We were lucky to catch up with Freddie Carlini recently and have shared our conversation below.

Freddie, appreciate you joining us today. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

It’s probably the hardest challenge of owning a small business is taking vacations and making personal time. Just unplugging sometimes can be a feat. At the very least I usually need to bring my laptop with me “just in case” something small but important comes up and needs to be addressed, but most of the time if it’s not an email I can address from my phone, or it’s something big, I usually just reply to clients that it will be addressed when I return.

At the end of the day, what I have learned is that you are working with people. People understand vacation time, and if they don’t, they’re probably not a good client. Planning accordingly, alerting clients that you’ll be away during certain times, and completing tasks before leaving for vacation usually leads to a successful time away.

Another thing I recommend, when in a creative job, is try to make sometime on that vacation for something creatively inspiring. Work and life can get stale. Add something into your plans that can make things exciting again.

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

My name is Freddie Carlini. I am the Founder and Creative Director of Bright Light Media, LLC.

I grew up on a healthy diet of video games, horror movies, TV, and popcorn, so my imagination can be a bit wild, but that can be very beneficial to our clients. I’ve been working with computers since a very young age, and got into design early during my high school years. I pursued a BA in Media Studies with a focus on film during my time at Catholic University, as well as began freelance work during my time there.

After working corporate jobs and taking on many freelance gigs, I founded Bright Light Media with my friend, Matt Corrado, in early 2010 and have been growing Bright Light’s client list and business for the last 13 years.

Bright Light is a small Washington, DC based creative agency specializing in graphic design, branding, web development, video production, and marketing. Whether you are a small start up business or a Fortune 500, we have a knack for helping businesses stand out amongst the crowd. By combining traditional design elements and techniques with modern applications, Bright Light is able to consistently provide clients with effective creative solutions to help grow their brand.

Besides helping clients create and grow their brands and bringing to life their digital experiences, we have also created our own products and IP, one of which I am extremely proud of. In 2014, I came up with my homage and love letter to 80’s horror, the board game Mixtape Massacre.

Mixtape Massacre is a Bright Light original product that was conceived, developed, and produced by our team. After our first product (the OG Mixtape Massacre board game) was successfully funded on Kickstarter, we were off to the races designing expansions, merchandise, additional products, and growing our idea into a full fledged brand. Mixtape Massacre now has sold out multiple times and turned into a cult-classic board game experience for the last 7 years. We continue to grow the product line and expand the intellectual property. Thanks to the IPs success, it has also afforded us the opportunity to create other games.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

What’s really helped our reputation as a company I believe is delivering high quality work with a small team, that makes a comfortable and collaborative environment with our clients when working with them. And I know this is true, because in turn our primary source of new work is recommendations from clients. The highest compliment a client can provide is a follow up email where they introduce you to a new client and say, “you need to work with this team, they’re great.”

Even better, 90% of our clients stay with us for future work, be it monthly, yearly, or new projects from the ground up.

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

When it comes to our product Mixtape Massacre, we built our own e-commerce website to sell and advertise the product on. We also sell some of our products on Amazon.

The pros of selling our product on our own website is the profits are higher and we’re able to build a destination for returning clients. The con is the advertising needed to get people there.

With Amazon, the pro is obviously you’re listed on the biggest shopping site in the world, but it can still be very competitive. The con to having your product on Amazon of course is the monthly costs, and the percentage they take from each product you sell.

But we also handle all shipping for the products, so we still get to provide the same care to all our products and control the presentation of the products when they’re received. And I think that’s very beneficial to our customers.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://brightlightmedia.co and https://mixtapemassacre.com
• Instagram: @brightlightmedia and @mixtapemassacre
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/freddiecarlini/
• Other: Bright Light’s Vimeo account: https://vimeo.com/brightlightdc