DON’T BE A FRUIT-CAKE WITH YOUR TIME
And that’s where it all went down hill.
2014 was the first really successful year after our companies creation in 2011. We employed 15 full timers, had a blast creating inspiring content, and even made a profit. We as a team felt like we were on top of the world. The team was united, we had works that we all were proud of, and the future was exciting.
Suddenly it all changed,
2015 hit, and things were very different; and we couldn’t really put our finger on it.
I love change. I have seen so many good things come as a result of change that I have just learned to embrace it, look for it, and use it to help propel us forward.
With that in mind as our team and I started trying to dissect “what was the cause” of our sudden drought of customers, lack of team excitement, and even loss of creativity we were left with a lot of variables to sift through.
We had all new equipment.
We created a new vision for the company.
We had changed a number of roles for efficiency’s sake.
We adopted a new way of calculating pricing.
Some of us even got married.
So where do we start?
Well we had no clue. It was like trying to pay for something with a bag of change, the line behind us is getting impatient, and you can’t find the silly dime that you need to complete the total, and all the coins in the bag seem to be the same size.
So we kept searching. With great credit to the crew, everyone was supportive of trying different variables to see what was causing the result, but in the end it seemed like we were a patient slowly succumbing to the effects of our own anesthesia, yet still fumbling to perform surgery on our self as our hands go numb.
We, above all, kept on maintaining friendly relations with the COMVcrew outside of business.
luckily, after a few weeks of getting together with the team, sharing stories, and talking about plans and dreams, there seemed to be the possible culprit. All the hints piled up pointing us to one possible change:
We weren’t making time for what we loved, and what we loved was telling stories that we wanted to tell.
It made sense.
We had been putting so much time into trying to market to, negotiate with, and find ways to help new clients that we forget to make time for the things we were passionate about.
We didn’t put a lot of thought into it more than “We started COMV with a passion to tell inspiring stories, everyone who is now in this company came because of their passion to tell inspiring stories, and now we didn’t make any time for telling inspiring stories”
So we started making time for it. We removed our training program and replaced it with Creative filming (It accomplished the same purpose of improving our filming abilities).
We searched for contests that offered possible winnings for video subjects that we already had conceptualized videos for.
And instead of merely writing down ideas on our “Video Ideas” sheet, we started assigning crew members to create the scripts, pull together the actors and locations, and we made plans to begin filming in the following weeks.
It surprisingly took much effort to balance the many tasks and projects buzzing around the office so that we could pull together the enough time to start shooting, but the struggle is what helped us know it would be worth it.
And that is where it all went up hill.
Shortly after we started back on our journey of not only focusing on our Commercial Videos but putting a large emphasis on our Creative Videos we noticed a slight change.
Our team was starting to be renewed in excitement. We started getting new calls from potential clients. We felt like we started to remember our own talents and skills, and as our confidence in those gifts started coming back, the creativity started to flow again.
It definitely is not a happily ever after.
Our crew is still in the first stages of getting back to putting a large emphasis on Creative Videos. As new clients continue to call there is a growing struggle of time. How do we continue to balance what we are being paid to do and knowing of the need to do what we are wanting to do. But the great thing is now we can see just how important the latter is. Passion projects is our team builder. It is our training. It is even our marketing.
It was once said by Ben Johnson that “Language best shows a man: speak, that I may see thee.”
For us I find it to be similar “Passion videos best show a video company: create, that I may know thee.”
