Creating Opportunities For Yourself [Ep202]

Podcast

Mar 17

Taylor Lewis is just one of three brothers who have an equal part in running Atomic City, a full-service production company who have had the opportunity to have great clients such as Amazon. In this episode, Taylor shares with us how they took the initiative to create spec work and in doing so were able to develop a great relationship that led to them being able to direct a multi-million dollar project with Amazon. Jeff Bezos himself was complimenting and also requesting Atomic City on their next project. They've been able to achieve this feat simply by taking great initiative and creating work when there was no work to create simply to impress a potential client.

Course: https://www.filmcreatorpro.com/
Course Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/filmcreatorpro/

Free Filmmaking Guide: https://www.filmcreatorpro.com/handbook

Company Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/atomic_city/
Company website: https://www.atomiccity.com/

Welcome back to another episode of the Mami video podcast. My name's Ariel Martinez on this episode, we're talking to Taylor Lewis of atomic city. Atomic city is a production house that they're doing phenomenal, phenomenal work. And today I'm talking with one of the Lewis brothers. Yes. Taylor Lewis has just one.
Three brothers that run this company and they're doing a phenomenal job. They're getting great clients like Amazon getting asked from work from Jeff basles himself, which is phenomenal. So today we're going into that sort of story. How networking, grit, determination, passion, hard work, really paid off and ended up landing a great job like Amazon working with them.
And getting asked to do more work from Jeff basles himself. So this is a phenomenal episode. You guys do not want to miss this story. Title Lewis is joining us. He's just, again, one of three brothers. Uh, but he, we were talking a little bit about networking as well, and the hard work that they put in, how they got started and how they got to where they are now.
So without further ado, here's my conversation. Taylor Lewis Taylor Lewis. Thanks so much for coming on the Miami video podcast. How are you, man? Thank you for having me. I'm good. Um, great. Really, really good, excited to I'm super glad you sort of reached out. I'm always intrigued by people that sort of reach out and kind of, uh, put themselves out there to come on the podcast.
I've done that several times where I found an interesting, uh, guests for the show. I would definitely like to talk to, and sort of, kind of pick their brain and sort of share with the audience, uh, different aspects of the business and the industry. So super glad you did that. Yeah. I'm happy to be on. So yeah, we can go ahead and start by.
Letting us know a little bit about your background, do your, how you got started in video production and w you know, how the business is going in sort of, uh, where are you guys now? Yeah, for sure. I can give you, I like to call it like our origin story. I don't know why, but it works well. So, um, I own a video production company with my two brothers.
Um, and we got started. I don't know, since we were kids like 16, 17 years old, um, we grew up in a small little town in like Northern Utah, where there was literally nothing to do. So what we decided to do for fun was, um, a light things on fire and. Um, I don't know why our mom let us do it, but she did. And it was really fun.
I mean, we came up some pretty wild contraptions to film. Like we would take our dad's old tube socks, like film film with sand, dip them in gasoline, light it on fire and like throw it across our yard and try to Dodge them like fireballs. And we would do a bunch of things like that and do our best not to get caught on fire.
I think. One time. Yeah. My brother Ray once did fully get caught on fire, but he was fine. Anyway,
we're all still alive. There wasn't any major long-term damage from all the stuff that we did. But from there we realized how much it, how much fun it was to just like, shoot like movies and content. And so we decided to create a business out of it. And then like high school, we did like. The typical, like football highlight films, the cheerleader, highlight films, things like that, just for the different organizations in the school itself.
And from after high school, we decided we started doing it for like actual corporate, like small, like local businesses and our hometown and, um, Tried to go, go out that way. And it took a while for us to kind of like find her voice and find a groove and actually start making money. It was a lot of years of like that like starving artists, like really bad style stuff where we, I think for the first like seven or so years, we were making less than 10,000 bucks a year.
So it was, it was barely anything. And, um, and for. Yeah, for three people. Yikes. Okay. So it was like, we weren't making any money. Like we were living like my brother rent was like at one point, like on food stamps for a while. Um, and, um, it was hardly starting really starting artists. Yeah. Like it was, it was, it was tough.
And like one of the things that helped us, um, there's like two main things that really helped us like break into actually making money and doing well. Like the first one was when we learned how to tell. Like good stories. Because for the first part of our career, we kind of just saw movies online like that.
We went to the theater and watched, and like saw other commercials that people would create. And we tried to just like, copy what they did and that never, we were never able to create as good as story as they did because we were just trying to copy it. And what helped us finally is when we learned how to tell stories, our way thing, like put our voice in our.
Been on whatever story we're trying to tell, um, on whether it be a commercial or a mini documentary, we put our own little, like voice into the commercial and that helped us like become really good storytellers. And that's when more companies started hiring us and, and things like that. And then like the next big thing that really helped us was, uh, networking with other filmmakers.
Um, like for example, like there's this commercial contest locally that we there's, these two filmmaker judges that we really wanted to meet and get, um, become friends with. And so we entered that contest solely to meet them and, um, We didn't win the contest, but we got in and we made sure after the, after the award ceremony, we went up and talked to him and became good friends with them.
And they were the guys that actually gave us the chance to work on our, for our first multimillion dollar ad campaign. And from there, like w like they were kind of, they were just giving us a chance. We've never done anything like that before. And. They, I mean, we showed them some work that we kind of did a spec ad for them.
Like we did put work in beforehand. They didn't just call us up. Like, Hey, do you want this? We had to like, um, we did a spec that was going to be my follow-up question. Like they just hired you out of no. Um, no, like, I mean, it was a lot between when we first met him and when we first got hired on this gig, like, it was like three, like a couple of years.
It wasn't like instantly, like we were. PA's on their set, like production assistants. We like did like BTS work for them all the time. So like, they kind of saw our work, everyone, like through that. And like, we, we saw they were working on this ad campaign and we were like, dude, we could totally make a commercial for that.
So we went and made like a spec, like a, a mock ad for them, sent it to them like, Hey guys, look what we did. And we could, you should give us a chance to shoot one of these. And there, I didn't ask you for that. Did they know? Wow. So you just took the initiative and say, Hey, let's up our chances of working with these guys.
Yeah. And I mean, we were like, we're, we were good friends with them. So it wasn't like we overstepped our friendship. Like they, like, we would call and talk to each other, like go out to lunch and stuff like that. So we kind of be like, Hey, here's the video that we did. It's very similar to what. Guys are producing right now.
We would love to work on that project with you. And they're like, yeah, this is really good. And so they gave us a chance to shoot one of those for them. And like we did it for literally nothing. We, it was a mini documentary cell commercial. It was like a two day shoot, uh, took about 40 or so hours to edit from start to finish.
And we did all for like a thousand dollars. Like it was not like we did it for dirt and. Anyways. So that's just to get our foot in the door and we knocked like the first three out of the park. Like we did like a hundred projects for, for the, like for this campaign. And, um, the first like three are still to this day, like that company's favorite videos that they've ever done for that campaign.
Um, wow. If that makes any sense. And from there, like. We still like, and we became really good friends with that agency that they were working with and those filmmakers some more, and eventually like a couple years after doing this ad campaign, like Amazon saw, um, one of their commercials and was like, so they, and they contacted that agency and was like, Hey, who did this ad campaign for you guys?
Like, who shot this? And they're like, oh, you need to go contact the Lewis brothers. They're the ones that did it. And so that's how so that's how we got in their foot to door, to foot in the door to do our first Amazon game. And when we shot that one, after we shot that commercial, Jeff Bezos emailed us, um, saying that was one of his favorite commercials that Amazon's ever done direct.
It was like, it was like slightly direct, um, like it was for us, but he sent it to his production company who forwarded it on to. Wow. Yeah, it was really cool to get props from the big man himself. That's incredible. It was cool. Um, and even from that, like, like then like a couple months later, Jeff Bezos actually requested us to his, one of his other production teams to have us shoot the launch video for the Amazon echo.
Does that make sense? You had Jeff bays. Specifically request atomic city, the Lewis brothers to go and make their next ad campaign. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, it was really cool. And all of this, because you took the initiative back then to make sure that you work with these guys. Yeah. And it, it just came from like, yeah, like working our butt off and it was like, a lot of that is.
Kind of luck and word of mouth and stuff like that, but there's behind every lucky person. There's a ton of hard work that goes into it. So yeah. And it has nothing to do with luck. Like it really has nothing to do with luck. I'm sorry. Okay. It really, it really doesn't. It really doesn't because it really has to do with passion, with grit, with determination, with proactivity, like all that stuff plays a role into it.
Like I personally, I don't believe in luck aside from the fact. I'm a, I'm a Christ follower. I do not believe in luck whatsoever. Um, even in, in, um, in, from a, you know, straightforward point of view, put religion aside for a second, you know, all that is really hard work determination. I'm not talking about gambling, I'm talking.
The stuff that goes behind that, you know, there's a, there's a, a good meat, not, not even a meme, but there's like, I guess, uh, an encouraging image that you've seen oftentimes where you see an iceberg, but you see how big it is under water. Right. You know, that's kind of where it all comes down to. There's your determination, your grit, the hard work, the, you know, the, the collective proactivity that you've taken to kind of put yourself in a position, uh, for success.
So when your number was called, It's a term we use in football, but when your number's called, like you can perform your you're ready to go. So that's, that's quite amazing that that has come out of that. I had no idea, even in our, in our, uh, you know, our, our pre-interview interview. You didn't even mention that.
So that's, I'm, I'm very, very impressed. Congratulations on that, man. Well, thank you. I'll make sure to mention that next time. Yeah, no, no, absolutely. That's huge. That's huge. So I, out of this, like, did you, was there more networking that you did? Like what other doors has this opened up for you? Like moving after that?
Well, so yeah, like in our accompany, I, I kind of said this at the beginning. And, um, when anyone ever asks us like how we built this, like we always say the, like the two things that help build our company was being able to tell really good stories and authentic, real stories and, um, being able to network with.
Every one of our clients and like even friends and family, cause a lot of our first beginning clients were I very first client that actually where we started making more than 10 grand a year was a family friend. And we just another time where we reached out, like, Hey, let's we should like do some video to work for you.
And that guy started hiring us and they were. Dumb videos and yeah, I never want them, I don't want any client ever to see those videos because they're not very good. And they were like, when we were first starting, we all have a few of those. And I'm like, but it came from us like reaching out to him saying, Hey, let's do some work for you.
Like, will I, we did it a little bit cheaper again. And like kind of slowly grew our rates as we moved on. Right. But that guy, like that helped us break into like that. Um, six figure mark was working from him, with him doing videos with him and kind of through him, meaning other people, um, stuff like that.
Um, so we really just. Always pride ourself on the fact that how good we are at like, meaning your client and becoming that client's friend. Um, we like to be very easy going like chill guys, just to hang out with. And I feel like a lot of our clients kind of like that and gravitate towards that. Um, and then.
So that's why they, and I feel like that's why they keep that's one of the reasons why they keep hiring us. Um, so aside from the obvious skill and creativity that you guys bring to the table, the fact that you know what you're doing, your experience, um, and obviously the final product just being, you know, being great people to work with is what keeps drawing your clients to you.
And I think that's huge. That's why I keep a very. Crew of people that I usually call over and over again, to hire I'm talking camera operators, audio guys, gaffers the first ACS, all that stuff, a very small crew, whereas to sometimes it's an issue to find. Other people that I know, just because there's some people that I refuse to work with, um, that I, I don't even consider a ho when thinking about a job, even though I know they could do it, um, I don't feel comfortable sending some people.
Um, but, uh, yeah, it's extraordinarily important to not just be skillful and know what you're doing, but to be good people to work with and, um, leave your client with a really good experience working with you. That's awesome. Yeah. That's like we, I said this just a second ago. Like, that's one thing that we always teach.
Like we also have like an online course. We were teaching like beginner filmmakers, how to become like better filmmakers and how to step into this industry and make money. And that's one thing that we kind of hit heavily a lot is, you know, be a good person, tell good stories and like just how to.
Leverage you being chill and being good to work with and how to leverage that into like a solid network of clients. Um, and like, cause that one client that first, not that first one, but the, the one, the client that we, the agents see, we worked for that those filmmakers gave us a chance to work on, um, they, that client has brought in.
Like probably three or four other consistent clients that we work with through networking. Like we've become friends with that agency. And the agency has referred us to other agencies locally here in Utah that are now long-term clients for us. And we've been working with them for four or five years, you know?
And so it's just like that one client, because we. And have the leverage that network. So well, we have, uh, five or six other clients that pay us money every year. And it's really great. Wow. That's great. And you know, even going back to talking about that one client where you made $10,000 from, um, in one year, uh, which obviously starting off that doesn't seem like much, especially when you're splitting the company.
Into three people. Um, the goal is to have many more of those, because just having 10 of those, now you have $100,000 coming in, split between in this case, three people, which makes it harder. And I do want to talk more about that. Um, but the goal is to. Have more of those and then obviously start charging more and then basically kind of trickles down to now where, you know, you're, you're a couple years, two, three years down the line that same client is just one of many.
Creating this, uh, accumulated income for your business. Um, and depending on the structure that you put together, you either keep them, retain them or you've kind of moved on to something bigger. So it really just depends on your, your, your growth and your path. I want to talk about your brothers and how you guys managed to sort of build a business.
All three of you where you're all kind of, this is your livelihood now. How does that dynamic work? Because I always thought it was hard enough to have a just one partner and be profitable. Just both of you now, we're talking about three and, and your brother, so it's not like, you know, it's just not like, I mean, I guess technically, you know, one of the, you guys can kind of walk off and sort of the other to run the business or something, but.
Kind of have to deal with each other and you've been doing it your whole lives. So how does that dynamic work? Um, what is the general structure that you guys put in place? How, you know, how'd you guys get that, uh, going? Yeah. So how it works and by no means is our system perfect. Like they're like. With any partnership, there are in hard things to like, just deal with because you have there, they are my brothers, but they're also like coworkers, as in, like, if you're around them 24 7 working through things, like there are problems that do arise and you just learn how to work through them and, and things like that.
Uh, but yeah, it's the dynamic of brothers is very interesting. I want to say the least, but like, um, we have, um, made it work. And the one thing that we do that we have found that works well for us. Cause a lot of times, because there's three of us. At the beginning of our company, there was like too many cooks in the kitchen.
Um, yeah, like if we were all thinking, all three of us are directing this piece together that got really muddy really quickly because we'd have, even though we're family, we kind of all, we have our own personalities, even though we're all kind of similar. Um, so like one guy, brother wouldn't want this, a one certain piece to be in the commercial and the other two of us.
No, that's kind of dumb. I don't want to do that. I don't think that's funny or, or something like that. And, um, a lot of it actually comes down to our humor for some reason, like our humor is aligned, but sometimes our humor isn't aligned. Cause we like to do really quirky pieces pieces of like as far as commercials go.
And so like one brother wants something that he thinks is super funny, but the other two was like, no, that's stupid. No, one's going to laugh anyway. And so we kind of learned that that one person should like spirit. A specific project. So let's say like, if I were doing a commercial, I would be the director and I'd be the, I would have final say in any, in everything.
And the other two can give forth, give up their opinions and things like that and things that they think we should do. But at the end of the day, I get final say, and I get, decide what, what goes into that final project. And it kind of changes. Per project who runs it and that's kind of how we do it. And it's worked really well for the last, I think we've been doing this, this kind of SA this structure for like the last three or four years.
And it's actually worked really well. It's stopped a lot of arguments, um, just cause we don't have say in that project. Yeah. That's good. That's awesome. Yeah. When there's way too many cooks in the kitchen, truly hard to get anything done. So what you end up having is like two, three hour long meetings and literally nothing is accomplished.
Um, so I've been part of those. It's it's just not fun. It's discouraging, but that's good that you guys were able to find that dynamic. And you said that it's been working well so far that way. Yeah, so far it's been working pretty good. It just yeah. Allows us to work a lot smoothly. So are there any, are you guys, would you say you guys are all equally strength, uh, equally strengthened in.
Specific areas or do you have different areas that you guys are better at? Like marketing or, uh, visual effects or editing or production? Whatever it is. Uh, um, so as far as like, just like overall, like. Do all the jobs just cause we drew up doing this just the three of us. And like we all, we're all the hats.
When we were first running our production company, like we did sound, we did lighting, we did stripping all that stuff. And so we can, like, we can hold our own, like as an individual, like when it comes to all the things you need to do in a production company. But over the years, like each one of us have our own specific strengths.
So like my brother Burke, he is a gear guru. He knew. The ins and outs of every single piece of gear out there. And he can like understand the technical stuff way brother, better than me and my other brother does good candy. Like my brother Rhett. He is, I would say one of the world's best people person that guy can like walk into the room and everyone is his best friend in like five seconds.
I don't know how he does it, but it's like the truth. It's like when we go and shoot like mini documentaries of people for companies. Um, months after those like documentaries, we shoot those people that we shot. Like the I'm still like text my brother read and have just like casual conversation with them.
That's how good our friends he is with the P. People we shoot and things like that. And like me, I'm kind of like a mixture of both of those. I'm kind of like the bet, like I understand gear really well, but not as good as my brother Burke. And I'm a really good people person, so I kind of mesh the two together.
Okay. And so that's kind of like where our specific strengths kind of. That's interesting. And when you have productions, do you guys like when you need a, a sound tech is one of you guys a sound tech, um, and when you need a gaffer, you guys fill in that slot, or do you actually hire professionals in the, in those specific areas?
That really kind of depends on the budget for the concept, obviously, but like, Because of course, if we could hire those positions out, like, I would love to have like a professional sound guy onset getting audio, or like a PR professional gaffer. Cause we can do those jobs, but obviously someone who does it day in and day out would do a better job than us.
Um, and. The times when we don't have the specific budget to do that, we kind of the person who is spearheading that project, he is the director. And then it kind of just, um, comes down the totem pole from there. Like my, like if Rhett is directing, then probably my brother Burke would be doing the DP work while me and my brother Burke were up probably tag teaming, DP, and doing lighting and sound.
If it's like just the three of us. Type of thing, but very cool. That's kind of how it goes. Interesting, man. I'm loving like the whole dynamic of how you guys have been able to build your company now, going back to sort of networking. Um, is there any of that that you still do today? Um, what other uni. Uh, aspects of networking.
Have you guys tried, have you guys practiced that has sort of paid out for your, or vice versa that hasn't paid out for you? Um, is there something that you invested in to help your marketing tactics? Um, be a little more prominent there? Yeah. Um, I can, I'll start off with a few failures that we had, um, kind of failures, like, um, so we've done the typical, like.
Uh, networking conferences where you kind of pay like a lump sum to pay part of this group. And then you go to like a conference thing to go meet other business people, like-minded business people. And in those places we've given out hundreds and hundreds of business cards. Dozens of people and nothing ever came of it.
Like not a single we made, not even a dime or a cent from any of that. Um, and so that's something that never worked for us. And then at one point we also, um, kind of like you, we like to keep our production companies small. So it's only the three brothers. And the two brothers and me, and we kind of scale our, our company up from there.
Like we have a handful of gaffers. We hire, we have a handful of sound and like art department and stuff like that, that we hire when the production, um, Can I afford it basically. And so we can fit projects that are like 10 to 20,000 up to like half a million or more when we do like an Amazon gig. Um, we like that versatility.
Um, but like there was a point in our company where we thought that we could hire, we wanted to hire more people on specifically people to go out and meet. For our company to like go and find his clients. And we have them on for probably about a year and nothing against that. The employees we hired, like I don't have any animosity towards them, but it just didn't work out.
We didn't get any new, um, clients from it. Um, the client, we got new clients that year, but those clients were from like connections. I made, or my two brothers made. And so it wasn't connections from the employees we got. Got it. And so it was just not, it wasn't working out. And so we went our separate ways, but, um, a silver lining in that, from that, um, those employees we had, they went on and got production jobs at other Prussian companies that have now hired us to do work for them.
So. Was it referred from those employees? Yeah. Like they, they went on and they're like the marketing directors of like a local, like fitness company. And, um, well, like it's the fitness company that owns like proform and, um, there's another, I can't remember their actual, like high level content, but anyway, so in the end they ended up being a little more profitable.
Yeah. Yeah. They, they paid. And we got back all the money. We paid them and more, um, that's also, it worked out in the end, but like at the time it's like nothing worked out from it. But yeah, as, as you're running your businessman, as you grow, I I've noticed like I'm a lot more meticulous with everything that I spend my money on.
And my initial thought is, especially if it's for the. Is this going to bring me more money? You know, so it's, it's, everything has to be an investment because otherwise this is, and this is the dangerous part about sort of trying to justify every gear purchase. Right? It's, it's, it's difficult, you know, you have to find that line, where is this for fun or is this for pleasure or is this for business?
You know, is it going to bring me money? And if so, how is it going to do that? What's the strategy behind that? So, That goes the same thing with hiring somebody to, you know, are they going to bring you money? Um, is it going to make it more efficient or is it going to make it easier for you to go out and make more money?
If they're going to take on the load, they might not necessarily have to physically directly bring you money, but indirectly they are because you can go and focus on other things. So you have to sort of. See things that way. So, uh, that's uh, that's super interesting. Now, do you guys have plans on hiring other people now, or is it for now you guys going to keep it nice in a tight knit?
Um, as right now, there's not too many plans on hiring people, just because of that one experience. We just got it. Didn't pan out the way we wanted it to. And we would have, if we hired someone, it would be very. We'd have to do like a trial run for like you work. We hire you as a freelancer for let's say a year or two.
And then from there, like we can hire you on, we'll bring you on and pay you salary. But sometimes freelancing gigs, like they pay more money anyway, so, oh yeah. But there are a lot more risky. Yeah. They, um, so what have you learned now? Want to pick up on that thread. What have you learned from hiring somebody?
Do you feel like? So for example, with me, I had somebody on staff and then we went our own separate ways. It was very amicable. Uh, but you know, I would have to say some, a lot of that would probably be me sort of being able to manage, you know, so I started my business. Loving what I do, and I still do the production side of it.
But by default, I've had to transition over, to know how to run a business. And we're talking bookkeeping taxes, all the business, jargon, all the business stuff that I did not sort of foresee, but you have to learn that to run a business. Um, I have found that. You know, in hiring I'm like, man, I need to get better at sort of making use of this person.
And the time that I had them to make it more profitable for me. So I never really got into a real. Good organized workflow myself. So I was never able to really implement that into my employee, which was difficult. And then all I saw was, man, I'm paying them and it's, I'm not being as profitable as I should be, but I would even attribute that also to myself being, you know, I, I'm not optimizing them to their full potential.
I feel like I needed a little more help with that. I do see myself maybe doing it again in the future, but when I'm more optimized and my workflow is a lot better, um, it it's, it's tricky, especially letting the creative part go and trusting us. Somebody has to do it. And then, because I didn't give him better.
I'm now not being, and now I'm kind of almost redoing their work. Um, it's kind of that deal and it just wasn't profitable for me, but again, I cannot fully blame them. It was just more of not being able to facilitate that instruction better. Yeah. Did you find that any of, sort of your separation had to do with you guys or with them or there just wasn't they weren't the right fit, sort of what was the deal there?
Um, Yeah, what I think kind of went wrong, I guess you could say is so their background wasn't really in, like, they had a background in marketing, but it was kind of like, I don't know. I can't tell you how to describe it. Like, but it wasn't really like production background marketing, where you go to a company like, Hey, you need us to film you a video, which is in and of itself.
Like when you cold call for our line of work, it is extremely hard to do. Like that's in and of itself is like probably the hardest thing about, um, like a filmmaking career. Like you, can't just, it's hard to go to a company like, Hey, you need to pay me. Tens of thousands of dollars to make you a commercial.
And that might make you some money. Even if you have like stats on the back end, people are still very hesitant. Are you, how have you tried cold calling before? Um, yeah, I don't think I've ever tried that. I've definitely tried cold calling and I've tried cold emailing. Um, I still do that now. Um, actually in the video, if you see those little boxes up here, that's a form of our cold calling emails.
We send them like I've. Um, random companies packages with like a bunch of swag and cool swag, like a cool t-shirt a hat, um, a cool notebook, like very well-designed. I almost feel like every single time I mentioned video to, uh, to someone that owns a company they're very intrigued. Like everybody wants a video, every single company that I've ever spoken to, they always say they want video, but you know, I'm not talking pricing.
At the forefront, you know, um, the way I usually approach it is like, man, you should make a video for that. Like, yeah, man, that'd be awesome. You know? And that's usually the response and then I'll tell them, give them examples. Like you can have a podcast for your, for your company. You could make a marketing video, you could have a YouTube channel.
Like there's so many different things that you can do. Social media clips, like all that stuff. I never talked prices, you know, um, and then see sort of their needs, but you know what, like, I'm always open to like, obviously I want the work, but if they don't have the budget, Hey boy, check this guy out, you know, and it kind of doesn't help me anymore.
So I always refer them to somebody else and I just still help the company, even though I'm not making any profit. Now I have done that. Been able to receive work indirectly because that same company referred me to another company that they remembered, et cetera, et cetera. So it always comes back full circle, I think.
Um, so that's sort of been helpful for me, uh, but that's always been sort of my approach. I don't think I've ever cold called. I did kind of go business to business, offering free videos. When I first started, that's kind of as close as to that, I, I would get. That kind of worked out for me, but the videos were free.
So everybody said, yes. Yeah. That's kind of how that goes. Yeah. And so that's kind of, that's how we've taken. Like I, again, most all our company, all our revenue really comes from us networking with our current clients and then having them like refer us to other people and like, just like friends, like I've gone call clients from like I'm friends with somebody.
And I talk about my job with them all the time and I didn't even like ask. Hey, can I do a video for you? They've come to me like, Hey, I have this video project. Um, I know you do video. Can you help me out with that? Um, a lot of times that happens and. Um, but like, I always just keep trying to cold call cold email when I have a spare moment because maybe someday I'll work out and it hasn't yet, but maybe someday I'll get a really cool client that randomly will work out.
Um, but yeah, anyway, and so that's kind of what, like when we hired those people, going back to that original question. Sure. Like we hired them on from, they were. Um, they were trying to sell, like, I think they came from like a SAS company, so business, uh, software as a service, um, and they were selling that and, um, And then they came into our company and they didn't really know how to market that or sell that to people.
And it was a bunch of cold calls that we, we hired them to be our cold call marketer type people. And I think that was like, kind of our, our downfall is that they didn't have experience in marketing this type of work. And it was also an uphill battle of like cold call, email marketing, things like that. I, I could see that happening.
A lot of people have, uh, have suggested that I get an assistant to answer phone calls, to write emails, to get estimates and all that stuff. And my response is always the same kind of that deal where I don't know that anybody would know what I would say. If I'm trying to convince somebody to go to get a video, right.
This would have to be an assistant that is very well versed in our industry. Not only that well-versed to sort of the level that I would sort of kind of, uh, promote or propose a project, you know, the podcast, and we can have all this cameras, et cetera, et cetera, where I can, I don't usually do this, but I can give them a price off the top of my head.
And I would give them a price range of what something may cost, um, but tweaking something so small. Right. Just off the top of my head and I would say, well, yeah, that would drastically change the price, you know? So, uh, to train somebody at that level, it's, I mean, I don't know that I can afford the time to do that, you know, the time and, and the potential loss of clients, of them learning, uh, to sort of do something like that.
Yes. There is a benefit to have somebody that's skilled like that, but, uh, I'm sure it's not cheap, um, from. Uh, financial part and time part, you know? So, um, there's always that it's always, it's always tricky like that in anyone that I don't know. I feel like anybody that knows. Uh, to sort of do this stuff like I do would be running their own company themselves, you know, uh, I just kind of the way that I think about it, at least I haven't found anybody that would be a good candidate for that.
So, I mean, it's always the battle there. Um, I want to talk about your really quickly, uh, I want to talk about your, um, your course that you guys have the education that you guys do. Uh, tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so we created this online course. It's called film crater pro, and the reason we created it is kind of just like we looked at the other courses that are out there.
A handful of other filmmaking courses out there. And, um, we kind of looked at the content. They were creating. There's a lot of good content out there, but we looked at theirs and like their origin story and what they're teaching. And we kind of looked about how we came up to make money in this industry.
And it's a totally different, um, it seemed like a totally different type of path. And so we wanted to create, uh, a course that kind of teaches. Our scale to set what we learned, um, getting in this industry. So how to tell, like the two main things, I mentioned a lot here where you know how to tell a story your way with your voice and then how to leverage your network or into build a network to make money.
And so we created this online course to do that film creator pro and it teaches. It basically, it goes through everything like how to use a camera, like those basic, like how to edit that you'd find in any online course, but then it goes, we kind of try to go deeper into like the tips and tricks of the business side.
Because another thing that other online courses teach are they kind of stopped at like getting filmmakers to film weddings, to film small local commercials, to film like real estate videos, which those are all great markets to be in. If you're a wedding filmmaker, I'm not bashing on you because you can make good money doing that.
And I know you can. Yeah. It's. Yeah. And I mean, like personally I shot wedding videos when I first started, I didn't love it. So that's why I don't do it anymore. Um, and so there's an Haller market of filmmakers out there that maybe they don't want to make real estate videos for the rest of their life or make wedding videos for the rest of their life.
And so our course kind of helps you. Like get out of that level, like teaches you from beginner to get out of, to then make, you can start making wedding videos, stuff like that, but then break out of that into the corporate world of making high-end commercials for big companies and how to work with sets of 30 or 40 people and how to deal with the gap or how to go find a gaffer and things like that.
And so that's kind of what our course goals. That's awesome. Um, I'm going to be putting link a link to your course on our show notes for this episode. And you said you had a, a, a download. Yes. . Yeah. For your listeners. Um, we are giving away this, uh, 12 page, like filmmaking guide. It's a very basic, um, guide.
Yeah, great. I wish I had that when I started. Yeah, exactly. I made this, like, I think a few months ago we normally sell it for like 40 bucks, 47 bucks. And it's basically a guide that teaches like, What camera's settings to have basic lighting setups, like, um, w how to tell if something's overexposed, like how to understand a histogram.
Um, cause those are all things that I, when I like, like you said, when I first started the industry, it was really hard for me to understand what a history and was saying to me, or like one, an example I always use is the, like the aperture on the lens. I always got confused with the numbers on it. Where like, when you have a 2.8 aperture, that means your IRS is really wide opening.
You're letting in a lot of light. And that number always seems backwards to me. I feel like it should be like an and that should be your apertures all the way wide open, but that means it's closed. Anyway, that always got me confused. And so like, if I have like a little E like guide in my phone, I can take anywhere with me on sets at the beginning.
I could have used that and it would've been, yeah. So that's why I created that. That's awesome. Yeah. We're going to put a link to that and I appreciate that. I'm sure my audience will appreciate that as well. Put a link to that on the show notes for this episode, where can people find your work, your website, your, uh, your social media handles?
Yeah. So we're on, um, like atomic city and film creator pro we're both on Instagram, like Facebook just type in atomic city or film creator pro will be there. Our website, um, Atomics. Dot com and it has all our, our favorite work, not, or not some of our latest stuff, but it has some of our favorite projects on there.
And you can go to film creator, pro.com to check out more about our course as well. Um, That's awesome. Well, again, we'll be putting links to all of that in the show notes for this episode may be somebody that uses your course will get a call from Jeff basles or Elon Musk or something. Yeah. Hopefully that'd be awesome.
Uh, well dude, Taylor, thanks so much for coming on the show and sort of letting us know, uh, how awesome your story is and, and sharing your, your, your course with us. We really do appreciate that. Yeah, thank you for having me. So there you have, there's my conversation with Taylor Lewis. I hope you guys enjoyed that one.
As I mentioned, we're going to be putting links to all their work, to their website, to their social media handle, and also to that free downloadable PDF. Uh, for starters, that really goes into a camera settings and sort of a basic look into their course that they have film creator pro. So go check that out in the comments in the, in the description below, I'm putting all the links there.
Uh, thank you so much to Taylor and atomic city for taking the time to share their story with us. I hope you guys learned something from them and check out their course. It seems like a very, very great resource for those of you that are looking to get more information on starting your production companies, what direction to go and so on.
So make sure you check that out in the links below, and we'll see you on the next episode of the Miami video podcast.