We recently connected with Mitch Hackleman and have shared our conversation below.
Mitch, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?
The risk is ongoing. I have built up a fairly successful media production company, but have started turning away opportunities to focus on my consultant firm, EVS. When you’re going from anything that is known, into the unknown, there are inherent risks. Will I be able to pull this off? Will it be better than I am doing now? Those are the types of questions I’m forced to answer on a daily basis. I’ve always been an Entrepreneur, and I have always viewed the world in a slightly different way than those around me. My ability to build a great media production company was something that took strategy, hard work, and a bit of luck. Now I’m wondering if this switch is going to be the right move for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m making the switch. I just deal with these sorts of challenges, as we all do. I have the expertise for a particular client base, and that is why consulting is the route I’ve chosen to go. I have been consulting with many companies for the last few years, but always from a context as a media production guy, or an Ebike reviewer. These types of relationships are great for getting to know the client and understanding their weaknesses, but I’ve found that it’s a hard swing from media guy to consultant, from the client’s perspective. That first impression is hard to overcome for a lot of the clients that I’ve interacted with over the years. Choosing to make the jump into offering strictly consulting services is my attempt to overcome those relationship blocks, and truly be able to offer my expertise to clients that are in a position to listen and grow their businesses with my insight. Not to say I am the end-all-be-all of EV knowledge, I am always learning and growing in that respect, but I’ve been in the industry for quite a while and have seen many failures that I think I could help other companies avoid. So, that’s the risk: taking a profitable business and turning it into something that may not have the returns I’m looking for.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Mitch Hackleman. I am a father, husband, veteran, and EV consultant. My EV career started when I was given the opportunity to work with some really cool people over at ElectricBikeReview.com. I worked mainly on the front-facing customer service side of the company but was eventually given the opportunity to review Electric Bikes. I enjoyed reviewing so much and creating content, that I stuck with it and some brands seemed to notice. Even though I had just started a YouTube channel at the time, and had very few followers, I was getting offers to review bikes left and right. So, I was the Ebike review guy. One day a client of mine asked if I knew anyone who could do media content and I said I did–it was me, I was the media guy. We worked out a deal to produce some videos and I took that money and invested all of it into my first camera, a Nikon Z6. For the nerds out there, I also snagged a gimbal and an Atomos Ninja V for filming. Nowadays my Nikon is my stills camera, and I have since upgraded to a larger cinema camera for video media production. So, I invested my earnings into a camera setup and produced my first piece of content for a paying client. From there, things started to fall into place, and I was able to show off my work and get other clients interested in media production services. Since then I’ve worked with companies that sell Ebikes, electric generators, skateboards, pants, scooters, you name it. I’ve also had the chance to work with local artists, studios, and international musicians to create some content as well. And all of those things allowed me to create a successful media production business, with work coming in from different industries. Fast forward to now, and I’m launching an Electric Vehicle consulting group called EVS, which aims to help starting or established businesses in the Ev space grow their outreach and connect with more customers. We focus on a few main things at EVS, but always have the larger scope of the brand into consideration. Having been the recipient of many Ebikes, as an example, I have a good understanding of the customer experience that a lot of these business owners never get. This is pretty critical information if you’re looking to increase customer satisfaction and gain customer loyalty. My years of experience, combined with my team of experts in their field, we’ve really created something that is unique in this specific market.
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
My story for this is another very recent event. I’d say almost ongoing, but there are some major things that fell into place, so I would say as of today, I am on the tail end. It starts out with me attempting to build out the business to support a few key clients. I brought on a few people here and there, some were more full-time than part-time, and we had plenty of work to keep everyone busy and happy. A few of our biggest clients decided that they wanted to switch up what we were doing as far as media production goes, and this pivot left us with a substantial gap in the payroll. I was fortunate enough that a few members were ready to go their separate ways and had been helping me out while they transitioned to a new role elsewhere, but there were some who stuck with me through this slim period of our cash flow. The aftermath is, as I had mentioned, still ongoing, but we’re largely out of the woods with our remaining staff. We’ve had to adapt to our new agreements with some of our longstanding clients. I experienced 6 months of negative gain on the business, and as you can imagine, that took a toll on me, my family, and those I worked with. I kept hoping that this situation would fix itself, hoping I wouldn’t have to make any hard calls or really pivot that much. This is most likely what lead to my negative period being so long. I realized that I had invested so much into this particular structure, or way of cooperating with these brands, that I hadn’t looked at many alternatives, or really even evaluated the efficiency of what we were doing. It wasn’t until my right-hand man had a series of serious discussions with me that I was able to snap out of this unrealistic hoping, that wasn’t being backed up by many actions on my part. I was gifted a few opportunities, which I took full advantage of, and I was able to climb out of the financial hole I was in, with more cool opportunities presenting themselves to me in the very near future. This sounds like it wasn’t fun, and I can confirm that it was not. However, I learned many valuable lessons, and it forced me to start EVS, which is something I’ve had in my head for a year, but never had the motivation to really pull the trigger on. Now I’m sitting here with two businesses, set to keep me busy and bring in revenue for the last half of the year, with more growth expected next year. The dark periods are tough. But they are needed by most of us. It’s all data points. It’s all learning. If we can keep that perspective and keep moving forward, we can accomplish pretty awesome things. .
Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?
Honesty. Everyone appreciates it. Authentic communication and encouragement instill confidence in our clients. Even though it doesn’t apply to my exact line of work, I use this word all the time: fiduciary. It’s usually used in the context of money management but essentially means a trust-based obligation. And when I work with clients, I would rather do what is best for them, than best for me. If they want me to create some multi-thousand dollar campaign and push it on various platforms, I could just say, “sure, let’s do that.” However, if I see that there is a way for them to get a better return on their investment, pursuing some other course of action, I would rather bring that to their attention and grow their business, rather than just make a short-term gain off them. In the end, building trust with clients has always been my number one priority.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.evsconsultinggroup.com/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/Ennovation