Speaker 1: Regardless if you've been running your production business for years or you are just thinking about the process of starting it, I think these five tips are going to drastically change your business. What's good, creative fam? Brandon Washington here. Let's not waste any time. Let's go ahead and jump into the first tip I have for you when it comes to starting your production business, and that is you have to think about running a production business as a 60-40 type business. Now, that's the numbers that I have chosen to go with, but what do I mean by 60-40? That means focusing on the business side of your production 60% of the time and actually focusing on the art and creativity and the production side of your business 40% of the time. I don't know any production people out there who will really disagree with me, but when it comes to being a creative, a full-time creative, you spend most of your time actually handling the business side of your company. This means you have to pay attention to things like billing and finding new clients and really just all of the mundane business stuff. If you go into it with the mindset of knowing that I'm going to have to spend probably more of my time focusing on the business and less time working on the actual creative, one, you'll have a more successful business, but ultimately you'll have the money and the time and the stuff that you need in order to actually focus on the creative. Real quick, before we jump into the rest of this video, I do want to announce that I am currently in the middle of my holiday giveaway. Giveaway over $2,000 worth of free gear, which include the Hybrid Pro filter from Sandmarc, the Soonwell Top Battery Handle, a one-year subscription to Musicbed, and a 180-watt light courtesy of D&O Lighting. If you want the chance to win all of this free gear, make sure you check out the links down below in the description so that way you can know all the details that you need in order to win this awesome gear. Check out that video right after you finish watching this. All right, now the second tip that I have for you guys is to keep costs low. Whenever you're starting your production business, there is a lot of stuff that you kind of need slash want, like new cameras, new computers, marketing, an office space, a team. There's a lot of expenses that you can immediately incur when starting your production business, but if you're smart, you'll do everything you can to keep your costs low. Starting a production business isn't the easiest thing. You need to build a resume. You need to build relationships. You need to kind of get some clients underneath your belt, and the biggest thing you can do to help you in all of this is to keep your costs as low as possible. If this means officing out of your house, do that. If this means renting gear, do that. If this means working with freelancers instead of hiring employees, do that. Anything you can do to keep your costs really low is going to be crucial to your business. The last thing you want to do is try to scale up too fast, run out of money, and end up crashing your business. So trust me, when you're starting out your production business or if you're running it for a while and you're running into financial issues, do everything you possibly can to keep your costs low. Now real quick before I jump into the third tip, I do want to say that if you are liking these Business Monday videos, continue to hit that like button and subscribe, but also leave me some comments down below on some topics you would like to see me cover next week in Business Monday. All right now the third one is probably the one that I messed up on probably the most and it probably should have been the first thing that I mentioned in this top five list, but that is you need to set up the foundation of your business early and honestly do it at the beginning. See for me, when I first set up my business, I just operated it as Brandon Washington and when people wrote me checks, they wrote them to me as Brandon Washington and I didn't do any of the paperwork. I didn't do a DBA. I didn't do an LLC because I didn't understand any of that stuff and I said, ah what the heck, I'll figure it out later. Well, that in turn bit me in the butt. So I'm telling you guys right now, if you're watching this video and you haven't set up any type of foundation for yourself, for example, now I operate underneath the LLC of BeWatch Media and by doing that, it has changed everything. I have an EIN number. When people write me checks, they write them out to BeWatch Media. It makes me look more professional, but also I'm more so protected. I can get business insurance and a lot of other benefits because I've set up my business the right way. Now I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to tell you how you should set up yours, but I can tell you that I have an LLC. It's worked great for me and if I were you, I would do some research, figure out which one is the best one for you. If you want to go incorporated or not incorporated, LLC or just a DBA, whatever you want to do, do some research on those fronts or let me know if you want me to try to cover that in a future video, although I'm not a lawyer, but this is something that you definitely need to do right now. If you're just getting paid underneath the table, cash by check, by your name, and you're not handling your paperwork right, especially with taxes, you're going to resent it, especially if you get big, which is what we're all hoping to do. So prepare now as if you've already hit the goals that you plan on hitting and you will actually be able to enjoy those goals and not deal with some of the repercussions of not doing your due diligence at the beginning. All right, now the fourth tip I have for you guys is find a niche that you can kind of start building up your client base in. Now for me, this is probably the hardest thing because I like shooting everything and I honestly get bored just shooting one thing, but I will say by building up at least in one niche, it's going to give you some residual income and some good clients that you can maybe even get on a retainer and kind of show your body of work to at least one area until you can build out to more. For me, that was real estate and I did that for years, but the one issue with this is real estate, just like every other industry, has its highs and its lows and when the industry is on a low, typically you are on a low. So I normally recommend find one niche, build into that, but while you're doing that, start looking and find that second niche because and you don't want to get in a situation where your niche dies and therefore you do. So getting into multiple niches and primarily if you can get into one where when one is down, the other one is on a high, that would be awesome and that's honestly the best setup you can have, but you do need to start somewhere and so if you have no work and you're trying to start from the very beginning, find a niche, dominate that niche, and then look for the next one. And the fifth and final tip I have for you guys is if there's something you can't do well, as soon as you can, bring someone on to help you with that. Now I know that's a little contradictory to the whole point of trying to keep your costs low, but I will tell you there is value in having something done right. If you are not very business minded and you struggle with writing contracts or developing a business plan or pitch plan, finding someone who can help you with those things will drastically improve your business. Now there are certain things that you can bring people on to help you with without actually having to hire someone full time or part time. See, if you can work with other creators and collaborate with them and you issue them like a 1099 where they're working as an independent contractor, this can drastically change the way your business is done because now you don't have to worry about things like benefits or taxes, but you can just issue them the 1099 that says they were an independent contractor, they can work with you for a select period of time, and then they can go on and do their own thing and you can continue doing yours. I've done this for web designers, editors, graphic artists, people to help me with my contracts, lawyers, whatever the case may be, I have brought people in to help me with my business when I needed them in those moments. Now obviously you can't spend all your money up front on all these people and I totally get that, but when you can bring someone on and you have the budget for it, I strongly recommend leaning into people to help you take your business to the next level because if you keep trying to do everything yourself, your business will never grow. There's this saying that I heard a long time ago and it's, if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go with someone else. This means you're going to have to bring other people into your business in order to reach to where you're trying to get to. Now obviously everybody's goals are going to be different and what type of people you're going to need are going to be based on your strengths and weaknesses, but ultimately look at the areas where your business is suffering, see if you can bring someone else in to help you with that and that will drastically help you unlock your business and kind of take it to that next level. So there you have it guys. Those are my five tips on how you can actually start your production business from scratch. If you liked this video, check out some of my other business Monday videos that I have where I go over all different topics as far as how to run a production or creative business and let me know what you guys think about some other topics I should cover in future videos. Thanks so much and I'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.