25-year-old college dropout's production company brings in $1.08 million a year—and helped his parents retire

At just 15, Tuan Le made a bold promise: He told his parents he would help them retire in 10 years.

The family had just immigrated to Canada from Vietnam, and Le’s parents worked tirelessly to provide for him and his sister.

“I remember my old man coming home at, like, 7 a.m., and my mom told me that he lost like five pounds after one week,”the 25-year-old tells CNBC Make It. “That was an awakening moment for me. That’s when I told my parents, ‘Give me 10 years, I’m gonna retire you guys.'”

His parents wanted better opportunities for Le and his sister, he says. While their family was “extremely comfortable in Vietnam,” he says, the opportunities for college graduates weren’t as abundant as they are in the U.S.Although Le says his parents “sold everything” to move the family to Canada, the move caused a lot of depression and anger for Le, who didn’t speak much English when he immigrated.

But in 2025, Le made good on his promise of helping his parents retire. The success of the video production company he founded, Toronto-based ShortsCut, allowed Le to start sending his parents $5,000 CAD — around $3,652 USD — per month. It’s enough to cover their rent and expenses living about an hour outside of Toronto.

“My parents are still working because they told me they wanted to do something with their time, but they don’t have to work,” he says. His parents work two days a week at a farmers market stall his mom runs.

Le founded ShortsCut, which creates short-form videos for brands, in 2023. The company mainly produces videos for TikTok, Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts. He started small, filming food for restaurants around Toronto, and says he eventually leveled up to making high-quality videos designed to go viral on social media.

In 2025, ShortsCut brought in $1.08 million with a net profit of just over $488,000, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. The company generally has 10 to 12 clients on its roster, including pet food and tech companies, Le says.

While struggling to acclimate to life in Canada, teenage Le played a lot of video games, he says, and eventually started cutting together video montages of his gameplay.

“That’s how I got into video editing,” he says. From there, “I started editing videos for League of Legends YouTubers and then finance YouTubers [and] some dropship YouTubers.”

Back then, he charged $20 CAD for roughly 20-minute videos, he says. He enjoyed the video editing process so much, he decided to pursue it professionally, enrolling at Toronto Film School a year after he graduated from high school in 2018.

One of his first assignments was to make a video on a subject that was meaningful to him, and he made a short film about his parents. The film landed in the school’s hall of fame, Le says, and at that point, just four months into his time there, he decided to drop out.

“To me it was like, ‘Wow, that’s sick,’ but at the same time, I heard this quote that goes like, ‘If you’re the best in the room, then you’re in the wrong room,'” he says.

After dropping out of film school, Le tried to land “any job” that would let him make videos for a living by cold emailing “every single CEO, production company, marketing agency in Toronto,” he says. But he lacked professional experience and didn’t receive any offers.

Eventually, Le offered to work for a Toronto-based content production company for free for three months in exchange for training in running a business, such as writing emails and negotiating deals.

During that time, Le started shooting his own videos on the side. He messaged “every single restaurant” in Toronto asking if he could make a video for them in exchange for a meal, he says.

“I was shooting videos for a restaurant in exchange for free food, and I was living out of a suitcase with my laptop on my friend’s couch,” Le says.

He started out making videos for small food stalls and mom-and-pop shops on his phone before upgrading to nicer cameras he got off of Facebook Marketplace. Still, Le noticed the videos weren’t garnering a ton of views or engagement when the restaurants posted them on Instagram.

TikTok was beginning to really take off at the time, and Le saw that as an opportunity. He asked his clients for $2,000 to make 10 TikToks.

“If it doesn’t work, if it doesn’t get any views, I will give you your money back,” he says he told them.

The first video Le made for a client racked up 700,000 views, he says. And the next got 300,000. His strategy was simply to identify trending video formats and make similar videos promoting the restaurants. His viral videos helped one client gain 9,000 followers overnight, he says.

“After that I was like, ‘Wow, I think I got something here,'” he says. “I just took that case study [to other clients] and was like, ‘Hey, I can help you go viral.'”

After his three months of working for free were up, Le left to start ShortsCut at the end of 2022. The company officially launched in January 2023.

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