We recently connected with Jordan Drew and have shared our conversation below.

Jordan, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Alright – so having the idea is one thing, but going from idea to execution is where countless people drop the ball. Can you talk to us about your journey from idea to execution?

As with many creative businesses, this started out as a passion. I would always shoot photos and videos of my friends skateboarding and take along my camera when we went backpacking. It was a very innocent and natural start for me, and the seed was planted by complete stranger’s comments regarding my work. It gave me the confidence and little jump start I needed to make more content. That’s when the idea of a career with a camera in my hands began.

The idea began to sprout when I was working for a non-profit in Truckee, CA, the High Fives Foundation. Their goal is to assist athletes who have suffered life altering injuries by getting them back out into the outdoors. My job was pretty much being the mail kid, the bottom of the totem pole, but I found myself useful at events and camps bringing my camera along, capturing the action and documenting what the non-profit offered to athletes. My boss eventually started asking me to capture more and more, and whether he likes it or not (he’s been very supportive in my transition to my own business, still hiring me to this day as a freelancer), capturing content for them was where I built my portfolio and confidence to do this professionally.

This may sound extreme, but I believe to make any sort of change, the pain of staying stagnant has to be greater than the pain of changing. Something that I just couldn’t get off of my mind was, even though I had the coolest desk job you could ever ask for, I still found it painful getting up to go to work or twiddling my thumbs “looking busy”. I just knew I couldn’t work for someone else. I would rather stress over my own business that stress for someone else. I put in my two weeks in February 2020, tremendous timing.

What kept me going during that transition was 1) Doing the “boring” tasks to make my business legitimate and standout from other creatives that do this work on the side and 2) Being EXTREMEMLY communicative and providing far more value than my prices back then reflected.

The process of going from idea to execution included paperwork, setting up my finances to be legit, setting up my website, and automating tasks like email follow ups and contact forms. It seems boring, but this really took my idea and made it a concrete, legitimate business. There was a sense of pride that came along with this as well. I felt like my own boss, and if I was going to be the boss of a company, I better make it pretty cool!

One of the biggest things I had to figure out was the customer service side. I was my own business now, the buck stops with ME. The customer’s contact point, me. If Alpine Media had a major screw up, it was on…only me. I quickly realized that I had to be better and had to over deliver to make my young company stand out. Once I started over delivering and stopped making excuses, that’s when it really started to solidify and take off.

Jordan, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a photographer and videographer based out of Reno, Nevada. I spend a lot of time capturing images in the Sierra Nevada, Lake Tahoe, Black Rock Desert, and so many more of the spectacular locations I’m fortunate enough to be around. I first got into photo and video work like many others, just carrying a camera around and documenting my adventures with friends. It started at a very young age, growing up in the San Francisco Bay area, when I skateboarded a lot. I would be the guy with the camera at all times. Once I moved up to the mountains when I turned 20, skateboarding was replaced by backpacking, rock climbing, snowboarding, and mountain biking. All the while, I was still the kid with the camera. What really kicked it off was a backpacking trip of the John Muir Trail, in the Sierra Nevada, where I took videos and photos throughout the entire 20 day journey. This trip still influences a lot of my work today and is what pushed me to start taking this photo/video thing more seriously.

As of right now, Alpine Media is essentially split into two “sub-companies”, Alpine Media Weddings and Alpine Media House. The former speaks for itself. I provide local and destination wedding videography services in the Reno/Tahoe area and beyond. The Lake Tahoe region is the perfect place for people to have the big wedding of their dreams, or elope in a quite forest next to the most beautiful alpine lake in the world (in my humble opinion). My company has great relationships with venues, photographers, DJs, planners, and florists throughout the area that really allow us to create to the best of our abilities.

Alpine Media House (AMH), focuses on commercial and documentary work. We produce content for local businesses, non-profits, and individuals. This is where our focus on the outdoors comes into play and where my early life influences my work the most. We take an adventurous approach to otherwise “cookie cutter” content. We prefer doing interviews in the woods, product photos on a mountain top in a snowstorm, and brand videos that contain visuals only possible when you get up early and put in the work to get to incredible locations. At the core of AMH is going that extra mile to bring stunning outdoor visuals to otherwise regular content to set our clients apart from the rest of the competition. As we move forward, AMH is growing into the action sports space, a natural progression for us. A background in these sports allows us to keep up with a camera in hand, and get raw, cinematic, documentary style content of athletes and outdoor brands.

We are so proud to go the extra mile, and to give an adventurous flare to any brands image. That sunrise 5 miles from the trailhead? We’ll get that timelapse. Those drone shots of snow capped peaks? We’ll get a dozen different angles. The trail runner whose shoe sponsor needs footage of them on a granite ridgeline? We’ll match their cadence with a camera in hand.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I believe very strongly that ideas are NOTHING without action. Taking action in a creative field can be extremely difficult, but a lot of people who aren’t in the industry look at me and say “Wow, must be nice, you click a button on a camera all day in these beautiful places!”

The reason I think taking action in a creative field is so strenuous and difficult is because there are so many different paths and decisions you *could* take. There are so many possibilities, that when it comes to picking one, you feel like you may be missing out on all of the other opportunities. But what I’ve learned is that you just have to pick one and go, full on. You can’t half ass it, you really need to give whatever direction you decide to go in a truly honest and 100% attempt. It’s that full on commitment into something that may not even be the right choice that can be so draining and difficult.

It’s so easy to get caught in “analysis paralysis” in the creative fields, because not only is the starting point fuzzy, or the path to where you want to get unclear, the destination is completely undefined as well! When you’re an accountant (and I love all of you accountants out there), there’s really one way to do someone’s taxes (not really, but you get the gist). When you’re a sales person, you sell the product. That’s pretty much it. But when you’re a creative business owner, even your job title is up in the air sometimes! Each task you do is so different, each photo you edit has to be done differently, and no matter how much effort you put in, art is subjective, so your client may not even like it! Mentally exhausting to say the least. That’s something I think not a lot of people think about, and really only something you can learn by going through it yourself.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I’ve said this to everyone that’s asked me “How do I start a business” or “I wish I could do what you do”, that Google and Youtube are your best friends. I am telling you, whatever it is that you want to do or learn about, there’s is SO MUCH information out there on the internet. Youtube was basically my photography degree and film school, forums answered all of the questions I had at 3 am while stuck on a project. It’s also the absolute best place to find inspiration. If you don’t know what to create, get inspired by someone and go out there and make that thing!

I am dead serious when I say that a total beginner could become proficient in at least the concepts of videography in a few months by binging Youtube videos and going out and replicating what they just watched. Never stop learning and suddenly you’ll be in a totally different place creatively than you were a year ago. Just like compound interest in a retirement account, learning compounds, and you’ll be lightyears better than you thought you could ever be before you know it.

Contact Info:

• Website: alpinemediahouse.com, alpinemediaweddings.com
• Instagram: jordan.alpinemedia