We were lucky to catch up with Bobby Burns recently and have shared our conversation below.

Bobby, appreciate you joining us today. Being a business owner can be really hard sometimes. It’s rewarding, but most business owners we’ve spoken sometimes think about what it would have been like to have had a regular job instead. Have you ever wondered that yourself? Maybe you can talk to us about a time when you felt this way?

I think this is a recurring thought for any small business owner. It’s even more prevalent in creative fields and for me personally, with multiple business, it often on my mind. As with many things though, it’s important to put these thoughts into perspective. It’s easy to slip into a “grass is always greener” mentality. My main endeavor is in the wedding industry, with 16 years under my belt creating top tier, highly creative wedding films that stand out from the masses. It’s easy for me to look at friends and family who get weekends off every single week. Who clock out at 5pm and leave their work in the office, or who get to slack off (to a certain extent) and still have the same amount of money show up in their account every two weeks. Those things seem so foreign to me and also so desirable. However, it’s important to acknowledge the flip side of that. Those same people see me with an extremely flexible schedule, able to take vacation at a moment’s notice, choose not to work in most scenarios if I’m not feeling it or want to prioritize something else, Or making good money from what seems like one day of work per week. Of course each of us are not fully acknowledging the downsides of each other’s lifestyles. Again, it’s easy to fall into the “grass is always greener” mentality, but I think that’s just a human condition. I am grateful for the work I’ve been able to do, the impact I’ve had in people’s lives, the trust that clients have given me, and to be able to do a job that I love and enjoy the pros AND the cons of that job. Even in times where I envy a set 9-5 schedule and weekends off, I know I’m not made for that life.

Bobby, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m primarily a wedding filmmaker and educator in the space, but also do a fair amount of commercial videography for companies large and small. Additionally, I’ve just opened a combined fitness and coworking space in Minneapolis as my most recent venture.

I always enjoyed filmmaking and had the opportunity to intern for a very similar company to mine while I was in high school. I’d love to say that I fell in love with weddings and knew that was what I wanted to do long term but that wouldn’t be totally honest. While I did love shooting weddings and certainly worked hard starting my business in college and filling my weekends even then to continue to get better, I never thought that was what I’d do for a career. I wanted to make films, or at least I thought I did, and anticipated that I’d just work a “whatever” job if I needed to. However, come graduation I had built a company, one that worked and was profitable. I had made a name for myself while wedding films were still in their transition phase to what they are today. I had the ability to be full time right out of college and just never looked back. I’ve always pushed myself to become better, really trying never to settle which is a standard I’ve held myself to for better or worse.

A bit later in my career I dove into education, teaching others in the industry how to shoot better, edit better, and run a better business. I’d upload youtube videos on topics that were close to my heart and I eventually caught the attention of one of the largest wedding filmmaking platforms on youtube, Wedding Film School. I came on as a partner of the channel and now own the wedding film school brand along with two other top tier wedding filmmakers in the industry and we are doing our best to put out high quality tutorials, gear reviews, behind the scenes and more in addition to our weekly podcast and live film reviews to our nearly 175,000 subscribers.

We’d appreciate any insights you can share with us about selling a business.

I haven’t sold a business, but I did bring two others into a business as owners and it’s one of the best decisions I have made for that business. I think it’s easy as business owners to believe that you need to wear every hat. Or perhaps that you need to wear every hat for your business until you are making X amount of money. And there is certainly some truth to that. However, bringing on people who can help build your business is invaluable and in the long run is totally worth it. Through bringing other people into the business we have drastically expanded our offerings, increased our uploads and maybe most importantly kept each other sane through the busy times and tough decisions. I am not the best at every single role for my business and it’s important to be able to acknowledge that and bring people in who are better than I am.

Have you ever had to pivot?

The decision to educate in the wedding filmmaking space really developed out of a realization that at the time I was becoming bored with my career path. I was running a successful business by any measure but through a random conversation with a wedding guest I realized I no longer picked up my camera for fun, only if I was getting paid. I hated that and struggled a lot with that thought. Through it I decided to teach what I had learned to others as a bit of a creative outlet. I was good at it, but more importantly I enjoyed it. It wasn’t something I was paid for (at that time) and it made me love creating again, something I had lost for a little while. That pivot was huge to my future success in the wedding filmmaking business and also ultimately became it’s own business as well. As a result I’m incredibly protective of the amount of work I will take on and the projects I choose to be involved with.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.redmonddigitalmedia.com
• Instagram: @redmonddigitalmedia
• Facebook: facebook.com/redmonddigitalmedia
• Youtube: youtube.com/weddingfilmschool