We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aaron Roberts. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aaron below.
Aaron, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Betting on yourself can be one of the hardest things to do.
You have probably heard before that the hardest part is taking the initial leap. And that’s not wrong. Quitting your day job. Dropping your savings on an investment in your business. Leveraging capital investments and credit card lines to keep you afloat. Whether it’s a small video business, a restaurant, a clothing line… the risk of “losing everything” is what usually stops people from ever taking the leap.
But what I have found is that when you re-define success, and in turn, redefine failure, the risk of “losing everything” looks much smaller in the face of risking “what if I never achieve all of my hopes and dreams because I sit here continuing down the same path I am on.”
When I quit my last full-time day job, working as a lab-tech for a Dermatopathology company, I was only 22 years old. I had decided college wasn’t a fit for me out of high school, and bounced around doing odd jobs for awhile before starting a small production company on the side (shoutout to the OG team at Blue Vision Entertainment!)
And when I used up all of my PTO to shoot my first TV Pilot, The Cast Members, in the fall of 2016, my boss told me it was either quit or keep filming my Pilot.
My letter of resignation was in the inbox of my boss and the owner of the company the next morning.
The risk of living a life where I was not able to finish shooting the Pilot we had taken time to write, cast, and shoot for around $4000 was far greater to me than the risk of a job that paid me $18/hr with health care benefits.
After that pilot launched my career into the smallest slivers of semi-viral internet fandom (we had over 500,000 views on Facebook and found a dedicated fanbase of 3,000+ followers), the next “risky” opportunity that set my life on the collision course of successful projects I’m looking down the barrel of right now, happened in the Summer of 2018.
I had the opportunity to produce another TV Pilot I wrote & directed, this time one with a few TV & Film actors (one from Parks & Rec!), but as production neared closer and investors kept dropping, it became clear that if this was going to get made, I was going to have to carry a lot of the risk.
So I did what any 24 year old would do…. and maxed out all my credit cards, loans, and cash flow to the tune of $30,000 or so. It was an incredible risk. It put me upside down financially.
But over a year later, when we were selected as one of the premiere Comedy TV Pilots in the world at the Catalyst Content Festival in Duluth, MN everything changed.
Did I win award after award at the festival? No.
Did I network and hit it big with an agent who helped sell the show and make all my money back? No.
In fact, I spent most of the night on the final day of the festival in all sorts of doubt about everything. Why am I putting myself through this? What good was any of this if I still feel I’m at square one? Should I just quit?
Lucky enough, long ago I learned that if you can redefine the scope of what ‘failure’ is, then you can always find the reason you’re on the path you found yourself.
Failure, for me, would only be NOT trying. Failure for me, would be NOT finishing a project because I let my fear get in the way.
Failure isn’t not winning any awards at the Festival. Because during the Festival, I listened to what was happening in Duluth Minnesota. I listened to the head of the festival, Philip Gilpin, talk about how they wanted to create a movement in Duluth that brought the film industry back in a big way. Tax incentives, production rebates.
So I returned to San Diego. My team and I started rewriting a feature film to be set in Duluth Minnesota (a feature film based off that very first TV Pilot). And when Duluth came through with Production Incentives, we were one of the first companies granted their new rebate.
And now, heading into Summer 2022, we have a total of 66% of production rebates in Minnesota, distribution for our feature film that should start production in the late summer of this year.
I am at a place where everything is lining up for all my hard work to finally pay off.
But if I never took that initial risk. Or the secondary risk. Or the third one of setting my movie in Duluth Minnesota.
I wouldn’t be ready to start achieving all of my wildest dreams.
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?
At 28 years old I bring well over a decade of industry experience to my company Rising Tides Creative. I grew up on film sets of my Father’s award winning commercial Production Company and always had a knack for visual storytelling.
Besides producing and creating TV Pilots, docu-series and feature films, Rising Tides Creative was really born out of a way to do creative services better; both for the client and the creative.
There is nothing the pandemic taught business owners more than the fact if their business wasn’t online, or had a good digital presence, then they essentially ceased to exist. In a world of to-go and delivery only, curbside pickup and a massive shift to e-commerce more than every before, if your business isn’t in the Digital Hospitality industry, you suffered massive losses or in some cases had to close your business altogether.
While our primary focus is on restaurants and hospitality brands; a strong, user and mobile friendly website, mixed with high quality photo and video content that authentically tells the story of your business is applicable across every single industry.
Rising Tides Creative is set up to be a single source resource for your business in all things creative. We can seamlessly blend with your existing marketing and creative departments, or we can act as the entire media arm of your company (as we do with one of our clients Cali BBQ Media – yes, a BBQ Media company exists and they do their BBQ as good as their content!)
We help strategize your brand or businesses messaging and core story, philosophy, values and what makes you unique. We then plan monthly, quarterly or semi-annual content shoots to “show not tell” what your business is all about. Then we publish this content EVERYWHERE possible.
And the flip side of this equation is we want to make being a creative a sustainable job. The creator economy is tough. The freelance world can seem impossible to navigate if you’re taking the initial risk and looking to jump in.
But between our upcoming education courses and in person classes and the systems’ we are building to seamlessly integrate the creatives with the business community who so badly need them, is what will make Rising Tides Creative a household name sooner than later.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding part of living my life the way I have chosen to live is that I am living fully authentically to who I am and I know I am living a life where I will not have major regrets in whatever and whenever my final moments are on this earth.
That was something that has been ingrained in me since I was a child. I’m not sure by who or what, but the thought of working a “day job” never sat well with me. Offices, repetition, continually competition, spending most of your life inside…. I knew it would lead to an unfilled life.
So while there are plenty of tough days being a creative – we are ALL our own worst critic, which was something important I’ve learned from creative professionals who are much more successful than I am – even the days when I am at my lowest points of feeling like I am not where I should be or not getting the breaks I was expecting, I know in the long run, I am still on an authentic path that is bringing me closer to achieving everything I hope to achieve.
Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?
David Metlzer’s Connected to Goodness is a guide book for how I see myself and my business.
Some people may take or leave parts about “manifesting your dreams”, and admittedly, I take and leave some parts of it myself – but what struck me most were the 4 tenants he builds into his business that I modeled and created them to be the core of Rising Tides:
Gratitude: practicing daily. Grateful for the work, for the clients, for being able to work in an industry that I love
Empathy: the ability to see my clients, coworkers, partners etc. as fully formed humans who are going to make mistakes, and priding myself on empathic responses.
Accountability: taking quick accountability for things that have gone wrong without blame, shame or justification.
Effective Communication: all of these three strategies, when implemented and practiced by an individual or a group help lead to effective communication. Communication without an ego, communication with empathy, communication with accountability.
This can grow you personally to new heights, and it can do the same for your business.
Contact Info:
- Website: risingtidescreative.com
- Instagram: @alwaysarob
- Facebook: @alwaysarob
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-david-roberts-a7287b187/
- Twitter: @alwaysarob
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/risingtidescreative
Image Credits
For all the photos besides the Skrewball product photos please credit Andrew Barrack (@AndrewBarrack) and then for the three product photos please credit Emily Villedieu (@TheReelEmily) Thank you!