Grow Your Video Business

Have you ever come across a tool that makes you business run so much more smoothly that you would gladly pay 5x the price for it and still feel like it’s a steal? Yeah, me too, and for me, Wipster is one of those tools. Wipster is something of a “Google Docs for video”, allowing for commenting and collaborating right on top of the video, where it makes sense. You can even export those comments into your Premiere timeline to keep them front of mind when doing a round of revisions. It makes collaborating with clients and other members of my team SO much easier than it was in the past. Seriously, this tool couldn’t have come around sooner for me and my business, it’s that good. Not only does the Wipster team have an amazing product (they actually don’t feel like they even need to sell to customers), they are deeply in tune with the pulse of the industry and where it’s headed. Content Marketing Manager Hayley Jordan and Partnership Marketing Manager Andre Van Den Assum join me on the podcast today to talk about what trends they’re seeing in the world of video, where we’re headed, and how Wipster can make your life easier. Find the original post at: https://studiosherpas.com/category/podcasts

If you’re anything like me, when you first started your creative business, literally the last thing you wanted to be spending your time on was selling. For me, it was all about creating emotional films that moved people, but as I took on more work and got busier and busier I ended up spending less time shooting and more time selling. Besides the fact that I wasn’t spending as much time doing what I loved, the problem was that I had no idea what I was doing when it came to sales. No way to guide potential clients to the conclusion that my work was worth more than what somebody else down the street was charging. I had always assumed that my work would speak for itself, but was realizing that this was not the case. Matt and I (Ryan) got together this week to discuss how building out a defined sales process has changed our businesses, and how it can do the same for yours. For each of us, the moment when we actually put a sales process in place was a pivotal turning point for our businesses, freeing up our time to focus on other tasks, helping land bigger clients, and overall making life less stressful on us. I know you might think the term “Sales Process” sounds heartless, like it takes the personal touch out of your client interactions (I thought the same thing). In truth however, your process can be as simple or complex as you want it to be, and simply allows you to have something to fall back on when dealing with potential clients. This allows you to be more at ease, natural, and attentive to their needs. Find the original post at: https://studiosherpas.com/category/podcasts

When most of us think about making a career shooting films, we’re only able to come up with a few routes to success. Sure there are the wedding and corporate/brand film industries, but they are often crowded markets with a ton of high-quality filmmakers vying for these jobs. A lot of us dream of landing high-end commercial clients, but have no idea how to even get started. So what do we do? Brad Walker is the Founder of Lighthouse Films, based in Wilmington, NC and has been thinking outside the box ever since getting out of film school. He got his start by becoming a specialist at making promo films for high-end summer camps before shaking up his business with a risky investment and making the jump into commercial work. He’s worked with brands such as Ford, JP Morgan Chase, Red Bull, IBM and many, many more, always with the aim of humanizing these large brands with authentic storytelling. Brad shares with us how thinking outside the box and taking smart risks in your business can open up worlds of opportunities for you. Particularly, he discusses how we often spend too much time thinking about our gear and our product, neglecting one aspect of our business that is just as important if not more so. Find the original post at: https://studiosherpas.com/category/podcasts

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com Let’s face it, none of us are getting any younger. And one of the challenges that our ever increasing ages present to us in our industry is that it becomes harder and harder to keep up with what our clients expect when it comes to wedding and commercial video projects. Tastes change, and there’s always some new piece of gear or software with which to acquaint ourselves. Jason Magbanua is a Philippines-based wedding and commercial filmmaker with more than 17 years of experience in the industry. He’s realized how much harder he has to work these days to stay atop the latest trends and technology, but why that hard work is essential to continuing to grow his brand. His company now has 25 employees and he personally shoots over one hundred weddings every year. Amid this schedule, Jason still manages to find time to work with corporate and commercial clients and speak at wedding filmmaking events around the world. He reminds us that while your age may require you to work harder in some areas, those years of experience ultimately help us charge the prices we want, and work with clients who are truly excited to work with us.

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com When a lot of us start out in the wedding industry, whether it be as filmmakers, photographers, or coordinators, we have dreams of working with high-end luxury and celebrity clients. I know I did when I first started, but as most of us realize pretty quickly, it can be really hard to elevate your brand to a level that attracts that type of clientele. And even if you do, there are often a host of other challenges. Sasha Souza is the founder of Sasha Souza Events and has been planning and coordinating events of all kinds, including weddings for over 20 years. In that span, she’s guided her company to becoming one of the top event, design, and wedding coordination companies in the US, the most awarded wedding design and event planning company in Napa and Sonoma, and now has offices in Napa, Sonoma, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Over the years she’s worked with a number of celebrity clients and shares with us today her mindset behind attracting those clients and working with them, including how to handle being asked to work for PR. With all the success of her own business, Sasha is now broadening her focus to include helping other creative professionals “who have no idea why their businesses suck.” What’s more, she’s offering a $100 discount off of her 8-week coaching Masterplan to listeners of this episode!

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com It’s a challenge that wedding filmmakers and creative business owners the world over face and struggle with, every day. "When is it time to quit my job and go full-time on this? Is it even possible for me to make a career telling stories through film?? My market is waaay too small for that...” Some of us struggle with this for months, years, or our entire lives without ever taking the leap and giving it a shot. The timing never seems quite right, our ideal clients are nowhere to be found and there are too many obstacles that we perceive to be standing in between us and our dreams. Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com Sarah and Rick Pendergraft of PenWeddings have been there, and know all of the struggles associated with making the move into a totally foreign industry. Based in Broken Arrow, OK (yeah I had no idea where that was either), it’s hard to say that they’re in a “high end” wedding market, and yet they’ve steadily been increasing their prices, year after year since launching the company in 2009. Not only that, but they consistently travel around the world to shoot high-end weddings for couples they love working with, and who genuinely care about the finished product. I’ll be the first to say that I learned a ton from them today about some of the experiments they’ve done along the way, (some successful and some not) related to pricing, marketing, and scheduling. They also dive deep into how they went about making the leap from working for the local news station, to crafting wedding stories at European castles, Mexican beaches, and much, much more.

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but you’re probably going about pricing your film services in the wrong way. Don’t worry, I’ve been doing it wrong as well, and so are about 99% of not only wedding, corporate, and commercial filmmakers, but creative business people in general. Sean Low is the Founder and President of The Business of Being Creative, a consulting company and fantastic blog (seriously, read Sean’s stuff) that helps artists build businesses that honor the art that is behind them. After starting his career as a lawyer, Sean found his calling working with creative business owners helping them transform that pesky business side of things that so many of us creatives struggle with. One of Sean’s biggest criticisms is that through our pricing structures, we unintentionally cause our clients to value the wrong parts of our creative processes. By rethinking - and repricing - our offerings we can be more, creative, land better clients, and make a better living doing what we love. We dive into some of the price restructuring I’m currently going through with my own wedding film brand, and Sean points out some of the inconsistencies in the way we price our corporate and commercial work versus the way we price our wedding and social work. It turns out that I - and probably a lot of you - are still using outdated pricing structures that made sense 20 years ago, but have little sense in today’s creative business climate.

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com You might notice while listening to this episode that today’s guest, Evan Bourcier uses a certain word again and again and again. That word? Intentional As in being intentional, thinking intentionally, and making decisions about your work, your projects, and your life with foresight and purpose. Despite his age (he’s 23), Evan has achieved a lot in the world of filmmaking so far. He’s an award winning and highly sought after DP, owner of a boutique video production house, Valo Visuals and runs a popular educational blog, podcast, and Facebook community. What’s the secret to his success? You guessed it: Being intentional If you’ve dreamed about moving from event video production to commercial work for big brands, or making the jump into marketing yourself as a full-time Director of Photography, Evan has some great tips on how to go about achieving those goals with intention.

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com A little over a year ago we (Matt and Ryan) launched this crazy idea we had, called Studio Sherpas. Since then, we’ve put out our Selling Like A Sherpa course (which we will be relaunching soon!), launched this here podcast, and created a whole bunch of other content to help filmmakers take control of their creative businesses, move in a direction that inspires them, and charge what they’re worth. You might be wondering though, “Who are these guys, and why should I listen to them???” In answer to that question we decided to record a podcast focusing on us, Matt Davis and Ryan Koral, co-founders of Studio Sherpas, passionate storytellers, creative business veterans, and dedicated family guys. Between the two of us, we’ve experienced pretty much all of the highs and lows that working in this industry can bring. We wanted to take a moment to share our own stories and hopefully provide some insight into what it’s taken for us to build our businesses from one-man wedding film companies, to fully fledged teams focusing on weddings, corporate, education and more.

Find the original post at: podcast.studiosherpas.com "It takes more than pointing your camera at a human to really capture character in your video. While most wedding have a bunch of people, and often prominently feature a couple, they rarely have any character." This was the opening line of a recently published blog post by today's guest, Patrick Moreau. The blog post in question was titled Why Most Wedding Films Suck, and needless to say, it ruffled some feathers. Patrick joins us today to dive deeper into the sentiments that drove him to write the post, and what the average filmmaker can do to not only produce films that don't suck, but ones that cross borders and inspire viewers beyond the wedding film industry. If you don't know Patrick already, he's the co-founder of Stllmotion, a video company that went from shooting their first wedding with photo and video for $250, alllllll the way to shooting for some of the biggest brands in the world a few years later. How big? How about the NFL, MLB, CBS, Callaway, Canon, Toyota. The list goes on. Really big. Oh, and they've also won five Emmys. Do you want to hear the crazy part? Many of those brands approached Stillmotion to work with them after seeing one of their wedding videos. Hard to believe right? The thing is, Patrick and his team are master storytellers, and the elements of a well-told story remain the same no matter what you're covering. Whether it's one of the most important days of a couple's life together, or one of the most important days of a bunch of 300-pound dudes smashing the crap out of each other, the principals are the same. Patrick's frustration with the lack of storytelling chops in the industry is the focus of his other company, Muse Storytelling. At Muse, he teaches filmmakers how learning the art of storytelling is the biggest thing you can do to move your business forward. It's storytelling, not a new drone or camera setup that is the thing that's going to elevate you to getting those 10, 20, and 50 thousand dollar clients on a consistent basis. Storytelling has become something of a buzzword as of late, but we want to clarify what it really means, and how you can go about crafting great stories, and getting paid what your worth to tell them.