We were lucky to catch up with Jake Schmiedicke recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jake, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?
Ten years ago, when I first branded myself as a freelance videographer/photographer, I decided to continue using the company name I had randomly chosen for myself during my backyard film-making days in high-school: Ice Pictures Productions. For a while it worked just fine, since at the end of the day my clients were hiring me for the skills I brought to the table, not because I had a slick name (pun intended) for my company. But a few years into my business as my client base grew and I started receiving a lot of good word-of-mouth referrals, I started feeling a little embarrassed when people would ask me what the name of my company was and what it meant. Good question. What DID it mean?? I had just picked it randomly as a teenager because I thought it sounded cool (pun intended.) Did it mean I was an ice-climbing adventure photographer? Was I taking pictures of ice? Perhaps I produced ice sculptures for local winter festivals? In short, the name signified nothing about me, my business, or the spirit of my work.
Eventually, as part of my website rebuild, I decided to change my business name and logo to more accurately reflect me and my work. I did a lot of thinking about my business, my clients, and the kind of work that I enjoyed and excelled at. I wanted a name that conveyed in a basic and clear way that I did video and photo work (with a primary focus on video), but also conveyed my skill in telling my clients’ stories, as well as my spirit of adventure. Eventually, after a lot of brainstorming and trying out various ideas, I settled on my new company name: StoryQuest Video. I thought it perfectly captured what my business did (making videos) as well as conveying the spirit of my work and the skills I had to offer (a strong sense for capturing and conveying stories in an inspiring way.)
To this day I’m still happy with my choice of name, and no longer have to sweat when someone asks me what I do and what the name of my company is. Maybe if I go back to making movies in my backyard I’ll dust off good ol’ Ice Pictures Productions again, but for now, I am StoryQuest Video.
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.
My name is Jake, and I run a small video production company called StoryQuest Video. I also do photography as well if a client asks for it, but my primary focus is video. Since I first picked up my parents’ camcorder as a teenager, I’ve loved making videos. I started out documenting family trips and weddings, but quickly branched off into “Hollywood” film-making. I would write a script, gather my siblings and our friends, and make goofy short films in the backyard. It was here, in the days before YouTube, that I first learned and practiced the basics of using a camera to tell a story. I loved watching films, from Star Wars, to The Karate Kid, to The Lord of the Rings; and I wanted to imitate my favorite directors and tell powerful stories the way they did.
Throughout college and beyond, I continued making short films with my family and friends, but also documented real-life events around me. I enjoyed the process itself – using the camera, editing at the computer, and finally revealing the finished film to friends and family. I never seriously considered trying to make a living with a camera until I was almost 30. I was engaged to be married soon, and after having worked a series of “normal” jobs post-college, I realized I didn’t want a normal job, I wanted to make a living as a film-maker, in whatever shape that took. I was encouraged by my fiancé (now happily married almost ten years) to pursue my dreams and do what made me come alive.
I decided to brand myself as a creator of branding and storytelling videos for businesses and organizations. I had no inclination to make wedding videos, and figured it would be difficult to make regular income with backyard short films, so I settled on promotional film-making. I took the plunge and opened up for business as soon as my wife and I got back from the honeymoon. I had no website, no clients lined up, and a whole lot more to learn about cameras and editing. Thankfully, I have older siblings who are also business-owners, and they were willing to give me a chance at creating some branding and promotional videos for them. The videos I created for them were the first entries in my now extensive portfolio, and as other business-owners saw the good work I had done, and how powerful it is to have a good video on your website or social media page, more clients started flowing in.
Clients appreciated my sense for story and my ability to capture the spirit of their business in a visually compelling way and distill it down into a 3-minute branding video. Sometimes I’ve even helped clarify their company’s mission and unique selling point for them through my video-making process because I could see and express the important threads of their story and how those threads all fit together even better than the client could see for themselves. I’ve never considered myself the world’s best cinematographer or editor, but I do have a good sense for story, and am able to leverage this skill on behalf of my clients.
Since those early days, my business has continued to grow. I’ve made videos for companies ranging from the donut shop down the street to multi-national industrial manufacturers. I’ve traveled all over the world for client work, from Ecuador and Taiwan, to Iceland and Kazakhstan. This summer I even trekked to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro with a group to create a mini-documentary.
But I’ve never forgotten where I began. I still love watching movies. And any chance I get, I still make short films in the backyard with my kids, which they love as much as I did when I was young. Those dreams of Hollywood film-making are not gone forever. Just in the last few years I’ve been hired to be cinematographer and editor on feature-length indie films and documentaries, and I plan to pursue this kind of work more as time allows. Storytelling will never go out of style, and storytelling is what I do.
Where do you think you get most of your clients from?
There’s nothing like word of mouth. From the beginning of my business, word-of-mouth has been my #1 source of new clients. I have a good website, and once in a blue moon I’ll get new clients through online traffic, but consistently, when I get a call or email from a prospective client, it’s because they heard about me from someone else who shared my work with them.
I’ll admit it, I’m not much of a salesman, and it is so much easier to land a new client when they are already a warm lead because they’ve seen and liked my work and have heard positive things about me from someone they know. This will get you so much further than having a fancy website or slick marketing campaign. Those things can be important building blocks, but at the foundation of it all you need that relationship of trust.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I am just grateful every day that am able to make a living doing something that I love. I get to use cameras and lenses, edit at my computer, travel the world – and most of all tell incredible stories. But it’s not always sunshine and rainbows. Even the best projects have difficult moments or aspects of drudgery. But even the worst day doing something that I love is still better than the best day doing something that is sucking my soul dry. And so I think that’s the most rewarding thing about being a working creative – getting to create something every day.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.storyquestvideo.com
- Instagram: jake.schmiedicke
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/storyquestvideo
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jake-schmiedicke-3b120717
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@storyquestvideopro
