I wanted to have a more personal conversation in this video.

One of the early opportunities I got as a filmmaker was to work on a feature film as a DP. This was about 5 years into my career.

I thought I had made it. But working on a film is a whole different world than what I was doing up to that point.

As a freelancer, I was shooting commercials, documentaries, corporate videos, and even weddings. Pretty much do anything and everything I can get my hands on the pay the bills. So even though I knew filmmaking from my film school days, I really wasn’t ready for it.

Overall, the production was pretty good, but it was physically and mentally taxing.

I had my son at a pretty young age, so making time for him during the week was a big priority for me.

But with a film shoot, I was gone maybe 14 hours a day. I had no personal time at all. I was barely getting enough sleep to function.

After the movie wrapped, I literally got physically sick for weeks.
Knowing that family was more important to me, I knew I couldn’t just do this every few months for the rest of my career.

In the meantime, I was working on a documentary film that I had started a few years back. I figured if narrative filmmaking was going to keep me away from my family, maybe I could make a living as a documentary filmmaker and freelance on the side.

So I would hustle as much as possible to figure out how to get freelance gigs and then I would spend the money on the doc or buy more gear I thought I needed.

There were so many months when I couldn’t make rent. So many times I was getting overdraft fees. And so many times I would just put the documentary on hold until I could get free help or find more money and time.

Every single week, I questioned everything. Why would I choose this path?

Ultimately, the biggest problem was not knowing where and when my next job was coming from.

But when I was looking at other people freelancing as filmmakers in pretty much any position, they were all in my shoes. I sometimes saw guys much older than me, 30 years into their career, and not much better off.

So as you could imagine, I was ready to quit. But I’m pretty stubborn and I thought what else would I do anyway. I went to a film school. No one would hire me.

And I’m so glad I was paying attention to the people around me that were doing well, both professionally and personally and those were the guys that had their own production businesses.

Now I’m a creative person. I didn’t know anything about business back then. But I figured, hey I learned filmmaking. How hard can this be?

Through a six months transition between 2012 and 2013, I started and grew my video production company to six figures in profit.

I did this by laser-focusing on marketing and customer acquisition, something that barely any filmmaker paid any attention to.

I had already lived a life where I relied on word-of-mouth jobs. I hated that feeling of thinking this might be my last job and having zero control over it. So I fixed that problem for myself.
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I’ve covered that in several videos already on acquiring clients, and that’s not the point of this video.

My point and why I really wanted to make this video is because I know there are people that have felt exactly the same way I did.
You can find a solution too, to have more control over your career and it doesn’t have to be my path.

But don’t get discouraged. This still feels really personal to me, because those were some hard years that I won’t forget. By I think they taught me the work ethic and stubbornness I needed to keep going and finally find success.

I hope my story can help a few people going through this as well.

Learn the exact blueprint I used to go from a struggling videographer, to running a profitable video production business, in this one-hour free training.
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