We were lucky to catch up with Christin Baker recently and have shared our conversation below.

Christin, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. So, we’d appreciate if you could open up about your growth story and the nitty, gritty details that went into scaling up.

I have had the opportunity to be with my company for 16 years. I was there in the beginning when we launched and had 10 subscribers to our brand new tiny streaming platform and was there to celebrate when we hit 5,000 active subscribers. After all these years we have had over 17,000 people subscribe to TelloFilms.com and it’s been quite the journey for the largest Lesbian/Queer platform and longest-running LGBTQ+ streaming platform.

I have experienced Tello going from my part-time job to my full-time job with employees. Don’t misunderstand, TelloFilms.com is still a small company but it has grown. As a small business we have to make choices about marketing and ROI for our very limited funds. I’m here to tell you what worked for us. That might not work for your company but it might get you to think about where you want to go next on your journey.

Know this first about streaming platforms: our currency is content. We need new content and we need it as often as possible. When you don’t have Netflix or Hulu money you have to become very good at picking and choosing what you do and how you do it. So, our first funds went to webseries content. I made the choice to invest in a comedy. Because I was working with a producer who could get us free places to stay and free horses, we decided to make a Cowgirl Comedy. I then looked at employing actors who had a social following. This is something people still do today but my hope was to get press coverage and get the actors to post about the project. Keep in mind that the pay wasn’t much at all and I was very lucky that actors said yes to the project. These actors didn’t say yes for me but they did say yes to my co-producer. I realized how important it was to partner with someone who could get good people with a following. I used this a few times in my career. I could come to the table with a little money to fund a project but I needed someone who had the juice to get good actors because of their relationships. It was a great collaboration, I had a little money but not contacts and these co-producer had contacts but needed production funds.

Think about what you bring to any collaboration and what you need and then start to partner. It doesn’t have to be a forever partnership, I’ve collaborated with people on five projects and others it was just one project. You have some skill set or some asset people need, figure out how to leverage that as best you can.

That project was released and we went from 10 subscribers to 300 subscribers. Good but still not enough to really pay for our costs or make more. I had to really get creative with how to make content. It wasn’t until we were five projects in that Tello hit one that was very popular and grew subscriptions where we could start to make marketing decisions. The company was always on social media – that was very important for our growth, we also did our best to get our projects reviewed. That was one of the keys to our early growth, press through reviews.

Let me pause for a moment to mention that we did lots of crowdfunding early in our days to help pay for things. This was something we had to do and we could give away merch. This took a lot of work for me outside of being a filmmaker. I had to package and ship all of our perks that people bought. I have made more trips to the post office than I ever thought I would when I dreamed of running a streaming platform and making content but it’s something that I had to do because I was totally committed to this and this was a way to make it happen. The ego has to go away when you’re in the trenches and working to make your dreams happen.

Four years into Tello Films and we were doing well, I still had a full-time job, but we could look at how we market and get press. A few things we did was sending actors to lesbian events. There are a few around the US and while I’m not sure if that was helpful it’s something we did as part of our marketing. We also sponsored a LGTBQ Film Festival in Austin, TX. That didn’t get us any real recognition. We used coupon codes to see if we got any sales. Neither of those things drove sales, which were what I needed. I think those things are good for brand building but not really for driving sales.

What drove sales every time was press for our new content.

The biggest thing that we did to grow name recognition was to make a Holiday RomCom movie. This one I would have never guessed but that’s what really started to move the needle for us. This was in 2019 into 2020 and over 10 years working on Tello Films.

Let me pause one more time here to say: there were times I got really frustrated and down. I felt like there was no way out of the hole of “I’ve never heard of your company.” You can’t give up. You have to keep trying different things to get your company to break through and get to a point where you have scaled up where you can quit your job and work full time on the thing you love. For me it wasn’t an Emmy nomination, it was a Hallmark-like Holiday RomCom for the lesbian/queer community. This got us noticed, mostly because we cast a few actors who had a lesbian following.

We had a lot of social media love, we didn’t even have a lot of press (that did come later) but we had so much social love for these actors that it drove sales of the movie and subscriptions in TelloFilms.com and now I hear “Oh, I’ve heard of that movie (platform)” or even “I love that movie! That’s yours?” Here is now where we spend our marketing dollars:

Google and Bing ads
Facebook Instagram ads
A great PR person
Social media company
Podcast interview placements (this has been a fun one as well)

We are starting to get into TikTok ads and mostly because it’s getting more difficult to find the lesbian community on Instagram and Facebook through ads but TikTok has an algorithm that is more helpful in finding the community. This is going to be a test for us so we will see what happens.

What I hope to do next is sponsorship for brand building purposes. I think you have to put money first into what will drive subscription (which for us will always be original content, that’s the key first and foremost) but then you can move to brand building and that’s what we plan to do next.

At the end of the day, you just never know what’s going to be the thing that makes you break through. It’s never fast or easy but the key is persistence and trying new things.

I hope this journey has helped you in some way!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am an award winning director and Emmy nominated producer. I’ve been playing with video producing and storytelling since I was 13, after my family got their first VHS camcorder. I started out directing music videos and SNL parodies with the neighborhood kids and moved on to start my own digital distribution and production company, tellofilms.com. Tello is the first lesbian/queer network to receive an Emmy Nomination. The series Secs & EXECS has received a 2017 Emmy Nomination for Mindy Sterling, Outstanding Actress in a Short Form Comedy/Drama Series. In 2019 the series “Riley Parra” received 2 Emmy nominations for actresses Liz Vassey and Carolyn Ratteray.

I was early in the streaming content creation and founded Tello Films in 2009. I also love directing and was awarded Best Director for her work on Maybelle at the 2016 London Raindance Film Festival. I’m a member of the Producers Guild of America as well as the Television Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

I have directed am a southern girl at heart and have made 3 Lesbian/Queer Holiday RomComs all set in the south, the most recent being “Merry & Gay”. I’m also working on a limited thriller series “Scare BNB”. That follows “Christmas at the Ranch” “I Hate New Year’s” and “Season of Love”, which was the first Hallmark-esque Lesbian/Queer Holiday RomCom.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My passion is giving the lesbian/queer community movies and series where they can see themselves in the stories. It’s critical for under represented communities to see themselves.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I try to be my most authentic self. I have never wanted to seem bigger than I am, misrepresent our budget or size. I have always told my story and I think people can see and feel that in my communication.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.tellofilms.com
• Instagram: @tellofilms
• Facebook: TelloFilms
• Twitter: @tellofilms

Image Credits
J. Nathalie Taylor