Building a Corporate Video Business from scratch with Adam Forgione

G' day folks. It's Dan. It's Wednesday and it's time for another podcast. I am really thrilled this week to be starting the first of a three part series with Adam Forgione from New York City. Adam was a extremely successful wedding filmmaker for nearly 20 years. Very highly decorated, lots of awards, and then he shut his wedding business down to focus on another thing. One of those things was a music library which we're going to talk about in a couple of weeks time. But he also rebuilt his business entirely to focus on corporate video production. And in this episode he's going to talk in detail about how he did that and what the three key drivers are for him running a successful video production business. I think you're going to really enjoy this episode. It was absolutely brilliant talking to Adam. Adam is also a very experienced educator, has done tours of the US Teaching business for filmmakers and video producers. So I think you get a huge amount out of this episode. So I hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to the Video Business Accelerator Podcast. Each week we uncover the secrets to creating a wildly successful and scalable video production business. With your host, Dan Lenny, discover how the accelerator program is transforming the lives of our@www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

So Adam, it's great to finally connect. You're a busy man and for good reason. For anyone who's not familiar with you, can you just give us a bit of background on Adam Forgione and where you've got to at this point in your career?

Yeah. Long story short, I started out as a musician and I started playing professionally when I was in my late to late teens. And then by the time I was around mid-20s, I started getting interested in video editing. By the late 20s, I got my first copy of Final Cut 1 and I edited my own wedding video, which was amateur footage, you know, just friends and. But I loved it. It gave me a bug and I started to actually, you know, cook, do editing for wedding studios that were like cookie cutter wedding studios, really corny stuff. But you know, I didn't know any better. So I was just, you know, cut my teeth on that. And at the same time for, for years prior to that I was a music producer and a mu and an engineer as well. So I would produce albums and play in bands and do sound and all that kind of stuff. But that was kind of teetering off. And then, you know, early 2000s till today, I just been going strong on the video end. I got into weddings first. I recently retired from weddings I'm very happy about that. But I have a lot of knowledge that I learned along the way with weddings and I really enjoy teaching and sharing knowledge. So I think I have at least a few years of sharing that knowledge even though I'm not doing weddings anymore. But I hope somebody can benefit from it. I'm all commercial, corporate and a year ago I also launched another baby which goes back to my full circle Music Love, which is Select Music Library. So I have Penny Lane, which is the corporate commercial video and I have Select Music Library which is my music licensing library. And I love them both and pretty happy.

So obviously you were pretty, I mean, you know, you're being very humble here, but you're pretty highly decorated wedding filmmaker when you were. There's weddings and there's, and there's, there's this Penny Lynn weddings. I mean they were high end, big budget and what was it about? What made the shift from the wedding industry, which I'm presuming you were doing pretty well in to, to, to kind of really focusing on video for business.

You know, I wanted to transition out of weddings for many years and I think the main reasons why were the number one reason I wanted to get out of weddings was that the, the anxiety in my stomach before every wedding was just taking a toll on me. And I think it was because I cared, but it just, it was screaming like this is wrong. Like I know that if I'm doing what I love, I don't get butterflies going to work. Like I, you know, I welcome where I'm going and I'm looking forward to it. And I started to not look forward to that feeling anymore. And then the other big thing was that, you know, my weekends were taken away and I have kids, I have a 14 and a 10 year old. So that, you know, missing that part of my life. And then in addition, you know, it's, it's, no matter how you slice it, it's one story. You know, boy and girl get ready, they get married, they have a first dance, they have party and you know, it's got a little played for me. So I love the corporate commercial angle and I love the art of selling. I love marketing, I love business. So I thought corporate and commercial was a much better fit than weddings were.

Well, I'd love to go there for a moment because, you know, this podcast is primarily about helping video business owners accelerate their business. And I feel, and certainly from talking to a lot of filmmakers that that marketing and selling, it has this stigma attached to it. And for some reason Lot of creative people find themselves going, oh, I hate marketing, I don't want to do marketing, I hate selling. I don't want to be salesy. And they have this, I feel, misguided approach to what selling actually is. If you're serving a client with something that they need and your offer or service or product can really enhance their life, then I believe you have a moral obligation to put that offer in front of them. Talk to me about your process and how you view those side of things.

Yeah, I get you and I get a lot of people when they say, look, I'm not a salesperson. I don't like to be silly and I personally don't like that either. But what I learned, and I'm a big fan of audiobooks and I've listened to a lot of.

Business audiobooks, the classics and new stuff, what I learned was that, hey, we're like, we're like jet fighters. And we can arm ourselves with all different types of weapons. And when we arm ourselves with those weapons, we have the power to fire those weapons at the right target at the right time. And so I'll give you an example. Some of the weapons can be asking your clients what their pain points are, but not by saying, hey, what's your pain point? But asking them, you know, when you're looking for a videographer, what is that thing that you feel is missing? In most of the cases, when you go look at different videos online and you speak with different people, what, what do you, what is that missing thing? Is there something you feel that you're missing? And you know, there's an example of them explaining or sharing a pain point. And then you have to make sure that you can fill that need. There's that classic saying, if there's a need, fill it. And everyone has desires when they're shopping, when they're a consumer. And it's our job as business owners to fill those desires. And we may not be the right fit for everyone. So, you know, you have to really target onto the types of customers where you naturally stand out by doing this, this and that, and you help people fulfill their desires by doing those one, two or three things. And I know we're talking very high level here, but that's the simplicity of the whole thing. Customers only care about one thing. What's in it for me? That's it. They really don't care how much resolution your camera records. They don't care what 8 and 10 and 12 bit are. They care about that end result benefit. And you know, there's a lot. We can go.

I'm just laughing here because you mentioned two things. One is it's really simple. And secondly, they just don't care about anything but what's in it for them. And yet I believe, and I have the greatest respect for our community, but I think what happens is that our community spends so much time talking about cameras that they just assume naturally that everybody else is interested, including clients, and it's really the case.

It's absolutely not the case. I mean, look, there's some rare cases where the groom is like a hardcore camera fan and he's like, hey, I just got a, you know, a 5D or a Sony A7. You know, three. And, you know, as three. And I'm really excited. And, you know, sometimes you get those. And I remember getting those. And I was kind of excited because I'm going to talk shop with this guy. But you got to really balance that because, you know, guys are usually logical and girls or women are usually emotional. So you have to speak in words of how do you feel versus, you know, what do you want with those two. But to go back, a very simple. I'm a big fan of substance and not smoke and mirrors, you know, So I could be saying all this and sounding all bullshitty, but the truth of the matter is, let me throw some real stuff against the wall here so people have substance. Let me tell you a story. And I didn't make this up. So I go into Home Depot or a. Do you guys have Home Depots?

Oh, wait, like we. In Australia, we have Bunnings.

All right? It's like. It's like a megastore for, like, hardware and stuff. Is that okay?

Yeah.

So you go to one of those places in America, we have Home Depots. And, you know, you go in there and you want to buy a drill, so you go and you see and look on the wall and you have, like five different drills with different speeds and different power ratings and different brands and different colors and different features on them. But you find the right drill, you pick it out, you go and you buy it, right? And then you go home and you drill a hole in your wall and you hang a picture up on your wall. Now, I went to the store. I didn't want a drill. I wanted a picture up on my wall. That's the end result benefit. And that's what our customers are looking for. The drill, the speed, the. The color, the fact that it can go in reverse and forward. Well, that's 4K 10 bit. Who cares? They don't care. I mean, we care as filmmakers, but they don't care. Put the picture on the wall. That's all I want. Can you put my picture on my wall? It's the simplest way I can explain it. You have to find your benefit, your end result benefit, you know.

Yeah, I love that. Now I wanted to kind of just talk a little bit about, obviously you'd been very established in the wedding space. Had you been doing corporate video on the side as well? And I say on the side in between times or, or did you just make a decision to go into that space? And the question I get asked the most frequently when I ask someone a question about what's your biggest problem? They always say getting clients. And, and I'd like to go there like, how did you go about setting up any new market with a wedding portfolio that was not relevant to corporate? Tell me about that.

Yeah, that's a good question. I'd be happy to share how we got our clients and how we built. So first things first, nothing happens overnight. And this did not happen overnight too. This took a lot of years and it took a lot of failures and a lot of perseverance. So that's number one. Um, I tried, I started getting out of the wedding, I started trying to get out of the wedding business. I would say 2008. So this has been a 10 year haul. And you know, I might have picked up one or two clients that year and then maybe the next year picked up another client and then another client and so on. And then, you know, slowly that built. And I have a lot of clients now. And you know, one, one small tangent here is that what's great about corporate commercial clients versus wedding clients is that, you know, corporate clients, your job is to make them a return on investment. It's a marketing tool. And when you do that and you do it correctly, they'll come back to you. And that's your account every year they have a budget, they spend it on you. And that's that whether it's 5, 10, 15, $20,000 a year or whatever that is. So with a bride and groom, it's a one off, you know, and that's what's great. You get accounts, you don't get just a one off client. And that's what I love about corporate commercial. But I'm actually going to bring up something here just so I have a little guideline I can fire off some, some specifics you asked about how do you get work? Right. That's the magic question.

I'll Tell you, everyone asks that question. Everyone asks how to get new clients. How do I get new clients. How do I get new clients?

Yeah, I'm going to share with you exactly where all my clients came from. And.

I'm actually going to bring up. I'm just going to put this on the side so I can see. See it.

Well, first things, I feel like we should. I feel like we should have a drum roll here. You know, the big, the big reveal.

Yeah, I mean, I know this isn't a visual presentation right now, but I'll fire them off. And I do this in business classes, too. But I mean, first things first, you got to know who to contact, right? And mostly it's going to be people with positions in marketing. So examples could be. And now I can actually look at my screen here so I can run them off. You know, VP of marketing, marketing director, director of marketing, VP of Business development, marketing manager, sales and marketing rep, communications director, and also even human resources. So first things first, if you're on LinkedIn, go on LinkedIn and plug in any one of these words. It will search for people's positions. And then all of a sudden you realize, oh, I'm first or second degree with this person. Let me reach out to them. And what you do is you start building your CRM, your customer relationship management database, and you start putting them in this, this spreadsheet, or I personally use Zoho, which is like $60 a month, but you can use something or you can, you know, make a spreadsheet yourself and then you go after them. But the next thing is, here's where I get my clients ready. I see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. I have nine clients currently that derived strictly from weddings. They were groom, brides or grooms who later on. And here's a really cool tip. If you're coming from the wedding world and you go into the commercial world, if you've saved your emails, which I do, go back and find every single email you've ever gotten from any lead, whether they booked or not, and send them out an email. You'll have to experiment. Send them out an email saying something along the lines of, hey, I just want to, you know, thank you for, you know, allowing us to capture your. Your special day. Or in the case of a dead lead, thank you for inquiring and I'm sorry that we, you know, wound up not working together. And I hope you had a wonderful wedding. The reason I'm calling you or the reason I'm emailing you is because I wanted to let you know that we also do corporate and commercial work and we help businesses make money through video marketing campaigns. And if you are in or know anyone within your company that's in marketing that is looking for another company, and I assume you, you, you like what you saw because you came to our website so you enjoyed our quality, you know, reach out to us. And you're planting seeds that may, you know, grow a month from now, a week from now, 10 years from now. But these seeds keep planting. So I'll go through others though.

We've gotten, let's see, one, two, we have. So nine of them are from, from brides and grooms. Eight of them are from. And these are ones that are constantly. These accounts that are live referrals from clients. So like, for example, Make a Wish is one of our clients who referred Leukemia Lymphoma Society and Leukemia Lymphoma Society referred Crohn's and Colitis foundation of America. So it just keeps trickling, right? SEO huge. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 11 counts that, you know, they're regular accounts. With us, we probably have like five or six in the pipeline this month from SEO alone. You know, doesn't mean they're all going to, you know, book us, but we have that. SEO is huge search engine optimization. That's basically how do they find you on Google and where do you show up when they search for relevant terms targeted by us. We have about six successful companies that we targeted directly that we landed. Interesting ones. So somebody you're working with a company, then they get fired or they leave the company, they go to another company. As long as you take care of them, you make the money, you make them look like rock stars. They're going to call you from company B and they're going to say, hey, I'm working over here and we need a video on. I'm in marketing. Here we go. So I got four of those mergers and acquisitions. I have two large corporations that, you know, had been bought out, but they retained the marketing department. So we stayed with them to introduced my friends. And then we work with agencies like digital marketing agencies, advertising agencies. So these are real life examples of real ways to make money. And I'm, you know, making money with these accounts. These are all real.

So I'm curious, you know, SEO is an interesting one because it's kind of fallen in and out of favor in the. Kind of fallen in and out of vogue in some respects. But actually we are doubling down on SEO just now. This podcast is part of our SEO strategy. Consistent content.

I believe, you know, YouTube, Google, Facebook now has the ability to kind of literally transcribe these videos live and take keywords.

How do you go about your SEO? Do you hire someone to do it or what do you do?

So about a year and a half ago to two years ago, I got overly obsessed with learning SEO. That's one of my weaknesses, is I get obsessive. So I got obsessive over SEO and I started listening to SEO experts like Neil Patel and. And Brian Dean, I think his name is. And this other guy.

I can't even think of his name. It'll come to me. But they're all like top YouTubers. They really have very relevant information. And anyway, with SEO, I found out that there's. There are a lot. There are hundreds of factors that determine where you show up, but some of the little things that I've heard may or may not be 100% accurate because SEO is a very gray area where there's a lot of opinions floating around there. But essentially, Google owns the space. You know, no one cares about anyone but Google. They control probably over 90% of what's happening when it comes to SEO. Google owns YouTube, and YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Well, that says a lot. Google loves when you use YouTube and rewards you. Another thing too, is that probably the most important factor for SEO is what's called the SEO title page. The title. The title. I'm sorry, the title name or the title page or the SEO page. They've been coined different words, but it's that, you know. So example, if you write a blog post.

About, you know, how to properly expose.

For DSLRs, making this up, how to properly expose for skin tones on popular DSLRs. Well, you can use tools like keyword planner, which is part of Google Ads, and you can use paid ones. And there's probably some free searches too, but you could find out what's popular and how competitive keywords are. So you might be able to find out that how to properly expose on DSLRs is a really hot keyword search term. I don't know. I'm making this up. And if you do and you find that it's not competitive, you make a blog post and you make sure the type, the SEO title of that blog post is exactly that. How to properly expose with DSLR cameras. Then there's something called H1 tags, H2 tags, H3 tags. Picture this if you were reading a book and that big bold, you know, chapter one the beginning, that's your H1 tag. So when you look at a blog post or you look at a webpage, there's always that big, fat, giant font in the very beginning. That's the H1 tag. Usually that's very powerful. And Google really listens to that. Their, their AI listens to that or looks at that. So if you match that up to the keyword, great. And then you put those keywords like properly expose, properly exposed, dslr, properly exposure, proper exposure. Use these keywords interspersed throughout your copy. But you can't sound like a robot. You actually have to write it like a human being. Because Google is smart and knows that. And if your URL happens to have those words in it, you're. It's a bonus for you. You know, these are like little tricks. Another thing too is every image that you have can be labeled from an SEO standpoint, can have an image name, the actual file, like dot, you know, whatever it is dot jpeg. It can also have alt title, which is very important. And that's how you find, you know, when you do a search for how to properly expose, and then all of a sudden you look in images because you're looking for scopes, and you find that your blog post image is right there in the top because your image was properly labeled. There's so many ways for them to leak into your website. And it all equals business. I can go on forever on this stuff.

What I love about it is, is I'm actually 10 years in business this year since we set up F Stop Academy. And I was reflecting on that recently, going just the roller coaster of running a business. You know, it's hard, it's relentless. And I just read a book recently called the Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham. One of the boss, if not the best business book I've ever read.

What's it, what's it called again?

It's called the Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham.

I will remember that.

Fantastic. And he says, you know, he's been in business 45 years. He's been through recessions, he's been through boom, he's been through bust, he's been through bankruptcy, he's been through building. And he said, the one thing that I take away from business is that it's just a series of monotonous things done consistently. And SEO, for example, like, for me, everyone seems to be looking for a quick fix. It's like, hey, if I just do this course, my business will fly. And, and my, my, my experience is somewhat different. It's like it's a lot of different things constantly changing. Would, would you agree with that? What's, what's your take on, on running a business over the last 10 years in this particular form?

I'll tell you. And it's great. I love, I'm going to look at that book and I grab gold nuggets from all different books and I kind of put them in my own toolbox. So here's the conceptual idea for a successful business. For me, very high level. There's three parts to a business and this goes to anything. It can go to a business like yours or mine, or it can go to Apple or Google or anybody else. Three parts are this the first part? If you were to imagine three boxes, box in the left box in the center box in the middle, the box in the left is your sales and marketing department. So generally a cmo, a chief marketing officer would run that. But that's how all of the money comes into your business. Without that being run efficiently and being a 10, you're not going to get business, you're not going to close the deal, you're not going to get the word out and get people attracted to your brand. The second box is operations or otherwise run by chief operating officer. Now they're in charge of everyone that makes the widgets. In our case, we're filmmakers, right? So we make films. But we're talking everything from phone calls, I'm talking about phone calls, about administration, you know, like, oh, we need photos or we need to find out where you know the location is and what's the address of this place and your project management, all the way to filming, all the way to editing, pre production, script writing, motion graphics, all the stuff that you create and is part of creating the widgets that's in your operations. And then the third box is financials and analytics. So that's the CFO and that's, you know, chief financial officer. So now you, you've come in with the first box. Sales and marketing. The money came in, they were really good. We got the money, now make the good stuff. So they pass the money over to the coo. COO says, thanks for the money. We're going to make great stuff for you. Then the money comes out, whatever's left over, you could deliver your product or products and whatever profit is left over goes to the CFO and says, okay, so what do we have left over here? I see. Now this is what we need to be aware of. Now I know how much the expenses are. Now I know how much the profits are. I know who I have to pay. I know how much money is left over. Should we reinvest it? Should we spend it? Should we spread it out? Should we hoard it? Whatever you need to do. And that cycle continues. The money goes back into the business and it just keeps growing. The trick is you got to be a 10 on all three of those boxes and most of us are a 10 at the middle box. The operations because we're artists and we have to learn business. That's my take on it.

This is a perfect moment to pause this. I think we need to run this over a couple of episodes because this is gold. So I'm going to leave it there, folks, and we'll pick up Adam next week.

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Sam.