We were lucky to catch up with Miguel Ortiz & Anthony Fioto recently and have shared our conversation below.

Miguel Ortiz & Anthony Fioto, appreciate you joining us today. Getting that first client is always an exciting milestone. Can you talk to us about how you got your first customer who wasn’t a friend, family, or acquaintance?

How we made our first dollar is unique in the sense that we don’t offer a product. We are a distribution company and we make our own productions/content to distribute. We had to put in about 2 years of our own content using our own money, and making no money, in order for someone to actually approach us and want to hire us for our services.

Our first production/client, was a Uptown musician called donSMITH. He hired us to produce his music video title Group Chat. It was great to finally have someone look at our content and want us to make their visions come to life; but we also felt a great deal of responsibility to show up full throttle to create a project that wasn’t our own and have the product idea exceed the budget expectations. This was our first test in seeing if we were a serious production company.

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

Truthfully, we started TheTelly because we couldn’t breathe. We couldn’t shake that feeling of being ignored or dismissed by an industry and culture that moves quicker than light. We used the tools and resources we were given or earned and shaped a place where we could finally get air. Slowly we invited others who needed a sanctuary too and we grew into a family. Everyone in the family was tired of hearing no and needed a yes in their life. They needed someone to look them in the eyes and say “we hear you”. That’s what TheTelly is for. A place that understands you and helps you. All of us at TheTelly have goals and ambition and we stand together in believing in each other’s dreams.

Funny enough, TheTelly started off as a dream, literally a dream where I, Miguel, dreamt of turning my Instagram stories into a reimagined TV Channel. When I woke, I got right to work on creating micro 15 second content for my personal IG and I labeled this nuance TheTelly. I saw a lot of people gravitate towards what I was doing and over a few months with someone who I was working with, Kathryn Fana, I decided to unite all the creative work I was doing under the umbrella of TheTelly.

When I decided to start making longer content that’s when Anthony Fioto joined the team and things really started moving. We had one camera, 2 and a half lights and our determination. For about 6 months we prepped and launched TheTelly, an Instagram based Television Network. We kicked off our first season with 13 original shows working with some of New York’s best creatives, Wavy Bagels, Elizabeth Alvarez, Ashley Arthur, EJ White, Tiffany Carvalho, Yums, Adiana Rivera, Kelly Joule and Cedrick Hoyle. These people dedicated their time and belief to our idea and we are forever grateful.

During the inception to execution phase we faced so many obstacles, especially when it came to availability and resources. All three of us were fresh out of college, struggling to make rent, getting little to no pay while trying to fund this wildly ridiculous idea of being our own distribution company. We would shoot all day, edit all night and then go straight to a job. It was long, it was frustrating but we successfully distributed our shows at 4 days a week for 8 weeks straight.

We’d love to hear about you met your business partner.

Right now, TheTelly is ran by Miguel Ortiz and Anthony Fioto. Anthony and I met in college when we were both attending The City College of New York. We were taking film classes together and shooting class projects and we quickly became friends. After we graduated in 2017 and I came up with the idea for TheTelly, Anthony was helping Kathryn and I shoot our first couple of projects for TheTelly and he just became part of the team after that. He became such a great business partner.

Together the two of us have been able to produce commercial content, music videos and narrative series. What sets us apart from other collectives that do our work is that we make clients’ low budget products look high in quality. So often we get asked how much we spent on this concept or video and every time we mention how little to no money we spent, they are shocked.

We are looking forward to seeing what the future holds for us and TheTelly and we are striving to grow this business into our full time jobs.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

We believe that the most effective strategy for growing clientele is to distribute content for people who are highly active on social media. Our first couple of projects, we would try to use other artists/creators who had a large following so they could tag us or give us shout out and from that we were able to create a bigger following.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thetellychannel.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thetellychannel/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thetellychannel/
• Linkedin: n/a
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thetellychannel?lang=en
• Youtube: n/a
• Yelp: n/a
• Other: n/a

Image Credits
N/A