Ep. 3 with Travis Wears - Building a freelance career

In this episode, Seth Lowe interviews Travis Wears, a Kansas City-based filmmaker, about his journey as a freelancer. They discuss topics such as taking time off, transitioning to freelancing, setting goals, learning the business side of filmmaking, investing in equipment, starting out in a small market, and the rewards of collaboration. Travis shares his experiences and insights, emphasizing the importance of reinvesting in oneself and being open to new opportunities. He also reflects on the financial success he has achieved as a freelancer, which exceeded his expectations. This conversation covers the early freelancing years, balancing work and family, income and goal setting, investing in the future, cash flow and financial planning, saying no to low budgets, the impact of technology on the industry, the importance of technical mastery, and the blend of luck and hard work in achieving success.

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Interested in coming on the show, or know someone who would be a good fit? Email us here - seth@sethlowephoto.com

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Transcript

Seth Lowe (00:00.)
 I feel like I feel like recording these episodes are a little like getting ready for a flight like you get your drink and your comfy shoes and yeah man and put your airplane and you go to the bathroom, you know the whole thing and yeah, same process Hey, welcome to the solo creative a podcast for freelance filmmakers and photographers who want to become more successful at the business of freelancing I'm your host Seth Wohan

Seth Lowe (00:31.502)
Welcome to the solo creative. Today we're chatting with Travis Wears, a Kansas City based filmmaker who wears a lot of hats in the industry and I think is just truly a valuable resource to learn from and listen to. He has a lot more to share than we could ever pack into a single episode. So hopefully we have him back regularly to do some deeper dives on other business related film topics. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, man. It's always good to chat. Yeah. So what's going on in your world currently? It's January, you know, what's what happens for you in January? yeah. So,

I tried to take January off the Q4 and 23 was pretty crazy for me between all my various ventures. So just really trying to spend some time with the family. Jess and I are going to Mexico in a couple of days. We're going to be there. We're kind of just coming back and having dinner, you know, getting dinner with a couple of friends, catching up with family, you know, and just kind of relaxing a little bit. That's a, that's a good thing to do. Usually.

This January is actually kind of busy for me, but usually I do the same thing. Kind of one of the first months of the year. I try to do that. Rest is important. Yeah. Big time, big time. One of the first and best pieces of advice I ever got was that your creativity is like a muscle and just like you work it out, you have to let it rest and grow. And that's been so valuable to me. I wish I put it into practice the way, but I totally agree with you. learning how to put that into practice is an ongoing thing, an ongoing struggle. Yeah.

completely agree, especially as you have kids and your business grows and everything else. Exactly. So, how long have you been freelancing and did you just jump right in at a young age? Did you transition from another career or similar career? What was that like? Yeah, good question. So this is 2023, July 23 will be 15 years for me. I got started late, you know, I didn't pick up a camera until my late twenties, 28, 29,

Previously, I was in an indie rock band for many years. I didn't really have a career path. You know, I was a writer and I was good with words. And so, you know, I was in college studying English thinking maybe I would go write somewhere, playing in a rock band, not very career focused at all. And, you know, filmmaking is kind of something that fell into my lap around the DSR DSLR revolution era.

Seth Lowe (02:55.31)
I think that, that era, kickstarted a lot of people's careers. Do you, are you someone that is like really goal specific? Like I want to film a feature by the time I'm, you know, 50 or something, or do you just kind of take life and projects as they go and let, let your career and world sort of organically evolve? Both. I mean,

The first couple of years of freelancing, you know, I didn't even think of it as a career. I thought of it more as like, how can I make enough money to pay my rent and get food on the table and, you know, take vacations and stuff? You know, I had been working in the restaurant industry for a while, not making any money doing that. I mean, it's a, it's a paycheck to paycheck, you know, night, literally, literally night to night tips, you know, out situation where, you know, I ever have a lot of extra money.

And, you know, ramping up a freelancing career takes a couple of years to get inertia. So, and I was PA -ing, which you're not getting a lot of money doing that, especially 15 years ago. So really it was, I didn't have much of a career plan at first, for the first couple of years, it was really just, can I work enough to pay my rent? You know, later I became very goal oriented, but those goals are, you know, a mix of creative and.

financial, you know, I have a sort of a dartboard full of a little bit of different things that I try to accomplish. And it's not so much about accomplishing them so much as it is giving me a direction to head. You know what I mean? Because without that, you can kind of just sit there and do anything. So I use goals as sort of a path, you know, to head down. And if I get there, awesome. And if I don't, you know, there's usually a branch that leads me another direction from that path, which I find equally interesting. Yeah, I.

I'm not like super goal oriented. I think I'm more outcome oriented. You know, like I want to, work on a personal project this year, or I want to increase my income or work less or whatever that is. And then there's, it kind of gives me multiple ways to achieve that goal. Yeah, I think that makes sense. And, you know, it's fun for those to change. I get bored pretty easily. And I think that's one of the reasons why production ended up being, you know, a career that I've stuck out for 15 years, cause it's, you know, different every different.

Seth Lowe (05:14.19)
different projects all the time. So for me, the goals are changing quite a bit often, you know, sometimes I'll get started down a path and I'm like, I lose interest in that goal. I'm totally cool with just saying I'm not, that's not my goal anymore. You know what I mean? Like out the window with that onto a different thing. Yeah. I'm really quick to try things and quick to exit. If it doesn't make sense. You kind of have to be, you know what I mean? in this business, it feels like, yeah, totally.

So you said you were PA in early on. I mean, what was your overall exposure to, you know, this, the film industry as, you know, 15 years ago, did you see people having a career in it? did you, you know, like when you got to a point where you're like, okay, these are how rates work in different roles and careers in the industry. How did you get exposed to that? Yeah. So I was in college, you know, doing English and I took a couple of film classes. When I say film classes, they were very,

They weren't production based. I mean, there was a media department there at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, but they weren't very,

Seth Lowe (06:24.782)
Hmm. We were mostly spending our time studying like film theory and story structure and, you know, watching old, Fellini movies and French new wave and all that stuff. There wasn't really any hands on, experience with the equipment. And I had no idea that you could be a freelancer.

You know what I mean? I had no idea that there was commercials and local documentary productions. it really wasn't until after college that I, I got an internship on a whim at this startup, production company. And, I was just kind of looking for things to do. I was writing at a place. I was waiting tables and bartending and I heard about this new f****g

production company starting off and so I applied for a free internship and that's when I realized, like you can make money doing this. Like you can, they're shooting Walmart commercials here and grocery store commercials. And, you know, it was kind of mind blowing to me to see that there was this whole little industry built around videos. I had no idea that it existed. Yeah. I went to Columbia for photography and my roommate, one of the years was actually going to school for film.

And even then I was like, like, what are you even going to do with this? The same thing. I got, it just didn't click with me that there was, yeah, like local production companies or you could make a documentary. It just, for whatever reason, my brain just didn't put the pieces together. And I was like, well, cool. That sounds dumb or good luck. You know, I don't know, whatever. Right. did you, you know, grow up around people that owned a business or were self -employed, you know, family members, friends or something where you could kind of glean.

some of that process from them or see it at work and like, be like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know you can make money on your own. Anything like that? No, no idea. Had no idea. Everybody I knew growing up, growing up, worked for a company. You know, this was, I was born in 80 I'm 43. so I didn't know anybody who kind of was out there hustling, doing their own thing. I don't know when that it dawned on me that you could do this. Probably.

Seth Lowe (08:45.838)
sadly in my late, mid late twenties, right around the time I started doing stuff like this, you know, my dad worked for hallmark for 42 years. You know, he, a lot of people that I saw worked for a company for multiple decades, you know what I mean? And there was this relationship with the employee and the company that I'm not so sure still exists. You know what I mean? But like where you're loyal to the company and the company's loyal to you and.

they're interested in your retirement and they're helping you find some sort of pension. And yeah, I mean, that's what I saw growing up. Yeah, I think that's a huge shift. just with our generation for people that have careers, you know, it used to be like, you go work somewhere for like 40 years or whatever. And now it's like, if you work somewhere more than four years, it seems like something's weird. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How are you, I mean, how did you start learning the business side of things and how are you currently, you know, was it like books, podcasts, an internship, you know, what?

When did those, like the business side of it really start clicking for you and the light bulbs kind of start going off? Business side didn't come for a long time. you know, now it's, it's interesting, you know, 15 years in, I would say that that's like my, my strongest, attribute is knowing the business and understanding the business side of it. But, you know, that's just been part of the journey. you know, that part, I started in 2009, July of 2009, and it wasn't really until.

2016, 17, that I really started realizing like, if I'm going to be doing, if I'm making the kind of money that I'm making and I'm going to be doing this for a while, like I better get good at the other aspects of this rather than just the technical execution of the projects. So, you know, I'm a self -taught filmmaker. I tried.

finding a mentor, you know, in Kansas city, didn't have any success with that. Didn't have a lot of interest. it's a, it's a great market and there, there's a lot of supportive people here and it's changed quite a bit now from where it was then, but at the time it was like very protective. And I felt like anytime I went to someone expressing an interest in sort of shadowing them, they were, their response was.

Seth Lowe (11:07.822)
quite literally sometimes like kind of stay away from me kid. Like I've got my little area. You go make it on your own if you want to stick around. And I had quite a few older folks in the game straight up telling me like you cannot make it in this industry. Like don't try, don't even try. Yeah. There's a lot of, a lot of curmudgeons out there, I think. Yeah. Which I'm maybe now I'm a little bit curmudgeonly myself, but you know, I had a couple of people just say, you know, when I was like excited, super excited about the business.

and killed them. Like people I respected just look at me and say like, if, if you want to know what's good for you, you would just go find something real right now. This isn't a real career. Yeah, that's, that's kind of a sucky starting point. Like, yeah. So go ahead. Well, I, I've been hit up every now and then, you know, I get someone like, Hey, can I intern for you or whatever? And I definitely, I feel bad because like, I want to help and encourage people, but also I'm like, I,

I work in my basement and I travel basically full time. So it's just like, I'd be happy to like have a conversation with you every now and then or grab coffee or whatever, but I don't, I don't know what I would do with you as an internship. You know, I just, I just don't know. Yeah. So when someone asked me that question, which that happens a couple of times a year for me, I usually just get them on set as a PA right away. and in my experience, people that one, I do it because.

I remember what it was like to go up to these people who I saw working on interesting projects and ask them for like, just, I wasn't asking them for help. You know what I mean? To make my career happen, just kind of like advice or coffee or whatever. And I got the door shut in my face so many times that it really made an impression on me. And I remember thinking, like, if I ever get to the point where someone's asking me these questions, that's not how I'm going to respond. And so, and I find that the people who are willing to reach out.

and have those conversations with people they don't know are oftentimes, you know, some of my best crew members later, they're just really driven and you have to be very driven. You have to have that internal motor in order to succeed in this business because it takes a couple of years to get up and get going. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I had one, Jack Salmon. He's in New York now. He's like a union AC. Awesome, dude. He like, you know, just, he worked for me for like two years and we just had a blast. A lot of fun trips. I mean,

Seth Lowe (13:27.374)
I learned a ton from having someone around consistently to work with. And I think, I don't like to think he learned a lot from me, but you know, who knows, but it was a fun, definitely an awesome guy and a fun experience. It's good to have, you have to have, you know, if you're to be successful in your local market, you have to have a group of folks who you collaborate with often. You know, the rhythms, they know yours, you know, it's really a team effort to make one of these projects work. And so, yeah, I think that it's important to find.

your crew, find your folks. Yeah, big time, big time. Do you remember like who was your first real client, you know, and what was your rates like or anything like that? good question. Man, my first real client.

Seth Lowe (14:21.774)
I've got a funny one. Will you think of it? This wasn't my, this is really my, my first client, but I had, when I was trying to start freelancing and leave my, I worked at a church, leave my church job. I had given myself like a billing goal to bill so much money over the course of like three months or something like that. And I was like, it was like literally like two days away from my 90 day goal. And I was like $300 short of my goal and I was feeling pretty depressed. And there's this company in town.

that, 3d prints, teeth, you know, like if you get a tooth replace and I just randomly got a call from some guy that works at this company and he's like, Hey, we need a picture of this tooth from this new printer we own. Can you take a macro photo of a tooth tomorrow for this conference? And I was like, yeah, sure. And they were like, how much do you charge? And I was like, $300. I showed up the next day and took this.

macro picture of a tooth for $300 and, you know, hit my goal. Yeah, there's so many like, yeah, that's awesome. I think there's so many things that have faded in my memory, but you know, one of them for me was early on, you know, I was trying to work my way up the crew ladder. You know, I was a PA, couldn't make enough money doing that. I thought, well, I'll like become an AC or a grip or whatever.

And I just had a really hard time getting any kind of foothold because the people working in those positions had their, like, they were kind of box boxing me out, you know? And so, I was like, well, I'm going to become a DP. So, you know, I bought a, I went to, a big box department store, furniture store called Nebraska furniture, Mark here and got a Nebraska furniture, Mark credit card. Cause I had no money. I think they gave me.

$1 ,200 or $1 ,500 total. And I bought like a T2I and a couple of lenses and some batteries and like a maxed out like my $1 ,500. And then I just went home and started watching YouTube videos and just kind of, you know, hustling and a couple of years, I would say like maybe two years later, I was shooting, you know, nationally broadcast commercials, traveling the United States. It all happened pretty quickly. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, that's...

Seth Lowe (16:43.406)
That's amazing. That's awesome. what would you say to people who are in smaller markets who maybe don't have access to go, you know, be a PA or, you know, AC for someone. And it's really like, you know, there's, it's just, everyone is sort of like a solo do everything kind of person. And there isn't that maybe people aren't always trying to box you out or don't want you to learn. It's just like a highly competitive small market. And so there's just not a lot of space. And so they're nervous, like how, you know, how do you get started and how do you learn?

I always say that anyone coming to me asking about making a career change, I say, be ready to give it two years. Like don't make a decision on whether this is working or not for you until you've given it a full two years of effort. Because to me, that seems like two years does sound like a long time, but you know, when you're making a career change or you're entering into a new industry or you're making a switch from.

one position to another. It takes some time. You know what I mean? For, people to find out about you, for you to develop your, your network of contacts and for other crew members to, to, to kind of pick up on you do this now. So I don't know if this is answering your question or not, but I feel like if you're getting into this for the first time, or if you're transitioning, or if you're trying to move up the ladder or even down the ladder,

to a different place where you feel more at home or comfortable, I would say give it your all for two years before you really take stock and say like, whether or not this is a success or failure. Because I feel like if you work hard at something for two years and put your all into it, like you will get enough traction to be able to stick with it. Yeah, I agree with that. I think two years was probably about what it took for me from like saying, I'm a freelance photographer.

to, you know, really actually, making a living at that. And, you know, it took a lot of grinding, a lot of work, but yeah, two years is probably, probably pretty spot on. and don't, and just one more thing on that note, reinvest in yourself as much as possible. You know, like if you're getting income coming in, you know what I mean? Rather than approaching that with a scarcity mindset, you know what I mean? double down.

Seth Lowe (19:04.174)
on, you're only doing it for two years, right? So like double down as much as you can, reinvest in yourself, whether that's online classes, whether that's networking events, whether that's things like going to NAB or Cinegear, buying equipment that's relevant for that particular role. Like I'm a firm believer in reinvesting in yourself, doubling down, expanding your foundation, you know, from which to work, getting yourself more tools and you know, more ability to scale up in whatever role you.

you're pursuing. Yep, I completely agree with that. I mean, early on, I think, you know, you absolutely are your best bet and you got to throw everything, everything at it constantly. You know, you just in regards to investing in yourself, betting on yourself early on, you know, I think that's super important. You know, there's and there's a lot of ways that happens. There's shooting personal work, there's investing in equipment, there's marketing yourself, all of those things. What do you think is?

most important early on and where did you put a lot of that money and a lot of that effort? Let's say you're first year out, you're making 40 or 50 grand, where are you putting that money and that effort?

Yeah, for me, you know, I think for everyone can be a little bit different. I'm a big believer in investing in equipment. If you are an operator, you know, which I call myself an owner operator in many ways, you know, I'm a DP, but I've always owned and a gaffer. Now I have trucks and all sorts of cameras and all sorts of stuff. But, you know, in the beginning, when I was just focusing on camera work, you know,

buying the right camera package for what I was doing, the kind of work that I was getting and the kind of work that I wanted to get. And then continuing to build that out and renting that out to clients is the easiest way to scale up your income. You know, as a solopreneur creative entrepreneur, you know, they're hiring you, you want to bring the camera package, the lenses, you know, for me, I was also bringing a lot of times like lighting and anything else I could just to get that number on the invoice up.

Seth Lowe (21:13.39)
It's very difficult to replicate the ROI on equipment in other stable markets. It's very difficult to get the kind of return on stocks, you know, versus buying equipment. The ROI is just insane. I was on a road trip a couple of days ago.

with somebody who works with me in the Kansas city area. And he was asking me a lot of questions on this. And I kind of told him a little bit about how I do ROI calculations. And, you know, it's just, it's wild to go back and look at the charts and see how much money you can make on this stuff, because, you know, it's kind of a foolproof system if you buy the right gear and you're working enough. Completely agree. Owning gear is such a income accelerator if it's the right gear and it's, you know, it's purchased well.

One of my biggest, I think regrets just from like a financial and career growth standpoint was not investing in like real gear kind of early on. You know, I kind of hung on to the sort of DSLR video thing, I think a little too long. And part of that was just because maybe like a little lack of confidence in, am I, am I really a filmmaker? Do I really need to own this red or whatever? And then also being, you know, a solo, you know,

My wife doesn't work. I'm the solo income provider. So maybe nervous to lay out the cash or take on the debt or whatever, but I really wish I had invested in like a red package or a C 300 package, earlier than I did. And I think it would have made a huge difference in my, my career.

Yeah, it's pretty common, I think, to be nervous about what to do with your money when you've spent years just barely making it. At least, you know, it was for me. It took me a long time to get the confidence I have now at just going out and throwing down on something. Right now I'm in a place where I have so many things bringing in returns that I make a lot of purchases that I don't even do ROI calculations on anymore. I'm just like, does this make my life slightly easier on set? If so,

Seth Lowe (23:16.75)
I'll buy it or, do I want to have this just in case I might need it? I don't care what the ROI is, you know, to a certain degree. It's like, I'll, I'll put it in my inventory and I have enough other items out there earning income for me on a regular basis that not everything has to be fully optimized. But when you're, when you're just getting started, those purchases can be pretty daunting. I mean, God, I remember.

when I bought my Epic W that 8K red cam, that was like 50 ,000. And to me it was like, damn, am I really about to spend $50 ,000 on this camera? You know, previously the most I'd ever spent on a camera was the FS7, which I believe was like 10 grand, 11 grand, something like that. So that's a pretty big difference. Yeah. I bought my, my first red, January, like the first week of January, 2020, and then COVID happened. And I was like, what did I just do? What'd you get?

I got the Scarlett W, you know, I didn't go like too hard or anything, but still, you know, I think I spent like 20 grand and then, you know, a week later COVID happened and I was like, okay, well, I guess I'm just going to figure this out. But I mean, it worked out and it was great. It was an amazing investment. I made my money back on that thing and like probably like six or eight months, used it for a year and a half, two years, and then sold it for a couple of grand less than I paid for it. Yeah. And you just right there described, you know, the basic foundation of, you know, doing an ROI calculation. The way I always.

The way I think about buying gear is that my clients are buying the gear for me. I'm fronting myself the money, my clients pay me back and then with interest. So once the gear has been completely paid off, every thing on top of that is pure profit or a dividend per se. You know what I mean? You get your initial investment back. The money you make on top is profit. And then you can also sell the item whenever.

you know, ceases to be useful and, you know, get a little bit back there too. Plus at the very beginning, you know, when you make that purchase, it's also a place where you can use it to defer some taxes. Yeah, absolutely. My kind of personal rule is like, I like to be able to pay it off within about a year of client rentals. I think everyone's different. Like what, do you have like a kind of a rule or maybe something you had early on? Yeah, like 18 to 24 months is pretty conservative. So I feel like if it,

Seth Lowe (25:39.566)
can pay for itself within 18 to 24 months, then, you know, and then I own it free and clear in less than in a year and a half or two years, then it's kind of a no brainer. Now that said, a lot of things I've purchased have paid themselves off much faster than that, but that's a conservative approach to where I got to the point where I was like, all right, I'm not really risking much if I'm going to get this money back within the next year and a half.

Yeah, I think that's, that's a really smart move and it probably depends on your market too. And the types of clients you have and you know, but I think at some point you get a pretty good sense and you just have to take that risk. Yeah, absolutely. So we were talking a while back. you know, you, you wear a lot of hats, you know, you, you DP cam up produce gaff on a truck, all this stuff. but you, I think you had mentioned maybe making a really intentional push towards being a gaffer when you had your daughter a couple of years ago.

Do you want to talk maybe a little bit about sort of, did you have like a business plan behind that? Did you just see a hole, like a market opportunity? Like there's no gaffer near me. I'm just going to do this. Like how, you know, how did you calculate that out and make that, make that leap? So I think what happened was actually Danny Yord hit me up. Danny is somebody who is a producer that I really admire and respect. He's got a couple of amazing, you know, films that he's made. One of them is called Almost Holy, which the cinematographer,

There was John Pope directed by Steve Hoover. I believe I got everybody's names right. These are friends that I made at Masters in Motion, which for years has been a community resource held in Austin, Texas, put on by John and Christina Connor based in Philly. And that's a place where basically they just put on a little event filmmakers from all over came and got a chance to meet other filmmakers. And I met Danny and these guys there.

the first year they went, I think to when they were, I had seen almost totally the documentary. I really loved it. Kept in touch with those guys a little bit. And during COVID, you know, they were coming to a small town, a couple hours outside of Kansas city. And Danny hit me up just saying, Hey, we're looking for a gaffer. Can you put us in touch with somebody? And I was like, well, I own all the stuff. You know, I think they were asking for a few things. They're like, Hey, would, if they have this and this and this, and I was, I've always been.

Seth Lowe (28:02.094)
a bit of a gear horse. So I had all that stuff and it was COVID. So I wasn't working a lot and I really wanted to see Danny and John. And so I was like, Hey, you know what? I'll just come out and do this for you guys. Be awesome to work with you. I can like this stuff. I'm a DP. I know how to set up a light. And so they agreed. I went and did it. And I had such a good experience collaborating with John and Danny. And, you know, as a self -taught DP, a guy who really just never had anybody to learn from always have just kind of lit things on the fly and.

taught myself through, you know, failure. It was really cool to see other people approach a scene. And I felt really privileged to be in a more collaborative environment since so many of my jobs are small crews where we don't get a chance to approach the scene as artistically as you kind of want to.

And watching these guys work, they really took the time to light these scenes, right? Even though it was a doc documentary, they really, we really took the time to like block out the lights, light it, light it nice. And I thought, man, this, this work is something I want to do more of. So I just thought to myself, I am open to gaffing more. I came back and I told my partner, I was like, I think I would do this more if somebody asked me.

And I'm not kidding. The next five calls I got were people asking me to gaff project. It had never happened before. I don't know what happened exactly, but I just, the next five jobs, I was out there gaffing projects and I just liked, I just loved it. I love the collaborative aspect of it. And even though some people might say it's a step down on the like crew rung or whatever, I don't care. I was like, I'm out here working.

I'm meeting people, I'm getting to collaborate with DPs. It's not that often as a DP, you can, you get to be on set with another DP and you guys get to look at the same image and talk about how to approach it. I find that really fun. And so it's something that I've really enjoyed leaning into over these last couple of years. Yeah, that's awesome. And I think the collaboration thing is really important because, you know, oftentimes the higher you kind of climb the...

Seth Lowe (30:09.87)
role ladder, the more isolated and kind of siloed you become from your, your peers because it gets more competitive and you know, there's less people and it, it just is what it is. But I think that collaborative part would be a lot more rewarding on the Gaffney side. Yeah. It's made me a, it's made me a better shooter for sure. You know, on my own, the projects that I'm DPing, I'm able to approach it a little bit more through the lens of not just what I've.

learned myself, but what I've learned working with other DPs and how they've approached things and trying different things, you know, so it's been fun. yeah, that'd be invaluable. do you, do you make more or less money than you thought you would as a freelancer? God, a hell of a lot more. I never, I grew up in a fairly low income family, you know, like we could have been on food stamps, but my parents were too proud. You know, my

My dad had worked for Hallmark. He didn't go to college until like a couple of decades into his career there. You know, he was, when I say he was working at Hallmark, he wasn't, the guy making six figures, designing, holiday greeting cards. Okay. He was like a machine maintenance guy. Did those guys make six figures? at some, at one point Hallmark was one of the most successful companies in the United States for sure.

Right now they might be barely hanging on. But yeah, I mean, at one point in time, I think they had a lot of artists who were doing quite well. So we grew up in a low income house. You know, we got free meals at school. Almost all my clothes were hand -me -downs. My parents, when I heard them talk about money, it was always with like fear and trepidation.

I wasn't taught anything about money in school. I remember we did this thing called, God, what is it called? Exchange Expo or exchange city where you go and you have a pretend business and everybody gets like pretend money and you go around and like trade money. And this was in like middle school. And that's the only thing I can remember from like all the way up until college, any kind of discussion about.

Seth Lowe (32:22.862)
I mean, there, I think we froze. Okay. Yeah, I saw you for a freeze. No, that's all right. It's recording locally, so I'm not worried about it. But yeah, I relate to that. You know, we didn't really grow up with hardly anything. So, making money at this just kind of blows my mind every day. The first time I made six figures, you know, well, just to backtrack a little bit, you know, my first couple of years freelancing, I had to get my friend do my taxes. And I remember.

One of one year, it was like maybe $12 ,000 or something gross. It was like PA and like doing a little things. I would like go to Costco and like help them sample food items and get paid like $12 an hour or whatever. I was doing any, I was tearing down events, like weddings with my buddies. I was doing anything I could just to make a few dollars. Yeah. And I made like 12 ,000 and I was just like, God, this isn't very much, you know? And the first time I made six figures, I was actually terrified because I thought,

shit. This was kind of a mistake. Like I, I like happened upon a good streak and I was sad because I thought, well, now I'll never be able to do this again. And it's going to be so frustrating knowing that this is possible, but that I can't do it. I mean, that's how little faith I had in myself. So it's been quite a long journey of figuring out, you know, what's possible along the way. And, you know, it took, it wasn't until I was making the money that I actually realized like, okay, like this, there's more here than just.

you know, scraping by, I can actually turn this into like a pretty successful enterprise for myself if I really put everything into it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my first year out freelancing, I don't like, I just kind of, you know, put my head down and work and I got to the end of the year and I was like, I look, you know, I started looking at things and I was like, I made literally double what I made at my actual real job a year ago. And I couldn't believe it. Like I was shocked. And then, you know, a couple of years went by and you know,

My accountants like she gives me my taxes and I made like just over a hundred thousand dollars and I was like Are you sure like I don't I don't like same thing. I'm like, I didn't really believe her and Then I was like, okay I I got lucky this year like batten down the hatches like some I did something wrong or something, you know And I mean, I just there's no way I'm doing this ever again So it's definitely a wild feeling the first time that sort of happens Yeah, man, that's pretty crazy. It's cool that you were able to experience so much success

Seth Lowe (34:50.926)
right off the bat. I mean, you're a really talented guy and you're very good with people, so that doesn't surprise me. Well, thanks. I mean, the first, it was definitely a rough couple of years out of the gate. You know, I bounced in and out of a lot of regular jobs and, you know, PA 'ing and that kind of stuff too. So it was, and I tried once to freelance and did not go well. I went back and got a regular job until I could kind of figure it out again and make a go of it. And round two really took off for me. When did we meet? What year were you in your freelance journey? Was it South America?

No, we were in that Nashville shoot. yeah. It was like 110 degrees. I think it was probably like your first shoot with that red maybe like you'd just gotten it I think. yeah, maybe, maybe not too long before that. Yeah. So that was 2017 I think. Yep. So I remember, yeah, this is, yeah, I remember I bought it. I bought a house and moved in and the next day I flew out for that Nashville shoot that you were, you were on. It was pretty crazy. So what year was that for you?

freelancing? that would have been year two of like completely, you know, I hadn't no other income for two years. So I might three years of like making some money at it, but two years of just totally, totally freelance. So cool. So how, how long are you, where are you right now? this will be, what is it? 14. So it'd be, 10 years, I think. wow. Awesome. Congrats to you. 10 years, a decade. Yeah, thanks. I'll get myself a.

mug or a shirt? Well, I mean, I've seen you advanced so far in your career from just when we met in 2017, which I guess it is 2024. It doesn't feel like that long ago, but it's interesting to watch other people advance. You know, you see things incrementally because, but because I only see you once a year, once every couple of years, you know, I'm able to see these large leaps as you, as you continue developing your career. And that's pretty cool to watch.

Yeah, thanks. And likewise, same to you. I mean, I was definitely very green on that shoot. I mean, that was like one of my, I mean, I've been freelancing for a couple of years, but definitely my first like, I guess agency shoots. I've been doing a lot of client direct work at that point. So different experience for sure. Do you think you work more than you expected to or less than you expected to? What does that look like? I have a real problem with work in terms of just doing it all the time. You know,

Seth Lowe (37:12.59)
I have a kid now, Pepper. She's, you know, she turned two last October and it's really put into perspective just how demanding my schedule is. You know what I mean? for a long time, it was okay. I was single. I didn't have a kid. I mean, I used to be gone like 75 or 80 % of the year doing this stuff. And you know, in 2018,

2017, 2018, I started a little side hustle that started taking up some time. 2017, I bought my first house, 2020, I bought my first investment house. So I started building these other little ventures that's all started to grow and have like lives of their own. And now I'm in a place where I'm doing quite a lot of things and they can all be demanding at times. And sometimes they're all demanding at the same time. And so, yeah.

work -life balance is something that I wouldn't pretend to have a grasp on, but it's something that I'm really attentive to. You know what I mean? I'm paying a lot of attention to it. Yeah. I think about it more than I put it into practice. Yeah. I'm, I'm forced to, because my partner just won't put up with it. She's like, Hey, you know, like we need dad around. And that's a big, you know, that's one of the reasons why I, I, when I decided to start gaffing, I was like, I'm going to buy a truck. I'm going to build out.

A little system here in Kansas city where I can maybe try to work a little bit more locally and not be gone all the time. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, building in that family time is really important. I worked on something the other day and I was really excited about it. And I think typically I would have, you know, put the kids to bed and gone back down to my office down here and edited for like, you know, four or five hours till like 1am. And I just intentionally decided like, okay, I'm just going to hang out with my wife tonight. I don't need to go edit till 1am. It's probably.

Not going to be that good anyway, cause I'll be tired. So I'm just going to sleep on this and hit it tomorrow and take some family time. And I'm glad I did. Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, those experiences you have with your family and friends are far more valuable than. You know what I mean? another video project. Yeah, totally. If you were to like break your income down into buckets, you know, like DP work, gaffing work, rental income.

Seth Lowe (39:36.334)
other ventures you have, how would you kind of roughly break that up? Or do you have those numbers pretty specifically dialed in? Not really. I actually approach it more holistically in terms of like, what are all of these things bringing? What's my overall goal for the year? What are my goals within these businesses in terms of not just financially, but like structurally, like what do I want to do with them?

you know, just to get like specific, like with CineKit list, which is an online video community that I run, you know, my goal might be like to collaborate with a certain brand in 2023. And there might not be any, any financial goals attached to that. Just like, Hey, I want to collaborate with this brand, or I want to make a connection with this brand or with my rental properties. One of my goals last year was to purchase another property. It was just like, let's get another one of these houses.

in our portfolio, you know, it can be anything. I'm looking at my, at these various businesses individually, and then I'm seeing based on how they're doing, can I get to a total that makes sense for me and my family and how I want to continue growing? So last year in 2023, even though there were the writer strikes and the actor strikes for me, sports and doc, and that kind of work was

kept me really busy, so I did quite well. So I dialed back a little bit on CineKit list, dialed back a little bit on the real estate and let my production kind of take over and maybe it'll be different this year. We'll see. Yeah. I think having a, like in a more organic approach to that process is probably just easier. You know, you're not, when you're super rigid, it can make it harder and you can judge yourself a little bit more. But if you just have some goals and organically get there, I think it's a lot, a lot better, at least for me.

Do you at least look at some of those buckets, you know, like real estate or rental equipment and add fuel to fires that are burning well or, you know, what, what's your process there? If something's going well, do you just like, okay, that's great. And let it, let it go. Or do you like, okay, this is going, let's, let's. Yeah, totally. Yeah, totally. I definitely add fuel to something that's really taking off for really feels like there's like a timing element to it. Like for, for me, I know that.

Seth Lowe (42:04.334)
CineKit list, which is it's an online community, but it also serves as a deal portal. So, you know, we were running deals with manufacturers through our partnership at Arama. I know that a big incentive for people is to spend money at the end of the year so that they can do exactly what we've talked about, which is to increase their ROI through their company by owning gear. And so for me, you know, like October, November, December are really times where I like work out really hard on that business. And it's.

It's partially because that's a good time for just retail in general. And it's partially because I know for that, for that community, those are important times, you know what I mean? To get these deals out there so that they can defer a little bit of taxes and, you know, scale up for 2024. Yep. Shifting gears a little, you know, actually let's go, let's backtrack a little. You know, you, we talked about earlier about investing in yourself.

first and foremost, and really aggressively early on, at what point, or how did you kind of shift your mindset from like a hundred percent investing in growing my business to, okay, now I need to start maybe investing in my future, like a retirement account or a brokerage account or a rental property or whatever, you know, how, like, was there a point where you just, you know, what did that look like? Were you just like, okay, I'm making enough money now, now I need to do this or, you know, how did you make that decision?

Yeah, I paid a shit ton of taxes and it pissed me off. That was basically it. I owed the government a lot of taxes. I didn't realize it was going to be so much. I was still working as a, solo entrepreneur. so I didn't have any kind of corporate structure that's taxed at 40 % self -employed folks are taxed at 40%. and I owed the government a lot of money and it made me mad. And I thought,

damn, you know, I'm not going to let this happen again. And I talked to like my CPA who don't have a lot of good things to say, but he did help direct me towards, just like, yeah, it's a SEP IRA, you know, retirement fund. Like, Hey, if you want to avoid paying so much taxes next year, you know, dump some money in here. So my first retirement investing was purely as a vehicle to avoid paying so much in income tax.

Seth Lowe (44:24.366)
And then from there, I was like, well, if I'm going to be putting this amount of money into these places, I better find out exactly what I'm doing. You know, I tried going to a, an investor, what's it called? A financial advisor. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was one of these companies and I went in there and had a conversation with this like person and walked out with zero confidence that they had a real handle on what it was that they were doing. And I was like, if I don't know,

what they're doing and they don't seem to know what they're doing either. Like I better start figuring this stuff out because I'm the one that's going to suffer if this money goes into a bad place. You know, so I started, you know, researching investment options and through there, I kind of, yeah, I got a love for it over time. Just, you know, finding out ways to optimize your portfolio. That makes sense. Yep. Totally. My, my first account was a SEP IRA. Same thing. Like I think.

I don't remember what year it was, but I got like my tax bill at the end of the year. Cause that's just, you know, it was just a solo me and my accountant was like, you owe $16 ,000 in taxes. And I was like, wow, that's exactly how much I just spent on my new car. Like, like, you know, why am I paying for a whole new car again? This sucks. So, you know, then I was like, you know, I got a set by RA and then I got like really curious and just, you know, started researching and you know, I have other, other things I'm doing now, but yeah, that was just like a holy, the tax bill hits you one time. You know, like, right. I got a.

figure this out and a retirement account makes sense because at least at some point you get the money back. Yeah, how are you structured? How is your business structured? So I'm an S Corp. I get a W -2. I pay myself a salary every month and then what I've done for the past like three years, maybe two or three years, I pay myself a salary for like the first like 50 % of the year and then I do like an owner draw share bonus thing or whatever. This year I'm

It just started getting too messy towards the end of the year though because I you know depending on my income would shift so this year I'm just gonna pay myself like lower my salary a little bit and then offset it with a monthly Ownership dividend, I'm not sure what the official term is, but I just just do it monthly So I have a better picture out throughout the course of the year. Yeah, I think it's just called an owner draw I think you got it right Yeah, so just I'm gonna be doing it monthly now rather than at the end of the year So I think that'll make my life a little easier. Yeah, that makes sense. There's a lot I mean, I'm not a tax expert and

Seth Lowe (46:49.806)
This isn't tax advice at all, but I get a lot of people asking me questions about taxes because it is complicated. We live in a country where it's helpful sometimes because there's ways where you can defer taxes by doing, you know, the government wants your business to be successful. So they provide you on ramps to reinvesting in your business so that you can defer some taxes and so you can scale your business. So hopefully you're reinvesting back into the economy, hiring workers, et cetera, et cetera. So as a business owner, you know, it can be.

good that the tax system is so complicated, but it's also complicated, you know, and for me, one of my biggest pieces of advice and something that I wish I would have done sooner was, you know, turn my business into an S -Core so that I could have stopped paying 40 % on self -employed, you know, income. Yep. Makes a huge difference. I think another important, important thing to do as well as, you know, shop around a little bit for an accountant, you know, take like a last year tax return or whatever and get

get different people's opinions and feedback and see like what they would have done differently and what kind of advice they bring to the table. You know, I mean, I think if your accountant is not my first accountant, like would had no ideas didn't come to me with like, Hey, you should be doing this. You should be doing that. I would like to Google, how can I pay less taxes? And I'd be like, Hey, can I do this? Can I do that? And she's like, I don't, I don't know. It seems a little too risky for me. And I'm like, well, the internet says I can, I don't know. I mean, like, so I just, I started looking around and I found a different accountant. It's been a,

significantly better experience. Yeah. You realize that not everybody who does something is good at their job necessarily. You would have, I guess I assumed, you know, Hey, you're a CPA, you're a tax professional. Like part of your job is going to be to help guide me. Cause clearly I don't know what I'm doing. I'm making that very clear when I'm asking all these questions, but yeah, I've had a few not so good CPAs sadly, and it's a little bit frustrating. Keep shopping. If you don't have a good one.

keep shopping until you can find somebody that you trust and that you like because taxes aren't fun. So if you're going to have to, you know, convene with this person a couple of times a year, you might as well make it somebody that you actually like talking to. Yeah. And I mean, a good accountant should probably pay for themselves as well. So absolutely worth the spend. Absolutely. Do you have any, rule, do you have rules for like cash flow? Like how much cash do you keep on hand? Like in terms of like, I want to be able to run my business for six months or you know, what, what's that look like for you?

Seth Lowe (49:10.286)
Yeah, I'm pretty conservative. I like to have at least a year of like living and business expenses. if not significantly more than that, you know, and as long as it's in a place where it's working for me a little bit, like I don't stay super liquid in low interest earning checking accounts. You know what I mean? I have kind of enough to make, make a couple of months of, you know, expenses happen, but most of my money is.

you know, working somewhere, even if it's just as some, something as simple as like a high yield savings account or checking account at like wealth front, you know, you can get 5 % interest right now. So for me, it's, it's fairly liquid. It's not as liquid as being in your bank, but it's pretty close. You know what I mean? Like, and they offer a pretty, they offer, a higher, like security or yeah, their insurance is quite a bit higher than.

your standard FDIC insurance as well, you know, because they split up the money into a bunch of different accounts through their partnerships. Yep. Yeah, I do the same thing. I keep a few months kind of runway in my checking account and then go spillover, just go straight into a Wealthfront 5 % savings account. And then from there, you know, I look at other things, you know, brokerage or retirement or rental property or something like that. But I think that's a great, great rule to have.

Yeah, it's good to be kind of split up and diversified as much as possible. You know, that way any impact to any one of these little businesses or side businesses or events or investments, avenues doesn't hurt as much. You know what I mean? Yep, totally. Okay. Do you think it's, you know, for someone entering the industry today as a freelancer, do you think it's harder than it was 10 or 15 years ago? You know, it seems in my mind, I think there's a lot more work.

being created, there's more content out there, but budgets haven't really seemed to change much over the past 10 years. You know, maybe there's like, and maybe there's one or two less people per like job roles on a set, you know? So if the budget used to be like 25 grand and there were five crew members, well, maybe it's still 25 grand 10 years later, but now there's only three crew members because we're using autofocus and we, you know, some, you know what I'm saying? Like that's maybe where the growth is.

Seth Lowe (51:34.254)
Or there's, you know, a lot of, I mean, there's so many things out there where it's just DSLR and a stick gimbal thing, you know, like it's just a very different, different world, I think. Yeah. I, you know, I don't, I'm not a hundred percent sure because I do think that, you know, when I started 15 years ago, I was working on production commercials for like the local Kansas lottery or like a grocery store. And there would be like 20,

five crew members. You know what I mean? Like a director flew in from wherever and a DP and like multiple ACs and multiple hair and makeups and wardrobe. And now granted, these are just bigger commercials, but I see those jobs now. And there's like six people on set or eight people on set. You know what I mean? It's, I think I came in at the end of a little bit of an era where there were.

clients willing to spend more money on some of this stuff. This was right around, yeah, 2008, nine things were changing, I think in the economy. I was pretty unplugged. I don't remember that part of it too much, you know, being in my twenties, but, you know, nowadays I, all the questions I hear in terms of what, where things are going have to do with like AI and is AI going to replace people like creative work. And for so much, so much of the work that I do,

requires real people on camera. You know what I mean? We're shooting, athletes, we're shooting real people for businesses, you know, the CEOs were doing customer testimonials. We're traveling to dealerships and plants and like the story is with the real people. So I'm not too concerned with AI impacting that long -term. I think with anything, there'll be a fad where companies start using this. And for some people like who write,

You know, junk copy. Yeah, they're going to, their jobs are going to be taken by robots for sure. Yeah. I think there's some, some roles that'll absolutely get replaced, but if you're dealing with real people, I think it's probably pretty safe for, for now, at least. Do you, do you think like budgets are going up or down or you know, what's been your experience there over the past even five years?

Seth Lowe (53:54.446)
Yeah, budgets have definitely been impacted by COVID quite a bit. I think producers were already trying to throttle them down. And then when COVID happened, you know, I got approached by so many producers during that time who basically their attitude towards me was you should be lucky that we're even calling you for the job. So don't worry about what the rate is. It's COVID, nobody's working. You'll just take whatever it is that we'll give you. And that attitude never sits well with me. I'm looking for a creative partner in a client that...

is hiring me because of what I can bring to the table, not just because I'm the lowest bidder. So, you know, it's meant that I've had to say no to a lot of things, but I'm just a firm believer in, you know, the only way to get good at saying no is to do it again and again and again, until you become comfortable with it until it becomes familiar. And, you know, every no just opens up another opportunity for yes. I don't want to sound like a motivational speaker.

But, you know, saying no to low budgets and high expectations has been, you know, getting good at saying no to those things has been really beneficial for my career because it's helped, reinforce to me my own value. And it just leaves me open when the right opportunities do come along to say yes to those and to pour my full self into those. Yeah, I agree. I think early on, you know, it can be really easy to try to be cheaper to get the job or.

you know, someone pushes you around and you just take the rate and it's, it's really hard. I mean, is, you think it's just a confidence thing or, you know, what can, what could someone do to start saying no early on? Do you think you just have to do it or, you know, what do you do? Well, I think you're going to say yes to some things that you don't like that you kind of had a feeling might not be a good situation. And then you did say yes, and then you went into it and it wasn't a good situation.

And there are definitely what I would call red flag clients. And, you know, red flag clients are the ones who they want. It's like, they're like the trifecta of bad, you know, they want to beat you down on your rate. They don't, they're not prepared and they don't give you good creative. They expect the world. And then on top of that, they're usually the ones that you have to chase down when it comes time to actually getting paid too. So it's like,

Seth Lowe (56:09.582)
When you start seeing red flags on some of these clients, it's usually just like a bad client in general. And it takes a few years of kind of, you know, maybe saying yes to a couple of those when you're like, well, they seem red flag, but they did offer me a few thousand dollars and I haven't worked that much this month at a certain point in time. You know, like the money is nothing. It's like your emotional and mental wellbeing are far more valuable.

And so when I see what sends one of those clients sniffing around, I like to politely shut the door. Yeah. I think they're, I mean, the sad thing is those red flag clients exist just as much at like the $500 ,000 level as they do at the $500 level. Don't we know it all too well. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. if you were, you know, if you were to start out today, what do you think you would maybe do differently than you did 15 years ago?

I don't know the answer to that question because I am in, I'm a big believer in, you know, failure being a really important part of the journey, you know? So like when someone's like, Hey, what could, what would you do differently? You know, if you could avoid making these mistakes, it's like, well, you have to sort of,

run into the brick wall. And for me, sadly, it takes a couple of times doing it before that lesson really sticks in. I feel like the lessons learned in pain and suffering are the ones that like really force you to readjust your framework from what you approach these things creatively. So I would just say, I'm, I'm not necessarily proud of the failures, but I am, I embrace them, you know what I mean? As part of the journey. And so,

I think you kind of have to go into it, not knowing everything, knowing that you're going to fuck up and just being willing to, when that does happen, take responsibility for it and let it help you teach you a lesson on how to avoid that in the future. Yeah, there's not much I would do differently in my career. I mean, there's maybe some little things here and in the moment regrets that I'm like, why did I commit to this or sign up for this? But long -term, you know, at all you learn from it and you grow from it and have fun stories and it's.

Seth Lowe (58:19.086)
It's awesome. I wouldn't change any bad moment. Yeah. I have a couple of really painful ones, you know, like that come to mind right away where you're just like, it's something that still hurt a little bit, you know, but Hey, it's like, it's all part of the journey. last, last sort of like, current economy question. and maybe you, you might've already answered this a little. Do you ever feel like we're in a bit of a.

a bubble, you know, like our generation and in regards to being filmmakers and photographers, you know, we're sort of born at the, just the right time for the juxtaposition of, you know, video being accessible to us and a demand for content through social. do you think we're living in sort of a bubble or an enigma, or do you, do you think that this is here to stay and it's going to continue to grow and scale? I don't know. I think for sure we're in a, an interesting time in history, you know, had we had both of us been born.

in, you know, ancient Rome, you know, we wouldn't be doing video production. I know that. I don't know what the hell I would be doing, you know, probably in some Roman prisons somewhere. I'm not, I'm not a hundred percent sure. You know, yeah, I think it's hard to speculate on what might've happened, but I do think that, you know, the DSLR revolution was really crucial for me and a lot of my peers, you know what I mean? Getting into cameras.

looking good and being inexpensive enough for just your common, you know, person to buy without putting down a 20, 30, $40 ,000 loan right at the very beginning. Yeah. That has a huge, made a huge impact. You know, now we're in this place where there is so much of a demand for content. but it never feels to me like there's the industry is too saturated in these like medium markets, like Kansas City, you're in Peoria, you know,

I know in LA when there's a strike, you know, going on and those markets already have a lot of people working in them or Atlanta or New Orleans or New York or whatever, like that can be really challenging. But I think for small medium markets, if you really know what you're doing and you're set up for success, you know, it's, you're going to have enough work coming into, you know, keep, keep the business going for at least a while longer. What do you think? Yeah. yeah, I, I would generally agree with that.

Seth Lowe (01:00:44.174)
The, the smaller media markets, especially detached from like your major coastal hubs where there's still commerce and business. I think, there's a lot of growth potential steel still. And I, I'm pretty bullish on the future. You know, I think the individual creative and being able to directly connect with brands and bring ideas to the table is only going to get stronger. nothing against any agencies out there, but I do think that, you know,

independent people or small production companies definitely are going to continue to grow while large agencies might struggle. I think a little bit, you know, because brands can go directly to people to make something they like, or, you know, find someone easier and take a risk on someone a lot easier than, you know, your traditional 12 month or 18 month marketing campaign. That's all managed by an agency. So I think if you're in these small media markets with good size, 200, 300, you know,

small businesses around you. There's so much potential. Yeah, absolutely. Would 20 year old Travis be impressed with 40 year old Travis? man. You know, maybe in some ways I'd probably say, I, you know, I never had much of a, I don't know what I wanted at 20. You know what I mean? I'm 43 now. And I think at 20, I wanted to play in like a British rock.

wanted to be British and play in like a British rock band. And, you know, I would write these songs and, you know, at 20 years old, your ego is so confused because, you know, you desperately want to be seen as like unique. We all want to be seen as like, Hey, this is what, this is why I'm here. You know what I mean? To make music or to write or to sculpt or to paint or to work wherever. And.

You know, I was in an artistic struggle for most of my early twenties, you know, the band I was in, if, if some people like, you know, came up to us after the show and they'd be like, I really liked that song or that chorus. I mean, I was so,

Seth Lowe (01:02:53.102)
What's the word? I was so rebellious that I would like go to the band and like be like, strip the chorus down to like, you know, strip the hook out of it. You know what I mean? It's like, we'll, we'll punish you with our sound. You know, you don't get to enjoy this, you know, and now I'm, you know, focused on, you know, creating,

Seth Lowe (01:03:17.838)
these successful businesses. And sometimes I don't even think about like the artistic element of it. In fact, oftentimes I don't, I'm just approaching it as a technical problem. You know what I mean? Almost like a plumber. It's like, you've got a, you've got a toilet malfunctioning. I've got a lot of tools. I'll come into your house. I'll take a look and I'll use my 15 years of plumbing and a bunch of tools from one of my trucks to kind of fix this thing up. And.

I mean, that's a lot of our projects. They're not all like these creative endeavors where we get to go in and then truly fully express ourselves as artists. I think some of it is just taking your tools into the house and plugging the leaks and solving those problems and, you know, sending the invoice and getting paid for it and moving on to the next thing. And I don't think that's all bad. Completely agree. I went through a bit of like a self discovery, maybe career crisis. Like, what am I doing with my life moment a few years ago? And I put some time into figuring out.

what really kind of makes me tick, you know, and, you know, cause like, I had to separate, like my value is more than being a photographer. I'm a person with other things and values and gifts or whatever. And I, through that process, I kind of dialed in on the fact that I, I'm a, I love solving problems. Like I love being able to solve a problem for somebody. And it just so happened to be that all my problem solving is focused on using a camera to solve like a visual problem or a communication problem.

But I learned that, you know, I could be happy solving all kinds of problems for people. So it opened my eyes to other areas and other avenues to, to grow and connect with people to make money through solving problems. But it also gave me this realization that, really all my clients have our communication problems or visual problems with, you know, whether it's like a video you're making for internal communications or a marketing piece or whatever it is. And when I shifted my mindset to being like, how can I solve my clients problems rather than.

How can I be cool and creative? It just totally changed my career trajectory. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I think that, you know, we do both. We are creative in the ways that we solve our clients' problems, but you have to just sort of be like technically an expert, you know, in order to do what we do. You have to understand the gear. You have to understand...

Seth Lowe (01:05:34.99)
the technology, you have to understand, you know, the, the schedule, you have to understand how to manage crews. You have to understand how to do, how to communicate professionally with the client. I mean, there are so many things that just come down to technical mastery that go well beyond any kind of like unique creative creative expression.

Yeah, I, I actually think that's one of the biggest pieces of advice I give to younger people. You know, it's so much easier now to replicate an end look without knowing the technical process of how you arrive there. And that can be great for, you know, an image this big on your cell phone or something, but you know, at some point it doesn't get you far enough and it's not going to be, without those skills, you're not going to go far or really get to a point where you can make good money and have a successful career.

Cause eventually people will see through it and realize that, you just kind of know how to emulate. You don't know how to actually create and do it. Yeah. I've worked with some real geniuses on set that aren't in the industry anymore because people didn't like being around them. it takes a lot more than just, the ability to execute too. It takes just basic people skills. Yeah. Being polite, being respectful, being courteous, being prompt when asked a question by your client. I mean,

All those things are equally, if not more important than the actual gear and the ability to execute in the first place. Yeah, completely. Do you think your career and success are a result of luck or hard work? shit. I mean, I don't know how to quantify luck. I do know that I'm very determined. My partner says, tells me often that I'm the most determined person that she's ever met. She knows that once I get an idea in my head, like I'll

hack away at it for a good long while until I kind of get to get to a point where I'm like, okay, like this is how I can solve this problem. So I think hard work is essential, but I think there's a lot of people out there doing hard work, you know, like not just me. What about you? I think it's a pretty good, pretty good blend. You know, I mean, you know, if you work really hard when a lucky moment or a moment you can't control happens, you're ready for it.

Seth Lowe (01:07:53.486)
You know, I mean, you absolutely need those moments. You know, you need that person to give you the chance, that client that sees, or that art director that sees like, Hey, you know, this guy, I think he has what it takes and maybe he's young or he's pretty green, but I love the way he does this. Let's give him a shot. You need that person to come along, you know, and take that risk on you. Or you need to be at that random charity event where you're, you're miserable shooting coverage of the event, but you meet that.

person who owns a small business that needs an ad made and they, you know what I mean? You need those luck moments, but you got to work hard and be ready to jump on them and, and know how to, yeah, I can, I can make a brand video for your company and here's what it takes. You know, it costs X amount of money and we're going to hire the crew members and I've got the capital or the gear or I know how to rent the gear or whatever, you know, you, you have to be ready to really capitalize on those moments. Yeah. I think that that's the hard thing to quantify the luck part. You know, there's part of you that's like, I had this one client and I randomly met them.

you know, and then end up doing all these things that, but if maybe if it wasn't them, it would be someone else. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I, I think there's probably a ton of luck moments that pass by all of us just because we're not at that level to be aware of the lucky thing in front of us and to take advantage of it. Right. I think you're right though, that if an op, if a fortuitous moment presents itself, you have to be ready to capitalize it in the right way to really turn it into something beneficial for you and your company long -term. Yeah. And.

being ready to capitalize it for me doesn't mean like being willing to take the risk or say yes, but actually having like the tools to do it, the connections to pull it off, the resources, you know, the business, you know, knowledge, whatever that takes that that's the being ready, not just the yeah, I can do that. Yeah, 100%. Well, Travis, thanks for coming on today. It's been just fantastic chatting with you. I love every conversation we have. I learned so much and I'm sure our listeners will as well. Yeah, I really appreciate you inviting me to be on the podcast. It's always fun catching up.

I consider you a good friend and I like watching you on your journey as well. Thanks so much. Hey, if you want to connect with Travis, I'll have a link to his Instagram and CineKit list in the show notes below. Thank you. All right. See you. Bloop. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of The Solo Creative. If you enjoyed it, I hope you share it and you can connect with us on Instagram at the Solo Creative pod. Hit us up with any questions or suggestions for show guests. Thanks and have a great week.