- Oh hell yeah, look at that.
This label maker might be my favorite thing
that I've gotten in a while.
And it was like nine bucks.
And I hate label makers,
I think it looks so ugly.
These are like the old-school, embossed ones.
I don't know why I find this so amusing.
So the biggest mistake I've ever made
in my freelance filmmaker career
is probably not buying this label maker sooner.
This is so dope.
Take that, stick that on there.
Oh yeah.
And Fiverr's in the house sponsoring today's video,
so we will be doing a giveaway with this DJI Osmo Action.
With a custom-made label.
Look how sexy that looks.
All you gotta do is be part of the notification squad,
leave a comment down below
and we will pick out a random winner
within the first 12 hours of this video going live.
Good luck.
Now one of the first mistakes that I had to learn
was probably to not make negotiating weird.
I think at first charging any money at all
was just really weird to me, 'cause in my head I was like,
"Well, I already own a camera,
"I could just go out
"and get this shot that you're asking for."
"How about you just give me five bucks for gas
"and we'll call it a day?"
The day you decide to call yourself
a professional filmmaker, photographer, writer,
anything freelance, you're assigning a value to your time.
And once you generally figure out your value and your rates,
then it's just a matter of trying to find
the right clients for you.
The way I used to see it was like,
oh I'm gonna go to these people
and ask them a certain amount of money for this process
and hopefully they say yes.
But now that I've been on the other side of the table,
'cause we hire a lot of freelancers and outside contractors.
That really demystify the process for me,
'cause now when I go into a negotiation I kinda know like,
okay, this is what our budget looks like
and this is how much we can reasonably spend
on this service.
And it's really just trying to find that perfect match.
I mean, when you're hiring or getting hired
it should really be beneficial for both parties equally.
And if you feel like you're bidding on a project
that's way over your head
or you feel like you're totally slashing all your rates down
to just nab a project, it might not be the best fit.
We've built our company up over the last 10 years,
so naturally, as we get more experience, our rates go up.
And we know that even though we're not necessarily cheap,
we can provide value to the right client
to where makes sense for both of us.
So with all that being said
now the whole negotiation process
is much less intimidating to us
because instead of us going like, "Hey,
"how much money can you give me?"
It's more about, like, here's the services we provide,
here's how much we cost.
Are we a good fit?
Yeah, No?
Another big mistake that I used to make a lot,
and I still kinda do,
is just tryna do too much all by yourself.
From the very start I've always been a
do everything myself type of person,
and sometimes it's kinda hard to let go
of a little bit of that creative control.
But to scale a company you just have to do it.
So definitely not being afraid to reach out for extra help.
Especially if it's in a field
that you're not fully comfortable with,
like let's say like a logo design.
There's gonna be someone out there
that can deliver a better product than me
and do it much much faster, as well.
So times like that is when Fiverr comes into play,
and I just spent a little bit of time on their website
and oh my god, there are so many great resources
to help you get your projects done and building your brand.
For example a lot of our clients ask for a voiceover track
and that was always kind of a headache,
'cause we have to go out and look for them.
The process was just never very streamlined.
But I went on Fiverr and literally
within five to 10 minutes, I had an order placed
for a voiceover read.
You guys want to hear it?
Here it is.
(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] A wild Potato Jet can be found.
He films himself with the camera
because he thinks he actually matters.
Nobody quite knows how he managed to trick Kari
into falling in love with him.
She's way too smart to be dating a YouTuber.
In eighth grade Potato Jet tried to fart,
but accidentally pooped his pants.
- Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay!
Stop, that's enough, that's enough.
It's not true.
Okay, maybe a little bit true.
How freakin' sweet was that voice over.
And sounded so pro and legit too, right?
And you can find so much more on Fiverr
to help you build your freelance business
or support your projects like logo design,
web design, video intro animations
and even Photoshop or special effects editing.
And the prices were really really good too,
so as I was browsing the website I was like
"Oh my god, I could use this service.
"I could hire this person.
"I could get that and that."
And on top of that, you can use the code POTATOJET
to get 15% off the already very reasonable prices.
So hit that link in the description
which will take you to a custom page
Fiverr whip together for me,
it has a collection of my Fiverr favorites.
I bet you by the time you're done checking it out,
you're gonna be thinking of all the possibilities
and thing you can achieve with access to all this talent.
If you think about it, a lot of times,
you having access to talent is just as important
to having talent itself.
So thanks again Fiverr for sponsoring this video
and making this video possible.
Next mistake I've made is not enough planning for a shoot.
And I've always been more on the type of just like,
"Hey, let's just hit the record button
"and see what we get, and we'll edit it later."
But sometimes I'll get so preoccupied
with making sure all the logistics are good,
everyone has the costumes they need.
We have all the talent, we have enough lights,
we have enough tripods.
And then when you get to the set you're like,
"Oh wait, what shots exactly do I need?"
The first time we ever used the storyboard
is when our client required it.
They basically said "We won't give you the budget
"until you deliver a storyboard."
And I was like man, I don't need storyboards,
I just wing it.
But we eventually got a storyboard artist to jot it all down
and we had everything visually laid out in front of us.
And that shoot was the smoothest shoot
that I have ever done in my life.
And the reason is because there's basically no guesswork.
You know exactly at what point you need to get one shot.
What I used to do was run the whole scene through
a bunch of times from every different little angle
and build it together in post-production.
But when you have a storyboard
you know exactly when you're gonna be on what shot,
so you laser focus on that one segment
that you really really need.
And that also makes editing a breeze too.
And then, in the end, you just have this
very well executed scene.
So the act of planning things out
and creating the storyboard,
not just to actually get it on paper,
but as you're creating the storyboard
you really deep dive think into like,
this is the shot I want here, this is the shot I want here.
So since then I've appreciated storyboarding a lot more
than I used to.
And by the way, plenty of storyboard artists on Fiverr.
One of the really big mistakes I've had
was doing too much on a handshake deal.
Now for the first half of my career
I did everything on a handshake deal,
and I made it a point to work with only people that I trust
and it worked great, at least until it didn't. (laughs)
And it was a project with a friend that we trusted.
And the thing is I've just never been
a contract guy, you know?
I've always been like,
"I trust you, you trust me, we're good, yeah?"
And that was a deal for this major project that we did,
and we got half up front and everything.
But what happened was the company was just kinda
struggling financially with their cash flow,
and they just kinda put us
at the very tail end of their priorities.
Probably because we didn't have a legit contract.
And even though the people we were working with
are people that we consider ourselves
to be close and tight with, they were in the same boat.
They were knocking on finances door every day like,
"Hey, can we get these guys paid?"
It took us over a year to get paid.
Over a year!
And it was a lot of money too.
I mean, just from travel expenses, alone,
that I was supposed to get reimbursed for,
I just put it all my card.
It was like $20,000 of just air fares and hotels
and all the, God.
So lesson learned, no matter who it is,
no matter how close you are, just get a contract.
Just be safe.
And by the way, you can get legal contracts
written up on Fiverr.
Okay, this part is not part of the sponsorship.
Technically I already finished
the Fiverr sponsorship read earlier,
so I don't even need to talk about them anymore.
And the final thing,
which is what I consider to be the most important thing,
is what separates you from another guy with a camera?
What separates your company from the other company
that does the same type of thing as you do
but is willing to compete on price?
You start competing on price
it's just kinda who can get to the bottom the fastest,
and that's just not a game you wanna be in.
Is it about what camera you're shooting on?
Is it if you're shooting 4k and 6k?
Is it how good your editing is?
And all this.
And I think from my experiences, the hands-down,
most important thing that you offer is trust.
Big companies with lots and lots of money,
they always go straight for the people that they trust
and they repeat with them over and over and over
because they're trustable.
So if your company's the type that's like,
"Hey, I'll get this edit to you by Wednesday."
And then Friday comes around and they're like,
"So, about that edit."
And you're like, "Oh so sorry,
I got sidetracked with something."
You know, if you come up with excuses over and over
and sometimes you deliver good work,
but sometimes your work is a little bit funky
and need some tweaking.
It slowly damages your reputation.
For example, the editor of Vogue magazine
needs a cover shot.
They're gonna call one of the people
that they've worked with before
and they really trust or has the proper amount of experience
and the expertise to execute it perfectly.
And then the editor doesn't have to worry,
they just like, "Ah, It's done!"
If I were to walk in there and be like,
"Hey, let me take this month's cover
"and I'll do it for a fifth of the price
"that that guy's charging.
"And I know exactly what camera he's using, lenses.
"I know where to put the lights.
"I know how to do everything,
"just let me do it."
Then they're gonna be like,
"Okay, well what have you done?
"Have you shot cover shots before in fashion?
"Do you know what the (beeps) you're doing?
"Get the (beeps) out of here!"
Again this is not every single company,
but in my experiences,
the bigger the companies the less risk they wanna take.
So you have to give them that trust
by first having a lot of confidence in your work.
And you also need to have a lot of the experience
and the skills to back up your confidence.
So once you get to a certain level
to where you're confident with your skills
don't be afraid to talk the talk.
Sometimes people have a lot of skills,
but they just don't have that presence,
that confident, like, "I can do this," vibe.
And from the clients perspective,
sure you might have the skill,
but it just puts them on edge a little bit
and it starts making them wonder like,
"Ooh, should I of hired this person?
"I don't know."
So whenever I'm working with a client,
I'm always asking myself like, do they trust me?
And how can I improve on that?
Because they're hiring me
so they don't have to worry about it anymore.
I wanna make sure that I handle what they're expecting.
But not only do I handle it,
but make sure that they are at ease
because that's what they really, ultimately, want.
And I feel like that's where a lot of experience
really comes into play,
because the more you do it, the more you can start to read
what people want.
And what I was starting out
I would get a whole bunch of revisions,
I would send in a edit, I'd be like, "This is pretty cool."
And they would send back a bunch of notes,
"Can you change this?
"Can you change."
You don't want them to have to give you those notes.
But now with a lot more experience
I can look back on my old stuff and be like,
"Oh man, the composition in that shot was weird.
"That shot it's a little bit soft.
"The edits not tight there," der, der, der.
And at the time I couldn't identify it.
If you were to show me that same video back then
and tell me, "Hey, what's wrong with it?
I'd been like, "I don't know, it seems pretty good to me."
But now I can identify these little issues.
So now whenever I deliver a video my goal
is always to get it so good,
to the point that they just take it and they go.
"This is brilliant, how soon can we upload this?"
And if you can get it to the point
where the client basically never has notes for you,
they're gonna keep coming back
and they're gonna love you forever.
And then you could boost your rates and they'll be like,
"You're worth it," because you always get it done right.
Anyways, let's wrap this up by reading a few comments
from my last video, which was about a tiny little FPV drone
that you can fly around.
And Robert Macintosh, the legend himself,
chopped up a GoPro, stuck it on the top of the camera,
flew it around tight spaces and schooled us on drone flying.
So let's see what you guys had to say.
The top comment was from Johnny.
"Mr. Pilot at the beginning
"looks like he is going to be the main actor of
'Ready Player One 2'." (laughs)
Yeah, these FPV goggles always look so funky, like.
I should start wearing this out to bars, I'd be like,
"Hey, you come here often?"
And I'll just be like staring at a wall,
'cause I can't see anything.
The footage of the drone going through tight spaces
gave me anxiety.
No, seriously, watching that monitor I was just like,
(groans) the whole time.
And Robert just does it too.
He doesn't just go, "All right, I'm gonna do it."
He just like goes (buzzes),
and then go straight through a whole bunch
of little tight spaces.
"Awesome, didn't know ZZ Top flew drones."
What's ZZ Top look like?
Oh my goodness, that is him.
That is him.
- [Narrator] Thanks for watching Potato Jet,
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And then get a tattoo of Potato Jet's face.