Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Chris Barrett. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Chris 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?

Our mission in all of the entrepreneurial avenues we are part of is to make people’s lives better. I know that sounds really cliche, but we live in a world that cuts corners; less chips in a bag and charge the same price, products that break faster so the consumer has to buy it again, etc. What we strive to do is to go above and beyond in our services and deliver products or experiences that make people’s lives better, or at the very least, satisfied with the results. In our company, Barefoot Studios, a lot of what we do comes from having poor experiences in which we have said, “we can do that a whole lot better.” It started out with DJing weddings. My wife and I had plenty of experiences going to weddings with terrible DJs. The kind where they forget to bring the correct playlist, play the wrong songs, take 12 smoke breaks, have insufficient gear, etc. and we just said to ourselves, “we can do this better.” So we bought the correct gear, advertised on Groupon, and within our first year got a couples choice award from Wedding Wire. We don’t “charge per add ons”, we simply do everything we can to customize an experience to a client so they will have the best possible experience. Today, we are primarily doing videography work, teaching music lessons, and running a YouTube kids show called Ivan the Inspector. All of these were created with the same mission: to help improve someone’s life. So whether its the best, worry-free wedding, video advertisements to propel your business, or educational kids programming that will entertain your kiddo and help them learn things about the world, we strive to do our very best.

Chris, 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?

In our company, Barefoot Studios, a lot of what we do comes from having poor experiences in which we have said, “we can do that a whole lot better.” It started out with DJing weddings. My wife and I had plenty of experiences going to weddings with terrible DJs. The kind where they forget to bring the correct playlist, play the wrong songs, take 12 smoke breaks, have insufficient gear, etc. and we just said to ourselves, “we can do this better.” So we bought the correct gear, advertised on Groupon, and within our first year got a couples choice award from Wedding Wire. We don’t “charge per add ons”, we simply do everything we can to customize an experience to a client so they will have the best possible experience.

I think a huge thing that sets us apart from others is that we think through a lot, if not all of the details so our clients don’t have to. Whether it’s planning the events of a wedding reception, or the story behind a company’s video and how to market it, we make sure its thought through on the front end so you’re not saying, “I wish we would have thought about that earlier.”

Today, we are primarily doing videography work, teaching music lessons, and running a YouTube kids show called Ivan the Inspector. All of these were created with the same mission: to help improve someone’s life. We strive to give the best, worry-free wedding, videos to propel your business, impactful music lessons, or educational kids programming that will entertain your kiddo and help them learn things about the world.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of the things we had to do was keep our business going despite moving to different states. Just when we were building lots of clients in Minnesota for DJing weddings, I took a new job out in California. So we took the DJing part of our company out there. Then we ended up moving back to Minnesota and had to revive the business and tell clients we were back in Minnesota. We’ve had a couple kids since moving back so we aren’t able to do as many weddings and have shifted into focusing more on videography and Ivan the Inspector (kids show). But it was definitely a grind to have to get everything we once built back.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

We primarily focus on videography in addition to music lessons in this season. One of the biggest reasons is because we had kids and it was simply easier to go film on location and then edit videos once the kids went to bed. We found it worked better for our family/life rhythm. Weddings on a Saturday night still happen, but we take less gigs simply because it does take more of a toll on our family and we never want our creative endeavors to trump family life.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.barefootstudios.pro
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barefootstudiosmn
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/IvanTheInspector