We were lucky to catch up with Brian Guilmette recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Brian, thanks for joining us today. The first dollar your business earns is always special and we’d love to hear how your brand made its first dollar of revenue.
In the years prior to me starting my own creative business, I was working as a strength and conditioning coach in Cary, North Carolina, in a sport performance facility. I’d been there for a few years and had started to grow increasingly uncertain about where I could take that career. It can be brutal. Even with a degree in Exercise Science, and several certifications from the most respected governing bodies, it’s still a “pay your dues” industry. You start out by doing unpaid internships, low paying internships or assistant jobs, and your first paid positions are just not competitive…often low hourly wages with zero benefits. I was already burnt out and searching my soul for what was going to fulfill me. The only thing I knew for sure was that I have been a creative person my whole life. From drawing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles with my cousin Rob as a child, to teaching myself photoshop and html as a teen, to picking up guitar, going to music college and immersing myself in the early 2000’s Boston music scene, I loved expressing myself through creating. When I started my new career in the field of strength and conditioning, I couldn’t shake this inherent need to just…make things. This turned into things like designing graphics for my boss’s weight room, or editing photographs taken around the gym to be used in the marketing materials I would ultimately help create.
In late 2016 I had it in my mind that I needed to plan an escape from strength and conditioning and get back to my roots…the only thing that made sense was to look for something in marketing. There was only one problem, I had never worked in marketing, nor did I have a degree in a related field. I felt completely unprepared to enter the job search. I needed to start learning how to do things and gain some experience. I wrote out things that I wanted to learn how to do, or have some experience doing and I presented it to my boss as a change of my position. I actually wrote up a new job description for a “director of content” which was quickly accepted by my boss. In fact, he really didn’t edit anything I had written down, but instead he just copied and pasted what I wrote up into my new contract.
I put my skills to work, reviving an old podcast but this time as a video roundtable discussion with the coaches. I took over my company’s Instagram account, posting photos, videos, and graphics. I upgraded our written member of the month profile to a video format, and I produced vlogs and promotional content for events. I refined my skills by diving into what I truly do best – self-teaching. I consumed as much content as I could on graphic design, videography, anything that was considered “content marketing.” At that time, Gary Vee was taking over social media and I left no Gary Vee-stone unturned in my pursuit of learning what he had to say.
Around this time, I had gained a little recognition around the gym after spearheading a rebrand. My cousin Rob, the one I grew up drawing Ninja Turtles with, had become a graphic designer and I asked for some advice. He told me to practice redesigning logos, even if they weren’t actually sanctioned jobs. I started with my gym’s logo…which my boss ended up loving and within days we started replacing the old logo with my new logo.
I also had noticed someone who started coming around the gym to train – a professional BMX athlete named Josh – who had a significant online presence and was pumping out content in a way that was clear he also consumed a lot of Gary Vee content. I got up some nerve one day, walked up to him and basically said something along the lines of “Hey, I think we both are into Gary Vee…I create a lot of content for the gym…so if you ever needed anyone to help out with your content, I’d be down.” I started doing a few graphics for Josh, and put together a couple short videos of him working out, but none of it was for money. However, Josh did end up paying me my first dollar. In June 2017 Josh hired me to produce a video for a BMX benefit he was putting on for a friend who was battling some serious medical issues. I still remember the day Josh came into my office at the gym and handed me the check. While Josh did pay me my first dollar, he actually is way more responsible for me having my own business than it seems. See, Josh is not only a former BMX Athlete, he’s also a survivor of multiple brain tumors and has retired from BMX to dedicate his time to helping coach people to overcome adversity and be high performers just like himself.
Shortly after filming that BMX video, I got a job in Charlotte, NC as a marketing manager for a small business. I could no longer create content for Josh. However, despite knowing several video and content creators, Josh always kept me in mind. And in 2018, he proposed an idea – to quit my job, officially start my business and take him on his my first client. He needed help creating content to supplement his lifestyle as a keynote speaker, and coach. It was a huge risk for both of us but an opportunity I could not say no to. Josh paid me my first dollar, he was my first client and it was his confidence, trust and loyalty to me, and the belief I had in myself that I had the skills to deliver for him that started this whole thing.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I started out by creating content for Josh, whom I talked about in my previous answer. Together we created everything form vlogs, to documentary style brand videos, online course materials, and other social media content. My work was heavily video-based but I had been falling in love with the idea of having a “brand.” Slowly I started becoming more and more like Josh’s brand manager that just a content creator. Other entrepreneurs like Josh, and even small businesses that got to know the things Josh and I were doing started saying things like “we need a Brian.” I believe I have a unique blend of empathy, observation, and intuition that manifests into an ability to quickly understand a business owner’s wants, needs, and feelings. This has allowed me to earn trust and build stronger relationships with my clients and do it fast.
On the surface I provide creative services for my clients. I sometimes refer to myself as a creative handyman, as I provide a wide range of services like brand strategy and logo design, graphic design, web design & development, video production, social media management, among other forms of content creation. However, at a deeper level, what is most important to me is that my clients stay in alignment with their brand as they communicate their story with their customers. For new businesses and entrepreneurs who are just getting started, or even small businesses who never really “defined” their brand, this starts with a discovery period. By taking them through various brand strategy workshops, I help my clients define their brand and show them how to follow this as a “north star” as we then create the more tangible stuff like a logo, website, or video. Larger more established companies use these workshops too, but often times as a way to reconnect with their brand. Focusing on team-wide brand clarity makes any creative initiative markedly more efficient, and have a greater impact on what’s most important – their business goals.
I want potential clients to know that team alignment, brand clarity, and impactful business outcomes are more important than any one graphic, video, or piece of content I can make you.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
By late 2019, Josh (see previous answers) and I were growing beyond his own operations as a business. With his compelling story that resonates with pretty much anyone with a heart and my capabilities in video production and story telling, other brands had started reaching out to use to produce brand videos. We produced one brand video for a metabolic health brand which was debuted at the country’s largest metabolic health conference in February of 2020. A lot of the expo vendors at the conference got a chance to see the video and were impressed. There was a buzz about us and other brands were asking to have us collaborate. One brand even pulled me aside and offered to fly me out to their headquarters and film some promotional material for them. If you’ve been paying attention to the dates you may see where this is headed. Just a month later the world shut down due to COVID and the uncertainty led to a lot of companies saving money. Josh’s travel and speaking schedule became non-existent, and I had no idea what was going to happen with my own business. At the time, Josh was really my only client, other than a few one-off projects here and there. I had put in my biggest proposal for a video project yet to the founder of the metabolic conference we were at…just days before the shut down, only to have it put on hold indefinitely. I pivoted a bit with Josh and we finished some online coursework for his coaching business, but ultimately circumstances allowed Josh to move to Florida and our work together just couldn’t be the same.
I was left with pretty much zero clients and no outlook on the future. As I alluded to in previous answers, I didn’t start my business in a traditional way. Most have a side hustle and build up enough clients that they can quit their day jobs. I didn’t have a side hustle, Josh just asked for me to take a chance and I grabbed the opportunity.
Being new to owning a business, not really understanding at the time how self-employment taxes worked, and a healthy fear of money ended up being a great combination. I saved way too much money for taxes that year and ended up with a solid safety net in my bank account. With this savings, albeit leaking like a sieve, I furthered my risk taking by not going back to the 9-5 life. I took my background as a coach, and my skills in design and made a pivot. I started learning how to facilitate problem-solving workshops, branding workshops, basically any workshop that helps businesses get aligned, solve problems, and prioritize their solutions. I went back to where I started and asked my former gym boss to do some workshopping which led to a great opportunity. Together we developed an online coaching education course to help stimulate a new revenue source for the gym. I took a huge risk with this. With gyms being force to shut down, he didn’t exactly have money to spend but I believed in what we were doing and we did a deal that would pay me a percentage of sales of the course. Within hours of launching, the course passed $12K, and within that year, I had enough revenue to keep the lights on.
Bouncing back from COVID gave me a new level of confidence in myself and my business.
Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?
A large percentage of my clients have a connection to the gym I once worked at. This means they’ve already gained my trust. I’ve coached them and guided them through hundreds of workouts. I’ve boosted their confidence, I’ve taught them skills, and I’ve empowered them to be stronger physically and mentally every day. In my opinion, this has a profound effect on the odds of making a sale when they come to me for creative services. But there’s been one sale that I honestly didn’t think I’d ever pull off so soon in my journey, regardless of already having the potential client’s trust. A former member at the gym had just became president of a multi-million dollar company in healthcare – one that was born out of one of the biggest health systems in the country. She needed a full re-brand, starting with a name change – then a whole new brand identity, new website, collateral, the whole nine. I had previously done some smaller brand strategy workshops with entrepreneurs, but never something so comprehensive and so important to get right. The bigger, more established a company, the more is at stake when making such drastic changes. I knew the value of what they needed, I knew the impact it would have, and more importantly I knew the consequences of getting it wrong. I put together my biggest proposal ever and a bigger “price tag” than I’d ever thought I’d put in a proposal at least this soon into my business. I had two things going for me. First, she was a member at the gym I worked at…she saw what I did with the rebranding there. I didn’t have an extensive portfolio but this one rebranding – which wasn’t even my business, I did it while still employed as a coach – was a significant “work example.” Second, she had taken group classes with me in the past so she at least knew my demeanor and quality of work.
When I got the approval that she accepted my proposal and terms, it was one of the greatest moments of my life, not just as a business owner. It was highly validating and gave me so much confidence. I think one of the toughest parts of being a new business owner, especially a solopreneur, is the amount of imposter syndrome that can come with it. It’s easy to feel like a fraud sometimes…to feel like “why would anyone want to pay me even $10 dollars for what I do?” So to be trusted like that, to feel valued, really helped me feel like I belong among my business-owning peers.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.createdbybrian.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/createdbybrian
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guilmette/
Image Credits
Second photo of me holding camera with grey shirt – Photography by Jackie Lauricella