What They Don’t Tell You About Running a Creative Business...

So there's lots of things that they don't tell you about whenever they say, go chase your dreams, go create things and make money and pay your bills off of it and make a business out of it. Well, I'm here to tell you probably about 90% of my job is not the video portion, and we're a video production company. And so if you're in the same spot with anything like creative, whether it's photography, art, video, music, anything in that realm, and you're like, yeah, I'm wanting to start a business, I, I want you to watch all the way to the end of this video because I'm going to tell you all the things that nobody really tells you about whenever you're making a creative service and trying to monetize off of it. So there's lots of things that I've learned, and we do photo and video and I fell in love with doing photo and video and then realized, hey, I can make some money off of this because this is a need in our market, specifically where we're at in Texas. And I decided to go all in and I'm never going to look back, I'll tell you that. And it's been the greatest decision of my life, but it's come with a lot of challenges that I didn't think that it would come with, if that makes sense. And so, um, once you get good at video, once you have an interest or in whatever it is that you're doing, there's going to be the business side of things. And so this is the thing that you have to think about more whenever you start making money. Um, there's going to be things like sales. You got to learn how to sell things. You got to learn how to provide value and package it in a way that people want to exchange money with you. And hiring dumb employees like this— look, we're matching. This is what happens way too often. But yeah, the whole journey of learning how to sell things has been a massive adventure, because if you can't sell things, like, if you can't package things in a way to make people like feel the value, then you're not going to make any money. And having that service is going to be pointless, and your talents are not going to be seen because nobody wants to buy it from you, if that makes sense. Um, so focus on sales. Like, if you like talking to people— and you don't have to do it like the traditional, like, car salesman route, um, you just straight up talk to people and convince them that it's as important as you say it is, and they'll buy from you. And if they see the value in it, then you've done your job as a salesperson, as a business owner, and they'll go for it and they'll pay for that service. But, um, let me know if you have any questions on that. I'm still on the learning journey of sales, and so if you have any advice, like, leave them in the comments as well. Other things are like bookkeeping, um, and your taxes. Those are going to be very important as far as like what you are classified as, um, in your business, whether you're like a sole proprietor, whether you're a single-member LLC or an S-corp. Like all these things, I'm not a CPA, so contact your accountant, contact your CPA, get advice on those things. Um, those are just things that I've run across and I've had to figure out along the way. And if I wouldn't have had my accountant and my bookkeeper help me with these things, I would have been in a terrible spot. I would have been still tracking everything on Excel by hand, tracking all my mileage, tracking all of my everything by hand, and it would have been a nightmare. Um, and so Since then, we use QuickBooks Online, and that has been a complete game changer as far as like how I run my— the money side of my business. I can categorize things, I can set up envelopes to do like savings accounts, and that's how I do payroll, that's how I pay the employees, that's how I pay contractors. Like, that's where I send all my invoices, and it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you. But if you don't know what you're doing and like how to tax certain things, what kind of tax categories you're in, then you're going to need to talk to your CPA even more. Um, do that as quickly as possible. Get an LLC set up as quickly as possible because the longer you wait, the harder it is to transition out of that sole proprietor, um, level, especially if you're wanting to grow and scale your company. Beyond yourself, which that's what I'm trying to do. And so now we have a team of 7, and we— I have contracted out people, I have employees, um, all the above. And QuickBooks has helped tremendously in that. But that's something to think about. Try to learn about taxes as much as you can. Take classes. It's going to save you a lot of money and a lot of headache because the IRS does not play around. So, um, employees is a newer thing that I've been trying to navigate this last year. Hey, real quick, I wanted to let you guys know that we are actually opening up a few more spots in our coaching program. And so if you're wanting to level up your brand, level up your business through content and video, this could be a cool chance to work directly with me and we can get it done together. If that interests you at all, There's going to be a link in the description and we can meet one-on-one and talk about your goals. Let's get back to the video. Finding people who are qualified to do the work, who are hard workers, who are always striving to do the next thing, who's always wanting to push the company forward. That's a challenge in itself. And there's good ones and there's bad ones, and not everybody's going to be perfect. But if you can figure out what their strengths are, if you can figure out where to place them within your systems where it's like you're not making them do the things that they're not good at, but you're finding their strengths and putting them in spots where they're going to thrive and succeed. Um, that's been a challenge in itself. But just hiring people in general, it's hard because your overhead goes up by a lot. That's going to be majority of your expenses. As a business owner, um, your rent and your, uh, your payroll is going to be high if you don't want to do all the work yourself, which is fine. Uh, it's all business expense. Like, you can expense it and it helps on your end-of-the-year taxes, which goes back to the last point that I made. But it's, it's going to be trial and error a lot of the times, and figuring out systems that work are going to help tremendously moving forward. And it's just like, it's one of those things you got to just try it see if it works. If they're not a good fit, then you're gonna have to move on, and you're gonna have to put your feelings and emotions aside to make what you're building work. So not only do you have to manage the people on your team and the employees and the contractors, but you're gonna have to manage your clients. Um, client relations in big corporate jobs, they're a position That's like a whole position on its own because it is very important at that beginning whenever it's just you. If you're a solopreneur, then you're having to do all of this at the same time, and sometimes it can slip in between the cracks and you forget about the client relations. And it's— it is extremely important to keep them happy because they've already trusted you once. If you can make a good impression and then keep that relationship, that client is going to be worth way more in the future than potential new clients because you've already worked with them, you've already proved yourself, you've shown your value, and they're, they're convinced, they're in. And so for any future projects, then they're going to be way more valuable than, um, going cold knocking or going cold calling and trying to get new clients because you don't know if they're gonna say yes and they haven't seen the value that you provide just yet. Few other things to think about, and I'll try to wrap this up fairly quickly, but you gotta think about like your marketing strategy. You gotta think about who you're trying to reach. You gotta think about how you're gonna reach them, like what platforms, what age group, all of the above. And the sooner you can narrow down exactly who you're reaching, the sooner you'll be able to scale and make more money. It's kind of backwards. You'd think just cast a wider net and you'll catch more fish, but it's actually the opposite way around. Um, so try to niche down the most that you can, the best that you can. And that's one thing that I've struggled with is like at the beginning I would take any and all business, and I'm sure you can relate to this. But I would take any and all business just to make the ends meet, just to pay the bills, which is fine. But if you ever want to get out of that, like, you got to think about this stuff. Once you can figure out how to reach that specific person or that specific decision maker, um, for me, it's a lot of times business owners who I am trying to reach. I'm trying to, um, get them to see the value in the video production and the social media and content. And that is my niche. And I can niche it down even further, but we're currently doing some testing and trials in different spaces, different industries, to see what works best and see who needs this stuff the most in our area. But that's where we're at right now. Um, what's your niche? If you're a business owner watching this, which if you are watching this you probably are, comment below what your niche is and, and if you've seen success in that market, in that strategy that you're running currently. One of the last things you got to think about is how to actually make a profit and make money, and you have to learn how to manage it. I come from kind of a finance background. I got a finance degree from a university, and that has helped me up to a certain point. They, they teach you how to go and work for somebody, but whenever you work for your own company you're the decision maker and you have the authority and control over what you spend, how much you charge, and what your profit margins are. And so if you can figure these things out and, and develop a number that is competitive up to a point, but not so competitive that your margins are razor thin, uh, it's finding that in-between where you're actually profiting and you're actually making money, because that's the whole reason you're starting a business in the first place. Um, and, and that's one thing people struggle with. They try to undercut so much so they get more clients that they end up making $0 and working way more, and they get burnt out and they go out of business. Um, and so learning how to make a profit is going to help tremendously in the long run. It's going to help your business survive. So after all of those things that we just talked about, then you get to be creative. Then you get to go and do your art, um, which is the part that I love the most. Obviously, if you get into this from a creative standpoint, then you're, you're gonna know the feeling. Like, you got into it because you loved doing that thing. I love doing video. And when you finally get to that part and you get to do the video stuff Um, that's the final 10% of what your job is and what your business is all about. And so some words of advice is just to make sure you love the art, you love what you're doing, and it's going to be way harder for you to burn out if you genuinely enjoy what you're doing. Because I've seen time and time again, people turn it into a business and they get burnt out and they end up losing their passion. They end up losing their creative touch because they're so overwhelmed by the business side of things. So try to find that balance. That's pretty much everything summed up into a quick video. Uh, I hope it isn't too long, and I hope you found some value out of watching this. If this helped, make sure to leave a comment. Um, we're currently trying to grow this Howdy Media company. It's like a content agency slash video production and consulting agency. And so we're trying to build it up. We're trying to actually hit 7 figures this year. So make sure to follow along in the journey. I'll give advice, I'll show you how to use equipment, I'll show you what cameras you need to buy. Because one of my goals with this channel is to teach me 3 years ago what I needed to get to know to get to where I'm at now. And so make sure to subscribe if you like this content, and we'll see you guys in the next one.