You've got some talent. You've got some experience. You've got some good ideas.
What you don't have are people willing to pay you to create stuff for them. So you're not technically a pro. You're not technically a business. You're a person with a camera.
You with a fancy camera > grandma with a smartphone? If you're not getting paid, maybe that's arguable.
So what now?
Here's my little journey.
I come from a creative background. In undergrad: majored in art and writing. Went to grad school for creative writing. I consider spending four hours in a coffee shop working on a screenplay "a good time." Ditto that for being hunched over my computer into the wee hours fine-tuning a video edit.
I'd also worked on a range of projects--documentary stuff, corporate-y interviews, narrative projects, ads and marketing videos--so I felt pretty good about being able to make cool stuff for small businesses or nonprofits in the area. I also had the confidence of the self-taught, knowing that I'd be able to problem-solve and pick up the necessary skills along the way. And I loved developing concepts or storyboarding out ideas.
But I also knew that if I wanted to make the business sustainable early on, I needed a reasonably consistent client base. I probably wouldn't be able to (or want to) build each project from scratch. And I'd need to start thinking a bit more as a businessperson and a bit less as an artist.
Tough. At least for me.
One small epiphany came from a small production company I'd been following, Video Dads, and a peek they give into their corporate video production process. They talk about getting an email query from an organization that wants a video done and, without pause, they already know how much to charge, what the shoot will be like, and how the video will turn out. That's because they've already gone through this process a hundred times so they have heaps of experience.
But also because, and this is what struck me, they were treating their videos as, and this is for lack of a better term, products. They'd developed a video product and they knew the cost and process inside-out. And it's easier to sell a product than an idea. It's also easier than asking a client to trust that the skills and talent you showcased on Project A means you can complete a totally different Project B for them.
This isn't to say that considering your work a "product" is bad. This isn't to say that the work Video Dads creates isn't impactful or artful. Their videos are great and they're generous with their opinions and experience. Check them out.
This isn't, in fact, about their videos at all. It's about my own conclusion that to make my business sustainable early on--without a professional reputation or large body of knock-your-socks-off work, I'd probably need to embrace developing a video product that (1) I'd have a lock on the process (and thus the pricing) and (2) would be able to sell to sizable demographic of potential clients and (3) would be reasonably fun and give me a chance to refine some skills.
In short, I wanted to pay some bills and enjoy doing it.
I took these things into consideration and tinkered and toyed. And thought about what video products I could develop, refine, and pitch to a client.
Would it be news gathering? I reached out to the local newspaper to see if they'd be interested in enhancing their digital content with some professionally produced video. Phone calls. Emails. Into the ether. Nothin'.
Would it be corporate-type interview-driven pieces that I could approach organizations with? I knew that I'd have to round out my lighting kit and would want to upgrade a few pieces of gear before heading into a professional corporate shoot. But the black hole of gear acquisition is real and I wanted to figure out a product that wouldn't require shelling out for additional gear in the hope that it'd pay off.
Eventually, I landed on making a real estate video. And here's why:
A few things happened in quick succession. The first is that my brother and sister-in-law were in the midst of a house hunt so I was spending some time looking at real estate listings. And I realized that most of the real estate videos I saw were either poorly produced (grainy slideshow "videos") or were lifeless and confusing (a succession of ultra-smooth gimbal shots mashed together). But the biggest surprise was that outside of high-priced homes, video was hardly used as all.
The second thing was that the house next to my mom's was essentially vacant. The owners live in Florida and plan to move up to Michigan when they retire. But until then, their very cool lake house gets used intermittently throughout the year.
Putting these two things together, I thought, "Well shit. At least we can try to make a better real estate video."
So we did. After running through a couple of iterations (maybe to be expounded on later), we developed a real estate video product. We honed a method that was fun to shoot, easy to edit, but more dynamic and information-packed than the other videos on the market.
Then we showed it to friends and family--particularly people who had recently gone through the house-buying process. The feedback was great. Then we showed it to a real estate agent. That feedback was great too.
From there, we managed to get into a local real estate office to pitch them on our video and that meeting paved the way to getting the first gigs that made Mini Colossus a reality.
Now this is, of course, a stream-lined version of the story. Lots of other things happened along the way, including building skills in an unpaid project that directly related to our real estate videos and getting a kick in the ass to jumpstart the whole thing.
But the main takeaway from this post is that a change in my perception--being okay with creating a "product" to sell--is what helped usher Mini Colossus into the world. I had to figure out a way to pay the bills and in southwest Michigan, not a production hotspot, starting out with a product to sell was a way to make that happen.