Day In The Life Of A 23 Year Old Entrepreneur (Realistic) | Ep. 1

Alright, today is a day in the life of a media company. We're going up to the studio and we're gonna go get some editing done, some basic admin work done. I got to make some graphics. We're gonna start cold calling about our podcast studio setup pretty soon, and so I got to have something for our first touch. Email. Um, yeah, it's gonna be fun. Winston's sad I'm gonna be gone. Say hi, Winnie. Say hi, Winnie. Anyways, it's gonna be a good day. We have a couple shoots today. We have one at 1 o'clock, we have another one at 4 o'clock. The first one's gonna be a podcast for one of our members. Um, up with the podcast studio. And then the second one is going to be a higher production B-roll project that we're working on. Um, but yeah, it'll be cool. We're gonna get to take our lights and, and do maybe some fog machine stuff and just get some really cool cinematic B-roll for a specific project for one of our clients that we can't really talk about. But yeah, it's going to be good. I just drank my coffee, ate some breakfast, and headed out. All right, now we're headed to— we're headed to the studio in the Prius. Let's get it. Just thinking about how different the business has looked over the last 2 and a half years. And so that's when I started it. I started it in about March of 2022, and it's been quite the ride. We started off only doing real estate photography and videography, and, um, it kind of spread out and ventured off into like literally everything else. And so through a lot of trial and error, we were able to narrow it down up to this point that I only want to focus on video production, very high-quality video production, some content creation, social media consulting, and being just like a resource for people to come and to be able to learn how to make good content, how to grow their business online through video. And we did the whole like social media management thing for a while. It became too much. Even though we had a team, even though we had systems in place, the market that we're in for that specific thing, it just wasn't— I mean, it was profitable, but it just wasn't profitable enough for me to be like, yeah, let's keep investing in it, let's put all our time into it. And so if that's something that I were to say to my past self, is that, that one thing would be, is it gonna make— is it gonna take your business to the next level? Is that specific product or service like worth all of the time and energy you're putting into it? And if the answer is no, then you need to drop it and you need to move on to the next thing. Because ultimately, why are you running a business? It's to make money. It's to be able to spend more time with your family. It's to be able to kind of be the boss of yourself. Even though it feels like clients are the boss at times, but that's the ultimate goal. And so if that's something that you're struggling with while you're watching this, like, I wish somebody would have told me this 2 and a half years ago. It's like, pick something that is gonna make the most amount of profit that you still love and double down on that. I was trying to go every single route. I was trying to do weddings, I was trying to do real estate, I was trying to do social media management, I was trying to do YouTube channels. Like all of the things, and it just became too much. I was managing myself about 8 or 9 accounts every single week, and so that's like 3 to 4 posts per account per week, and it was just too much. And I really didn't make a ton of money off of it, which I know looking back now why that happened. It was because I was learning. But if somebody would have been there, if I would have been a time traveler, if there would have been somebody who was mentoring me in this space, it would have saved a lot of time and a lot of headache, um, and a lot of stress, honestly. So if there's— yeah, if there's a service that you're like, man, this is cool idea, but it's really not making that much money, don't spend any more time on it because you will just spin your wheels and nothing will grow, nothing will happen. That's my two cents on that. Just thought I should share POV from a point of view of a business owner. That's one of the biggest struggles that I've faced. And as soon— and it's not perfect, like there's still a lot I have to work on. And in a year it's probably gonna look completely different. As it does right now, which is crazy to me because a year ago today we had a different name. There was only one person on the team. Now there's 8. And so like, what can happen in a year is insane. So you just never know. You can plan, focus on the day. There's not a ton you can do about what's going to happen in a year. You don't know what opportunities are going to open up. And if you're pushed like you're putting stuff online, if you're posting consistently, then man, you just have no idea what kind of opportunities and doors are going to open. Because the things that have happened in the last 2 months, literally the only thing that I can explain it is the Lord. So I had no control over it. I was not expecting anything, but these ideas, these clients, these jobs just started coming out of nowhere as soon as I shifted my mindset. From just solely focusing on the business. And I have let the business consume me at times, which has been a struggle. At the very beginning, I was working ridiculous amounts of hours, which in a startup, some might say you have to, which is fine, which is fine. I was in college, I had some time, I didn't have a ton of expenses, I wasn't married yet. And so it was fine at the time. And I was like, okay, there has to be a boundary. There has to be a limit on the amount that I work so I can spend time with my wife, because ultimately that's why I'm working, is to support her, to support our family. And so yeah, these are just things to, to keep in mind. Anyways, the point of these videos and my YouTube channel is to not only like educate people, entertain people, but it's also to give an insight and just show people that there's a way to do business that glorifies the Lord, that makes money, is able to support your family. And this— the type of business that I started is, is honestly like a new type of business. Um, media companies have been around for a while, but the way that I'm doing it is a little bit not normal. So like the normal media company, right, You think of media, you think like news outlets, you think entertainment, you think the news. That kind of media is what you think of. And the kind of media I'm doing is— we're still in the video and photo space, but we're more focused on trying to help people grow their online brand and helping them promote and grow through video specifically. Um, now we help with overall content strategies, but one of the biggest things that I think can take your, your content to the next level is starting a podcast. And so that's why we started a podcast studio, um, and it's in downtown Abilene, Texas. And so what it is, we can have members for the studio. We were only able to fit 5 members at a time, but like, and we're almost full, we're almost full. We've only been open for 7 or 8 months and it's been really cool to see grow. It's something that I think is gonna start opening up a lot more. I know there are already some podcast studios out there but it's gonna, it's gonna continue to blow up, guys. I'm telling you, you're gonna see more and more of these content studios, these podcast studios pop up, and I kind of want to be at the forefront of it. And so that's one thing that we're implementing, especially going into 2025. It's like we are wanting to help people because we can only have 5 members. There's gonna be a group of people and businesses who can also, um, they're gonna also want their own studio, their own content room, because ultimately that's where everything is going right now. It's video. And business owners who understand that are willing to invest in these types of services And it's just like you have to rearrange the furniture in your head to understand how important it is. Because like I say all the time, there's 5 billion people every single day online, and just— you can either take advantage of it or you can miss out on this massive opportunity. There's lots of people who already have taken advantage of it and have made tons and tons of money and grown their businesses to— they've 10x, 20x, even 50x their businesses just by implementing their stuff, by being the content and putting it online, just straight up bringing out a camera and recording everything that happens. And so that's why I'm such a big fan of this DJI Osmo Pocket 3, which I did a review on. Go check it out. But this Osmo 3 It's so tiny. I'm wearing a microphone right now. You can't even see it, but like, it is— you can't even tell you're carrying around a very nice camera whenever you're using this thing. People don't look at you like you're, oh, is he vlogging? Is he trying to be famous? Whatever. No, straight up, like, they don't know that you're videoing, and so it's a lot more natural. You can find a lot more shots. You can be a lot more comfortable. And so this is one of the solutions that we recommend. Either if you don't want to use your phone, get something like the Osmo Pocket 3, get a small mirrorless camera that you can carry around like the ZV-E10 or the ZV-E10 Mark II. Any of those will work. But if you do it right, if you formulate your videos right with, with good hooks, with good topics, with good storylines. Like, people watch. And so the point— the way I'm doing this video right now, it's gonna be like POV of a business owner, 23-year-old business owner in West Texas. POV, you're trying to create a multimedia company to hit a million dollars. Whatever it is, it's super important to invest in this stuff. And that's my spiel in the Prius. Alright, we're at the studio. It's a little bit dark, but we're gonna go ahead and turn on everything. I just wanna kinda bring you guys along today. I'm not gonna do a ton of editing. So this is pretty cool, I'll show you guys this. So this light, this is what I do for my livestreams and, and videos. I usually just bounce that light directly off of this white curtain, and I think it looks pretty good. It's, it's pretty soft. It's not too crazy. But obviously there's some stuff that we need to clean up on my desk, so I'll be doing that. Kind of getting the setup ready for our podcast at 1 o'clock today. And might grab some coffee, may grab some water. But yeah, I really wanted to try out this, this way of making videos and just, just straight up recording. It's gonna be a little bit longer today, and it's not gonna be as upbeat and music and transitions. But I just want you to get an insight of what we're doing and kind of what it takes to run a media company like this starting now. And I'm, I'm only 23, so there's a lot of things I have to learn. But let's go ahead We're gonna turn on all the lights. So these backlights over here, I don't know if you can see me or not, but these backlights are very important. So we have, we have a lamp here, we have a lamp over there, and a floor light, which is just like a —what do you call it—a floodlight. So that's what we take to weddings and stuff. Um, but when we're not doing weddings or events, it's chilling on the floor back there. I don't know if you can see it right there. It's chilling on the floor, and it just kind of gives it a cool effect. It gives some light behind me. Let's turn this—golly, look at that bright—look how bright it gets. The softer the light, the better it looks. So if you don't need a ton, that's something to know. But right now I'm going to make sure our payroll is good to go. I got to give some commissions, pay out some contractors, um, do the boring part of business. Last week I got to file all my sales tax and income tax payments to the government, and so that was fun. If you're not preparing for your taxes and you're a business owner, you need to call a CPA right now because you're already behind. That's one thing I've had to learn how to kind of understand is like— so I have a finance degree. I have a finance degree from university, and I learned some things there, but that was mainly teaching you how to work for somebody, how to be an accountant for a firm, not necessarily running a business. And so some of the tax law came in handy, but I still didn't know it 100%. And so having somebody there who knows that stuff has saved me time, like countless hours and countless of literal thousands of dollars, which is crazy that they don't teach this stuff, but it's a huge part of running a business. And people start businesses so they can make more money and spend more time with their family. And so if you know how to utilize the rules and play the system, honestly, then it's huge. It's huge. But yeah, today I still have that wedding video that I'm working on, uh, and I'll show you guys some of that and how I have my setup on Adobe Premiere Pro. That's what I've been using. I use I've been using that since the very beginning and it just keeps getting— at the beginning it was a little rocky, I'm not gonna lie, but the new updates and, and the new AI features that they're pumping out has been awesome. Um, but okay, let's give you a quick little tour. Um, so it's a little messy right now. I did do a tour video not that long ago on the studio, but you walk in and it's a little bit messy, so you're gonna have to excuse me. You walk into the right, okay, immediately to the right we have our coffee bar area. We have like some drinks and Nespresso pods and that kind of thing, and then we have some storage, our calendar that we haven't updated since May of 2024. We have our, uh, tool chest that has all of our equipment. So you open it up and immediately there's tons of equipment, tons of things going on. Usually it looks nice and pretty and clean, but whenever we're in between shoots and jobs, it gets insane. You got my desk, which it's just my desk setup. Maybe I'll do a video over that. Got a mini fridge. In this particular space, we don't have any closets or anything, so this is where we store everything. Uh, let's see, over here we have the studio side. So the whole reason— and that fell, I need to fix, I need to fix those microphones— but the whole thing with this room is right here down the middle, at one point there was a wall, and at one point there was a doorway. So before I even moved in here, they opened it up and made it one big room, which is awesome because I can have the studio side over here. And so everything we record in here, this is the recording side, and we got props, plants, tables, chairs, microphones. And everything on that half of the room is like the production side, wherever— where we can people can see themselves whenever they're recording. I'm going to turn on this light here. They can see themselves whenever they're recording right here. So we usually have 3 cameras set up. We'll have one right there, one right there, and one right here. Everything's going over here into the switcher. And so this is a system that we have decided that people might want to know about. Goodness, Mike left all this trash here. Mike is our other editor here, but we're running a Mac Mini here with the M2 chip, and that's powering the computer. We have the Blackmagic display right there, um, but that's, that's how that works, and everything runs via HDMI. All the way up to the switcher. Um, we've had to move the set around a couple times, so I haven't had time to like really organize all of the cables there. Over here we're running, uh, Sony FX30s. If you were curious, if you like camera gear, then let me know, we can talk more about it. But we're using the Sony FX30s. We have 2 of them on the outsides. And a Sony A7III in the middle. Hopefully we can upgrade that soon. Okay, with all of that being said, if you have a space or if you have like a room or an office that you think would be cool to make into a studio, let me know. We can totally help you out with that. Like, my idea with that is I am wanting to put together something for people, which we've already basically done it, um, that is almost 100% you push a button and everything turns on, and you push one more button and you record. So everything should be set up already, all the cameras should be at the right angles unless you change like the amount of people, or if you want a different angle, you can move the camera around. But it's gonna be almost 100% push and play. And whenever you push it, when you push the power button, everything will turn on. When you push the record button, you'll be recording. You can— there's gonna be a monitor where you can see yourself, so you don't need somebody else necessarily in the room watching you. And then as soon as you hit stop, in a perfect world, right? And I know it's possible because I've seen it happen, but if you film a podcast, if somebody's like, hey, well, we want you to build this podcast setup, so we're gonna go in— and we've already done this— but where we go in, we, we create a design within your space, within the dimensions you give us, within the amount of cameras that you want, and we'll put it together. And then what we'll do is we'll offer you an extra add-on to where you can do— have us do the editing and distributing part of your podcast towards Spotify, towards YouTube. And so as soon as you hit stop on that switcher It's gonna upload to a cloud server that we have access to here at the studio, and we'll be able to edit it, see all the episodes, get it ready for distribution, and then we'll be able to upload it all from across the world. Like, you could be anywhere in the world and we can do this. That's how I envision it, envision it in my mind. And so if that's something that like you would be interested in, or even if you feel like you have the skills and knowledge to do something like this to help us out, to be like a tech, comment below. I want to know how many of you are interested in that. Um, yeah, I'm just curious to see the market out there. Outside of Abilene. We haven't really tested it anywhere else other than Abilene. We haven't even really marketed it, and we already have 2 clients that we're helping do this for. And so it's just really going beyond the studio here, because like I said earlier, we can only have 5 members. And so that's kind of the whole reasoning and thought behind doing that and pushing that hard in 2025. So we're gonna be doing that. We want to push workshops harder. We want to push doing live classes. We're gonna do some more things for our Insiders group. I'm just— I just want to bring those people massive value and just like show them that there's other ways to do things. And then there's gonna be a lot of free things. There's gonna be a lot of free content, so make sure to join that. But That, that's kind of my whole mission is to just educate people, show them how to utilize social media in their business, specifically through video, because I think that's the most powerful route. If they want to do a podcast, we can help them with that, can help them set it up, because guess what? We've already done it. We already know how it all works. And so creating like a one, one-button setup to where you can come in, record, do your thing— we don't necessarily have to be there. Is going to be crucial to this process, or if you have somebody on your staff or whatever that is able to do something like this. Um, but alongside that, we'll be doing like event coverage for video and photography. I've kind of thrown around the idea of doing live streaming of events. So if you have a big corporate event or something and you want it livestreamed, we can bring in our switchers, our cameras, and basically create a live production environment. I don't know that we're 100% ready for that yet. I'm gonna have to get some more gear and equipment, but It's expensive, guys. This stuff is, is crazy expensive. Like, just to give you an idea, everything in this room that you saw just a while ago, it's probably within the $20,000 to $30,000 range. And so there's been a lot that I've invested into this, and it's because I'm passionate. I believe it's a massive need. And so instead of you going and spending $30,000 on a quit equipment and then learning how to use it and having somewhere to store it and then learning how to edit. Like, just hire someone outside of your company. Um, and if you're not from this area, like, find a local media company who can help you out with this stuff because it's not going to just save you time, but it's going to save you a headache. Um, it's going to save you honestly money because during that time that you're learning how to do all this stuff you could have been out making more money doing the actual business side of things. So I don't know, just some warning thoughts to think about. Also, shout out to Sony headphones. If you haven't tried Sony stuff, you need to. We're gonna go ahead and clean everything up. Some of the things that we have to do, like move this light— whoo, how bright that is, boy! Yes sir, we got to move this light. We got to put a softbox on it, which is this guy right here. Oh, I guess we got to take that off, but we got to put the softbox. We have two of them, one that goes on the left, one goes on the right, and they basically go into like a cross pattern. These, these lights get so freaking bright, it's crazy. But clients are showing up in about, uh, probably 30 minutes from now, 20 minutes from now, and we're gonna go ahead and get it set up for a 3-person interview right now. There's only 2 chairs, so I'm gonna have to pull the couch in from the hallway, and we're gonna have to set it up that way. So it's pretty cool, y'all can just watch me do everything around the studio, and it's literally like following me around, and you can see everything that I'm doing. Um, DJI Osmo, personal cameraman. But it's pretty cool, I think. So this particular member— oh, hi— this particular member, um, they started with us. They started their podcast with us, and the amount of growth that I've seen through this specific podcasts and like even like just the local level of like awareness and like people sponsoring and getting to know the stories and testimonies of people throughout the big country, which is around Abilene. It's been like crazy to watch because they went from no views, nobody knew about it, to now they're around 400 or 500 downloads a week just on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And so seeing it grow from scratch, it's just been huge. But I don't know, it just shows the power of doing a podcast. And I think, I think everybody honestly should have a podcast. And I think that's just— that's not me being biased, but like, that's— I'm just a big fan of it because it allows people to trust you more. It allows people to get to know you more. You can show off like how real you are and people get to actually know you for who you are. Um, but that's, that's really why I think it's been such like a— like people are so attracted to it because it's just real. It's like throw a camera in the room and let me hang out with you type vibes. And I also think that's why you see a lot of vlogs and a lot of videos in the style that we're doing this one today, is because it's just real. Like, you're just hanging out in a room with that person, getting their thoughts. It's— that's literally it. So Something to think about if you're a business owner, or if you are like thinking about starting a podcast or starting to go all in on social, then I would say do it. 100%, no doubt, do it because you will not regret it. Um, over here we have— hey, I'm gonna actually move move you over here. I'm gonna go ahead and put you— let's put you over here on this shelf. Boom, put you on the shelf. Um, so now you can kind of see the whole setup, the lights, the cameras, where we're putting the cameras. And I wanted to, to just show you guys what it's like 20 to 30 minutes minutes prior to the set, because a lot of people don't see behind the scenes. And I think it's— I think it's important because, uh, a lot of people don't know the amount of work that goes into starting a podcast. And since we have the systems in place and the people and the manpower and tools to successfully put up a podcast. It's like we just immediately gain trust with our clients as soon as they walk, literally as soon as they walk into the studio. They like see everything going on and they're like, well, we, we trust you and you know what you're doing. Obviously you know more than we do. And so that alone Sorry, I'm like out of breath. So that alone, having a spot and showing like you can do this stuff is— it's huge. And it's one of the forms of like every time somebody walks into the studio, I want them to be kind of like shocked, like they didn't realize how cool it was going to be or how— what a vibe is going to be. So That's one of my goals, and I think we've done a pretty good job at it. Uh, this chair just goes over here. I'm gonna get the couch real quick. Now, this couch I got off of Amazon, and it's honestly been perfect because it's not super heavy. I think I paid $250 for this thing, something like that, along those lines. Oh my goodness, moving furniture is a lot, man, but we do what we can for our clients. So having something like this where Oh, having something like a studio, time-consuming, and takes a lot more work than you would think. And the cool thing about the switcher is everything records onto this drive. So whenever we start recording, that little ISO stop box, that's how long we have. We have 8 hours and 13 minutes of record time left. We have 862 gigabytes. This is all your audio. And so the way you turn that on, we have cam 2 and cam 3. So we're going to turn on the mics for cam 2 and cam 3. And now we should be getting signal from all of the podcast microphones. And that's pretty much it. We'll do a sound check and then we'll hit record on the switcher. I'm going to get some more footage during the actual session. And how do we get— um, but yeah, not a pretty or simple— with the feeding tube, like a cup of black coffee every day, about 6 months. So what was it? Yo, just finished up this B-roll shoot. Um, it was very cinematic, so we took the cinema kit, the cinema rig. We had to put a little— we got a light, we got an ND filter, and a matte box in the front. We have our monitor that we can see everything on. It was legit, um, everything came out great. If I'm allowed to, I'll put some footage in here, but more than likely I'm not allowed to, uh, NDAs. But it was a good shoot. We wrapped up the podcast stuff, everything went great there. You saw some shots of it happening, and we have some shots of the B-roll going on, a little BTS for you guys. But yeah, that's pretty much it. Um, I'm about to go home, say what up to the wife, and that's it. That's the day of a 23-year-old CEO who's trying to run a multimedia company. Um, lots of video production. Uh, we have some upcoming programs, some classes and things of that nature where we're going to be teaching people how to use social media and grow their personal brand online through video specifically. So I don't know, I'm pumped. I got some cool comments today from some previous live streams that I've done, and they were like— there were two of them that were like, hey, thank you, like, this helped out a ton. And so that's just encouraging to me, especially not having the biggest following in the world. I mean, I especially in the places that I'm putting stuff like YouTube and Facebook, and specifically an Insider's Group. And just seeing that people are getting value out of this stuff, just, I don't know, it makes it a little bit more encouraging and motivating to continue to push on and do more things. So if you've learned something, it would mean a ton. Leave a comment, hit the subscribe button, because we're at 122 subscribers as of today. So, alright y'all, we'll see you guys in the next video.