2 Rules to Being a Better Business Owner

BUSINESS
2 Rules to Being a Better Business owner

1. The ability to find opportunity where others don’t even recognize it.

2. Be the best human in the room

In the world of entrepreneurship, there is something called “The Grind”. And if you are receiving this newsletter, you know all about it. Instead of having a clear definition of it, we all just seem to know what it is: putting your head down, waking up early, and working until the late hours of the night seem to be the best picture for it.

Day-in-day-out.

And just a few years ago, this was the hype all over social media and self-help literature. You would see videos and images of creators who were doing a million things all at once (in the most cinematic way possible lol), and somehow making millions from it. Then you would have the sudden realization that you were being lazy while on your phone, and you would throw it to the side and get to work.

Then you got burnt out trying to keep up with these people who are “grinding”.

And while it is true that there is no substitute for hard work, let me offer you one other thing that all of the successful entrepreneurs have in common:

1. The ability to find opportunity where others don’t even recognize it.

In our podcast that was released today, we interviewed Orlando Cano and talked about his 7-figure kayaking business, as well as his 6-figure wedding filmmaking business, and a key theme throughout his whole story is simply noticing things that other people don’t. We won’t tell his story for him—you can check it out here—but Orlando started his $1.5 million/year business one day while on a family vacation.

He had recently moved to Sarasota, Florida and took his family out to go kayaking. While there, he couldn’t help but notice that the local guide made roughly $1,000 for 4-5 hours of work, with almost no overhead involved. Looking around him, Orlando couldn’t believe that he was the only person noticing this, and he immediately took action to start his own kayaking rental business.

So while it is true that hard work, and “the grind” are essential to making a great business, it’s almost useless if you are working on the wrong things that nobody is demanding. It’s like going to a networking event for a completely different industry that you are involved in, where the reward-to-effort ratio is way off.

In fact, this is exactly why we chose to create our own light leaks at Runaway Vows. Jake and I found ourselves constantly wanting to use a great pack in our edits, but we couldn’t find any that were worth it. Until one day when we had finally had enough, and we went to Jake’s office, turned out the lights, and spent the next 3 hours making our light leaks. After that, because we loved them so much, we chose to package them up and sell them, and to this day, we still have people telling us how much they love using them.

2. Be the best human in the room.

This one is a little harder. Look I get it, I am an introvert at heart, and sometimes even just the thought of being crowded by hundreds of people is enough to discourage me from doing my best work. To combat this, I have read countless books trying to learn skills such as: how to make conversation with anybody, the 5-second rule (don’t get me started on this one), and even so far as once buying a book called “Verbal Judo”. Because at the end of the day, I simply want to be able to have a meaningful conversation with anyone, but I absolutely dread the small talk and the awkward moments where you have no idea what to say, or you both know that the conversation is over and don’t know how to politely end it and move on.

(If you relate to that last paragraph, respond to this email, I’d love to chat with my fellow circle of people 😊)

But reading books is a poor excuse for practice. Is it better to read about how to converse more efficiently, or to just go out there and face the big scary world and do it? So here is the best advice I ever received about how to make a presence for yourself in a crowded room full of people.

Walk into the room as if you know that everyone already likes you.

Cheesy? Maybe. But think about how you feel when you are around your close friends and you walk in late to a party with them and they all shout and you and give you a hard time. You are the star of the show in that moment, yet you don’t feel any butterflies or social anxiety, and that is because you KNOW that these people already love you. Many times the reason for being so nervous about being in a crowd full of people or public speaking is because we don’t know what these people think of us.

Flip the switch and convince yourself they already love you even before they know you. Take however long you need to make sure you believe it as well. Once you do this, it’s significantly easier to approach anyone.

It doesn’t matter what industry you are in, people with skills + social IQ always get the job over the person that just has the skills. A wedding planner will hire a videographer who has decent skills if they are a close friend. The head of marketing will hire the candidate who has B+ skills but an A+ social IQ over someone who just posesses the skills.

Doors WILL open for you when you start becoming the best person in the room, that is a promise.

EDITING
How to edit more efficiently

1. Edit more passion projects

2. Wedding Post House

There is this idea about editing that I don’t accept: you either love editing or you hate it. While I have definitely understand where this statement is coming from, have you ever got into the flow of editing when you were working on a passion project?

1. Work on more passion projects

Roughly 6 years ago, my friends and I went up Provo canyon and made a rope swing. We documented the whole process, and when it came time for me to edit it, it took almost no time before I was in the flow zone and happily spent a whole night editing the social media post for it.

And that was one of the first times I realized that I genuinely do enjoy editing, so why would I shy away from it when it comes to weddings?

Twofold answer here, but by working on more passion projects, you might just find that you rekindle your love for editing. Or the answer might just be that you don’t have the same passion for it. But before you have a midlife crisis because all the lifestyle gurus tell you that you need to pursue your passions and anything else is unacceptable, know that this is perfectly okay.

Any business owner will tell you a huge list of things that they don’t enjoy doing within their own business. Whether it’s marketing, design, outreach, social media, you name it and they hate it. That is why they hire other people to do it. The same goes for you, Mr/Ms. Creative.

Do not feel bad as a creative if you have no passion for creating the edit. Your creativity shines elsewhere within your business.

2. Wedding Post House

At Runaway Vows, we outsource all the time. We are two guys who don’t have nearly enough time or resources to make sure everything is done perfectly.

That is why we use Wedding Post House (no they are not paying us to even post this c’mon). We are very particular about our videos, and giving an editing house full control over edits sometimes is not what we want. So Wedding Post House is the perfect solution for us, here is what makes them different than a traditional editing house:

They cull together all your footage and organize it perfectly for you. They do 80% of the work, and you are left with all the creative choices for the final edit. When you send in your footage to them, they will perform the grueling task of sifting, culling, color coding, and organizing all your footage for you, so that your editing time is literally cut in half.

After talking with literally hundreds of students, most of the reason that we hate editing is the culling process. We envy photographers because we can’t watch Netflix while we edit, because we need to be involved and attentive to every. single. frame..

If this is what turns you off to editing, have someone else do it. It has been one of the biggest game changers for us. For less than half the cost of an editing house, we get full flexibility of how the final edit plays out, and we only have to deal with the most beautiful footage of the wedding.

Win win.

⭐️ Use code “RV20” at checkout for your discount

DAVINCI RESOLVE
PowerGrades

I am going to keep this one short because it’s not quite finished yet.

A year and a half ago, we teamed up with world-renowned colorist Jake Pierrlee to develop DJI Mavic 3 conversion LUTs. They were such a hit that we began speaking recently about going bigger, to something more applicable to everyone (who uses Davinci that is)

Starting last week, we began working with him to develop custom PowerGrades inside Davinci Resolve. If you don’t know what PowerGrades are, just think of them as a custom node tree that is applied across your project with one click. It gives your entire project the same look and feel, and makes the coloring process significantly faster.

The whole Runaway Vows team is slowly migrating over to Davinci and we could use your help…

What kind of PowerGrade looks would you want for your edits? Bright and airy? Dark and moody? Filmic and grain?

Send me an email back and tell me what you want in a PowerGrade.