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

Hi Spencer, thanks for joining us today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

I was fortunate that I found a job out of school that gave me the flexibility to grow my freelance career. Once I was at a point where I was earning a living freelancing it became an easy and safe choice to quit my other job and pursue my video work full time.

It’s easy once you’ve found success and stability doing what you love to question “why didn’t I take the plunge sooner”. It’s possible that if I dove in sooner I could have been even further along but I feel that this is a fools game. For myself, I needed to build my skills with the safety net of a part time job & steady income.

Would it have been nice to start making videos out of high school instead of dropping out of college, working landscaping, going back to school, finishing school, working odd jobs THEN starting to make videos? Sure, but that wasn’t meant to be.

I’m glad I did what I did when I did it. At the end of the day, I’m just glad I got here.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I always loved making videos growing up, whether it was a school project or documenting trips. Coming out of high school I didn’t think it was a realistic career path and didn’t even really entertain the idea. over the years I kept making videos on the side regardless of what I was doing. eventually I got a paid opportunity through a friend which ended up being the foundation for my career. It was a job shooting an event activation for a liquor company through a local agency. Now the majority of my work comes through small to large agencies creating content for their clients.

This ranges from event capture, to creating content for pre-build real estate developments, to brand story videos for local businesses. In this industry it’s not enough to be good at what you do, you need the business side too. You need to be able to connect with and understand your clients and customers.

I pride myself in being a reliable and fun person to work with.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest thing I had to reframe was thinking of pricing from an hourly perspective.

Growing up the majority work as a “paid by the hour” endeavour so that’s the way we learn to think about it. As I was building up my freelance my point of comparison was my part time job where I was making $20/hr. So I figured as long as I was making that, it was worth it.

Or on the flip side as I started charging more, I had a hard time being confident in my pricing because from an hourly perspective it seemed high.

At the end of the day what matters is the value you are bringing to your client. Ultimately you need to find how much something is worth to your client. If you are doing great work odds are the value to your client is also worth it for you (and then some!).

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

Luckily it has never been cheaper to get off the ground as a videographer. That being said getting a decent camera for commercial/corporate level work you still need a few grand to get off the ground. I was able to fund this through my other work.

As much as it’s true that gear is not everything, investing in gear allows you to grow quicker as you aren’t dealing with sources/picking up/dropping off rentals. And if you have the capital up front it means keeping more of your project rates in the long run instead of spending on rentals.

The tricky part is knowing WHAT gear to invest in when you are starting up and don’t have much practical experience. But that is what the internet is for.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://spencerbell.studio
• Instagram: spennyb123
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/spencer0bell
• Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/spencerbell