How To Make Wedding Videography Actually Sustainable Ft Austin Blanchard

Today Austin from the Creative Cabana joins to show to talk about the hard truths of running a business by yourself and what many wedding videographers simply overlook starting out.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

If you're struggling in your wedding video business right now, you might not have a filmmaking problem, you might have a positioning problem.

SPEAKER_00 0:07

You have to figure out how to make a good first impression, because you only get one of those, and then from there, you gotta figure out how to make people feel seen, heard, and cared for.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Because you can film something beautiful, you can edit something emotional, but if the right people never see it, none of it really matters. In this episode, I sit down with Austin Blanchard from Creative Cabana to break down why so many wedding filmmakers get stuck.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

But you really don't scale your business like until you realize that you need help and you're willing to get help.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

You don't need this perfect brand, you really just need clarity and the courage to take the right next step. Because when that clicks, your work doesn't just look and feel good, it finally connects with the right people. This is the How to Femme Wedding Show. Austin, the man with the plan for your brand. I just made that up on the top of my head. That's pretty good. That's good. That's pretty good. How are you, my friend?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

I'm doing really well, man. Uh life is good. I can't complain. It's chaotic as a business owner. It's chaotic for a lot of us, but it's good at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 1:26

It's good to hear. I feel like I've seen you kind of doing all sorts of things.

unknown 1:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah. Uh life does take me around. I try to stay home more often now that I've got a two-year-old at the ha in the house, but man, yeah, it's good though.

SPEAKER_01 1:43

I want to kind of go back into the past with your story because I feel like, I mean, we've known each other for a couple years now, but I've never really actually heard the story of how you started your business, how Creative Cabana kind of came into existence. So I'd love to hear more about that.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Yeah, yeah. I'm happy to share. I I'll give you the medium-length version. Okay, at least I'll do my best. Uh, sometimes I cut it too short and then it doesn't make sense. And yeah, sometimes it's far too long. So um, yeah, my background actually is in marketing. So I came out of college. Well, I actually like dropped out my last semester of college, if I'm honest. Uh went and worked at a nonprofit in Australia. And in this this place, I was just there to like help and volunteer. They ran a medical ship to Papua New Guinea. It was a really cool organization. They needed help in their marketing department. So here I am, this like almost college grad. Uh, spoiler alert, I did go back and finish, but I I went and they needed help in the marketing department. And I was like, I enjoyed designing websites for fun. I would just do it as a hobby, kind of. And they took me on board and I learned photography, I learned videography because they were doing like documentary style stuff. Um, I learned more about websites and branding. And in about eight months of being there, I ended up being in charge of the entire marketing department, which was only like six people, but like I don't, I don't know how it happened, right? I got thrown in the deep end. That's kind of the start of my journey because then a couple of years later, when I was um looking to leave and move on with life, I was like, I've got all these skill sets to help small business owners. So why not start a marketing company? And so I did that. I started my own business here in the States um and just was all about helping nonprofits, churches, different organizations really so that they didn't have to hire someone full-time. They could have someone come in and and do things from the outside. Um, and that went really well. During this time, my wife all of a sudden was like, Hey, Austin, I love what you're doing, but why don't we take some of those skills and apply it towards weddings? And so she joined the business when we kind of branched it off to start doing weddings together. Um, and that was a lot of fun because that became like our baby that we were raising or building together, right? That became my wife and I's thing. And then I still had the marketing business on the side, um, or kind of running them both together. Um, but yeah, it was such a fun journey. And within a few years, that that wedding business was really scaling quickly as as far as like what we were charging. Um, we were charging$13,000 for video only in Iowa, like unheard of, right? So at some point we realize we're on this trajectory, um, to be completely honest, where we're like, we actually don't want to go this route. We want to just kind of start staying home more. We want to stop traveling so much, we want to build more of a sustainable lifestyle and sustainable business that's maybe not as flashy as it once was. Um, but that's kind of you know where where we went with the wedding brand. We still shoot some weddings. A lot of people ask me that. We still shoot four to six a year. Um, and what happened during this journey, right, of scaling our business, getting connected with a lot of people in the wedding industry, I realized that a lot of people needed marketing help. And I attribute all of our success in our wedding business to the way that I was able to do our marketing, right? From branding to websites to outreach to all the things. And um yeah, I just realized all these people needing help. And so I started helping some friends here and there. And then I quickly realized that there was something substantial to this. Like there was something that could really be built into a full-scale business that helps wedding professionals. And uh at that time I took the leap and I hired a full-time employee, and she wasn't cheap, she wasn't just some out-of-college person uh or like some intern. Her name is Emily, she's still with me today, she's incredible. And yeah, I like took her out of her agency job and said, I'll match her salary. Like literally the biggest risk I've ever taken in my life.

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Um, and that was four or five years ago, somewhere in there, um, probably closer to four. And it's it's been amazing ever since. She's helped me build Creative Cabana, um, where we, you know, we help wedding professionals and we've been able to build a team. There's five of us basically full-time that are doing this thing, and we love it. So that's that's a bit of of the story.

SPEAKER_01 7:14

A lot of us as wedding creatives have uh a bit more um of a learning curve when it comes to the marketing, because we come into it with a creative um artist mindset most of the time, and we don't really know what we don't know. Um, so I'd kind of love to hear what have you found to be some of those common mistakes that uh wedding professionals are making when it comes to their branding and and and marketing.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yeah, well, I've got I yeah, I'll share a few things here. Um, before I share like practical things that I'm seeing, I I would say one of the hardest parts about being a business owner is we are automatically assumed to that we're gonna have to wear every hat. Like when you're starting a business, there's no option really, unless you come from money, right? That you're gonna have to start at the ground up. And you are gonna have to wear a lot of hats. But you really don't scale your business uh like until you realize that you need help and you're willing to get help. And I'll I'll be honest, my first hire was not a copywriter or brand designer, it was an accountant. Then it was a bookkeeper. It was like the the financial things of my business are what stress me out the most and take up so much time. So it was only then when I started realizing that bringing on people into this business journey expedited everything else because it allowed me time and space to focus on what really mattered and taking care of clients. And I would say that's one of the number one mistakes I see is people, even years into their business, they're still gripping onto things with such a like firm, firm grip, right? Like they're not willing to let things go because they're afraid. I think as creatives, we we are controlling in the nicest way possible. Like I'm one of us, right? I same we we do love, like we're we're usually perfectionists. We and it's gotta be done a certain way, and it's gotta be done kind of our way because as we've learned and grown throughout the years, we often feel like it's the best way. It's the most on brand for us to do things. But what we don't realize is there's people out there that do it better. There always will be. Um, and so that is, I see it over and over again where people aren't willing to just give up some of these things in business that they have maybe had to wear the hat for a while, but they're not an expert in because you can't be an expert in every piece of the business, and that's why you need help. So I watch people with their brands and their websites and their marketing, and they just keep trying to do it themselves. And that leads into number two is they end up looking like everyone else. What happens is you you often pull inspiration from uh the people in the industry. You look at someone who's a little bit further along from you, and you you think, oh, they've done it, I can just do what they did. The problem is A, everyone kind of looks the same in the wedding industry, um, as far as branding and websites. Two, every business, even though we're in the same industry, it's different. We all have our own different goals and perspectives and the way that we want to do things. Yes, we might see a lot of similarities between people, but we're all individuals with like deeper things that matter to us than what uh maybe we ever showcase on our brand and website. So a huge thing that people can do is dig deeper. Like what get inspiration from outside of our in industry. Look at places that you love to visit and things that you love to do. But even more than that, dig into who you are because you're an individual human, and as cheesy as it sounds, like there's no one else like you. And so you need to do all this like introspective work. Now, I will say one of the hardest things with that is it's hard to do it on our own. Again, like, why do people go to therapy? Why do people um get help outside? Because you almost need someone else's perspective into your life. I will never forget when I had someone, it was a copywriter that we hired. And our website was like uh traveling the world for love was one of the headlines, you know. And the copywriter looks at me and she goes, Austin and Jessica, my wife, she goes, You guys don't want to travel. Why are you traveling the world for love? And it was just one of those light bulb moments where you like can't see it yourself because we thought, you know, we were traveling a lot at the time. Um, but there was just this disconnect of like the deeper things that mattered to us. And she really was able to pull that out of us. Like, you guys value time with family, time together. You value all these things that if you keep traveling, um, and especially if you're promoting yourself as traveling, it doesn't actually align the way that you think. You're just looking at these other people in the industry and trying to do what they do.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

So, yeah, I mean, that's that's a few things that I went on a tangent there, but look, I'm gonna tell you guys something that I feel like you need to hear, but I know is hard to accept. You gotta stop trying to do everything by yourself, especially if you wanna grow your business in 2026. And I'm telling you guys this because I have been in that place where I just felt stuck. I felt like I was never gonna get out of this rabbit hole that I found myself in of editing day in, day out, never having enough time to work on my marketing or my social media or my website or different aspects of the business that can help me truly grow. All these different things. An outsourcing is one of those levers that can just give you time back in your day, back in your life, and alleviate a lot of the pressure that comes from editing. But the good news is I have a team that can help you do just that. And that team is Uncle James, the official presenting partner of Have the Money. These guys are the real deal. I've been using them for over three years in my business, and they do exactly what they promise you they're gonna do. Save you time, kick backlog in the face, and turn your raw footage into some absolute gems. And they've been kind enough to offer you guys 60% off on your first edit. So head over to UncutGems, use my code HTFW at checkout so that you can kick backlog in the face and get back to growing your business in 2026. No, I love it because it really does give me that light bulb moment when I look back in my business and my journey, and I mean just kind of where we are as an industry today. I feel like, you know, we are inspired when we first get started, and even while we're still, you know, in the in the trenches of it. But you know, inspiration usually leads to imitation, and then that imitation never pushes forward to innovation because we just kind of fall victim to the like shiny object syndrome and just what we see on paper that looks really good. It's like, hey, they're attracting a lot of followers. If we do the same things, we'll attract a lot of people, and it's like, yes, that can work for a little while, but at some point you will run into a ceiling because when the supply is all the same and that exceeds the demand, it's just like it's just gonna be really hard for you to stand out and find consistency, and that's what kind of I ran into back in 20, gosh, when was when did we do the rebrand? I think it was 23 when I finally reached out to you and I was like, dude, I need help. I and it is true, like what you said, it's like you need people. It's like in the solopreneur journey, you can't do it all by yourself well. Um, I mean, at some point you will just run into those feelings of like, man, I have no one to like bounce ideas off of. I have no one to like get perspective from. I have no one to really help me, even though I'm like so tired, I'm so burnt out, I haven't seen my family in months, I have no social life. I feel like a pariah from society because I'm just like, I'm always in my office. I'm not I haven't even gotten sunlight in three months. And it's like, I mean, it it's just one of those things where it you have to go through it and experience it to finally have that realization. And it took me a long time to finally um come out on the other side, and I still have some control issues. I think we all do to a certain extent, because we're when you're building a business, I mean, that's a different type of love that you know not everyone can understand. And um, and so yeah, I mean, I I remember in 23, I was just like, things were just not great. I my inbox was nothing but spam. I was like, I don't know what's happening. Like, I feel like my brand just doesn't look like me at all. I was copying all the adventure elopement filmmakers, and I was filming no elopements. I had no elopements like on my page. I was like, what am I doing? Who am I serving? What does this even mean? What's uh it was a mess. Um, and so I remember coming to you guys and kind of diagnosed me. You're just like, yeah, I think we we can definitely help you out and make, you know, um bring new life to the brand. And um I remember you were like, hey, real quick, I'm about to hop on an education call. Can I use your logo as like a as like a test subject? Like for like what it wasn't like a what not to do, but it was like a good, it was like a good before and after of like, hey, here's where we started with Wayward Northern, here's where we're we're going. Um, but it it was, it was so true, and it like it just takes that like sounding board from other people to kind of like hear it for yourself, right? Because when you try to do everything on your own, there's gonna be disconnect somewhere. Um and my brand was just one big, huge disconnect. And then on the other side of it, once we finally got the new like website together, the new copy, the it just everything was just looking and feeling the way that it should have felt from the start. That's when it felt like an overnight um success kind of for me, in terms of like, hey, I have some more like energy now. Like, I'm getting leads, they're not spam. It's this is amazing. This is like how life and business are supposed to operate, and it was yeah, it was really great. And so, like, just hearing the common mistakes just brought me back because I was in that place where my brand just needed a facelift, it really did.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Um it it really, I mean, I can't say it enough. Like, it takes people outside of your business and outside of your family members to like speak truth into things. Uh, because part of my story going backwards is like I knew marketing and it and yet I had a time where I was at a videographer conference and I had someone look at me and they said, Austin, your brand and website is okay, but it does not connect to the type of people that you are describing. And again, it's like I had the expertise in this area even, but it's because I I am so and we are so stuck in the weeds as business owners of just like doing the day-to-day, and we assume so much about what people think about us and our business because we are thinking about our business 24-7. It feels like everyone else is too. I know I know that that's like obvious that they're not, but people really aren't thinking about you at all, is the hard part. And so you have to figure out how to make a good first impression because you only get one of those, and then from there, you gotta figure out how to make people feel seen, heard, and cared for so that it really becomes all about them and what they are gonna get from you. So I don't know, it just it makes me think of of my journey as well, because you just need you need help. Like, and I can't say, and I'm not saying that because uh it needs to be from me. It's just any expert in their given field, there's a reason they're an expert, right? So yeah, it's just hard, it's hard though.

SPEAKER_01 20:54

It is hard because when you and weddings, I feel like are just one of those fields that are it's it feels differently than I don't know why it does, but it feels differently than any other like industry, right? Because like you know, wedding videography, I don't know, people associate it more as like a side gig or a hobby, or you know, it's not like meant to be, or you know, I guess that was what people thought. You know, it wasn't meant to be a full-time thing. I mean, it can be a full-time thing. Um, but I think maybe because of that stigma, there's just this mentality of like, no, this is this is fine. I can I can work on my website and I can, you know, do all the copy, I can edit the marketing reels, I can communicate with the brides, I can do my bookkeeping, I can do my taxes, and you start getting all this stuff, you start doing all these things, and you're just like, no, screw this, this is terrible. I don't want to do this anymore. Um, but like it for me that was years of like going. Through it, yeah. It was like, you know, it's what's that quote from the definition of insanity is like doing the same things over and over and over again, expecting different results. I feel like that was me. Like, I'm just like insane over here. I'm doing the same things that I hate, uh, because I just feel like I can't afford to get help and things like that. And I feel like that is the biggest pitfall, right? Or that's the biggest hurdle for people. It's like it's just it's the cost associated with the help. People don't want to eat into their profit to create margin in their life. And like, but like that's where it's it's just you have to kind of push past that like that mind, because that's a mindset of like that's a fixed mindset to keep you stuck. It's like it's like my dad always used to say, Well, son, it takes money to make money, or or or it, yeah, or something like that. I don't know. It was along those lines, dad. If I'm butchering that, uh yeah, I apologize. But uh, and I was like, okay, I understand that. I mean, it's like when you're in business, yes, like it takes money to make money. And it's it, it's because I worked for my dad years down the road, and like, you know, he hired people, and I I would always like see like the the profit and loss, and I would see the you know, all the money coming in and the money coming out, and he's like, this is this is what running a business is all about. You make you might make a hundred K in a month, but then you only see five of that. I'm like, that sounds terrible, like that's crazy. But it's like like you were saying too, though, um, you know, it it just takes that that step forward to just really make progress in your journey. Because you can't make progress if you're constantly trying to build the path yourself. I mean, you can only get so far, like we've we've said before. Um, but to everyone who's just kind of like, well, Jared Austin, all this sounds great. I just I don't have the money, or I'm just I'm limited in my resources. Like, what is out there that can kind of help me just get started for now? Um, and then once you know, we build the business up, we make a little bit more money, then we can delegate and we can allocate some more funds to additional resources. And so um, yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

Yeah, I mean, from our perspective, we have an entire shop that we have built out for wedding professionals where you can get website templates, you can get brand kits, pre-made brands, basically. You just type your name in and the color palettes are there, you got a logo, business card, um, and a copywriting template that allows you to write your website with proven strategy, not just chat GBT telling you what sounds good, like truly things that we've seen work. And that's that's the difference. You hit on it. Like the wedding industry is so incredibly different than any other industry. It's highly personable, it is a very high-touch service. It's not like you're just a normal service provider going in and fixing someone's plumbing. Like, that's not how it works. You are there and people want to truly feel cared for and know that they're gonna get a good experience from you. And so we use this strategy across everything we do. But what's nice about our shop is like we have pre-built that strategy into the the website templates. Um, because you can go get a pretty website somewhere else. You can you can get pretty websites all over, right? You can get whether it's a template or hire someone. But I always tell people it doesn't matter if you think it looks good, if it doesn't work, it's not gonna make you money. And as much as some of us creatives aren't in it for the money, money does keep the lights on and it keeps food on the table. Um, and so I'm just a big fan of strategy, and that's what we really try to build into everything we sell in our in our Villa West shop. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:25

If I had had something like that when I first started, I mean, that would have that would have saved me a lot. I mean, I remember the first thing that I did when I left my nine to five was well while while I was at my nine to five, I hired a web uh designer, like a web and brand um designer for my first my first go at wedding videography was Carolina Story Film Co. I was like, why are you doing with the four names? Man, like why is it so confusing? But I should have just shortened it to Carolina Story, but it's it this is neither here nor there. Um but the yeah, the first thing I did was get like a just a presence online, like a digital storefront, um, a place where couples could see my work, see what I'm about, you know, and see like why I'm like so passionate about what what I do. But um I mean there was crazy mistakes within that first website, but at the time it worked because this was 2015, 2016, you know, I was um I was just getting started. And yeah, I I do highly encourage anyone. I mean, I've met so many filmmakers that just they don't have a website, they just operate like based off like Instagram, which for some people that could still work. I mean, I I know there's like some even high-level uh photographers and videographers out there that don't necessarily have like a you know crazy thought-through like digital storefront or website, I should say, but it's it's because like they've that's a whole different um strategy in terms of how to like you know build your business and acquire leads and all that stuff. I would say for the majority, having a website is is so important.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

Yeah, yeah. I uh going back to my story a little bit, you know, like I didn't scale my wedding business in the ways that most um like higher well people higher up in the industry would tell you because I didn't I lived an hour and a half from the the nearest city at the time. I couldn't network very well. Uh we could connect with people online, but we did not have good connections. I truly was able to build my business solely on like our website and then the marketing outreach to get people to the website and watch it convert. And so you're right, there's different strategies for everyone, um, which is why I'm a big fan of like let's build a strategy specific to you in your business. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

That's important to just kind of sit with too and have that self-awareness. It's like, hey, where are you at in your um like geographically? Um, you know, how close are you to like the nearest venue? Like how many weddings do they do like a year, and like so many things to like really factor in when it comes to marketing for your business. Um, and there there are so many strategies um to consider, and that's why it's yeah, it's there's no one size fits all, but there are um a lot of great resources like Villa West and Um your insight and experience as um a wedding videographer, plus um, you know, uh creative with creative cabana that just offers so much insight into um what we can do to just really move the needle um forward in our business. And because I feel like marketing is one of those areas that it's it's a revolving door. I feel like it changes like every so like so often, like the industry and like shifts so much sometimes, and you're just like, well, what worked yesterday don't always work today. Um so yeah, it's true.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

And I mean, marketing is hard because you touched on it a little bit earlier. It's like it takes it takes money to make money, you said that, and it that's how it works. Like you have to be willing to take the risk, and as long as you have a strategy in place, don't just start throwing money at ads or throwing money somewhere and hoping that it lands. Truly, if you have a strategy and and a plan in place, marketing, the reason it exists is to grow businesses and to make businesses profitable and make them more money or you know, get you to your goals. It doesn't always have to be financial goals. And so it's always scary, though. No matter at what stage of the journey I've been in in business ownership, doing more marketing efforts is always scary because you're always wondering if it's gonna come back. But good marketing will always come back tenfold or more. Like it should, it should easily 10x your business, it should do so much more so that when you look back in even two years, you're like, wow, look how far I've come. And then fast forward to 10 years. Whoa, if we wouldn't have made those steps of just taking some risk and and again, strategic risk. I'm not about just throwing spaghetti at the wall here. Um we really do I don't know, I just from business owner to business owner, it is it is so hard, and yet it is the one thing that can change everything, in my perspective, is when you're willing to be like, you know what? I'm gonna make this investment. Well, no matter how big or small it is, you're right. There's people starting out that needs to just be small because that's all you can afford. That's okay. Take that first step and then watch how it can snowball. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

I mean, and that's that's really it. I mean, it's like a snowball effect with um, I mean, especially my journey. You know, when I first started, I did wedding wire and the knot. That was kind of my marketing approach at that to start because I didn't know any better, but it worked. I mean, I was still I was relatively low ticket. I was like, you know, 1200, my highest package was 1800. So of course, wedding wire and the knot is gonna work because a lot of times it's it's generally budget brides that are on those those sites looking for a sweet deal. Um, yeah, that worked for a couple years and then it didn't work anymore. And so the next step was networking and then networking with other planners, photographers, and just getting on preferred vendor lists at venues. Um that really moved the needle. Um, but again, doing all that stuff is great. But if they have nowhere to remember you or like connect with you and um have those touch points, then it feels it might feel a little meaningless at the at the start. So for anyone who is listening to this podcast, like this all sounds great. I'd love to just dive deeper into Villa West and um and you know connect more with you, where can they where can they find you?

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Yeah, I mean, you can find me many places. Uh go if you if you really want to know more about you know branding website for for you, like go to creative cabana.co. That's gonna be the best starting spot for you. If you want to connect with me directly, now you can do it through there. If you fill out a contact form, you're gonna get me replying to you. I love being the the forefront, like getting to connect with each and every one of you so we can build a strategy around your business. Um, but you can find me on YouTube. I've got a YouTube channel, Austin Blanchard is the name of the channel. Pretty simple. Um, but yeah, those are kind of the the two main spots that I would say, I mean, you're you're you can find us on Instagram, creative cabana.co. Uh no dot actually in that one. But uh yeah, you'll find Villa West through all those resources too. So if you're looking for the shop that we've been talking about, you can find it from there.

SPEAKER_01 34:18

Perfect. Yeah, and we'll have all of these links down in the description below. So if you're watching on YouTube or listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, you'll be able to find all of these links and it can take you straight to those resources. So well, Austin, thank you again, man, for hopping on today and spitting some wisdom, sharing your experience. I it's always good connecting with you, my friend, and hearing hearing your story.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah, thanks for having me on. I uh man, this was this was a lot of fun.