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

Alright, Nick thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Owning a business isn’t always glamorous and so most business owners we’ve connected with have shared that on tough days they sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have just had a regular job instead of all the responsibility of running a business. Have you ever felt that way?

I never thought I would enjoy owning a business. I dreaded it. At the time, I was fresh out of college and looking for a job in the video production industry. I worked for a small engineering company that a friend owned as a marketing/drafting guy. The three owners were there before I got there and after I left. It seemed exhausting.

I remember coming home after work about 12 years ago and vowing to my wife that I would never own my own business. You couldn’t pay me enough or offer me enough to do that. I didn’t want to work 80-hour weeks; I just wanted to go home at the end of the day and not bring work home.

Fast forward to Christmas 2018.

I was employed by a company that made commercials. We were put on a company-wide call where the VP informed us that our company was closing its doors on January 1st. Immediately after that call, I called Greg Dinkins and Aaron Jesperson, some of the most talented guys in the industry (I may be biased), and we decided to take the plunge into owning a business ourselves, and that’s where Gig Bag Media was born.

None of us had any business experience, by the way. We just enjoyed taking pictures and playing around with cameras. We had been grunts our entire careers, working for major media companies in the news industry and on the marketing agency side. We weren’t sure how we wanted to model our company, but we knew all the annoyances that corporations had pummeled into us over our careers, and we didn’t want that. We wanted to make enough money to provide for our family, spend time with our families, and significantly reduce stress.

Fun fact about the stress, ONET online released a report on job positions and ranked them according to stress levels, and Film & Video Editors were at number two! So we wanted to change that as best we could.

We decided to work remotely out of each of our homes and save on overhead like building costs. We also made Election Day a company holiday and have built-in time off for any other day that has an election. The three of us already have families, but we added Paternity Leave and Maternity Leave longer and paid. We also wanted to be able to be involved in any kids or family activities and take vacations when we needed them. It didn’t seem hard, granted the fact there are only three of us helps, but it just takes planning, communication, and some project management.

We know at the end of the day, this job is still work, and it always will be, but we wanted to make it as low-stress and fun as possible. That doesn’t happen every day, but compared to our previous jobs, it’s a night and day difference.

We believe that by reducing stress, and removing “corporate” obstacles, we’re able to increase both creativity and productivity, which in turn improves our final product.

Nick, 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?

In high school, I was fortunate to have been involved in the Central Education Center in Newnan, GA. The CEC was a charter school that students from all three high schools in Coweta County could attend. It had partnered with tech schools and other businesses with the goal of being able to have students graduate high school with skills they could immediately use in the workforce.

I was part of the Video Production classes taught by Kevin Pullen. Honestly, I learned more practical skills from there than from my college courses.

After graduating college from Georgia State University, I worked for a small business, Arco Engineering, where I did a handful of jobs, from web design and marketing to drafting and design. From there, I was able to get a part-time weekend job at WXIA in Atlanta as a Morning Show editor. After 7 or 8 years, I was able to work my way up the corporate ladder to be Manager of the Post-Production staff. The only problem was I was working Tuesday through Saturday from 1 am till noon, and I could only take so much, so I moved to a more 9-5 position in the commercial side of the news.

After a few years in that position, I found a work-from-home position doing the same thing for a company based out of Jacksonville. That company had one client, a major media outlet; I was one of a four-member team in Atlanta.

As a Producer, I was now in charge of meeting with clients, creative scripts, shooting videos, and editing the whole thing for cable TV. It was a blast! But at the end of 2018, we were informed our one client decided to go a different direction, and the company was closing down.

Another Atlanta producer, Greg Dinkins, and the best editor in the company, Aaron Jespersen, and I all decided to start Gig Bag Media.

For the elevator pitch, Gig Bag Media is a multi-award-winning firm based in Atlanta is a creative digital video and media production company specializing in corporate & business videos; marketing & commercial videos; promotional & explainer videos; and can help you with all your branded video, graphics, and audio content for your business.

Now we have clients ranging from national hospital networks to major sports teams to small mom-and-pop shops all over the southeast, and we’re continuing to grow!

Our niche is a quality production that is low cost and fast turnaround. Having come from the news, we all were able to hit deadlines (no matter how crazy) without sacrificing much quality. Now, in the grand scheme of things, we have an entertaining job. Seriously. We make TV! We try to bring that fun to the client, many of whom have never done anything like this. So we try to remember, and pass on to our clients, that our productions will be enjoyable and effective.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

In the video and film production industry, we’ve discovered you have two types of people: Crew and Corporate. Crew folks aren’t great with clients, and Corporate people aren’t very creative. We’re lucky enough to balance both of those elements well. It’s rare to be able to meet a CEO, as a production guy, and be able to speak both Corporate and Crew. However, by doing so, our agency clients feel comfortable letting us run with our productions, so they don’t have to micro-manage us to ensure we’re representing them well from a business point of view.

Another thing is being able to control our emotions. That seems obvious, but let me explain a bit. As a creative, I tend to pitch an idea, one I put a lot of work into and think will be effective, and the client says “No” or changes so much stuff around that it’s nothing like it used to be. It’s hard to maintain a positive attitude after someone, generally not a creative, inadvertently says they don’t like my work. You have to put those emotions aside.

In addition, most productions are high-stress environments. You’re trying to battle the elements, coordinating actors and scheduling, ensuring the project finishes on time, and so forth. It’s easy to let your emotions get out of control and say the wrong thing at the wrong time.

Those things can affect a client’s perspective of you, your work, and your company, and we’ve been fortunate enough to be able to do that well and maintain a positive relationship with all our clients.

Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

There are lots of resources today that I wish were available during my early years.

It’s interesting to see how technology changes the opportunities people get. YouTube would have been amazing in the late 90s and early 2000’s. Being able to watch tutorials on editing or color correction. There are so many resources through certifications for software to online academies and eLearning.

I’m not bashing colleges by any stretch of the imagination, but I’ve said for years that my college years were a waste. I didn’t learn anything pertinent to my industry that I hadn’t already learned during my high school years at the CEC. Most of my college experience was theoretical. “What makes film Art?” “This History of Animation”, and so on and so forth. I probably woulnd’t have wasted money on college but gotten certifications and training for specific software like Adobe After Effects, interned, apprenticed, or joined the film union.

Contact Info:

• Website: gigbagmedia.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/gigbagmedia
• Facebook: facebook.com/gigbagmedia/
• Linkedin: linkedin.com/company/gig-bag-media
• Twitter: twitter.com/gigbagmedia
• Youtube: youtube.com/@gigbagmedia