Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Max and Courtney Smith. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Max and Courtney , appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

Yes! we’ve been able to make a full time living from wedding filmmaking. So we actually haven’t been in business very long. I was a worship pastor since 2014 and my wife was a youth pastor. We shot a few weddings here and there when we got our hands on our first camera. We fell in love with it but had a hard time seeing it be a full-time thing. Plus it was very hard to do as pastors working full time ministry.

However… fast forward to December of 2020, we had a lot of time to reflect during covid when everything was shut down (including churches). We realized we didn’t wanna live another day thinking “what if”. After a lot of discussion and prayer with Courtney, we decided it was time to step down and pursue wedding videography and photography full time. So you could say we’re still babies in the business owner world.

We actually had no bookings when we quit my 9-5 in December of 2020… so we were taking quite a risk. But I didn’t waste a second with all the free time I now had. We invested in courses, online education learning as much as we could. We connected with wedding planners and the vendors, created highlight reels of our work to share and used those in running face book ads for the first few months in 2021.

We filled up our calendar for that year miraculously fast. And then filled up 2022 before 2021 was even finished. The rest is history.

Max and Courtney , 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?

So once upon a time…. we originally were never into cameras, videography or photography. We were heavy into full-time ministry and loved it. (still love it, just do it for free now). And then one day, Courtney won one of those gift card contests on instagram. She won a $700 gift card to target, which was a miracle as we never win anything lol. She spent that money on her first entry level camera, a Canon Rebel t5. She did some senior sessions and family sessions here and there in photography and eventually worked her way into doing a few weddings.

One day we were asked to shoot someones wedding FILM. Not photo… Film. Which we’d never done before. And to this day I’ll never understand why this bride asked us to with us having no experience in that field. But we went for it. We spent a year investing gear, training ourselves, watching youtube videos, etc. So by the time the wedding was there, we felt pretty prepared. And we loved it. Every second of it.

Fast forward to now, we are incredibly passionate about creating wedding films that cater to each couple’s vibe and story. Something we do differently than most wedding filmmakers is we shoot what’s called “Story Sessions”. Our goal is to capture not just the wedding day, but the actual love story and depth of our couples. So we capture them doing something they love to do, at a place that they love and maybe even hang with people they love OUTSIDE the wedding day. A wedding day is important, but its not about the day… its about the journey of the couple and THEIR story. Details are great and we capture that content, but we pride ourselves as story tellers. And our goal with our films is to truly tell our couples story. Not just show a wedding day. Uncle bob with his over the shoulder camera can do that.

We also believe in having a strong narrative for your wedding film. Whether thats the vows you write to each other, letters, toasts or even interviews where we ask about your story… there’s always narrative with our films. We strongly believe in this. Otherwise you’re just paying us for a very expensive glorified music video. We don’t wanna do that. We wanna help tell your story that impacts not just our couples, but their kids, grandkids and generations to come will get to see what your story was all about. And what a day and age we love in where we do that and be creative with it!

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

So a big part of our social media presence was the consistent connecting with wedding planners and tagging them (along with all the other vendors) in our films. After we’d shoot a wedding, we’d create content for other vendors, mainly the photographers and planners. Sometimes we’d even create content for DJs, florists and other random ones. The point was to serve others in the best way we can. They would then share that content on social, tag you and then refer you. We’ve had to do this over and over again… but it has paid off tenfold.

Also, we went to a good amount of styled shoots to connect and network with new photogs and planners. That was a great outlet to start at when we began this process.

Another thing (that no one wants to hear) is to create content consistently (mainly reels) on Instagram. Study the algorithm and be present on your social if you want to grow a following. You can’t just post once a week and never touch the app while expecting to grow an audience. It takes a good amount of planning and consistency with any social media platform to grow a following and get leads from it.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

I’m gonna beat this dead horse, but staying active on social media is so important. A majority of our couples are present on there and theyre paying attention to what we do/don’t do. So when we stay active on our stories and posts and create engaging content, we’ll get followers. We pay attention to each person thats following us. In fact we’ll even DM a new follower saying “hey (name), thanks for the follow! how’d you come across our page?!” and it leads to conversations that have sometimes led to bookings. You never know how’s watching you or who could be a potential bride to work with. So keep your head on a swivel for moments like that.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @kennethkevinmedia
• Other: A little heads up, we’re doing a rebrand and name change thats launching fairly soon. So The current name won’t be around much longer.

Image Credits
Rachel Noel Photo