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

Travis, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

I’ve spent my career in video production, beginning in college and working at production houses in New York early on before starting my own video production company, Mediamazing, geared toward corporate marketing in 2010. I never planned on becoming a wedding videographer/photographer as well. When I moved to Minnesota over 10 years ago, I picked up a wedding DJ gig to have as a side hustle and ended up really enjoying it. Then I started seeing videographers at weddings, and because I was a videographer in my 9-to-5 life, I figured it would be a good transition. So I dropped the mic for a camera and next thing I knew Monroe Film and Photo was born.

I think the biggest thing that I can’t stress enough is that as a creative, you are constantly learning and growing. Each and every project we work on is a chance to try something new, or work on improving our skills. It could be something as simple as framing or lighting, or a bigger challenge such as a room setup that is troubling. There are always opportunities to learn from experiences. And if you feel like you’ve mastered it all, start adding elements to make it more challenging for yourself and experiment.

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

I currently own and run two companies: Mediamazing, which focuses on video and audio production for corporate clients, and Monroe Film and Photo, which provides wedding videography and photography.

At Monroe Film and Photo, we strive to make wedding videos that are unique to our clients. We don’t take a cookie-cutter approach to filming and editing, we capture each wedding with our client’s personalities in mind. Our goal is to capture the joy and the beauty of your wedding for you to relive and share in your own custom wedding video and photography for years to come.

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

What has helped us the most with our reputation is just having fun and being helpful on the wedding day. We try to keep things super casual, so no one is stressing out about being on video or having their photo taken. This approach comes through in our work, and our clients notice the difference — and often refer their friends and family to us for their big days, too.

We also are there for our clients if they ever need a hand during the wedding day. There are plenty of times where we have fixed audio setups for ceremonies, gave an extra hand while fastening boutonnieres, and act as a planner to ensure we stay on time and capture everything our client requests.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Nothing too flashy to share here — just hard work and making connections. Most of the money that started the company was from my DJ side hustle. I was diligent when Monroe Film and Photo first started to get only the gear I would need, not what I wanted. Everything else went into hiring contractors and creating workflows so we could expand. Things like cloud storage and NAS Raids are huge expenses, but critical to what we do. It wasn’t overnight, it was several years of work to get where we are now.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.monroefilmandphoto.com
• Instagram: http://instagram.com/monroefilmandphoto
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/monroefilmandphoto/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/monroefilmphoto
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-ezuGwF82FNTvRVkQ3LyBg