We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jaret Roose. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jaret below.

Jaret, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think it takes to be successful?

My idea of success and my definition of success has changed with the different seasons of my life. I landed a great corporate job my senior year of college creating video for my university and thought that I had it made. I finally could say that I turned my hobby/passion into my full-time job. I knew that not many people could say that, and I really did feel like one of the lucky ones. I worked hard and learned so much in the first 6 months, but as time was progressing I could feel that the 9 to 5 life maybe wasn’t meant for me. There was just something missing. I thought I had found success here and would be content, but I just wanted something different. I felt that I wanted more control over my time.

For extra money, I had been filming weddings on the weekends for a number of different companies and I was about to graduate. I had basically no expenses (just cheap rent) and thought that if I was ever going to take a risk and try to be a video freelancer / business owner, than now is the time. So, I graduated, quite my job, and set off on my own. I had enough associate work booked and money saved that I’d be okay financially for a while and put 100 percent of my focus into building a business up from ground 0. At this point, success for me looked like trying to achieve financial stability. I essentially just made a really long list of all the things that I thought would be good to do (I am task oriented), and got started. Built a website, cold DMed couples, started working on my social media presence, and just did anything I could think of to get bookings.

As time went on and the initial excitement of being the master of my own time wore off, I began to feel lonely all the time. I felt disconnected because I left a very social work environment to me working all day by myself. I also encountered the real truth of how undisciplined I was with my time. This great dream that I had to have a successful small business (financially) was being clouded by my mental well-being. This dream that is so hyped up of “being your own boss” was faced with a raw truth that, well, I can be lazy. This was a rain check for me that building a business is hard for so many reasons.

I figure this was a phase and just kept grinding, growing, and learning. Still with the main goal being financial freedom. As time went on and my business began to grow, 10 months in to my first official year in business I started going rock climbing with 2 friends who are also in the wedding industry. It was nothing crazy, we would just go once or twice as week. This simple activity gave me so much clarity. I had two people I could trust and two people that I’d talk to about work and we could all relate with one another. We were all newer business owners and could relate on the struggles and vent about things. Those times were incredibly therapeutic for me. I found a small community that started to grow because I decided to water and nourish that seedling. A part of me felt so much better about being a business owner and loved it a little bit more.

After this, I decided to invest in myself rather than buying another piece of gear. So, in anyway I could (podcasts, books, systems) I invested in my knowledge and tried to surround myself (on social media and real life) with people who inspired me to grow. I wasn’t rich, but I had financial stability and at this point, success looked like someone who was inspired, someone who was excited to work, and someone who had self discipline and systems in their life.

After lots of growth, that is what I think it takes to be successful or achieve success. I am at a point to where I feel like I could go back to a corporate job or continue doing this. Success is not found in a profession, it is found within yourself. I still have so much that I could do better and I am taking those steps, but once I started focusing on that, my business followed suit. A job at the end of the day is still going to be a job. I know work takes so much, but invest as much energy as you have left to give to building a community and to being at peace within yourself. This is a daily struggle, just this week I felt a heavy weight of being overwhelmed and it had me off all week. All it took to fix it was an acknowledgment of the feeling, a deep breath, and a prayer of peace and I kid you not, it was lifted.

Jaret, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Jaret and I am a wedding filmmaker! I got started in the world of weddings to make some extra cash, but slowly began to love the people side of the industry. I love telling stories of love and investing my time into getting to know these amazing couples that inspire me to love well every single day. I think that love is the most pure thing that this world has to offer, so getting to capture that is super rewarding! I noticed that within the industry, there were so many companies out there making films that didn’t have much personality. They seemed to have a formula and used it for every couple. I wanted to be someone who came along and created films as individualized as the couples love, their personality, quirks, passions, etc. People are incredibly complex and I wanted to create films that shared in that complexity. I am so proud of the films that I have created and know that I am just going to keep getting better and better on that side of things. My top focus this year has been the experience that I am giving couples. I have invested so much of my time and energy on building a top notch experience for my couples so that they don’t just have a great film, but a great experience on top of that as well.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I use SO many plugins and subscriptions to help me both on the editing side of things and the business side. Some of my favorite for editing are: Davinci Resolve, carbon copy cloner, musicbed, sync, vidflow, beat edit, izotope, goyo, plural eyes, ezco, shot designer, Vimeo, disk drill, storyblocks and shotput pro. For business, I love using Honeybook, found banking, full frame insurance, showit, legalzoom, quickbooks and google professional suite. For education, I’ve used altitude university (part 107), how to film weddings, own your own business (podcast), how to film weddings (podcast), work wives unscripted (podcast), and the we got you podcast.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I love this topic because I have been able to get to where I am without spending a penny on marketing or using services like wedding wire to get clients.

The number one piece of advice that I can give videographers is to simply be a kind person and to drop any sort of ego. This helped me create relationships with so many photographers. Early on when I was associate shooting, I would always get to know the photographers and follow them on instagram, and continue to engage with their posts and their work after the fact. This was huge for me and helped me build a reasonably big network of photographers that were happy to refer me to their clients. They liked me initially becase I was nice, easy to work with, and stayed out of their shots. And they remembered me because I would comment on their posts all the time. I never asked for anything in return, but generally if you are nice to others, they’ll be nice to you as well.

I have gone even further within my business now, and I encourage you to do the same! I tag every vendor that I can when I post something from the wedding that I worked on with them, I tag the bridal party so that they remember and now know who that guy with a camera was, and when it is time to deliver the full film, I create a custom web page that I share with all the vendors so that they can watch it! I also have a footage request section at the bottom of that web page where any vendor can request and get footage from me free of charge. I will also create a short social edit for them if they want to. This lets them know that I want to help support them and am willing to invest my time to help them grow their business. I ask nothing return, but like I said, if you support someone , then when the time comes they’ll most likely want to support you too.

Instagram and other social media platforms are great and does help couples find me, but referrals will get you much better leads and I promise you, if you invest in your vendor relationships and focus on giving couples a great experience that they rave about, you will get more referrals and book more weddings!

Contact Info:

• Website: jaretroosemedi.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaretroosemedia/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaretroose/
• Other: https://vimeo.com/jaretroose

Image Credits
Megan Kuhn Photography Ale Santana Photography