We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lana Mattice a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Lana, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s jump right into the heart of things. Outsiders often think businesses or industries have much larger profit margins than they actually do – the reason is that outsiders are often unaware of the biggest challenges to profitability in various industries – what’s the biggest challenge to profitability in your industry?
I believe that there is a ton of revenue to be made in the video/filmmaking/content creator space. However, I still see many creatives struggle to meet their income needs. I think the biggest gap here is having a creative mindset vs a “business” mindset. Film school may teach students some technical skills, but it doesn’t teach students how to actually make money doing what they love. Having the skillset to determine your works value and negotiate pay is something that every professional creative needs to learn if they want to be successful long term. I myself am still working on this, but I’m in a much better “business mindset” space now than I was 2 years ago.
A big contributing factor for me was hiring a business mentor. Having that resource was a huge game changer in the way I did things. I learned a lot about client out reach strategy, networking, developing and pitching proposals, knowing the value of my work, etc.
Something else that I see creatives struggle with is depending on other people to provide them with work. This is the main reason why I started my own production company. I wanted to be in full control of my career, and not have to rely on anyone else to provide me with opportunities. I never really wanted to learn the “business” side of things, but knew it was something that I needed to do if I wanted to make predictable income. It doesn’t matter what role or position someone is on set. If you have the business skills and right network, you can start a production company.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Lana, I’m the owner of KOI Media Productions and freelance Cinematographer. I enjoy working on a variety of projects, but most of my work consists of brand story videos, testimonials, and commercial video production.
When I was in high school I took a photography and graphics design class that I really enjoyed. For a little while, I thought that I wanted to pursue a professional photography career. My aunt worked for American Airlines so every year we would take a family vacation. I always had my camera in hand and would love taking photos and videos of our trips. Although I loved taking photos, I soon realized that I enjoyed the process of editing the video footage much more fun. This is really what sparked my love for video.
During my junior year of college I landed my first video job. For $10 an hour, I would create social media highlight videos for a youth baseball program. The program grew exponentially over the course of 2 years that I was creating video content for them. Looking back at my work now makes me cringe haha. I can’t say the videos were “bad”, but they also weren’t great. I didn’t know how to use artificial lighting and my audio knowledge was also non existent at the time. I shot everything on a Canon 80D with a kit lens.
One pivotal point in my career was spending 4 months out in LA for an internship program. This is when I realized how little I actually knew about the filmmaking world. I learned so much more in those 4 months than the previous years at my college institute. Coming into the program, I didn’t even know what a C stand or Apple box was. This experience really sparked a fire in me, I became obsessed with filmmaking videos on youtube, learning as much as I possibly could.
Once I graduated college I started offering “professional” photo and video services. Much of my work in the beginning revolved around family portraits and wedding videos. It didn’t take me long to realize that I did not enjoy either of those things haha. Eventually I stopped taking those types of jobs and start to do more “corporate” video work. I’ve created videos for chiropractors, restaurants, etc. My focus today is more on commercial video production and higher end corporate work.
For KOI Media Productions, our guiding principle is to create videos with a clear purpose. Meaning that we don’t create videos for businesses/brands just because they look cool. We strategically produce videos with the goal of making a real impact, whether that be brand awareness, internal development or creating videos to better their customer sales journey. From what I’ve seen, many clients are unsure of where to start when it comes to planning out a video for their business. This causes them to place video on the back burner and not high priority. Our solution is to provide guidance through every phase of the production process, so that the client does not feel overwhelmed about it.
I also have another video/photo business called Mattice Media. I use MM for any fitness related brand work. The reason I separated my 2 businesses is because of the “riches are in the niches” saying. My thought process is that the fitness brands that I outreach to don’t want to see corporate work, and my corporate/commercial clients don’t really care to see the fitness content creation work.
Besides operating KOI and MM, I also do some freelance DP work. I really enjoy not just DPing my own projects, but others as well and getting to collaborate with other people. I’m at the point in my career where I am taking on much less “one man and” gigs and focusing on work that allows me a larger crew and resources.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
There isn’t a specific resource that I wish I knew about sooner, but I do wish I would have started learning how to do business sooner. In my opinion, running a successful production company is 75% business skills and 25% creative skills. Heck, if you’re really great at networking and business you can start a successful production company and never have to touch a camera. You could just outsource everything and keep the left over profits.
What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?
My most effective strategy for finding new leads has been Linked In. Much of my mentor’s curriculum revolves around Linked In strategy and building relationships on that platform. My main strategy has been maxing out my connections with marketing directors and posting 1-2 times a week to stay relevant. Linked In is a long term play, so it can be discouraging to not see immediate results. However if you keep at it, eventually you will make connections that turn into leads, and leads that turn into clients.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.koimediapro.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lanamattice/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattice4141
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lana-mattice/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lanamattice