For almost a year, I went to work from midnight to 8am. My coworkers and I didn’t particularly get along. After experiencing many job environments in which I found myself not being happy because of those around me who didn’t share the same passion for the job, I decided to make the leap of starting my own video business.
I went to film school to learn how to do film and television, and I wasn’t doing it. Being fed up with unhappy work environments, I decided to get into commercial video production.
Boy howdy, was I not ready for that venture!
One Client Leads to Another
When I decided to resign from my bellman position at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, I had some video work already lined up prior to starting my own video business. I had been doing light video work for a client for many years. I figured that would naturally evolve into more work.
The above video is entirely done by me – I did the preproduction, the production, and the post production. It was very rewarding work, but it was highly stressful. It would’ve been awesome to have had even just one more person as part of my crew. If I got to have a second crewmember, it easily would’ve been an audio person. Never underestimate your audio. Treat it the same as your video.
This occupied me for a little while, and I even got some other work doing some production for some horse auctions. This included doing some livestreaming.
Trial by Fiverr
Of course, one thing I had to consider when starting my own video business was how to get myself out there. One thing I tried to do was sell gigs on Fiverr. For some reason, I was hugely unsuccessful at this. Fiverr is a world platform, and there are so many people making videos on there. It’s hard to compete when someone in a third world country can make a video for $5 and it satisfies the client just fine. However, it’s not impossible because there are a lot of people on there making a lot of money!
I ran two gigs. “I will put together a most excellent whiteboard video” and “I will put together a most excellent short ad with stock footage.” I made zero sales!
However, I know they had some sort of service you could pay for to push your gigs out more. I didn’t pay for that.
What Happened after I Started My Own Video Business?
Although I do enjoy doing this video stuff, I kind of got burnt out on doing it commercially. Being based in Las Vegas gave way to a ton of competition. Not having full creative control takes a lot of the fun out of production!
Another drawback was that I didn’t have the most professional equipment. This is where I wish instead of going to film school, I just got to use even half that money to start my own video business. Film school was an extreme waste of time.
I absolutely believe in the fact that the operator is the main proponent to an equipment’s limit. One student asked me in film school why my videos shot on the same camera looked better than other students’ videos. It’s because I took the time to learn how to use it. However, the last thing I wanted was to not be able to do what was required of me because of equipment limitations.
I also would’ve had some more money saved up. Man, it was stressful worrying about money so much when I was starting my own video business!
However, I did buy seancorcoranvideo.site for the next 10 years! I don’t plan on doing any work for now, but who knows what the future holds.
It was a huge learning experience for me, even though it put me behind in life.
