How To Start A Video Production Company (2020)

what up guys so today I'm gonna talk to you about how I started my video production business that ended me on the Gary B book crushing it and probably tell you the steps of how I did it and how I went from having literally zero dollars for making account to making over a hundred thousand dollars in just two years so first things first I started my business in my career by doing a lot of free stuff for friends over at the time I start charging fifty dollars for video a hundred dollars for video eventually that grew to I currently charged around sixteen hundred to two thousand dollars for my day rate that is does that include editing or anything like that so a lot of my stuff when I first started out when I was living in New York City I did a lot of fashion stuff which is great it was a lot of fun I got to learn my craft and this is probably one of the most important things one of the fundamentals is learning a craft learning composition from there I started transition to working with a publication on doing short interviews for magazine with this really allowed me to do an open online to is this whole other side of video for businesses and this is the area that I don't see a lot of people talking about online a lot of people talk about wanting to do music videos and doing all these different things which those are fun but they're very uncontested and most of the time very low pain now focusing and working with businesses will open up my eyes was to the needs of business owners being able to provide them actual video as marketing collateral really help them get a better return on investment through their marketing so first thing I did at that time I was working as a bartender and what the bartending gig allowed me to do was that I was able to actually save money work night and have my days free to work on video projects so as minecraft grew and my skills got better ended up bartering with the place I was working at and offered to do a video for them which you could actually find online it's linked right up here for 200 bucks for me to come in shoot them a video what I end up doing next I used that video to show another business owner when I moved back to Florida what I've done in the past something I didn't realize is that when you work with business owners the thing you want to do is minimize risks for them and pretty much what I the problem that I had is that a lot of my stuff ended up working with a lot of like celebrities doing fashion stuff to a business owner you not being able to show them a business video they're taking a risk my chance on you to the next person that I actually reached out to was my barber I showed my barber the business video that I did for the restaurant and asked him if I could shoot an interview pre-much did a promo for his business he then said yes now I had two business videos that actually showed somebody else from there I asked him because he was a barber and this is something else that you could do he knows a lot of different business owners I asked him to introduce me to a couple people anyone that might have a marketing agency and any other other business owners that I could talk to so that's something that was working on the background as am working on my business the next thing I did is that I realized that I really good a market for you to be in was was working with dentists so ended up reaching out to a bunch of dentists and offering him to do a video the way that I did this is that I went online I found I went online through Google found a bunch of good reviews that I found for a dentist I made him a video I ranked that video on YouTube for you know Lakeport dentists which I'll link that here then I emailed the dentist but hey dr. so-and-so new to the area I saw your business and saw all these great reviews that you have I made a video for you to check it out it's ranked on the first page of YouTube let me know what you think by asking him know let me know what you think created allowed me and him type of conversation so from there followed up with him he's like hey so like what are you looking to do and I think listen I'm new to the business here's my new videos I've done in the past for other businesses I do have other experience shooting videos but most of that was based around fashion I love the opportunity to work with you and creating a free business video for you in exchange for a review and a referral to another dentist he agreed to that so and this is all done for free and the reason that I did these three videos for free was to gain the experience because throughout shooting those three videos a lot of things happen that it didn't expect to happen but it allowed me to learn on a job without messing up for a client it's one thing that you know you're shooting your free video for a client and the idea doesn't come out right and there's little things that happened that you didn't plan to but when you start charging business owners money for video and things mess up even if it's 200 bucks even if it's a hundred dollars they're gonna be a pain and work with by charging them nothing and a lot of media have full creative spectrum over the project and it allowed me to do what I needed to do so from there this dentist ended up referring me to a next dentist that I worked with which then paid me eighteen hundred dollars for my video so I ended up repeating that process long enough to had about five to six videos on my website there were all around businesses the next thing I did I set up my Google business page I ended up I ended up having to go through a rebrand coz when I was living in New York I was Rodrigo toxic reproductions when I came to Florida I had a I had a really big issue reaching out to people hunt down here my real task from really tossing productions people didn't listen to me so and they're rebranding the task of studios at that point I was living at my mom's house sharing a room with my sister sleeping on an air mattress getting up at 6:00 a.m. grinding my face off so from there and they're building a website through Squarespace ended up listing my business on Google my business on being places and Yelp because these are all directories that business owners go to to look for your services you implementing your business information there allows them to find you and contact you while you're working in your business now that I have my business set up having business listings online I start reaching out to marketing agencies in my area that didn't offer video now the reason I did this is that it allowed me to work with another company that really had existing clients that are already spending money on marketing but weren't servicing their needs with video so pretty much what I did I ended up giving that marketing agency anywhere from five to 15 percent of the leads Anderson ami and these are hot warm leads people who are ready to shoot a video so you know I'm more than willing and more than happy to give somebody you know 5 to 15% for a hot lead because that's something that allows me to just be able to work on the videos and work on my business and I spent time actually looking for cold clients or know going through the process of nature and client so throughout this whole process here so shot a lot of free videos and then still got a lot of different opportunities ended up working with a nonprofit organization that allowed me to go to Nicaragua for a week I got to travel I got to travel I got to you know work on a mini documentary in Spanish which is something I've never had them before I ended up using kind of the same process to reach out to a band that I liked that we're going to tour to Bonnaroo I pretty much offered them like hey I'm gonna work for you for free I'm gonna give you three videos if I can come to you if I can come with you and tour to go to Bonnaroo which is amazing experience and all of that content all of those things that I did or all skills that I didn't use on actual paint projects so another big thing that really helped me it was to keep my living cost low so when I moved back here in South Florida I was staying with a friend and then I decided to move back to my mom's house because I needed to save money but me saving money allowed me to number one take on really low paying jobs that allowed me to build my portfolio and build a network with client but number two not have me stress about having to spend anywhere from you know 800 to you know twelve or twelve hundred dollars a month on rent I want to keep my expenses as low as possible so I could keep and reinvest into my business next thing I wanted to do was build my network I wouldn't be able to no I a local organization here creativemornings that had a lot of different creative people and you know that network allowed me to me there's a lot of other business owners allowed me to meet with a lot of different you know creatives that then connected me to different opportunities and these are all things were done for free pretty much at this time the only thing I had paid for was my website so I could actually show my clients Network this is another thing that I see all the time when you were actually are sure your client work do not tell your client to just go to your website Tao send your client a link to a playlist that you have are you videos in if you're telling your client to go look for work and for them to go type in your website to then find you you're giving them work to do as business owners we don't have time for that you're gonna make this as simple as possible so I recommend you put all your videos on YouTube make them into one playlist and then if you can categorize those into different types of playlists so if you are working with the dentist only show home dentist videos if you're working with the restaurant only show them restaurant videos if you're just starting now and you only have a bunch of different mixture videos just have all that on one playlist but you want to make it super easy for the business owners to be able to find you into for them to able to see your work do not make them work for it say okay next thing here so throughout this process ended up finding another gig that was paying me 150 bucks to go out and shoot people at the restaurant for about five hours so I did this every weekend for a year so I was making 300 bucks guaranteed every week from this and this is the other thing that you want to work on you want to find yourself clientele when you're starting out that can be consistent with paying you as you're working on your skill as you're working on your business because this is gonna allow you to like I said take on lower paying jobs that's gonna build your skill in your portfolio so then you can actually start getting those higher paying jobs so the three niches that I recommend for this are gonna be real estate car dealership photos and restaurants those people you could use you probably get anywhere from 100 200 bucks for videos maybe even more but this is one of those things that you know if you're just starting now I wreck it I'd rather shoot a bunch of these type of videos then for me at that time being a bartender and working at a restaurant I wanted to get out of that industry so working at a restaurant I was making anywhere from a hundred to one hundred fifty bucks a night I rather spent 10 hours 12 hours even 20 hours shooting a video for 200 bucks versus going to go work at a restaurant so that's the mentality that that I had when I started out and that's where like no I recommend for you to do I also was a butler when I was living in New York I was I was a butler from Friday Friday afternoon toast Sunday evening I was working pretty much you know 36 hours non-stop 48 hours sometimes for this family but then I had pretty much Monday through Thursday free to work my craft do a bunch of free stuff so that's why that's the way that you want to kind of figure it out what can you do to hack your life that allows you to work a minimal amount of time in just a couple of days and frees up the rest of your schedule to actually work on this business because a lot of the days when you're actually running in a business it's not gonna be spent you actually shooting and doing these different things it's gonna be you actually working on the business editing projects and all these little nuances that you have to handle as your business grows so other jobs that you could do catering is a really good one do bartending galilei all these different things or is gonna allow you to one get out there and communicate meet with people but then also allows you to work a very small amount of time and make good amount of money you're gonna make a couple hundred bucks a week then allows you to actually work in your business all right okay next thing so this is my personal recommendation I'm not a lawyer so you should talk to one before doing this I'm just letting you guys know I did this for my first year business I do not have an LLC I did not have I didn't have any of those things I was pretty much getting paid everything under the table so for me to go out and get an LLC for 200 bucks didn't have to file taxes the next year and spend another $400 this didn't make sense for me you know the business wasn't really thriving I think my first year business I did about thirty to forty thousand dollars and everything's pretty much still since my name my clients were people that I knew so they're paying me through them molder paying me through PayPal it wasn't until I got my first big check for about $3,200 I shot a series of real estate photos and videos for a broker and they made a check out to tasks of studios and my bank account rejected the checks and that that was the name that the amount was too big so dollars of time that I decided to actually start my LLC and I still do have an LLC but one thing that I did invest that would make your life a lot easier is QuickBooks you can set up QuickBooks for about five dollars a month and have all of your invoice and then through there a lot of your taxes a lot of big expenses and go through there it does mileage tracking for you I have a link below for that it is an affiliate link that I've been set up through them and that's something that I highly recommend that you do is to make your life easier for the $5 a month that is a business expense and 'action up get into write out the next year maybe at your first year it won't be a business expense but it will definitely make your life a lot easier promise you that that's one thing I do recommend I just start doing 10 a 1099s over the past year and you know using our LLC and all that I don't think you should really focus on all of that when you're just starting out but this is really just kind of cover and touch base and a couple different things now the riches are in niches but when you're starting out is shoot everything anything to figure out what is it that you actually want to do you know I ended up deciding to specialize on small to medium sized businesses because I find a huge market with that these business owners are willing spend anywhere from three to six even $10,000 for you to shoot videos for them and this is consistent work it allowed me to buy a lot of the gear that I have now and allowed me to travel it allowed me to do a lot of different things than when I was working with you know artists and doing events and things like that I was really just scraping by and and I kind of got over that so other great industries for you to go to our service based businesses and businesses that have high lifetime value clients are the ones you want to focus on so for an instance doctors dentists plastic surgeons like a dentist can charge you $400 to do a root canal if you can justify them that in the matter of a year four people will see this video and decide to get a root canal for them when you're charging them two thousand dollars they can justify that spending but if you go to a restaurant and tell them hey I'm gonna charge you a thousand dollars to do a video for them a thousand dollars is such a huge expense they have to have such a high number of turnover and tables for them to recoup that money also because a restaurant has such a high level of overhead cost so other great places are the great companies for your work with our roofing companies are really great to work with and make a ton of money flooring companies a see all different type of companies that spend a lot of money that they get a lot of hi big tickets do the big thing and kind of just going back to the previous part of this is that you need to understand how much money are you making right now you need to have that figured out like I said for me I was making 100 150 bucks a day working three to four days a week to pay my bills so if you look at the math for that that means that I was making you know five hundred dollars a week doing bartending waiting catering stuff so if I could work one video a month they pay me you know anywhere between two to three thousand dollars that to me was way smarter than actually working all these different hours so what I'm trying to tell you is that if you realize if you can work ten hours a day eight on one video in charts 2200 bucks and you're doing that twice a week even if you do it twice a week you can still make a good amount of money but he need to figure out what your expenses are first and then if you can realize where can you minimize his expenses when I was living at my mom's house for that first year or actually about a year and a half it was tough you know I mean but it really allowed me to excel to Rome at today allowed me to get in the car a lot of me to move to a bigger better place a lot of me to you know buy two sony a7s and all these different type of gear and you know those are the things that you want to do when you're starting out minimize your costs minimize your cost is definitely the biggest one now just to kind of wrap everything in I know this video kind of got a long and I kind of rent rented in a couple different places but this is me just trying out this YouTube thing and I brilliant bring you got some value in today's so don't want to make this a super edited type of video I just really want to get you guys on some facts is your camera gear is not as important as you think I started my business for the first two years shooting on ad 7100 with a sigma 17 to 49 millimeter 2.8 I had two of those I had two new or lights and I think at that time I was had some type of live system those are really the biggest things are you gonna need to kind of work with business owners like this is it yourself you know a good set of cameras a good set of glass lighting you know my first light kit was under 200 bucks I think I probably spent $400 on my laughs mics right now you can get the rode mics for 200 bucks those are great I used those a lot right now I probably start something like that so if you do have the money get an app sure 120 get yourself you know you don't have to get her Sony a7 three you can start off with like you know the S or not so you guys are off with you know one of the a 6500 something small like that you just need a good glass need like a 50 millimeter 1.8 and you're good to go if you have two of the same cameras to the same lenses it only makes it look a lot better for you for these different types of interviews but you don't need all these different types of crazy gear not until you start making money on your second and third year so I'm gonna wrap the video up here let me know what you guys are gonna learn next you know I'm singing about maybe doing a type of video on you know how to get those clients actually I'll communicate them if you wanna see some of those emails let me know in the comments I would find out more what you guys gonna learn like I said if you're new to channel consider here and subscribe I'll see you guys next time peace

Channel: Rodrigo Tasca

Views: 44,628

Keywords: how to start a video production company, starting a video production company, start a video production company, how to start a successful video production company, starting a film production company, starting a production company, production company, how to start a production company, video production company, video production business, video production, make videos full time, make a living making videos, how to make a living making videos

Id: 955DMH7juVg

Length: 20min 33sec (1233 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 20 2020