- The business was just seeming to suck
every single cent that I had.
And that was simply because I was investing in things
that didn't have an exponential return in the early days.
What's up, everyone?
Welcome back to another video.
Today we're gonna talk all about investing
in the filmmaking industry that we are in.
Maybe you're a hobbyist that wants to turn
into a professional filmmaker, or maybe you're a filmmaker
that's been doing this for a little bit of time,
but is perhaps stuck in terms of the business,
maybe things have slowed down, maybe cash is tight,
or maybe there's just
a lack of creative ideas around business.
And this video is for you,
because this is the video that I wish myself would have seen
10 years ago when I was first starting out.
It all hinges around one simple idea,
and that is simply to invest the time that we have,
the resources that we have, and the creativity that we have
and invest that in things that have an exponential return.
When I first started, I took everything I had
in terms of the money that I was making
and put us solely into the equipment around me,
into cameras, into lenses, into audio equipment,
and into lighting.
And for about the first three or four years,
I was really struggling to make any progress
when it came to the actual commerce of the business
that I started in the first place.
'Cause at the end of the day,
a business is supposed to be able to support yourself,
support your family,
and actually provide an income for your life.
But the business was just seeming to suck
every single cent that I had.
And that was simply because I was investing in things
that didn't have an exponential return in the early days.
Now, of course, as the business grows, as profits increase,
you want to be able to have the freedom and flexibility
to invest back into the business and buy really nice toys,
like cameras and lenses and lighting,
and all those good things.
But in the early days,
we need to maximize that small amount of money that we have
and invest in things with an exponential return.
Now, there's three ways that I see
that you can invest your time,
and particularly your money in the early days.
And the first one is simply to invest in yourself.
Maybe take a step back and think how many times
or how many hours have I spent investing in myself
in the last week.
We live in a digital world, and obviously,
you're investing in yourself by watching this video,
which is a great start,
but YouTube is full of knowledge around the film industry,
full of creative ideas,
full of insight and tutorials in terms of you
developing and leveling up your creativity.
And then also beyond YouTube,
there's a wide world of creatives
that have produced courses that you can learn from.
And these are a great way of investing in yourself.
So think about the money that you might have.
Do you spend a thousand dollars on the next lens
or do you spend a thousand dollars
on a really powerful course
that could completely transform your mindset
and help you level up?
The second thing that I have is mentorship.
So spending the money that you have,
and maybe you have a mentor or someone that you look up to
within your world.
Maybe there's a particular filmmaker
in the city that you're a part of.
How about grab some of that money
and take that person out for lunch and just say,
"Hey, can I shout at your lunch?
Can I shout at your coffee?
Can we go grab a beer?"
Whatever you would like to do,
and just pick their brains in terms of developing
a better or a high level mindset
from someone who has actually had the experience
within your specific industry.
'Cause it's all very well to take advice from people
on different sides of the world,
but there will be someone in your town
who's made a successful career out of the creative industry,
particularly filmmaking, that you could learn from.
So spend a bit of money to invest in a mentorship program
or a particular person that you really want to learn from.
Thirdly, within the investing for yourself,
what about investing your time and resources
into volunteering at a production company
that you look forward, or you look up to?
I don't see a lot of people doing this.
A lot of people who knock on our door,
particularly here, are obviously looking for a job.
They're looking for an employment,
but no one is willing to work for free.
And I find that really fascinating,
because if you're wanting to level up
and become the best in the industry,
or really grow in your creative field,
then the best opportunity you have to grow in that field
is to volunteer your time
at a company who is doing the things
that you actually want to do.
So why not spend a little bit of that time,
a little bit of that money that you have,
and invest in yourself
by volunteering at a production company
and just say, "Hey, I'll literally sweep the floors.
All I wanna do is spend a week with you
and soak up everything that you are doing.
Soak up your processes.
Soak up how your team works, the culture,
and also your post-production pipeline."
All of those things will be available to you,
if you simply just spend a little bit of your resources
and volunteering somewhere else.
Number four, film, film, film, film, film.
You need to be investing your time and money
in creating content.
Please don't wait for the job just to come through the door
before you pick up your camera.
If you have a down season,
where you don't have many jobs coming through the door,
this is a perfect opportunity for you to knuckle down
and invest in your own creativity by creating the films
that you wanna create for free, for yourself.
This is somewhat a counterintuitive investment,
because you'd think that you want to be doing stuff
that is generating literal money coming through the door.
But the more you produce content for yourself
and do the things that you love,
the more your portfolio will grow around the creative area
or a creative field that you want to be pursuing
for client work, and the more you're gonna learn.
Now, practice definitely makes perfect.
And the more you pick up the camera, the more you film,
the more you make mistakes,
then the better you are going to be.
Lastly, build a portfolio off the back of that.
I don't know the amount of people
that have come through our door
over the last couple of years and said,
"Hey, you know, I'm a filmmaker. I want a job.
Can I work for you?
Can I do this?"
The first question I always ask them is, yeah,
no problem, mate.
Can I see your portfolio?
And the amount of times where people have been like,
oh, I just haven't had many jobs on recently,
so my portfolio is six months behind.
That just blows my mind,
because if you wanna be a professional filmmaker,
you need to be making content all the time.
But building a portfolio is probably
the single most important thing you can do
when building your filmmaking career,
because that is the main interaction you have
between yourself and a future job opportunity.
And so that is probably the best thing that you can do
to invest in yourself.
All right, so the second area that we can invest
our time and money into is investing in our business.
Now, a lot of people, when they're entrepreneurs
working for themselves, sole trader-type models,
you'll hear them talk a lot about spending so much time
in the business that they don't have time
to work on the business.
And if I was to give myself of 10 years ago some advice,
it would be simply to just make sure
that you religiously manage that difference
and make sure that you're spending just as much time
on the business as stuck in the weeds in the business.
We want to develop a business mindset
along with our creativity,
because creativity, the flip side of creativity is commerce,
and we want to be able to balance the two
between creativity and commerce.
If we don't balance the two, we'll be hyper creative,
but we won't have a viable business model
to be able to be sustainable as a business long-term.
And if we're just focused on the business,
then there's a lot of the creative aspect
that will suffer in the process.
So the sweet spot
is right in the middle of creativity and commerce.
And the way you can do this is to really start investing
in your own mindset and realize
that you are actually in the middle
trying to balance the two, creativity and commerce.
You're obviously in the film industry
'cause you love making films,
you love the creative aspect of that,
and that's sort of more of a hobby component.
You love doing it, and that's why you're doing it.
And so we just need to make the transition into commerce,
into the business world to try and come up with structures
and systems where we can utilize our hobby
for commercial benefit,
because we want profit so that we can grow,
that we can reinvest, and that we can actually have
a really balanced, healthy lifestyle in the middle.
So my main piece of advice here
in building a business mindset
is just to be aware of that commercial reality,
and to prioritize cashflow more than anything else,
particularly as you're starting out.
You might have a couple of thousand dollars in the bank
and just really try and start thinking about that money
as opportunity to create more work
versus simply just buying the latest piece of gear,
the latest lens, the latest camera.
As hobbyists, we obviously want to sink
all of our money into the equipment,
because we want to make high quality films.
We want the audio to be more crisp.
We want this lens because we want
the beautiful, shallow depth of field.
All those good things
are really great things to keep in mind,
but perhaps more on a long-term trajectory
in terms of your business.
You need to prioritize spending your money
in a way that gets you business through the door
so that you can get the wheels spinning on your business
before diving too deep into that creative world.
Okay, and number three.
The third thing I would invest my time and energy
and money into is my relationships within my world.
Now, there's three key relationships within this.
There's obviously, the relationships you have
with your clients.
You want to ensure that they are the best relationships
that you possibly can get,
because a repeat client is worth its weight in gold.
Quite literally sometimes.
I don't know how many clients we've had
come and go over the years,
but there are a certain handful of clients
that just keep coming back for repeat works.
They're potentially the larger companies.
And honestly, we owe a huge amount of our bottom line
to those clients because of the repeat service.
Now, I think those relationships have been strengthened
because we look after them and we give them good deals.
We make sure that they're happy.
We really invest in those relationships
because they're worthwhile.
The second type of relationship
we want to continually invest in is our industry peers.
So those creatives around us, particularly within our city.
We want to make sure that we have strong relationships
with those creatives, because one,
it's just really good to be nice people
and to build relationships and friendships.
But the second reason is that you never know
when you'll need them and when you'll need a favor
or you'll need to call upon them for a job.
So there's a whole lot of jobs
where they're bigger than our one particular company.
So we need to bring in other creatives to be a part of that.
But also there's other creatives
that have particular pieces of gear or equipment
that we might need to hire for a particular job,
and it's just really good to have nice, strong relationships
with everyone in this industry,
so that we're all friends, we're all helping each other
grow the creative industry within our city
all at the same time.
I think our city particularly is a little bit small
for strong egos
and people who just think that they're awesome.
So take a chill pill and just relax and enjoy the fact
that you can be friends with the creative industry as well,
and they're not just competition.
Now, the third type of relationship
that I would encourage you to invest highly in
is the relationship you have with your family.
Now, you may have a partner, you may be married,
you may have children, you may not be.
But whatever relationship surrounds your world,
you want to invest your time and energy
into that relationship
to ensure that it can be as strong as possible.
For myself personally, I'm married, I've got two kids.
And if I didn't have
a really strong relationship with my wife,
I wouldn't be empowered and encouraged
to do all of this creative work.
There'd be a lot of tension there, because I work a lot.
I spend a lot of time at the office creating content,
building a business.
And because of that relationship
as the foundation for everything I do, business is easy,
I'm encouraged and empowered
to carry on doing what I'm doing.
All right, so there you have it,
there's some thoughts in my head
around three different areas you could invest your time
and money into other than purchasing gear.
Now, hear me out.
Gear purchases are awesome.
They help elevate the quality of our films,
but primarily behind the scenes,
there's so many more things
that you could invest your time and money into
before gear to really help your business
take that next step.
So what do you do with all this?
How about you list out of 10 how are you doing in each area?
How are you doing investing in yourself out of 10?
Are you a three, are you a five,
are you an eight out of 10?
How's it going investing in your business out of 10,
and how are you going investing
in your personal relationships,
your client relationships, and your relationships
with other industry professionals around you?
I hope you enjoyed those thoughts.
Please consider liking, subscribing,
dropping a comment in the comment box below,
if you thought this video is helpful,
and also let me know what you would like to see more of.
We are a busy commercial production company
here in Nelson, New Zealand,
so we have a lot of things going on.
It's not always easy knowing what to make videos about
because the filmmaking industry is just so big, so vast,
but I'd really love to sort of find a little niche here
on YouTube and continue giving you as much advice
and tips and tricks as possible.
So drop a line in the comments
and we'd love to hear from you.
Apart from that, we'll see you in the next video.
(relaxing music)