We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Paul Schmidt a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Paul thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
I began my company to serve the non-profit community by sharing and illustrating their mission using video. I’ve always been a storyteller. Not only that, but I grew up with television and film as the mediums I embraced at a very young age. I enjoyed the arena of the moving visual medium and wanted to be involved in some way. When I fully dove into broadcasting as my major early in college, I quickly discovered that broadcast journalism was not where I wanted to be. I couldn’t find my true calling until about two years after graduating from college when I was hired to join a non-profit television camp for youth with a video production arm that only produced videos for non-profits. It clicked that that is what I wanted to do from this point forward. Tell the stories of incredible organizations creating positive impacts in their communities. For that last twenty-plus years, I have done just that.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Storytelling started my interest in what I do. I’ve always been interested in storytelling and am an avid reader and watcher of movies and television shows. Unsurprisingly, in high school, I was selected to attend an exclusive television camp in Seattle and jumped at the chance.
It was the wisest thing I could’ve ever done because I learned how to do things in front of the camera and learned a lot about what happens behind the camera when it comes to video production. That played a significant role as the theater aspect when I went to college didn’t work out. One of the side projects I worked on at the camp won an exclusive or prestigious national award, solidified my desire to do things behind the camera, and put me on the path I am today. In college, I learned how to do live television, and from there, my first job out of college was for a government Access television station, where I learned even more about live television broadcasts, how to produce programs with a deadline, and how to coordinate the subject matter. I enjoyed that aspect immensely. Then, an opportunity to work for the camp, from which I learned everything back in Seattle, became available. I jumped at that opportunity and became one of the first full-time staff members. I also learned how to work with clients and client-side deadlines at that organization. My love of nonprofit storytelling was born there because it was also a nonprofit organization. I enjoyed that, which I carried back home to Michigan to start my business to create video stories for nonprofit clientele.
The mission of our business at UnoDeuce Multimedia is to be a storytelling agency that uses video to document the why of nonprofit organizations and socially responsible small businesses and show how they make positive impacts within their communities. We complete our mission in three ways: full-service video production, recording and editing, live event video including live streaming and multi-camera production, and podcast development. We provide expertise with anything that requires video to our clients, and we do this primarily in three areas: websites, email marketing, and events. Most importantly, we are not only a creative partner but also a technical resource, so how we approach our relationship with the client is as someone who is there to help technically and creatively to make sure that the event goes well A/V-wise. Also, the entire video is where it needs to be online, and it’s crafted in a way that responsibly and accurately illustrates the client’s mission.
What sets us apart is that we like to work with an organization that we can grow alongside. We like to be the partner in developing their story, taking it from where it is currently to where they want it to go in a visually modern way that people can engage with. That’s the essential part of how we approach our client relationships.
What I’m the proudest of my business is that we are built to impact the community as well. Since 2020, we have tracked how we have helped our clients make real strides in their fundraising efforts. We have calculated that we helped raise close to 6 million dollars in that period. That statistic warms my heart.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
In August 2019, I suffered an ischemic stroke. They put me in the hospital for 10 days and also laid me up for about a month and a half. That was the longest time I can remember being away from my business. At that time, I had two other employees, and a colleague stepped in to take my spot in management if you will. However, I learned that all the processes, templates, and things I created up to that point helped steer my current team to make things go while I was gone, and I couldn’t have been happier. From that point, we have just gotten better. We have increased our services and clientele, for instance. I gave them more autonomy regularly. We have done so much more because I unintentionally prepped us for that situation, and it worked out in our favor.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Like anybody in business in 2020, the pandemic forced us into a pivot. It forced me to lean back into the start-up phase and dive deep into live-streaming tools and applications that can expand our services because we couldn’t do regular in-person video production, which has been our bread and butter. Due to my experience in live broadcast television, I leaned into that, and we became one of the premier companies around creating live streaming events catered to ease-of-use management, branding, and all the above, to create a situation in which clients felt that they could still make a difference fundraising online. That became a regular service and created a situation in which now we regularly offer multi-camera event development and broadcasting however they need, whether live streaming or in-person, but that pivot was massive for us.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.unodeuce.com
- Instagram: @pauldeuce
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paul.j.schmidt
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pjschmidt/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2CmuOHd09wvMFNoGqNR76g
Image Credits
James Van Zile
Kat Mendez-McClure
Elisa Schmidt
Megyn Forrest