Crash course in running a video production business

- Hi. We're excited today to be talking to you about how to set up and run your own video production company. And there's a lot of different steps you're going to have to walk through. One of the most important things you do is make sure that you can define the market and the mission. What is that your company's going to do? Just being out there to produce technical videos isn't enough. You have to have a specialty and a passion so you stand out in a crowded field. Additionally, it's really important that you build a team. This team is going to be potentially people on your staff or a collection of contractors. But most likely a mixture of both. In this day and age it's really common to have people that you work with all the time in your core team and then a collection of professionals that you're going to interact with on a regular basis. - [Amy] And of course if you're going to do that, then you need good team communication. So we're going to talk to you about a number of tools for accomplishing that. Plus we'll talk about how to establish a technical workflow. - [Rich] And it's really important that that workflow runs a bit smoother. So we'll focus on things you can do to have a smoother production. After all, the less time you spend, the more cost-efficient you'll be and the more competitive you are because you can deliver more quickly. And we'll take a look of course at how you land work. And this is really going to come down to putting together great proposals and knowing what to charge for your services. - At the end of the course, we'll recommend some other courses you can take. Because this is really an introduction and there are going to be a lot of opportunities to do some more learning when we're done. My name is Amy DeLouise and I help organizations tell a better story through video. I do that both as a producer/director and also as a consultant working with organizations to help their own internal teams do a better job of video storytelling. I've been running production businesses for many years in many different iterations. So that's one thing I bring to this course and one reason I was really excited about doing this project. I've also written several books for Focal Press about various aspects of production, and of course I'm a LinkedIn Learning author on many other courses. So I hope you check those out. One thing I really enjoy doing is bringing my expertise to live events. And so I often speak at some of the large conferences and events in our industry. I've also been a small business owner for a long time. And so I like to bring that perspective to the table because as small business owners, we understand that you're often working with a smaller team, sometimes in-house and out-of-house people, but you're still making that big impact with productions that might be for large corporations, multi-national organizations, or nonprofits. - And my name's Rich Harrington. I'm a visual storyteller and I'm really passionate about both photography and video. And these two worlds have really grown close together through the years. Now I always like to share information, so I've written a lot of books through the years and have a lot of courses available in the online library. What I like to do is make sure that when I figure something out, I get that information to as many people as possible to make the production community that much stronger. I also get a chance to speak at several great conferences, but I put my knowledge into practice in the real world. I'm the founder of RHED Pixel, which is a visual communications company, and we also own Media Factory Studios. So this is a place where all of this knowledge is really put into action. The advice we share with you is designed to be practical. And Amy, you and I have worked together for many years with many clients, so there's a lot of stories we can tell you and a lot that we can't. But the knowledge we learned is going to be shared in this course. And I also invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn. Amy, there's a lot of great things to cover. I'm really sure that we can really help folks out here today. - Absolutely, because one of the things that both of us have done is both run production companies and worked with in-house teams. And so we are going to be able to give you some insights both as people who run an in-house team or people who work with an in-house team. And those are both critical components of running your production business.