The case for indulging in passion projects with Stu Edgeworth. EP #291

G', day, guys. In today's episode, I'm talking to Stu Edgeworth from Chuck Media Productions in Sydney. Now, Stu has managed to balance running a very successful corporate video company that works with comms managers in corporate and healthcare and pharma and also having young family. He's got three kids under five, and he still manages to make a short film a year and go and push it around the festivals here in Australia and in the US So what you're going to learn in this interview is how you can still have it all. Use your video production company to fund your short film projects and take advantage of the tax breaks. But also, how do you balance all of that? Well, you need to employ people and have systems and Stu shares exactly how he does it. Now, I do apologize, some of my audio is a little bit distorted on this. There was a problem with the setup. I'm still trying to figure it out, but I didn't want to not issue this episode. So if you can see past that, that. Enjoy this episode.

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 members at www.videobusinessaccelerator.com. enjoy this episode.

Good day, Stu. How are you, mate?

Doing well. Nice to see your face again.

I know. And you. So I wanted to bring you on to the show partly because I know you've got a cool new podcast coming, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

And it's like it's commonly written law that if you have a podcast, you should invite another podcast on your show. So he invites you on his show and that's how this game works, right?

One for one. That's right.

Exactly.

Exactly. Now, I wanted to kind of bring you on because I've known you a little while now and you have some really unique insights as a filmmaker who very much leads his business with story. But also you have a family of three and a wife and a lifestyle that you want to maintain. Plus you have a very passionate interest in short films and being a film director. And I just feel that that's something that will really resonate with this audience. So why don't we just, like, take it, take it away, share a little bit about how you would describe what it is you do at Chuck.

Sure, yeah. Well, all of the above is true. So there are a few plates spinning in the world of Stuart Edgeworth and Chuck Media, for sure. And I'M sure that's really familiar, obviously, to a lot of the people who'd be listening to this podcast. And it's. A lot of us have started with.

A creative passion and a creative itch to scratch with filmmaking and then looked at ways to monetize it. And then suddenly 10 years disappear and you've got a family that you need to take care of whilst trying to do all of the above. So I'll try and give you the abridged version. So.

I sort of studied film and was making films from a young age. And then I actually went away. And after I studied, I veered course wildly into another line of work and ended up in business development and sales for sort of an international.

Company. And so went pretty far down a sales and business development path. But then at some point with that it was, you know, I was in my twenties then, and so there was nice travel and perks and pay and that kind of thing, but actually made some content for that company. And it suddenly sort of reopened the door and the realization was pretty apparent pretty quickly that actually that was what I was probably supposed to be doing the whole time. So made some content for that company. And then pretty quickly I quit my job. So I quit that. I took some of the savings I'd made there and. And jumped into being a freelancer right off the bat and kind of, you know, a freelancer pretending to be a company in some ways is how it sort of felt, depending on who I was pitching to. I was a company. And there was definitely that imposter syndrome for quite a while. Probably not entirely wide of the mark for some things. But then, you know, I guess.

The company became more of a reality over the last 12 years or so. And so Chuck Media is the company. So it's not just me as a freelancer anymore. We've got a small team. So part of that journey was hiring people and figuring out how the fuck to do that, but still trying to maintain integrity in the sort of work that we do in quality, all those sorts of hurdles. And then in.

The last four or five years, then my family also came into the mix. So it was making those decisions at certain points of, how can I extract myself from the freelance thing a bit and make the company more of a proper ongoing concern? So there was time to spend with my family because, yeah, I've got three kids under five, and if I want to maintain my marriage and see my. My kids, then I can't just. It's impossible, you know, you can't just be living Living that full time freelance lifestyle and expect everything to work.

I think it's probably a very familiar story. I know that I certainly began my business in 2008, 2009, working from a shed at the end of my garden and I had Sony as a client. And I remember one distinct time when we were on I think the FS or the A7s launch film and I'm like juggling basically £100,000 worth of budgets and the guy's like, so how big's your team then? I'm like, well, you know, we, we pretty, we're pretty lean. We, we scale up and down to keep, keep ourselves nimble. And I was like, if he only knew. Like if they knew I ran from a shed at the end of the garden on a shoestring at the time, they probably never would have hired me. But I think that part of error skill in selling and storytelling is to paint a picture, right? But then, you know, 10 years on, you've hopefully got your together and there's a different set of challenges, right? So now you're, you're growing Chuck, growing your family. What kind of, how have you had to, you know, in 2022, have you had to kind of look at your business differently from perhaps life before kids?

Yeah, sure. I guess at some point there.

You know, when you're a freelancer, it feels like you're hustling for cash, right? Like you are just like, let's get as many jobs in the belt and you know, probably you're shooting for just a higher quality or a nicer client or a better type of job. You know, everyone will have different goals that they're aiming for, but I mean, inevitably a part of that is that you want to get paid more. And you know, and it's. The harder you work, the more you hustle, the more, the more cash comes in and got to a certain point freelancing, where, you know, it was a pretty healthy income for.

A freelance type job. Didn't have any kids. I had a lot of time to be able to commit to that. But I guess, you know, this year and last year.

It becomes more the value or what I'm. What I'm trying to.

Utilize more is time. So obviously time is the finite resource. And maybe that's a shift when you hit middle age as well, right? You're like, well, hang on a sec, the clock's kind of ticking as well.

I want to be able to not work 10 hours every day on a shoot or go away and do that unless I choose to.

But I need to be able to have some structures in place whereby the whole thing doesn't fall over if I say, if I say no to a job or if I need to push an edit onto someone else. It's like, you know, there's that fear, right, where if you, if you let a job go, if you're a freelancer, that you're giving away part of your business. So part of that was, yeah, you know, building the team so that we still do the work. But it's not necessarily just me doing the work and I'm able to spend more time.

With my family and as you know, had a child born this year and then a child born 18 months before that. So you have to take off some time when the kids are born as well. So significant chunks of time that get pulled out of your life.

It's funny, I think a lot of freelancers I speak to are really, really struggling, are worried about growing a business and then having to kind of give that money away to hire staff and team. I think it's a very common fear. But as someone who's been in that position and has gone from maybe making a really good living as a freelancer and then having to pay someone a full size salaried wage, how did you reconcile that? How did you approach that? And what did you, what was your thought process to kind of rationalize that decision based on? Maybe it's the fact that you had kids and you had no choice, but I guess that's part of it. But what was your process for that?

There's definitely a leap there, there's a, there's a mental hurdle that has to be overcome. And it, and also it took a while to unlock how that, how that was going to work, you know, because it seemed for a while like if I was just literally hiring another freelancer, I'm just paying them as much as I would, you know, I've paid myself. So some of it was looking, having to restructure how AI quoted and costed jobs and then also, you know, figuring out economies of scale across different jobs. And also, you know, there's. When you've got employees, you're not, you're not having to.

You'Re not having to give away those freelance rates. So it became a switch of.

It was more about. Once I had staff on, the mindset became, how do I fill their plate? Okay, that's more my goal now. How do I make sure we've got enough coming in to sort of fill their plate so they're not just Sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Whereas, you know, if you're hiring contractors for a job, it's much more project specific. So yeah, a few mental shifts there and a few.

And a few leaps. You know, at some point you just have to take a leap and try something different, I think. So hiring someone is sort of.

It'S a leap into the unknown. But it's a, you know, it's a bit like investing as well. Right. Like if you don't have skin in the game, you won't really learn quickly. So it's like putting skin in the game and then you'll pretty quickly learn how to not lose money by, by having an employee. Whereas you won't really learn that if you don't give it a go.

Yeah, and I think that's another, another big fear I hear it comes up again and again is the, oh, but I'm busy now. What if I get three months down the line and we go quiet and then I've got to pay this person, they're sitting there not doing anything. I don't believe that fear has ever become real for anyone. But in your experience, so what happens when things do go a bit quieter? What do you do with that resource?

Yeah, yeah. And that has happened then. So that, that was, you know, that forces, forces you to think about, well, yeah, actually what, what do we do? So you know, there's different strategies there. Obviously it allows you to re.

To, you know, to use that resource in a different capacity. So.

That'S the silver lining, you know, forced us, we were doing proper marketing. So when you've got an editor sitting around not doing stuff, then you've got a resource that you can redeploy to create content for your organization. For marketing.

It'S still cash going out. So you've got this lag obviously where you know, the marketing hasn't bit and you're getting leads coming in. But that was one thing, that.

Was a silver lining I guess of that sort of situation.

But also then it's just a forced lesson and well, we obviously haven't worked hard enough earlier to fill the plate. What do we need to do there?

And also in the terms of the agreement with an employee. So if someone's looking at doing this to start off, maybe it's looking at a shorter contract for an employee as opposed to an open ended employer employee relationship. So if someone's thinking of doing this, I would suggest maybe it's like, particularly when you're beginning with someone allows you to figure out if working together works but shorter employment contracts are probably a good first step and one that I now use. If we're bringing new hires on, it's that starting off on a shorter contract.

I loved your analogy to investing. And we both, we both spoken about this. We both invest in property, we both invested in an NFT and some crypto.

But in any investment strategy, like, you've always got to be willing to wait for the return. And actually the longer you wait, usually the better the return. Like we take crypto at the minute, you know, our crypto's gone a third of what it was worth when we bought it, but that's now. If we were to get rid of it now, we would lose money. But we can have this conversation in two years time and it's tripled to, you know, from where it was originally. So I think that that investment psychology, that's not something that's common in filmmakers. I think there's a lot of fear naturally in filmmaking of what if it doesn't work. And I think I see that a lot in the vba. You know, when we talk to people coming on board, it's like the ones that have an idea of the investment psychology that you are investing in yourself for a future benefit. Talk to me about your process and where you got that investment psychology from. Because, you know, marketing does take a while. You create the marketing and you test it and there's a lag and a lot of it doesn't work, but you've got to just go, okay, that didn't work, move on. That didn't work, move on. Check the data. Tell me about your attitude to risk and investing.

Yeah, well, I'm actually pretty risk averse, you know, generally crypto aside.

So.

You know, when it comes to other investments.

Outside of business. So I've got, as you mentioned, I've got an interest in property and in a lot of ways that's, that's an easier investment because it's a very slow moving investment. And it's just something, you know, I spent, just spent more time learning to sort of understand.

When it comes to investing in your own business though.

It'S much more dynamic. Right. You've got a lot more ability to control the nature of your investment and to reap the rewards that you put into it. So, so.

It'S a less risky investment because you're completely in control and it moves a lot more quickly if you want it to.

So I think that.

If we're talking about investing your own time into your business and thinking about what you want to get out of it.

It's probably the best. A lot of the guys in the VBA talk about, really your business is probably your primary investment because you're the king of this castle.

And also you've got the ability in a video business to generate really good cash flow to then utilize in your other assets. If you've got that sort of mindset, if that's what you want to do. Yeah, yeah.

And I want to talk a bit about your, you know, mission, I suppose, to, to build truck, to be a really good investment vehicle for your family that generates great cash flow and provides employment for your team. But you're also, and that's one of our massive values alliance is the fact that, and this is something that I'm very big on in the VBA is like, what is your success, rational success look like? It's not just about the money. It's about time and time spending with your family. You're taking January off and you're going to Bali with a family. You spent a few weeks in LA at a film festival. You spent probably another month, six weeks this year making a film and going to events to promote it. How important is that to you? And how do you balance that with the needs of the business, but also the needs of you as a creator?

Yeah, that's a great question, Den. And probably something a lot of people can relate to is that balancing between the commercial aspects of your business and the dirty work of having to make money, which is kind of a crazy headspace sometimes, but really it's giving you a vehicle.

To shoot for what else you might want to achieve in, in your life as well. So I, I get a lot of personal satisfaction and.

And, you know, a sense of self worth and I, my identity from, from filmmaking. But I guess the, you know, the other creative type short films and.

You know, the, the other more aspirational dreams, I guess that I have. But, you know, you need money to, to, to keep, you know, to, to keep that ball rolling. And so it is a bit of a balance between making sure that there's, there's enough money being made in the commercial side of the business that I can then put into a dumpster and burn on the, you know, on the creative short film site. But, but the benefits that, that I get out of that. So obviously I'm also able to, you know, get time from the business. And because the business is making money, I can, I can go and indulge these, these flights are fancy, but the secondary rewards I get from that.

It'S A sense of self worth and confidence which then bleeds back into the commercial business because I feel accomplished and that when I'm talking to clients and they're also seeing that the creative things they're doing, it gives you something to spark a conversation with. And also, um, you know, it's, it's something that, that if I didn't do and I was purely doing the other sort of work, I probably wouldn't, I wouldn't feel whole, you know, I wouldn't feel like I was fulfilling my visions, you know, that, that, that we talk about.

Yeah, and I think you, you were, you know, made a short film recently. You, you did a few festivals in Australia, then you went to LA and, and you were there for like a week, 10 days, I'm not sure, thereabouts. But like, it must have been an interesting experience to have this successful commercial videography business in Sydney. But there was you with the team at home looking after it while you're at a film festival in, in, in la. What was that like? That must have been an interesting experience from a kind of like observer's point of view, looking at the other people, you know, how many of those people were in your position where they had a successful video business that was kind of funding the art? Or was it the opposite? Was there a lot of, kind of very poor filmmakers scraping dollars together to make a film? And how was that experience?

Yeah, I think that.

It is interesting. Sort of stepping into that world, particularly over in L. A. It is a bit of a different beast. I didn't, I met a couple of people in a similar boat with a commercial background who were, you know, stepping into.

Into the other, more narrative stuff. But, but for the most part, it's, it's talking to, yeah, filmmakers who are working in the, in the film industry. But then.

It'S, it's, it's definitely, you know, you're beholden to that, that sort of, you know, that, that sort of work, you know, if you're working in, in a crew role or something like.

That.

And, you know, for me to look, to be able to do that and look back and say, well, hang on, I probably couldn't really do that because I've got three kids. I can't really duck off and do, at this point in my life, do a first AC on a feature film. I value the flexibility that having the business allows me. So.

That makes sense for me, you know, that I totally respect the other filmmakers who have mortgaged their house to make a short feature film with the hope of that then taking off. But for me, it makes more sense to have the flexibility to enjoy that situation. But I'm not going to drop everything and go and scrape for 10 years and work as a barman and try and make it in LA because my wife would leave me.

Yeah. And you never see your kids. Yeah, it's pretty good reason. Yeah.

You know, I'm turning 40 next week, then it's. It's not.

It's.

It's not on the car.

Shit's getting real.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. But, you know, I think what's really interesting about this is that as a freelancer, you probably wouldn't have made that film because you would have been like, I've got to keep working. Like the freelancers.

The nature of freelancers, you have to go and do the work. The business owner step is you creating the opportunity to help the clients, but also an opportunity for freelancers to get work and then build a team. And then you're able to leverage your profits to take time out of the business, but also spend the profits on making the film, which will more than likely reduce your profit to zero and therefore reduce your tax bill.

And that's a great way. And that's the positive spin that I put in this.

Make no mistake. I completely understand that all the money that got put into that short film, that's not a profit return coming off that. But as I was saying, it's the other well being, if you like, benefits.

And I would argue that actually there wasn't a monetary return, but Stu's feeling fulfilled as a director and that fire. I would imagine if we got Dion here and we said, does this make Stu a better person to live with? She'd be like, yeah, I want to make him make a film every year. Because otherwise you just end up becoming the provider and the financial hunter for the family.

Yeah, yeah. And I think you're spot on. I think a much happier household when I'm. When I'm able to pursue some creative projects, as well as, you know, as well as wearing the hat, you know, I'm very happy. And there's a sense of pride in being able to be that provider. You know, there's classic sort of masculine vibe of being able to look after the families, and there's a lot.

We can't ignore our binary coding. You know, it's funny, actually, I was talking to Sammy, one of the guys in the vba, about coming on a podcast, and he went, oh, you should get tash on. Like, I want to go do it. Together. He's like, no, you should get Tasha on, ask her the questions, then get me on and ask the questions. We should do. Should get the wives of the VBA to, To come on the podcast and share what it's really like to live with a filmmaker.

Yeah, yeah, look, that could be. It's an interesting concept, but maybe let's revisit that down the track.

Let me revisit that in February once you've had a month off with the family and. Well, look, I'd love to, before we finish up, hear about your plans for the future and including, you know, why. Are you starting a podcast?

Yeah, sure. So, yeah, we were launching a podcast called how to Hire a Video Production Company. So that's aimed at busy marketing and communications managers who.

You know, they have. They're looking to outsource their video production. They may have tried to do it before and had. And had a terrible experience.

You know, we've worked with any number of clients who have done it before and have made mistakes along the way, and we've made plenty of mistakes along the way as well. So it's taking those big mistakes that.

Organizations and marketing managers make, talking about those big mistakes so that, you know. So if you're a marketing or communications person looking to outsource your video production, you don't have to make those. You don't have to make those mistakes yourself.

Nice. I think that, you know, you very much embraced the marketing game this year, and that's really important, particularly now. Content is where, like or not, the future of all marketing is going to be content based. So I think it's really smart to start that podcast. We'll be sure to link the details below.

Now, I like to ask this question, I always forget.

What is the one thing I haven't asked you about that you feel a videographer who's perhaps freelance or running a small company listening to this show would want to know what would that be about, running a business and growing and scaling.

Right, right. I think the one thing we haven't touched on which.

Which has been really important and which we made mistakes with early on is systemizing things. I know you're a huge proponent of systems then, and it was really through you talking about systems with the systemology guys on the podcast that a couple of years ago now that first got me thinking about, because I wasn't even thinking about that. Systems, to me is such a foreign, you know, was not. Was not on the. On the radar. I'm a hugely disorganized and kind of chaotic person in a lot of ways. And so I guess realizing that making systems is not actually that hard.

Just once you have figured out, you know, the general formula for doing it. Because without systems it's really difficult or you're just sucking your own time away if you're trying to get other people to do work for you. So by documenting something once and then being like, here's the document, then I'm not doubling my time to get other people to do the work for me.

So yeah, I think that's one thing we haven't talked on. And it's kind of like it sounds like this nebulous, frightening thing to dive into if you are a freelancer and you haven't done it. But if you're looking to scale, and even scale in a small way, when we say scale, that also sounds frightening. But if you're just passing off some tasks.

To an assistant at some point, that's a great place to start with. Just like practicing what could we note put down in dot points so that you're not, you're not just doing stuff over and over again.

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