The $5,000 Mistake We'll Never Forget

June 17, 2023: A day that Jake and I will forever remember for Runaway Vows

Because we lost over $5,000 by overbooking ourselves.

The context was that we had previously double-booked that weekend, and the plan was simple:

Jake and I would divide and conquer, that’s the point of a team right?

Then just a few weeks prior to the date, we got a phone call.

A local wedding planner told us that she had a People magazine wedding for us,

BUT the catch was that we had to do it for free…

Looking back, I am not sure that we would have taken the gig, but after thinking it over for a whole 5 minutes, we decided to take it.

All in hopes that it would propel the Runaway Vows brand forward.

What that meant is that we now had to find 4 associate shooters to cover those other 2 weddings, pay for their travel, meals, etc…

We survived, and the wedding went fine, but as we walked to our cars afterwards, we had such a bittersweet feeling.

Sweet because we saw our brand cover 3 weddings in one day and have incredible content to flood social media,

Bitter because we learned one lesson the hard way:

💡 Booked doesn’t mean profitable

It’s relatively easy to fill up a calendar with bookings, lots of people will hire you for free/extremely discounted.

But it’s harder to build a full-time career out of it that can reliably support your lifestyle.

In 2023, Runaway Vows had only been established for one year,

And we had no idea how to price ourselves.

We knew what we wanted to charge, but with each inquiry, it seemed like we were playing a game of cat and mouse to find out how much the couple could afford.

The result is that we had 3 weddings that were grossly under-priced (and even free), that came back to hurt us financially.

After hundreds of 1:1 coaching sessions with students, we know that underpricing yourself is an extremely common problem.

So we made a simple pricing calculator that helps filmmakers get an accurate estimate of what they should be charging to be profitable

We even made a Youtube video that talks about pricing in-depth (Even though it’s talking about Honeybook, the premise is how to price yourself)

Of course, knowing what to charge is different that actually charging it

But it’s a starting point.

If you want to start becoming a profitable filmmaker who knows their price, then click this link to get our Pricing Calculator 👇🏼

As always: code “runclub15” for 15% off

Talk soon Runaways,

Nate | Runaway Vows