How to Hit 5-Figure Success as a Creative Entrepreneur (With Michael Angelo)

I was working 50 hours a week I was like a glorified secretary I was doing everything but what I wanted to do it was like hell on Earth because I was doing so many things at the same time it was totally worth it in the end what kind of ads are you running Google ads is uh she's a Fickle Beast Google makes it very difficult for you to be a manual Google ads person New York Atlanta California you throw a stone and you'll hit like 30 videographers so you have to evolve eventually into a business owner you have to find a way to replicate your skills make it IAL by teaching other people how to do what you do spoken now like a true entrepreneur Michael has a very interesting name it's Michael Angelo and I was just telling people like dang somebody's parents had a good like sense of style and aesthetic or maybe a sense of humor uh just before we get too deep into the episode and we're going to get into like how this very interesting Arc that you've been on in your career being employed and then breaking away from the employment everything you've learned and I think our audience is going to get a lot from your journey specifically because you're kind of right in the thick and the character in the story being you are about to have a massive turning point and I'm like on the edge of my SE like what happens next tell me what it's like like growing up with the with the name am I saying right is a Michel Angelo it's Michael space Angelo and it's funny you bring that up a lot of people do bring that up that my name is Michelangelo it's actually very new so my original last name or my original full name was Michel Angelo Gomez and it wasn't until so about a year ago when I got married that I I dropped that last name and just went under as Michelangelo because my first big like salary gig like that guy you know he had a ton of applications for the job and he only remembered mine I used to call it stage name until I was told not to call it that but they were just like yeah just go under your you know your middle name and that's how he recognized me so I used it for so long and then uh like probably three three four years been using it and I was like you know I'm just going to make it official um when I get married so it's actually a very recent thing that it's Michelangelo when you say make it official what does official mean uh like legally changing it so like oh you did legally change it so from now moving forward that's it starting 2023 yeah uh legally yeah fully legally changing it um and yeah now now it's like Michelangelo but I've been going by that for the past like four or five years well Michael for people who don't know who you are can you please introduce yourself and then tell us a little bit about your backstory and then we'll jump into the questions I've got I'm currently the owner of San Antonio video productions I've been in kind of like the video space for the past 8 to 10 years I'm 26 years old so 8 to 10 years would be probably like when I'm 15 16 years old I started out you know freelancing a whole lot you know started out you know going through college um did that for a couple years did freelancing you know two to three years and then after a while I landed a salary gig where it was um in the outdoor television space here in Texas but you know I'm not an Outdoorsman but it was the only thing that I could really do um that was in my space and that had like consistent pay um after a few years of that you know I started freelancing again really the rest is history I I started my own business and I transitioned out of that space and now I've been full-time with San Antonio video productions for the past three years now okay there's a couple of key points I want to touch on but then I really want to get into the meat of this is what you're learning in the process right now so transition number one is getting a full-time gig transition number two is leaving a full-time gig to do your own thing so let's take it first spend a little bit time about this full-time gig what did it mean to you to have that full-time job what did you get from it and is there anything that you want to share about that experience yeah I think that full-time gig um so it was an outdoor television show we did a lot of freelancing and what was crazy was that it was a small team so they produced two shows there each with 26 episodes so for any given year it was 52 episodes across five team members there was one host one editor uh I was like traffic manager YouTube manager website manager and client portfolio manager so like they gave me a ton of like things to do and I thought I was going into it as a videographer editor but really I was editing like 40% of the time like I wasn't editing a whole lot I wasn't shooting at all um but I learned a lot about you know like just many other different positions that I feel like have helped me and I've just always been the kind of person that even if it's not something that I want to do because I'm doing it I feel like it's like a reflection on me so I always did it to like my to the very best of my ability so like if I was you know working on a website or a client portfolio or uh managing projects or anything like that like just because it wasn't what I originally came in there for it was you know very important to me that I did a good job and you know great job at it that was definitely a big learning experience cuz before that like before landing that job I was doing nothing but freelancing um and you know being a PA and a production assistant on like you know anywhere I can get a job really so was that a transition period for you from getting intermittent unpredictable work to having something that was solid you something you can count on and grow into yeah it it was definitely one of those things where I would be a production assistant on you know all over the place whether it was you know once a week or twice a week and it was while I was doing like going through college so it wasn't something like it it was good for me during college because I could go to I can go to school and class but I could still you know do you know side gigs and short films and um you know just be in the space and learn the space when College was nearing its end now I have to actually like support myself and I have to find a job that's more consistent and long term so yeah it was definitely definitely a transition period going from sporadic you know no schedule no set pay to like a 9 to5 and it was 9 to5 in new bronos which I don't know if you know much about Texas but San Antonio to new bronos is about a 45 minute commute so my commute would be like an hour and a half for five days straight so it was definitely a big change looking back on it now do you think you would have been better off consuming to freelance or was the full-time gig the thing that you needed to take you to the next level definitely I don't regret I feel like I I don't regret the the full-time gig and I feel like at the time I didn't feel that way at all because was you know I didn't want to be in the outdoor television space I I didn't want to have a 9-to-5 and my position there you know at least for the first year year and a half was you know I it's funny my friends always called it like I was like a glorified secretary I was doing everything but you know what I wanted to do but I learned a lot of like great you know just business stuff in general um in terms of you know you know client portfolios managing client portfolios and um trying to grow a YouTube channel and uh doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes and it also very much it was it was also my first step really into the corporate space I started working when I was 15 16 but they were all like you know fast food jobs retail jobs but this salary position was my first step into the corporate environment and I had to learn how how those relationships worked you know how to send emails how to talk to people how to not talk to people um it it was very much like I was very I think it was like 1920 when I got in there so I was very young and I really didn't know any better um but I learned a lot I definitely learned a lot so it sounds like you learned a lot of valuable skills you got consistency maybe Val validation that you know what you're doing and continuing just to not have to worry about where the next gig is coming and you can just focus on developing systems and protocols and things of that nature but at some point here in the story I think you quickly realize that for one reason or the other we don't have to get into it is you kind of capped out in terms of your salary in the period in which you're a full-time employee like you you moved North like by $88,000 a year which isn't terribly significant and you can see earning potential cap what is it that compels you then to say you know what I need to do this on my own before I said I needed to do things like on my own I had you know I told my boss at the time right you know because it was a steady gig they do film a TV show so I told him like I don't want to be in the office I want to be out in the field you know I want to be able to produce something I want to be behind the camera I want to edit you know the TV show and they had two shows one of them like was their main show was like the big thing and the other one you know not so much it was like their you know B show it was like junior varsity kind of show um and I did two seasons of that first before I felt like I had the the knowledge and the gear and the experience to do my own thing so it wasn't like one of those things where I went from you know being in the office to working for myself it was definitely a ramp up um kind of situation where I did produce two of their you know Seasons um before moving on to doing my own thing what were you prepared for and what what surprised you when you started on your own I feel like when I started on my own it was just you know I was working 50 hours a week at this salary gig so whenever I had time on the weekend or in the evenings I would shoot um and I would try to find any gig on you know either thumb teac or Craigslist or Facebook or just try to find anything you know really it was just a learning process each client was a learning process like my first client was my first lesson into making contracts like I didn't make contracts at my old job so like if I show you like a contract from like at the very beginning of my career to what they look like now it's so sad um it's so sad as to like what it what it started out as and like what it looked like but I felt like every client was a learning experience and every client I added and continually added on to it so yeah that first year basically um I think I did somewhere around like 50 or 60 clients before IID left I was still working there but it was like 50 or 60 projects in that year that I was doing both salary and uh freelance for myself so I just kept learning and learning and it just got to a point where I couldn't do both at the same time 50 to 60 projects that's a project a week a little bit more than that were you working yourself to the Bone it was very stressful um and yeah it was definitely a lot of a lot of gigs I priced myself extremely low back then I didn't know how to price I didn't I frankly I didn't think I was worth a whole lot at the time when I was starting out I I always told myself like if I could make what I'm making equivalent to my salary so at the time my salary was paying me equally to like $200 a day so I said like okay well if I could make $200 on a job then I shouldn't be complaining about what that job is right you know they're going to get what they're going to get like they know I'm a novice 200 bucks isn't a lot lose for them but you know a lot of people booked me it it got to the point where on my second or third year of my business there was a contract that I had booked from my first year which was like a $600 contract and this was before I charged for travel it was like a $600 wedding in Midland Texas which is a six-hour drive and I had no idea so I just saw it looked it up in my calendar I was like what in the world is this going so I was like what is this I booked this a whole long time ago but I'm going to fulfill it and I did I did fulfill it but yeah that first year I just try to get anything and everything you did The Honorable thing by the way I just want to point out that you made a commitment and despite looking back on it you're like this is a terrible commitment but I'm going to go through with it because that's what people do they honor their word and I remember talking to Jonathan Stark about this he said if you quote something and you decide later on that you undercharge them he said suck it up let that be a painful lesson for you something that a lot of people do and they mistake this all the time is they think I'm going to get a salary job and then when they transition into being an independent contractor freelancer they take their salary job and they divide that number by 52 weeks and then by or however many days you can work in a year and say that's my day rate and that's kind of like what you did you're like okay I'm making about $200 a day I'm going to charge that that's a mistake because what a job gives you is job security every week you get paid no matter what happens and you don't have to worry about it then they should also provide you some forms of insurance they should pay some of your employment tax if there are any there's things that are added in there that most people don't calculate so even if they're doing Apples to Apples they've not calculated correctly the opposite is also a problem where people have a day rate which is really good and then when they go to negotiate a salary they just multiply their day rate by 50 or you know whatever number of days that you can work in a year and they think that should be my salary and so the opposite is also wrong you don't take into account the taxes insurance vacation sick holiday all that kind of stuff so people keep getting this messed up so for the record everybody if you're working a full-time gig and you you want to do a freelance gig figure out a day rate that assumes you won't be working all the time that has to be higher than what you would be making if you're doing a full-time thing because it's the only way you can sustain yourself in the best of all possible worlds if you're booked all the time you're still not going to be booked every single day of the month it just doesn't happen so you need to think about that and on the flip side if you're going from independent contractor and you're going full-time you can't flip that around because it just doesn't work the numbers economics so you're working a 10 hours you're doing a whole bunch of projects at least one new project every single week and then you're burning the candle at both ends your business and your full-time gig what happens next I have to also bring up the fact that at the time I'm in like a four or five year relationship and it's getting to that point where I need to go full-time only because there is so much you know going on in terms of like I'm being spread to in so I had to go full-time and at a certain point what I was making was above now my salary and I was consistently month after month I didn't know where the leads were coming from in terms of like you know I was on thumb Tech I was doing a lot of lead generation but it wasn't to where like I can nail it down I just knew at a certain point that every single month wherever they came from I was making x amount of dollars and that was more than my salary I didn't factor in like profit or anything like that it was just straight Topline Revenue like I didn't I didn't look at any of the expenses um but the reason why I bring up the relationship is because I also was going to be engaged soon and I had to get a house so the only way I can do that was through my salary gig so I had to basically get a mortgage transition out of the company go full-time and then plan a wedding so that was like 2022 where it was pretty much like I I feel like it was like hell on Earth because I was doing so many things at the same time but at the same time 2022 was very much the year where I was now dependent on myself to to do do everything you know and it was very very challenging um but I feel like it was totally worth it in the end are we out of the pandemic in 2022 maybe a little bit but I feel like 2021 was still very much pandemic era yeah and uh during that time I was doing a lot of live streams I started out kind of like family events so a lot of weddings a lot of weddings you know they would live stream their weddings because you you can't have 50 60 or 100 people at a wedding I always felt bad but good at the same time about it because I always you know I I always told people like I have the opportunity to grow during the pandemic when a lot of my competitors in town were struggling because they had all this overhead they had a lot of employees they they had these giant teams where I was kind of like a oneman band I can go to all of these Productions by myself uh you know despite covid now we're going to take you to the story where we're at where I want to spend most of our time now by the way before I do that you mentioned Thumbtack a couple times I'm unfamiliar with thumb Tac what is it thumb Tac is like a you know a Contracting uh directory pretty much where you can find like handyman painters photographers videographers they they're pretty big with that pretty much just like a lead generation website I feel like it worked really well when I first started out um before I started you know putting up my ads on you know Google ads um but yeah Thum Tech was very big for me that first year year and a half until their rates changed and I feel like they killed photography and videography in San Antonio so it sounds to me like it's a job board is that pretty much like what it is kind of really uh it's more of a I feel like more of a marketplace where you pay for leads it kind of averaged out so like I feel like when I first started it was an average of like $20 a lead whether or not they booked you it took me like eight leads for them you know for me to get one and that was like somewhere around like $400 just for a single gig so that would have to be something you'd have to account for in your production because you're spending money and you have to get that money back somehow and it really was one of those things where if I could you know make that amount in that gig and then some then I shouldn't have a problem doing it and were these leads vetted like everyone that you paid for was a legitimate potential job thumb teac at the time you know they they are pretty good at giving high quality leads but you are competing against you know five or six other photographers or videographers so you have to be very quick at responding you have to be you know give a good offer quickly answer questions quickly and you also have to be priced competitively on thumb Tac because you you know you're going up against other videographers you know based on an hourly rate so I would say like oh yeah I'm like $35 an hour like for the longest time I was $35 an hour that was that was me and my equipment um as a videographer which was you know extremely low so it's an hourly rate you would compete against that and you would throw in whatever you could throw in if you had equipment you would throw that in as well yeah for the longest time um it was just a per hour basis you know for equipment and that 35 over a year and a half it jumped all the way you know 35 to $50 to $100 um and then at the high end it was like 250 per hour with all of my equipment with the production that included like cameras lights um nobody else because I couldn't pay anybody else but it was just me as a oneman band that basically I told people like I will get your video done 250 an hour and everything will be included and then of course I charged separately for post- production but even then those rates were really small um and yeah eventually I stopped I stopped doing that all together because it was clearly not the way to do things but it did help me build my portfolio I feel like that was something very valuable that I got out of it it's it's one of those things where it helped me build my portfolio and at least still get paid for it whereas like I do know a lot of people recommend working for free um but for me you know I I just thought about it as like working for what I'm already making at my current job so I I didn't mind it at all at least for me like if I was taking a day off or working on a Saturday and I was like oh yeah normally I get paid $200 a day at my network job but over here I'm getting paid you know 400 500 I I was pretty ecstatic about it like I thought back then I was like this is incredible it sounds incredible I mean depending on the context what was the adise job that you could pull off of thumbil tag probably anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000 there there's an upper limit for sure so roughly like say, 1500 aide job yeah I I would say so and you said something had happened they started charging more for leads was it what was the new rate was it the $20 was the new rate or was that the old rate they had an average right so every lead can be you know anywhere from $10 for that lead or $25 or $30 for that lead I would average it out and it would be $20 a lead I needed eight leads for somebody to book me so that was $400 after about a year and a half they had changed their rates to per hour so like $10 per hour so like if let's say a client came to you for a wedding and instead of that being a $20 lead it was that client reaching out for six hours so that was a $60 lead now because potentially that wedding is a $60 so imagine uh you know the average wedding is like 5 to 8 hours for videography um that's $50 to 80 and I knew I needed eight of them for to get one yes so that $400 lead span turned into like a th000 to like 1,500 it that happened overnight yeah I had to basically transition out of using Thumbtack to uh using you know Google ads and and I was experimenting with Google ads at the time but that was really the Catalyst for me to be like I need to get off of this directory and just start advertising you know my website on Google ads so it sounds like Thumbtack basically broker jobs that were buying units of time or did you have to tell them it's going to be six hours or eight hours or who decided how many hours it's going to be the lead the client how would they know it's going to be a six hour gig so thumb teac basically gives them a questionnaire based off of you know what you know they would be like what are you looking for is it a wedding or is it a promo is it like how long do you need a videographer for how long do you need a photographer for and they'll just put in whatever number so they had determined that and all you could do is be a person who would bid against that based on an hourly rate exactly yeah when it came to the bidding process was it all facilitated through the portal did you ever get on the phone to explain to them what you do and how you do what you do oh for sure I feel like at the beginning I did start off in their chat you know thumb text chat but as quickly as possible I always try to move things to email and then after after a few months to about a year I moved every almost every meeting to a phone conversation which now I mean I would call that a discovery call at the time I just thought a phone conversation I got to know the client better I got to know what they needed and um yeah it it was very much trying to get them off of thumb TCH as you know quickly as possible and you know booking a call with them and what you learn about the the client sales process and Landing the gig only recently and it's funny you know I've been already at this for about three to four years but only recently have I been giving clients the final proposal so pretty much I would get all of the information during the call and after the call I would send them the proposal and get a followup and an email back so I would basically assess everything that they need draft a proposal and send it but like nowadays what I'm doing is I'm like drafting it in real time and I email it to them during our like first Zoom call and be like hey this is what we can do for you um this is the rate talk to me about it you know tell me yes or no that is a very new thing for me um only because you know I've seen um you know I've seen a lot of your work obviously but you know I feel like the the consensus out there is that most videographers photographers they'll give their proposal right then and there they'll tell them the price right then and there where I don't really have like set prices so I have to actually draft a proposal every time but when I was first starting out I would have the call they'll tell me what they need I would have set rates for it create a proposal send it after is the only difference be uh from then to now is you you draft it while you're on the call I feel like yeah so I I would take notes and draft it but like now it's it's a lot easier to draft it now because um my proposals are built into my contracts so my contract and proposal are one and the same now I do understand that is very different probably very different than what most people do when you were talking to them on the Discovery call what did you think you did that got them to say yes more than no I feel like my portfolio of work you know I never really had impostor syndrome or anything like that going into it because I had a portfolio of work and um thumb tech reviews after every gig I would send a review link and I would tell people like you know it was very easy to get reviews because I was very consistent with my you know I guess post review process so I would really like tell the clients especially if we had a good time like you know please leave me a fivestar review like I didn't send them a link I sent them a link with a five star review to help me with potential clients in the future so I feel like my portfolio of work having that on the back end and you know doing all of the jobs and already been through the salary gig and the freelancing kind of having all of that in my back pocket really I feel helped me land more jobs just because you know I I've been through it you know even though I was you know really just starting out I had a lot of experience prior I think you're saying what most people say which is the portfolio either makes or breaks you and you had a good portfolio built on a lot of client experience right yeah I had gotten experience at that salary job you know building you know websites even though it wasn't a WordPress website it was on Squarespace but that's where I made like my portfolio and that's where I started hosting my videos um and I would you know I could just easily send that into a link and I would had anything and everything that I shot I would put it up there whether it was you know a a really low paying gig or a short film or anything that I did for free I just kept adding to it and after a while I just had so much on there that it's just one of those things where it's like you know and then I started making demo reels where you know once you have enough of a portfolio that you can actually shop around cuz I I have photographer friends and videographer friends they have done a lot of work but they don't want to make a portfolio and it kind of like boggles my mind that that's like the first thing you should do is make a space to make it easy for people to look at all of your stuff which is like it should be common sense but the people that I've worked with in the past you know it's not always common sense for everybody I don't know if uh if uh you've had that experience but it's not always common sense to make a portfolio what do you think the difference is between the Michael of $35 an hour or the Michael of $250 an hour what's changed if you're wondering about the difference I would just say it's more so the experience level I felt like I was very inexperienced so um $35 an hour I thought was very a fair fair rate uh the $200 an hour day I averaged that out too I was like okay if I'm making $200 a day that's my $200 day rate but on an hourly basis I was making like $25 an hour so I was like oh $35 an hour that's good you know it was very different really when I looked at other what other people were charging on thumb Tac 250 an hour was kind of like the upper limit I think the lessons that you learned are applicable for someone who's in the creative space photography video or something like that or editing they can learn from this which is what did you do on the call what did you say what did you ask in the discovery call that you think gave you a competitive Advantage I want to take away the portfolio I want to take away the reviews because at some point everybody's going to say I have a portfolio I have reviews but now I want to get into the diagnostic part of VI where you're engaging in in in dialogue with your prospect what do you think you're doing that helped you to increase your increase your chance of getting a yes once you do enough uh projects regard you know and you don't know everything and let's just take weddings for example cuz weddings were really big in my first year every wedding client that came through the door they all pretty much had the same wedding you know you can only do about 20 things in a wedding um whether that's like in the ceremony you know the cake the walking of the thing you know the cutting of the cake and the toast the speeches like there's really only about 20 different things um so I was just very thorough I would ask about everything I would ask about um how long is it how long do you want to stare you know what is your budget and I was I was extremely thorough about it that way there was like no surprises for both me and the client and I feel like because of that um they felt confident in my abilities and they felt safe because I brought the level of experience in the sense that like okay I've done hundreds of weddings this may be your only wedding you know your whole life you have you know two or three weddings God forbid if they divorce but like this is really like the only time that you know wedding clients they only have one wedding so they don't know they they're not in the industry they don't know everything that goes into it they don't know that it's more about the family and instead of the bride and groom the bride and groom are like they have a lot of things to do on a wedding you know and I always say you're planning a party for all of these people this is what all goes into it and I just knew everything about it because I I had done so many at that point and I was just very thorough about it we got something today that you are going to love I promise this video is brought to you by us the future ready to turn your years of creative experience into your own thriving business but feel trapped in an in-house job and you're stuck with a portfolio under NDA and not sure about all the business stuff that comes with striking it out on your own or simply the feeling of running this by yourself we can help accelerator will guide you in building a standout portfolio mastering lead generation and feeling confident in the business side of well business when you join you'll get access to a self-based curriculum of over a 100 videos with accompanying templates pre-written copy and resources get weekly coaching personalized feedback and a supportive Community to boost your confidence and success if you're ready to start working for yourself instead of fueling somebody else's creative dream start here click the link in the description below or head to the future.com accelerator we'll see you there okay back to you Chris moving on now to you running Google ads as a new way of generating leads uh what is the the key Insight that you got from running Google ads that people can apply to their business the transition from thumb Tech to Google ads it's always you know been LED back to the same thing like if I can cover my ads or cover my ad spend in you know one or two gigs then I shouldn't have a problem paying for it and it was really one of those things where thumb Tech and Google were kind of competing for the longest time and um you know at that point I had done no social media you know no SEO no blogging none of that stuff and uh yeah Google ads I just felt like it was consistently getting me work so why didn't I consistently just keep adding more to it until I found like an upper limit it's one of those things where you have to do what's working and you know what is working try to double down on it um and try not to like um you know try to really find out what is working and for me at the time Google ads was working very well for me so I just kept increasing the uh Budget on Advertising I just increased it you know all the way to 2,000 a month you know just consistently you know spending that spend and a lot of people think that's crazy like when I first tell people initially like how much I'm spending on Advertising you know they just think that's that's like a really high number for a lot of beginner people and a lot of the videographers and photographers that I worked with you know they're very you know nervous about it because they're like I can't just throw away $2,000 a month well if one gig is $2,000 and it only takes one day for you to you know fulfill that gig then it pays for itself you know it it's a no-brainer almost what kind of ads are you running are you running targeted ads are you doing lookalike audiences tell me a little bit more CU I'm very unfamiliar with Google ads not even no no no yeah go Google ads is uh she's a Fickle Beast no not not in that sense it it you basically need like if you want to run ads the right way you do manual search ads you know you have somebody there that's full-time or an agency or somebody that a platform that's really good at managing your Google ads and do search ads and manual ads and they build them out and they uh you know they test them they do ab tests they change them out every three months um Google has this thing called smart ads you lose a lot of money on Smart ads Google makes it very difficult to you for you to be a manual Google ads person right um because their backend and their UI is extremely complicated in reality you have to think that Google is wanting to push you towards smart ads I already had to pick up a lot of skill in videography I had to pick up a lot of skills in sales I had to pick up a lot of skills in building you know my portfolio and websites uh and and the client experience but one thing that I don't want to pick up skills on is Google ads and uh that whole backend stuff I feel like if I did Google ads correctly then it would just be me hiring somebody to do that full-time because that is really the only way to do it correctly as a beginner videographer I could not afford to do that that so I just did smart ads and I just factored that into the cost that's just the cost of doing business it's going to cost me more than it would normally that you know if I was doing it the right way but I'm saving a lot of time and I don't have to pay somebody else to do that for me let's get into this part where I think this is the meat of our conversation you've got this blueprint on how to achieve your dream I would just prompt you to do that and then have you take it away these past this past week or two um I really been trying to dissect you know every stage that I've been on every year of my life for the past five years six years it's kind of like all a blur but I created like a blueprint that kind of came you know because of that and you know it's just based off of like the word dream and the first first letter is you know dedicate you know dedicate to finding yourself the highest paying job that puts a roof over your head but preferably in your chosen industry because you need to be able to kind of do a little bit of both if you can't do it in your preferred industry then it at least puts a you know a roof over your head step two would be refine refine your skills by learning as much as you can from that job and start to apply yourself and apply that you know to the outside world you know start freelancing start getting gigs outside of your normal 40 or you know 50 Hour Week salary or whatever puts a roof over your head because you you know you got to start somewhere the third one I would say would be evolve you know getting Ser you know start to get serious about your business and seek mentorship and when I say that you know um I say that because you know that first year I wasn't fully like serious about it I I avoided learning sales for the longest time I avoided learning project management I avoided you know client experience I avoided all the things that wasn't videography and photography so you have to evolve eventually into a business owner and the longer you avoid that the longer you're never you know you're not going to go fulltime which is the next step would be to activate your full potential by committing and going full-time and I I I say that to a lot of people you know I have another uh business owner friend he's he's in the AV company um but he's doing trying to do both he's stuck in a salary position but he has an AV company but he's not going full-time and it's like okay you're complaining about sales but you're never going to get sales if you don't commit yourself 100% of the time to this and then eventually which was uh step five in dream so multiply uh which is kind of the stage where I'm at right now is you know multiply your efforts by scaling Beyond yourself and recognize that your time is limited and start buying it back expand on that I understand that concept but somebody who's listening to this is like what do you mean buy my time back yeah So eventually you'll start to realize that your time is extremely limited I feel like time for me you know there's there's only so many gigs you can do in a day there's only so many projects you can manage and even if you were booked you know 30 days out of the week which I wouldn't recommend because that's an incredible amount of work um you can only do so much and there's an upper limit there's no time for relationships there's no time for time off there's no time for vacations you want to be able to start to train people around you you know train interns hire part-timers and transition them into full-timers and eventually you know actually grow Beyond yourself because and I always tell this to like my wife and my family it's like I have to start training people Beyond me because if tomorrow I get hit by a train the business goes like it's gone there it is yeah it's done so it can't live and die with you you don't want to be a commodity you know and I that was a selling point for me when I first started I would tell my clients like yeah I'm the one shooting your stuff like you're going to get this level of quality from my portfolio because I'm the one that's actually on set whereas like it was nice to some people but it's not you know you can't do that forever you have to find a way to replicate your skills and you have to find a way to replicate your processes and make it official by teaching other people how to do what you do and you know keep that same level of you know consistency and quality throughout spoken now like a true entrepreneur and you understand the key thing that most solo preneurs don't understand is the act of Delegation and training people I keep telling people to being an entrepreneur is synonymous with being an educator you have to teach people what you do because if you can't it all hinges on you and if you have sick days I mean we don't have to go as dire as do dying but if you can't physically work what happens to the entire company and you have to prepare for that and a healthy business survives without its owner are you at that stage right now tomorrow if you hit hit by a truck muggle heaven forbid is the company in a place where it can continue to go on with without you that your your wife can somewhat remotely manage are you there yet no no no I I am I what percentage are you I'm like I want to say like 20% there okay so a ways to go still so yeah definitely a waste to go I would say I'm like a year or two away from that where uh all the edit would take care of itself but not any of the sales not any of the project management not any of the actual production which my next step is training a creative producer So eventually I did get a full-time editor um my next step is now doing a creative producer I don't I'm not trying to dog on like San Antonio but like it's not Austin you know Austin is very you know you know they're very video focused they're very motivated to to do that um you know New York Atlanta California you throw a a stone and you'll hit like 30 videographers you will um but for me to find like a creative producer in San Antonio that can both shoot troubleshoot and talk to a client you know and and work with the client and manage other people or know all of the equipment or fly a drone it I have to basically build everybody up you know I did have a few interns at a certain point and I did try to find other people but they only do one thing like they only either do photos but no video or they do video but no editing or they do video but they don't know how to talk to a client and they're super shy it's like you kind of have to do everything when you're out in the field um especially for like Run and Gun Crews or oneman band so a way to mitigate that would be for like what I did and this is partly because of like you and your advice you create a network so uh I started you know inviting people and increasing my rates and I said like I don't want to do oneman gigs anymore I'm going to tell my clients that like I have to have a like a few production assistants I have to have camera operators separate person to do drone and I just started reaching out on Facebook online other companies you know small companies reaching out and just saying like hey come you know white labor yourself come under sap just for this gig and just hire contractors and plug them into your network and out of those contractors I'm finding you know special key guys that I'm like I want to convert you to full-time and that's kind of where the stage where I'm at right now but yeah tomorrow if I got hit by a car no not possible you've been working at a pretty young age and it's it's hard for people to hear like me working 10 years he's only 26 years old how could this be so you started young everybody keep that in mind and your first full-time gig I think you were making about 52 Grand a year based on your crystal ball end of 2024 what do you going to make So based on my crystal ball end of you know end of 2024 um I'm probably going to make 300 to $350,000 in uh gross revenue so not profit but gross revenue those are two wildly different numbers and the reason why I believe that is because we just ended quarter 1 which is March 31st we're filming this on April 3rd we just ended quarter 1 and I'm already cleared uh 96,000 for the year so um yeah my my processes have definitely changed from 2023 to 2024 and I feel like I'm seeing like that hockey stick growth and I'm just trying to find more you know I'm very data driven now um so I know where all of my leads are coming from I'm trying to find more Avenues to like get you know increase that because I feel like I can't make 300 or 350 next year and also get you know three or four you know salary positions under me like I'm going to have to increase that and that's why I'm starting to like you know starting to get into other revenues like content marketing where is your single biggest source of leads right now right now would be repeat clients so and this is just for context like uh like I don't want like I I'm not shy about like giving away numbers or anything like that like in 2023 I have a full Year's worth of data and during that full year 101 you know Grand of Revenue was from Google and about 50 Grand of that was from repeat clients throughout the years clients that just aren't paid you know Google ad leads but right now the beginning of the year I feel like because everybody got their marketing budgets renewed all my repeat clients are uh you know it's beating out my Google ads right now and my Google ads I feel like is at 26k and repeat clients right now are like at you know 50 or 70 that makes sense and I think if you spend all your money in client acquisition it's going to be a very costly Endeavor the idea is you spend some money in client acquisition and then you turn them into sources of new business and nothing can beat the the recommendation of a happy client that you're working with currently and that's a very powerful thing so you can start to move away from that you don't have to completely cut it off because you still want new leads because eventually your referrals will dry up too but a combination of those two sounds like it's working for you I just want to say congratulations it's in a very short few years grueling years you had your hell year but you got through it and it sounds like greener pastures are ahead of you and I just want to just congratulate you and say good luck with how the rest of this goes because I'm looking forward to checking in with you at the end of this year to see like how it went because sometimes you start off with a bang and you you actually even go bigger and you're like at 700 Grand it's like wow what an amazing turn or some unforeseeable thing happens and you have to kind of go back to the drawing board and fix a few things but you're still very early on in your entrepreneur journey and it's awesome for us to be able to catch you on the train as you're heading to wherever you're going uh I appreciate you sharing that with us Michael uh Before I Let You Go I want to quickly recap for people Michael has been through some trials and tribulations as a full-time employee then he split his time between full-time and doing his side hustle as we would refer to it and to a point in which he his side hustle reached a Tipping Point where it was making him more money than he was doing his full-time gig and so then it was time for him to go all in and it's scary and he had a lot of things to work through on a personal level getting married remodeling a house all kinds of things in debt craziness but he got through it and he seems like he's figuring out how to generate consistent leads and also how to manage clients in such a way that they're happy with a work product while he's not Hands-On on every single thing that he's doing so that he can grow in scale and so that was awesome he came up with this acronym called dream dream d r a m really quickly dedicate yourself to finding the highest paying job or at least just put your energies against something refine once you find something refine your skills learn as much as you can it's all about personal development evolve and as you continue to grow you're gonna bump up against other edges it's a signal for you to expand your skill set so that you can take on more responsibility activate by committing you can't have your foot on one Iceberg and another foot on another Iceberg you got to you got to pick one and just go for it there's a lot of uncertainty ahead but if you do so you might reap the rewards of Entrepreneurship because it's full of risk and lastly probably the biggest lesson in entrepreneurship is to learn how to multiply yourself to be able to delegate to teach others so that you can start to ensure yourself against hopefully catastrophic thing happening where you can't work for one reason or the other you have systems in in place that can run the business for you while you're on vacation while you're recovering from being ill or whatever else might happen so you want your business be strong enough to live without you uh any last final parting words of wisdom Michael no I feel like you really hit the nail on the head um I'm still very much in a learning stage um I feel like a lot of the people that I work with or that I try to work with or I try to tell people in terms of like videographers and photographers I try to like tell them what I do a lot of them uh struggle with putting I would say their own ego aside and not just learning as much as possible because they'll you know they'll be scared of uh you know clients or they'll be scared of you know asking too much for a job or they'll be scared of just asking questions in general whereas like if people are giving you advice on YouTube you know you have to you have to commit to that advice I tell people all the time don't try to reinvent the Wheel video has been around for a hundred years and people have made thousands and millions off of it so like why are you trying to like figure out how to start a business on your own and trying to reinvent business and reinvent video production when it's been around for so long just go anywhere online and uh try to learn as much as you possibly can wonderful what a way to conclude it Michael thanks very much for sharing your story with us and best of luck to you I'm Michelangelo and you're listening to the Future