We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Ryant Nelson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Ryant, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear how you think where to draw the line in terms of asking friends and family to support your business – what’s okay and what’s over the line?

This is home for me because I believe so much in not only friends and family supporting your business but also friends and family being a part of your business. The best way to get support from friends and family, or anyone in your business is to use your talents to support them. For example, in videography, that’s easier to do, because I am sort of like the family documentarian so I always got a camera out. I’m recording stuff. I’m making sure that we capture certain things, certain moments to certain family members that includes gatherings, funerals, whatever the case is. And because I’m using that in service to my family, there’s gonna be instances where they’re gonna reach out and want you to help them with something, and in that case, you run a business and you provide that service to them. So in terms of asking people to support it, I don’t believe in begging anyone to support your business. I believe in just serving and then letting people ask you to let them support your business.

Ryant, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Ryant Nelson, I am from Board of Nursing, Mississippi. I have an engineering background. I worked as an electrical engineer while I worked as a testing engineer for six years. I have a degree in electrical engineering. Right now, I am in the event production industry. We produce video content for our clients in their events and we also do things outside of that. We contain the expertise, the equipment, and the relationships to help our clients to showcase their brand that aligns with what they already do wonderfully.

At these events that they host, there are going to be attendees that never heard of them that are attending it and there are going to be people who follow them who are attending it and it’s up to us to help them curate a virtual experience from a content perspective that provides clarity around the messaging but also shows the audience just who they’re dealing with. We provide event production services, editing services, and we provide corporate interviews. We do a few things outside of that. It just depends on the project and the client that we’re working with.

I’m most proud of my team. I think that we’ve done a great job at developing a team of people who are motivated and care about the work and that can own the work that they do. It impresses me every time. My team performs at a level that allows us to move forward in our abilities as a company. For example, right now, we have the ability to handle two major events at the same time which not a lot of people could do, so we’re really proud of that. What sets us apart from others is that we are able to produce a really high quality work at a really high rate. Our speed is what sets us apart from other peopland our ability to see and develop a vision for our clients that’s in alignment with their brand, so that they don’t have to do too much ideation and guesswork when it comes to us providing something that they can use to promote their business and their brand. The main thing I want potential clients to know about our brand and our work is that we’re a small business. This is a small company, but we genuinely care about the results that resolves the problems of our clients.

We say all the time that we’re in the peace-dealing business. So we care about providing space for our clients to operate at their highest level of value which is creating the vision for the company and creating relationships for their company and so the minutia of creating content, managing the logistics of testimonials and of an event- all of those things are things that we we don’t want them to have to go through so that’s something that we take pride in.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My side hustle did turn into my full-time business. So, originally, I was an engineer working at a manufacturing facility. I had a passion for college graduates who weren’t able to get work because they went to school for something that wasn’t easy to get a job in, and I thought that the college offered programs and didn’t do a lot of work to help those students get placement outside of school. Some colleges do, but for the most part, I understood that colleges didn’t. So, anyway, because of my passion for that, I would make videos with my phone and I later bought a camera because I wanted to increase the quality of the stuff I was making and that turned into $12,000 of equipment. And so naturally for me, my next thought was because I had spent all of this money on my equipment, I needed to make my money back. So I started a side hustle but one thing led to another and I ended up working in Atlanta with some key people in the entrepreneurial space. While hanging out with them, I got inspired because none of them had jobs and I did. So I opened my big mouth and proclaimed that I was gonna put in my two weeks’ notice. The following week or later that week, realizing what I said I had to back up my words, so I did put in that two weeks’ notice. Two weeks later, I found myself in Miami at a huge conference that kind of put me on other people’s radar and the rest is history.

To answer how it scaled up to where it is today, I just kind of rode that momentum, kept working hard, people would reach out to me, and I didn’t do too much marketing. I still don’t do enough marketing, but, where my company is today, has just come from doing what I do to the best of my ability. And now, in this stage of my career, I’m trying to be the best leader possible, because my business is at a place where it’s gonna stop growing if we don’t add more people.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

I think what helped me build my reputation within my market is my attention to detail and a few things: my work ethic, which I credit to my parents, and my expectation for perfection. So, some of the best compliments that I’ve received about the work that we do is that our turnaround time is really fast, the quality of work is excellent, not even just for the turnaround time, but like period, and how hard it looks like my team is working. That’s essentially kind of what our reputation is. We’re gonna get it to you fast, we’re gonna give it everything. We’re gonna get it to you at high quality, and we’re gonna get it to you faithfully. You’re never gonna see our team standing around not knowing what to do in that moment. You’re never gonna find our team not putting intentionality into every shot, and you’re not gonna find our team not trying to innovate and find ways to do things faster and better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.reeldesigns.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reeldesignsmedia
• Facebook: https://web.facebook.com/reeldesignsmedia
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryant-nelson-0aa10358/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@reeldesignsimmersivemedia4479
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/ryant.nelson/