Mentioned in this episode:
Live Workshops / Classes
Online Courses
Podcasts Mentioned
Episode Transcript:
You are listening to episode 9 of the Level Up Your Wedding Film Business Podcast. What’s the #1 thing you should invest in for your wedding film business in 2020? Keep listening to find out.
I’m your host, Taylor Petrinovich, and at the core of this show I want you to feel inspired to take your business to the next level, and I want to give you tools and practical advice to help you along the way. Let’s Level-Up together.
As wedding filmmakers, we can sometimes be bogged down with the choices of where we should spend money in order to elevate our businesses. Should we spend more money on marketing? Or maybe we should buy that new camera that just came out.
There is 1 thing that you should be investing in for yourself and your business each and every year, and it’s something that will never lose its value over time. And that one thing is education.
When I was doing some research for this episode, I came across this statement about investing in your business in an article by Liz Alton:
“Investing in your own expertise may be the fastest way to help your company grow. Today’s entrepreneurs and freelancers need to devote time to their own education to see real growth. Your company’s success will be determined in part by how up-to-date your skills are, and how well you understand the latest developments in your industry—which may be evolving at lightning speed.”
We live in such an exciting time. We have so much information available at our fingertips at all times – through our phones or computers. There are more and more educational platforms emerging into the wedding film industry every single year, and they are amazing resources for us.
Education is an amazing investment, because it can be applied to your business daily. Everything you learn will make a direct impact on your business.
And there are so many aspects of your business that could be helped along by education. Whether that’s learning more about branding, marketing, social media, or even the technical aspects of filming and editing weddings. There’s knowledge out there that’s just waiting for you, and that knowledge might just be the thing that pushes you to the next level in your business.
Each year since I started my business, I’ve decided to put a certain amount of money aside to invest in education.
I’ve attended live workshops and have also invested in online courses.
In 2018 I attended my first Venture workshop. If you’re unfamiliar with Venture workshop, it’s the largest wedding videography workshop in the world. The teachers include White in Revery, Forestry Films, and Matt WhoisMatt Johnson, just to name a few.
The year I went, it was held in New Mexico. It was such an amazing experience. I learned a ton about filmmaking, crafting same-day edits, selecting music for my films, and about running a business. The knowledge that these industry-leading filmmakers brought to the table was incredible.
The live-shoots alone were worth it to me. It was a one-of-a-kind learning opportunity to be able to watch these amazing filmmakers in action, filming real couples. Then filming the couples myself, and asking questions about technique and posing. It was really valuable.
I learned a ton from the instructors, but honestly, that’s not the only place I found value. It was life-changing for me to be surrounded by dozens of other wedding filmmakers from around the world, who I could talk to and bounce ideas off of. I had never met any other wedding videographer in person, and this experience was so amazing. If you’re considering attending an in-person workshop, I will highly recommend it to everyone.
And, as a side-note, I’m attending again this year, in 2020. And I am so pumped to reconnect with some of the filmmakers I met back in 2018 who have gone on to become instructors this year. It’s an amazing community.
But there are other in-person filmmaking workshops that I’m sure are equally as awesome. As I’m recording this episode, the Wedding Film Retreat is happening down in Mexico. And Ray Roman holds in-person workshops all over the world as well. I’ll find as many workshops as I can and link them in the show notes for you, in case you’re interested in learning more. And hopefully, you will attend one too.
Not only are there in-person workshops, which to be honest, can get really expensive. But there are tons of online courses as well.
I’ve found that in-person workshops do an amazing job of inspiring, giving us the opportunity to have real conversations with amazing professionals, and covering all the bases of running a wedding film business. But online courses can be pretty different. A lot of the times, they are very niched down and specific in what they teach you. So if you want to learn about a very specific topic, online courses are an amazing investment.
A big reason to invest in education is that it will save you time and money in the long run. If you don’t know how to do something, or you aren’t satisfied with the results you’re getting on your own because you’re just trying to figure things out as you go along, investing in some education is going to go a long way. It’s going to save you all the hours of trial and error, researching online – like sifting through blog posts and YouTube videos. That is such a time-consuming process, and the quality of the information you get might not be super great.
Investing in an educational resource, like an online course, will give you everything you need to know about a specific topic in the shortest amount of time possible so you can start taking action.
I was listening to an episode of the Goal Digger Podcast by Jenna Kutcher the other day, by the way, that’s an excellent resource if you don’t already listen to it. Go check it out. But anyways, the episode was about a photographer asking if she should invest in a new camera or in an online course. And this is what Jenna had to say about that.
She said – “You are never done learning! I have a secret: for a few years I wasn’t investing in learning. What a mistake! I was more worried about figuring out things by myself and because of that, I wasted a ton of time and money. Last year I started re-investing in education, online courses, and a business coach and it changed my life. Those people out there killing it? They are the ones investing in learning, implementing, and laying the foundation for their businesses.”
Jenna Kutcher runs a 7 million dollar business, so I’ll take her advice any day. Investing in education goes a long way.
Whether you want to learn editing techniques, how to fly a drone and get cinematic shots, or how to run your wedding film business, there are so many options out there that can really help you.
Just to name a few:
White in Revery has a final cut pro course that walks you through the entire editing process on final cut.
Matt Johnson has a similar course, but on Adobe Premiere Pro
and of course there’s Parker Walbeck’s Full-time Filmmaker, which is an amazing resource to learn the in’s and out’s of filmmaking in general, specifically the technical side of filmmaking.
Jay Worsely has a drone masterclass.
And the newest one to the table is How to Film Wedding’s Complete Wedding Videography Course.
And those are just the courses specifically for wedding filmmaking. There are so many courses out there on how to build a great website, how to get the most out of social media, and so many other topics
Whether you decide to sign up for a live workshop or purchase an online course, continuing to learn and grow is invaluable to your business.
I hope you guys enjoyed this episode! I’d love to connect with you and keep the conversation going. I’d love to connect with you on Instagram, you can find me @thelevelupco
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Thanks so much for listening.
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