Keith Michael Productions, LLC

When I started Keith Michael Productions a couple of years ago, I had really big eyes. I figured this was going to be easy, and I would get customers and so on. I quickly learned how hard it is to start out and to continue growing. My first three jobs I actually booked rather soon after I started my business, but then I had a dry spell.

When I met with woman who was going to be the person handling my own wedding at the hotel, she gave me some hope. She said that a business like this takes at least three years to really start taking off. This is about the time the referrals start to kick in. And a friend of mine has also given me good words of wisdom. A salesman by trade, he told me that for every 10 people you talk to, 1 will hire you. That’s a 10% return rate. With these things in mind, I haven’t been discouraged when I didn’t get the job because I have actually been beating the 10% rate.

In the past year, I have met with people who haven’t hired me. Then, I was hired by people who never met me. Now, as I sit here on the first day of December, I think about where I was at this time last year. I had only one wedding booked, and it was for that same month. I had nothing booked for the next year. This year I look ahead at my calendar and I have 3 weddings next year along with my own, and I am working two other couples to book their weddings as well. In business terms, that is a 300% growth in future jobs compared with last year. That is something that I can be very happy with. Of course if I wasn’t getting married in June, I would have one more since I have had to turn someone down because their wedding day was the same as mine.

Even though I am seeing a 300% increase in business, I am no where near ready to go full time with this. As yet another friend of mine said to me the other night, when you make 2/3 of your current income doing your own business, they you can take that chance. That means if I can book around 20 weddings within in the next 6 months, I can go full time independent, except for the fact that I should wait until my fiance is out of Grad school.

A large misconception that I once had and many people still have is that because a videographer or a photographer run a successful business, that means that they must have a nice studio. Now in the case of the big studios that do multiple weddings on a day with different crews going out and different people editing, this may very well be true. But in my short time as a part of this industry and as someone planning my own wedding, I have found that my office is more the norm than the exception. Just about everyone that I have met runs their business out of the home. This actually makes it easy for doing work at all times of the day. However, for me right now it has actually made it difficult for meeting with clients.

I currently share an apartment with another guy. Now just imagine two guys in their mid 20s living together. Got that image in your head? Now Imagine me with a desk set up in the living room to run my business off of. That is my reality right now. This is a big reason as to why I am counting down the days that I will be living with my future wife, and when I can dedicate an entire room to my business. And then, I will actually be able to invite clients over to meet with. Until then, I will be making house visits and meeting at Starbucks.

Now to get back to the title of the post. Since I am running off of one desk, my space was getting very cluttered. So I went to Target two weeks ago and purchased a book case. One of the best investments I have made in a while. The shocking part is that pile that was on my desk has almost completely filled the book case. The good part is that I can now breath, and get back to what I get paid to do. Edit some video. I have two weddings and I want to get the both done before Christmas.

There is a lot to be said when you are a small company. I don’t have anyone to answer to aside from myself and my clients, I can be flexible to meet the needs of my clients, and I can make those last minute bookings. It may be true that since I am young company, I don’t get the work flow that bigger companies get that have been around for a couple of years. However, with the smaller work flow, it allows me to help out the last minute bookings. In the past 2 months, I have done 3 last minute jobs that were booked within 2 weeks of the events.

Now I am not telling people to wait until the last minute, because you might get burned. However, if you do wait till the last minute for whatever reason, you should still be able to find someone. And the best place to look are the younger shops. Chances are they have a lighter work load and that they are very eager to get the work, and in many cases may cut you a deal. So don’t wait until the last minute, but if you do, chances are there is someone out there that can help you out.

When I first started my company I decided to use a friend’s hosting company. They were just getting into the business, and I figured I would help them out. Well, they were one of many companies that are a GoDaddy store front. My friend eventually stopped doing the web hosting thing because it wasn’t worth for them and I was switched to another GoDaddy store front called domains priced right. Well, over time I have become unhappy with their web service and have decided to go to a web hosting company I had used when I was still in a band. 1and1.com is now my new web hosting site, or at least it will be once the transfer goes through.

What doesn’t this mean for visitors to the web site. Well, not too much. The site will look the same. I do have more storage on the site, so who knows what I might try and do with that. I hope you all enjoy it. There maybe a time when in the transition where my contact form may not work, but I hope take care of that as fast as possible.
 

It has never been easier for people in my line of work to share video samples online. With combination of high speed Internet and online sharing sites, it makes mylife really easy. In the past, there were very few sharing sites, and the load times were slow and the quality wasn’t that great. Many people, including myself, would host video on their own web server. This means choosing a format, and then hoping you don’t get overloaded with people watching it and using up your bandwidth for the month.

Last year I started using Google Video, YouTube, and Yahoo Video. Yahoo Video had become my main area to store my video and use it for my web page because they allowed longer video clips than YouTube (they only allow 10 minutes) and Yahoo looked better than Google. I have recently thought of encoding things to Flash myself, but that becomes more trouble than it is worth.

What all of these sharing sites have in common and is that not only am I storing video for free, but people can now search for it. When you host on your own site, you can only find it by going to that site. Now, people can share your clips and find your site from these other sites. The other great part is that these sites all encode in Flash. In the past you really had to make that choice between QucikTime® and Windows Media®. Then you had to worry about if people had one of the other. With Flash, anyone who has their web browser up to date can view these videos.

Today, I have started posting on a new site. It is DailyMotion.com. What I really like about them is that interface is simple, and that they allow you to have videos that are up to 20 minutes long. Here is a sample of what it looks like.

It’s very clean, and very simple, and I hope that you all enjoy.