apps remains strong.
Corey has created, bought, sold, and managed dozens of websites since 1996. Although the web has transformed over the last two decades, Corey is slower to adopt changes as they occur in the web development world, eschewing the fads as they come and go. "Often, the latest technology or framework is a convoluted way to achieve little benefit, only serving to differentiate resumes." In his development stack, almost all tools and frameworks are self-made and self-maintained. This allows him to maintain a greater degree of control and understanding over his tech-related projects.
Corey is an avid hiker and long-distance walker. He was married to Nicole Olson in September 2018 and has two and a half children: Aaron Olson (2019), Olivia Olson (2021) and mystery baby (due Summer 2024).
He considers dropping out of university (2007) to be one of his better decisions, forcing himself into entrepreneurship. Corey has been described as eccentric by others; but he often sees opportunity where most do not. He holds strict conservative values, attending a local Baptist Church. He hopes to have five children and multiple businesses.
His contrarian opinions extend into other areas of fascination. Corey has a history of economic thinking, and finds great pleasure in business analysis, data and statistics, and areas of modeling and calculation. Pattern analysis may as well be his pastime, as Corey describes himself as being obsessed with numbers, numerical relationships, and ratios / numbers within operating businesses.
In February 2020, Corey published a compilation of home videos freaturing his German Shepherd Dog on YouTube which went viral. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he bought a 50cc Scooter and began making other YouTube videos. By summer 2021 Corey became a partnered YouTube creator and maintains a small but growing channel. He hopes to put more effort into his channel and that is why this website exists — to curate and enhance his personal brand.
If you would like to get in contact with Corey, you can find contact info on his YouTube.