Why Your Business Needs Purpose (Not Just Profit) | Teeg Stouffer

My dad died, and when he died, my brother and I were in the attic and we were going through stuff. And this is a whole story all of its own. As a matter of fact, I'm going to compartmentalize that story. There's a great story, but it caused me to reconsider, and I quit my job and I started Fascination Film Studio, and I've never been more fulfilled.

Would you mind sharing the story?

I would. I would love to. I would love to.

Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Post Falls, Idaho. Um, I visited Idaho for the first time, uh, last year accidentally going on a journey with my wife up to Wyoming. So it was up there by Wyoming, and it was beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Um, but from talking to others, evidently there's parts of the state that more resemble a desert. So anyway, thank you for listening in Post Falls, wherever that is. I don't know if you're in the pretty part or the ugly part. Joining me today, Tej Stauffer of Fascination Film Studio. Welcome to the show, Tej.

It is a joy to be joining you, Christian. I've enjoyed being a listener, so it's fun to be able to make a contribution to the podcast.

Well, thank you for listening. Thank you. It's often difficult as a podcaster because you don't know who's listening or what they think because there's not a good feedback loop. So I will probably postmortem with you afterwards and get some more feedback on on your listenership. Okay, so tell us your, your origin story.

Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, Christian, I have an unusual start into this whole thing of media marketing, communications, events, storytelling— like, frame it however you want, right? When I was in the 6th grade, I lived in, uh, I grew up in West Des Moines, Iowa, and in the most perhaps unlikely of circumstances, I got cast in one of those afterschool TV specials. Okay.

And, uh, was this a local production or—

it was, uh, uh, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, it was a film, right? Like, it was these— in the 1980s and 1990s, there was these afterschool TV specials. You'd come home from school and they'd have a very moral message. Yeah. You know, and, um, mine The message of mine, Christian, was if you're having a hard time doing something on your own, you should try working together. And it would come as a surprise, not certainly to you, Christian, to the listener. They wouldn't know one way or the other, but it would not come as a surprise to you looking at me that I played the nerd in that film. And so typecast for life. But here we are. When I was 14 years old, Uh, I got a radio show, which is a very unlikely thing to happen to a 14-year-old. And then when I was 16 years old, I got hired at WHO Radio in Des Moines, Iowa, which is where Ronald Reagan got his start. So who knows where I might wind up? Probably not the White House, but, um, there's still time in there, but not a lot of likelihood. At any rate, I, uh, I went on. By the time I was 18 years old, I got an opportunity to start the country's first all-digital student-run radio station in America at Waldorf College in Forest City, Iowa, this tiny little college that wanted to do something audacious at the time of the digital revolution. And then that led on to me having an opportunity to go to Oxford, and my American voice was useful in radio there. So I worked for a BBC station there, and then that went on. I thought, for me, I would have had a career in radio. And then everything had changed in radio. I ended up marrying a lady who was a TV lady. We were a media couple. So she was a TV lady, I was a radio guy, and it only took a few years for us to be those award-winning powerhouse media couple that burned out quickly. And we sold our house and we sold everything we owned and we went on the road executing events all over America. So think a young couple with the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. We didn't actually do the Wienermobile, but stuff like that where you're in a different city every week, you know, executing an experiential event. And then I stayed in that business. And over the years, I've done all kinds of things in media marketing and events. And you know how this would be true for so many of us. I bet it's true for you, Christian. One thing leads to another. And I love fishing and the outdoors. And so, you know, I was doing experiential work in the fishing, the outdoors, and media work in the fishing and the outdoors. And then that led to me having a role at a a really super cool fishing company who was doing great things. And then there was change in the company, and I knew I had leadership skills and sales skills and kind of some of that, you know, enterprise kind of mind from, you know, now my career's advanced to the point, you know, I've been in business for, you know, 25 or 30 years. So I ended up basically being a fishing lure salesman. So, you know, just like one thing led to the other until I was basically— I wasn't— I was the guy. I was, you know, selling fishing lures to Walmart and Dick's Sporting Goods and Academy. And it was so far removed, really, from like the things that I'm really good at, which is like people, relationships, storytelling, telling the story. I was a fishing lure salesman. I could have well been selling, I don't know, sneakers or, you know, curtains. You know, I could have been selling anything at that point. It doesn't matter. It's just spreadsheets and enterprise sales. And so my dad died. And when he died, my brother and I were in the attic and we were going through stuff. And this is a whole story all of its own. As a matter of fact, I'm going to compartmentalize that story. There's a great story, but it caused me to reconsider. And I quit my job and I started Fascination Film Studio. And I've never been more fulfilled.

Would you mind sharing the story?

I would. I would love to. I would love to. I felt like, "Tej, you've been doing a lot of talking.

You better give a break." No, no, that's what you're here for. That is literally your job description.

That's my job. Okay. I think a lot of people would relate to this, and if they can't directly relate to this, the day will come where your parents die. Or, you know, it doesn't always go that way. Sometimes there's a tragedy, but you want it to go that way, that you lose your parents. They're the ones who pass away first. And we were in that time. My mom died a long time ago, 16 years ago. So my dad was still in the house that my brother and I grew up in, and my brother and I were in the attic unearthing all the things. What are we going to do with all these things? And we pulled out this banker's box and we opened the banker's box, and inside the box were these African artifacts, these wooden people, like mahogany people. They're like, "What is this? Why does dad have African artifacts?" And it kind of came back to us that we have like a, maybe like a great aunt and uncle who were missionaries in Africa. And this is from those missionary expeditions, but who were they? And then we're like, and it really bothered me. I was one of those 14-year-old kids with a big VHS camcorder on my shoulder. I got a stack of VHS tapes right back here on my shelf of the, you know, like recording, you know, I was the family documentarian, right? Been this way all my life. I'm recording my grandma's story, doing all the stuff, right? And, um, I'd never really— I thought I'd remember the story about these African artifacts, and I had forgotten, you know. And I couldn't ask my dad because he's dead, and he was the youngest of 3 brothers, and they're all gone too. There's no one left to ask. And I thought I'd remember, and I didn't. And then you're opening more boxes, and there's these photographs. It's like, is this them? Could this be them? What's their name? Were they the good guys or the bad guys? Were they colonial Were they really bringing the gospel, the good news to these people? Like, what was their deal? And I can't know. And it really bothered me. And then we opened another box and I found this. And this is a little vinyl notebook. It's about 3 inches by 5 inches. And inside, it's the diary of my great-grandmother, Joy Larson.

Get outta here.

And the story of her coming to Iowa, where I live, in a covered wagon. And I actually knew this woman. I knew Joy Larson. She lived when I lived. So matter of fact, she lived until I was 20 years old. But she, the last 8 years of her life, she had dementia. But still, until I was 12, she had her faculties. I really knew this lady. And she came, I'm only 48. She came here on a covered wagon. Right? And the reason she was coming to Iowa from South Dakota is that her mother had died in childbirth, and her grieving father, who had 5 children at this point, was bringing his kids back from South Dakota to southwest Iowa so his parents could help raise the kids. This is the very early 1900s. Men didn't raise kids in those days, right? He was gonna go have his mom help raise these kids. And along the journey across the prairie Their wagon was struck by lightning, and my great-grandmother was in the middle of the wagon, and her siblings on either side were killed, but she lived. And one result of her living is that I live, and I have kids, and my kids were born into such extraordinary comfort. They will never know the kind of grit and circumstance that she lived in. And the story goes on and on. It's an amazing story. And I was like, I'm gonna make a little documentary about this for the sake of my kids, because she lives on a fistful of cornmeal and beans a day. They'll freak out if I buy the wrong brand of chicken nuggets, right?

Right.

Like, right. It's just such a huge gulf between the lives they lived, and I'm the bridge between them, and it's my responsibility to bridge that gap. So I'm like, I'm going to make a film about this. And once I— for their sake, not to be— it's never going to be on Netflix. Nobody— it's just for them that they'll know the story. That we would create continuity among our generations. And so once I started doing that, I'm like, this is all I'm going to do. I'm not very fulfilled selling fishing lures. I'm making good money, but like, this is not what I was made to do. This other thing, this is what I was made to do. So I quit my job, took the risk. My dad had just died. I could take the risk. He wasn't rich or anything, but, you know, we sold his house, had just enough money to create the buffer of—

right.

I'm going to own the camera gear. I'm not going to use my agency's gear. We're not going to rent gear. I'm going to buy the gear, and I've got enough of a buffer that we'll probably be okay. And sure enough, bless God, we've been okay.

I literally got chills as you were telling that story about your grandmother because, you know, I don't, I don't think many of us have those experiences where You're like, I shouldn't have lived. And the fact that I did live means there's something I'm supposed to do.

Absolutely. It creates purpose.

Yeah. But the reality is we all have purpose.

Yes.

It's just not always that stark. And maybe God does that for those individuals because they need it. Like they wouldn't have figured out their purpose or understood that they had a purpose without that type of calamity. Yeah. But I think what you're touching on is, I think, so important for not just creatives, but every entrepreneur and really every person. But, you know, this show is about entrepreneurship. And, you know, entrepreneurs are called to do something, and it's not make money. It's totally fine to make money. You should make money doing it. But if without that underlying understanding of your purpose, it eventually feels hollow, like selling fishing lures, right? Like you were good at it. You had success at it, but it's like, this is not what I'm supposed to be doing. And it's easy. It's easy to get there. I've gotten there myself, and I've talked to a lot of people that have walked that path of like, what, what am I doing here? Mm-hmm.

I relate. And now I get to tell a lot of stories exactly like what you said, where the odds were long and the people prevailed, probably always and exclusively in some way because of the hand of God. And there's a big revelation and a lot of purpose and breakthrough and power and fruit that's born out of it. And so it's unbelievably fulfilling, you know, it's unbelievably fulfilling. We could fill the whole show with these incredible stories that I get to tell, you know.

So, so that's what you, you guys do now is loosely say documentaries.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And as a matter of fact, if I'm speaking to other people, we're really going down like the profitable creative, the business track of conversation. Here's what I would say. I have a tendency in life— this is— I'm kind of an entrepreneurial guy. I've had a handful of different businesses and nonprofits over the years. I've started a few nonprofits, and I have a tendency to end up a mile wide and an inch deep. And I'm kind of a multi-potentialite. I'm kind of a generalist. I have a lot of interests. One thing leads to another and I end up a mile wide and an inch deep. And I was like, I'm not doing that with Fascination Films. We're doing one thing. We're doing heritage and legacy style documentaries. So within documentary, there's subsets and subsets. And so within filmmaking, you have this huge universe, you narrow it down to documentary, within documentary, subsets and subsets. I'm doing heritage and legacy. That's it. That's all. But remember, I quit my executive job where I had an ownership stake in the company and a VP title, and now I'm just going out on my own with not that much money, you know. And so thank God, literally the first Monday after I'd given my, you know, notice, I had a job, a Heritage and Legacy job. I was going to be able to help somebody let— document the transitioning of a farm. And that makes sense to me. My family is a farming family. That works. That's great. Totally get it. It was awesome. But then there needed to be more work. And I kinda hourglassed it out. So I went from exclusively heritage and legacy to documentary-style films that serve companies, families, and communities. So I still say only documentaries. I want to make documentaries that have legacy-level impact. But now I'm broadened out documentary a little bit, but there's still a real focus on heritage and legacy. But legacy's made every day. It doesn't start when we die. And so I I think there's a lot of ways to create legacy, both for businesses and companies and also individuals and families. So, a lot of these things help create legacy more than document heritage for the sake of legacy. So, it's kind of a mix, but it's documentary with an emphasis on heritage and legacy.

How do you define legacy?

Okay. This is a great question.

I know. That's my job is to ask great questions.

Well, you're good at your job. So, I'm going to answer that question. I'm going to give a slight diversion. When I started telling people I'm doing heritage and legacy films, they're like, "What is that exactly?" because it's not a household name, but there are heritage and legacy filmmakers all over the place. But they tend to be— and if any of them are listening, I don't mean this as a slight to you, everybody was probably gonna nod their head when I say this— they tend to be like introverted creatives, you know. I'm an extrovert and I'm a business builder. And I was like, nobody knows what this is. This should be a household name. I've made a portion of my living in the past as a speaker. I'm gonna start writing and speaking on this topic. So now I've had a couple years of writing and speaking on the topic, and I'm Uh, I'm talking about this all the time because people don't have a good handle on it. When we think about legacy, immediately people think about death, like after you die. The other thing people think about when they think about legacy is you might think about like something's been around for a long time. Like think about like legacy software, like, oh, legacy software. It's been around for a long time or a legacy brand. Oh, that brand. It's been around for a long time. That is actually a misrepresentation of what legacy actually is. Legacy is also not your money. A lot of people position legacy in the marketplace as you want to leave a legacy, and what they're getting at is you want to leave money, you know. And money and your assets is kind of part of your legacy, or it's like your name on a building or something. That's really not legacy. Heritage— when we, when we talk about like brands that have been around a long time, or things that have been here for a long time, or things that have led on to something, that's really heritage. Heritage is everything that happened in the past that leads up to you and now, right? Heritage, all the stuff in the past, that's your heritage. My great-grandmother, Joy Larson, she— I'm her legacy. She's my heritage, right? So heritage is all the things that happen that lead in. Part of my heritage is that I had a mentor named Doug Hudson who sowed into me. Part of my heritage is that I'm— I have a farming family, right? That's part of my heritage. I, I'm a white guy, you know, like, that's part of my heritage. There's a whole bunch of things that lead up to me. I I come from a family of talkers, communicators, right? That's part of my heritage. My legacy is being written at this exact moment. Right now, I'm creating my legacy. But people do not think in these terms. Matter of fact, I did some research about it. Only 6% of people think in the terms of their legacy frequently. Uh, 12% literally never think about it. Most people fall somewhere in between. 6% of people think from a place of legacy, but for those who do, radical reframing of their lives because they understand that as I am doing whatever I'm doing, the effect of my life, the effect of my life on other people is creating my legacy. It's how I'll be remembered. It's what the output of my life will be. It's, you know, what does this all lead on to? Because I'll be gone. But what will remain? The effect. The effect of me. That's my legacy.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. I love that. I, I, I— and, and it deeply resonates. We, we had a dinner group, uh, in our, uh, uh, Entrepreneurs Organization chapter here recently, and, uh, it was a Jefferson dinner, I guess. And I guess it's, it's a dinner where you discuss a topic. Um, And the topic was legacy. And yeah, it was very interesting. And what was interesting was like how these entrepreneurs, tenured entrepreneurs, what they thought about legacy and specifically their legacy. And my response to that question at the time was, well, you know, 3, 4 generations from now, even your family is not going to remember who you are unless there's some tremendous legacy like your great-grandmother, you know. Um, but you know, everything that we have built— relationships, businesses, family— you're you're dust after a period of time. And so reflecting in that moment, I'm like, the only thing that from a legacy standpoint that really makes any difference is how you treat others. Like, that's it. That's your impact. And it sounds very similar to what you're saying.

Yeah, we won't— yes. And, and to the point you're making, I'm going to reinforce that point. People mistakenly think that their legacy is about them, and it's not our legacy. Because you think, I want to leave a legacy, or what will my legacy be? And so that's kind of the— it's— I mean, we can use that, those turns of phrase, that vernacular But really, our legacy is not about us. We won't be here to see it.

Right?

Right. Our legacy is about them, whoever they are. Your kids or your grandkids or your community or your church or your business, your company. Like, all these things are part of what your legacy is. And there are things we can do to reinforce that legacy, not for our sake, for theirs. So for example, when somebody chooses to record their story, I just had a meeting with one of my clients about this yesterday. He was— we're midway through a project and he said, I can't believe how much more definition I have in my life and how much clarity I have in decisions I make every day because we're doing this. Mm-hmm. When you choose to record your story, it causes you to take stock. Like, yes, you're being very intentional. You're moving all the background stuff and you're stepping away from the tyranny of the urgent and the never-ending scroll and the pressure of the to-do list and the politics and the AI and the everything. And you're saying like, how did I get here? You're doing it very intentionally because you're going to have to articulate that. And somebody like me is often going to be there with you, helping you frame, how did I get here? What's good about that? What do I not want to continue? And then you're making very intentional statements like in a book or on film about like what's going to happen as a result, what you hope happens as a result. And you're able to speak to those people in a recorded way, a book or a movie or whatever you do. And that changes your life. It literally changes your life and it cements your legacy because there's a recording. Literally one of the films I just did, It's for a guy who— his kids hired me to go spend a week on an island with him because he's dying, and they know they need a tool for his grief. And in their, their sake, their circumstance, they have some, you know, almost out of the house kids, and they have a late-in-life baby, and they know he's never going to know this grandfather who moved here from the— his parents moved here from the Netherlands. So they, they, they will all be lost if they don't record it. And so there's intentionality about recording it. Let's record it. Right. So, so, so what will his legacy be versus somebody who isn't around? And even after he's gone, at any moment on demand, they'll be able to hear him say, I love you.

Mm-hmm. I love that.

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How— which is the million-dollar question, I guess. How do you transfer that passion into a business? Like, what's the secret there? What you're describing is very powerful, very impactful. How do you find people that want it and want to pay for it?

Yeah, probably not coming on your podcast because I bet none of your listeners are going to do this because they all do this. But hopefully they'll be like, I can do that, I can do that, and I'm going to do it. And I hope they do. Right. So it's exactly— I think it's exactly as you've said, even in today's show. And as you, as you say in, in Profit First for Creatives, You do want to be profitable, like you do want to do that, right? You should make money. I think you said that already in this episode. You should make money. I want to make money. If making money was my primary purpose, I know how to do it. I would create a business that has a recurring revenue model that sells at a price point that's lower than my cost of customer acquisition. I would start a customer acquisition loop. I would have a handful of funnels and I would keep optimizing them all the time. I'd probably use AI. I would, find market fit. I would do that thing and I would just turn on some money-making machine. I would find out what the market wants and I would give it to them a little bit better than anybody else is. That's not what I'm doing. I'm creating a market. I'm saying we're not thinking about this and we should be. And fortunately, bless God, I think it aligns with my purpose and I'm being sustained. It's not the most financially profitable but I think it'll have— I think there are a lot of ways to measure profitability, the fruitfulness of our life, right? And so if I help elevate legacy and thinking in long terms in an era when we're being sucked down into a very narrow iPhone-shaped hole, I think that that has immense profit. And so, and, and fortunately, a sustaining revenue stream for my household and the people who are working with me. And so that's how— so if I'm being a little bit more precise about the conversation, what I would say is I market the business in a handful of different ways. And I, and I'm happy to talk about that. And it's generating enough business. But there's a lot of people who have great stories. And they're never going to be able to hire me or somebody like me. Like my floor is like $3,500. $3,500. So that just— there's a lot of people who would spend $3,500 on a vacation. They'd be like, this year let's do a film. And that's great, you know. So like, even middle-class families and above could do it. Upper middle-class families and above for sure is my, is my audience. And there's plenty of people that support a business like mine like that, you know. And so that's fine. But there's tons of families— I mean, look at the economic maps— there are tons of families who have a great story, should record the story, and they can't afford me. So I wrote a book and I've been speaking on this book for like a year, refining this book, and I'm gonna release this book and everybody can afford $20. And it's like one-third storytelling because we all love stories, right? It's like one-third motivation— you should do this and here's why— and then it's one-third literally like, here is exactly how you do this, you know. I'll tell you what I've resisted doing, and that's creating an app that does it. And it's so tempting in an era of AI to just make the app because it would probably be profitable. Somebody's going to listen to this and they're going to be like, well, if you're not going to do it, I'm going to. And, um, I just don't want to park grandma in front of a laptop. That's not what I want to do. I don't want— there's— that app already exists. I don't want to park grandma in front of a laptop. I want to foster human connection, real human connection, in an era where that's waning.

Yeah, it's almost antithetical. Like, the app sounds like a good business idea, but it's antithetical to what you're trying to do, right?

This is about deep human connection.

And, and I, I, I think what I'm hearing, uh, under the surface here, and you tell me if I'm right, is you're designing the business to serve you and what you want It's not designing a business without intent or with the intent of financial freedom or time freedom or some other measurement of success. You have a very clear idea of what success is and you're building the business to optimize for that.

Yeah, I think that's true. But I would say along the way, I want financial— if not, I do want a certain level of financial freedom. I want financial stability. I don't want to have to worry about where my mortgage payment's going to come from. And I, um, I have gotten a certain amount of time flexibility. I don't have to ask my boss if I can go to my kid's wrestling meet this afternoon. I'm just going to go. But there's consequences. I'll go to my kid's wrestling meet, but I've got a deadline to meet. I've got clients who expect their thing. So I'll just have to do— I have to upload those files after the wrestling meet. Fine. You know, like, that's the entrepreneurial joy, right? And the entrepreneurial challenge as well. And so, uh, I have a certain amount of freedom, but literally yesterday I got a call and I was like, can you film this thing in Des Moines, you know, these two days? I'm like, shoot, I can. My kid is singing at the Cedar Rapids Colonel. Which one of those am I going to decide? I get to decide. My boss doesn't decide. So there's a certain amount of freedom, right? And so I'm gaining— I've gained a certain amount of freedom. I've also gained the freedom of I get to choose what my values what values I'm going to operate from. Not my venture-backed capital company's values, which I've had to conform to in the past. Not my boss's values, not the cultural values that are held within a company. Nothing wrong with those kinds of environments, but I get to decide. If I want to say, you know, Jesus Christ is Lord right now, I get to say that. And there's nobody who can have— and you can edit it out because, you know, it's your show, but like, I can say it. You know, and so I won't love that. I know, I know, I know how you open your book. But my point is there's tons of environments. I have tons of friends who cannot say that, right? They can't, or they feel that they can't, or there would be negative consequences if they did. So I love the freedom of this, and I've gained that freedom. And if I decide, you know what, we're not going to do that, I don't have to run it past anybody else. I just get to decide. So I gained a lot of that freedom. But I also lost some certain things like a 401 or health insurance. I got to pay for it myself, right? It's worth it.

So if you— you talked about the ways you market. Let me frame the question this way. If you were to define your biggest business challenge right now, what would it be?

I'm, I'm once again being a mile wide and an inch deep. I just stood up a publishing company because there's demand there and specific requests. So I'm making a film, they're like, we just help me with the book, like, and I'm like, just go get a hybrid publisher. They're like, but I don't trust them. I trust you. And this is one of the things, I take this as a giant honor, and it's the only way to do what I do. The people who I serve really trust me. I try to really be trustworthy. And so then that leads to opportunity, and so then you pursue the opportunity. But I haven't exactly like resourced that. It's all bootstrapped. And so then, okay, well, now we have a publishing company. And along the way, people are like, I love the way you tell a story, will you do this? I know it's not— hey, would you do this for my XYZ company? Like, we want a film. Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. And now we've, you know, widened it, widened it. And so I'm once again getting a mile wide and an inch deep. And then I own— but I'm only resourced so far. Like, I had originally started this, like, keep this simple, keep this solopreneurship. And then I sort of realized that's not how I operate. I'm not a solopreneur. I like collaborative work. Best creative work happens when you get to help people be at their best in the thing they do the best. And I'm not designed to sit for hours and hours and hours editing. Like, that's not my— and so now I kind of have a little consortium of 6 to 8 people who I work with, you know, and we, um, and we're able to do a better volume of work, but it's still not resourced to the level that um, take— I've probably taken on more than I'm ideally resourced for.

I, I had this, this thought I'm going to share with you. As you were saying, an inch deep, mile wide, I think the entrepreneurial brain struggles with Predictability. I call it shiny object syndrome. Like, we're easily distracted. I don't know if it's because there's some neurodivergency, you know, we have some form of ADHD. I don't know, but we're definitely attracted to novel things, new things. And new problems. And we can't shut that part of our brain off, right? Like, you know, you walk into a business, you walk into a restaurant, and you're automatically seeing, well, you know, why do they do this this way? I wonder if you did it this way if it'd be better. Like, that just happens and you can't turn it off. So I think it does lead a lot of times, and it 100% happened with me, where it was, uh, say losing focus, but, but like you're, you're describing it as it, it appears that it's, um, you're trying to do too many things. Yeah, but what if, what if we reframed that as it, it— we're measuring it the wrong way. What, what if, if, if it's mile, uh, mile wide and an inch deep horizontally, what if we flipped it vertically? And now you're actually very focused and very deep. And, and, and looking at it, yeah, because Maybe we're, we're, we're just describing it on the wrong plane, right? Maybe the narrow part is, is different than we've defined it. Does that make sense? I mean, I just had this thought as you were talking, and I'm like, hmm, maybe that's a different way to reframe that.

It's still all story. It's still all creating legacy. It's still all that. And that might be the inch, right? It's because I'm not going outside of that. It's just giving more mechanism to story legacy, you know, that sort of thing, creating story for the sake of certain outcomes, you know. I, and I've talked a lot about the heritage and legacy stuff. And the truth is, I'm doing some stuff that's, it does create legacy, but like, I made a little microdoc, documentary-style testimonial. So we've all seen testimonials, you know, I like working with so-and-so because they're great. And it's usually like, you know, some person shot in a conference room, mana, like that, you know. And it's kind of boring, but it, you know, kind of serves a purpose, right? You know, you're supposed to have some of those on your website, right? And somebody was like, we can make me one that's like a documentary style, and— or will you make me one? I said, yes, it needs to be in documentary style. I won't do anything that's not documentary. And they're like, great. So I made this little tiny thing that they can send before a meeting and say like, Hey, looking forward to meeting with you. This is what somebody else had to say. And that has been a business engine for them. I mean, that has worked. Like the amount of the ROI on that little project is massive. I feel great about that. I feel just as good about that as I do about some of these other projects that are longer and deeper and have a lot more story. But it's still this little tiny story that is for a purpose. And it worked. It's effective and it's still documentary style. And like, I didn't have to like sacrifice any of my, you know, values in making that. I didn't have to compromise.

No, it sounds like it's— I mean, it, it's, it's small and, and focused, but it sounds like it absolutely is heritage and legacy. You're talking about a specific heritage of that, that customer or client and, and the legacy that the company is, is imparting upon them. I mean, I haven't seen it, but that sounds like what it probably is.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's what it is. And so I feel great about it, you know. I feel great about that. And I'm doing a film for a town, you know, and a lot of these small towns, it's like we just, we want to try to attract some kind of business or industry and we can't have anyone else move away. And so like, how do you do that? Like, how do you go about that? Well, one way is like you catalyze and rally the town. You got to do cool things, have people have to like live in there, and the school has to be good, and all the stuff, right? You have to, you know, a film is a really good tool to do it. The kids, everybody sees themselves and their neighbor in it, and then recognition. It's just an amazing moment, and they get to look back and look forward. So I love that stuff, and towns are just rich with story, right? And so I love that stuff. And, and of course the So, you know, we were talking before about legacy and kind of how that works, the intentionality and how when we record our story, it changes the way we are. There's one I did, just did one called Knowing Otis. And Otis is a— Otis Lee lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, and he, he's an African-American. His great-grandparents were slaves, you know, and then his grandparents became homeowners and they got an education. And then his parents not only got an education, they became educators. So they were educators in the, you know, era of segregation in, in Virginia, right? But they not only became homeowners, they started buying additional home, additional property, and became landlords. And then Otis, the guy I'm interviewing who's in his 70s, or the guy who I produced Noting Otis for, he not only maintained that family business of being, um, uh, you know, landlords, and not only got an education, he became a college professor. And a lawyer and went to work for the department, uh, for the, um, U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So like, he took business high. Every generation took business higher. Well, guess what? His sons— he has two sons— one went to Harvard and is an international lawyer, and his other son is a doctoral-level education administrator. So every single generation has built on the last. It's a generational staircase because the amount of intentionality they had and they are the 6% who thinks generationally, who thinks in terms of legacy. So, what about the grandkids? Like, what will happen in their generation? It remains to be seen. So, we made a film that will help ensure that this generational staircase continues to rise. And I just admire that level of thoughtfulness and intentionality. So in my business, if my business helps people accomplish that, it's all going to be worth it.

Yes, I think what I've taken away from this interview most is this understanding your heritage, your history, how you got to where you are, whether it's just your lifetime or generationally speaking, because like my mother was adopted, so like I don't know all the heritage, right? But that process of reflecting and understanding what makes you, you, how you got here, and then thinking about the legacy that you are going to give others through who you are and your intentionality, I think is is, uh, missing 100%. I think you're right. I, I, I met a guy from, uh, Great Britain, um, recently, and he was in his 20s, and, uh, he said, well, you know, my, my primary school was older than the United States.

Isn't that crazy, right?

And, and, and the United States, I, I think this is unique to the United States is that we don't have a lot of heritage. I mean, the history is brief, historically speaking, but we don't have any interest in it in general. I don't see— I mean, you know, it's just like, well, we need to put something up new there, so let's tear that down and put something new up, right? Right. But that process of doing that, I think, is is, is revolutionary, uh, revolutionarily impactful. And I love that that's what you're about and what you're doing.

I really— thanks.

So how do people find out more about working with you if they're interested in their legacy?

Well, I'm pretty easy to find because Tej Stauffer is a really uncommon name. There's not a lot of Tej Stouffer's floating around out there. But fascinationfilms.com is my, uh, where you find, uh, you know, my company on the web. So fascinationfilms.com, Fascination Film Studio. I added studio because it turns out there's another Fascination Films in Europe and they make a very different kind of film than the kinds of films I make.

You want the brand, you want the brand to be protected, right?

So Fascination Film Studio, but fascinationfilms.com. And I'm pretty active on LinkedIn, and of course we're on Facebook and Instagram. So you can find me, Teej Stauffer, Fascination Film Studio, Fascination Films.

Perfect. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, and I don't know why you wouldn't, uh, shoot us— click that little message button, shoot us a message, tell us what you think, and we'll get rid of Teej. Until next time, ta-ta for now.