We caught up with the brilliant and insightful William Jordan Patterson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

William Jordan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

I recently got off tour with singer/songwriter and artist Leon Thomas as his personal videographer and photographer. The gig was a huge win for me professionally and creatively, but the initiation of the relationship I harnessed with Leon began in New York a year ago.

I met him at a hotel in Brooklyn randomly at the bar. My dad encouraged me to go say something to Leon as the opportunity presented itself to speak to someone who I respected in the music industry. After introducing myself to him, I told him about my career in videography and video production, and asked who he had shooting his content at the time. To my surprise, his answer was nobody. It shocked me because I knew a LOT about Leon, and knew that as a grammy award winning producer/songwriter, to then be on a journey as a solo artist, meant he had a hell of a story that needed to be captured and told.

Long story short, I shot his hometown performance that night, but we weren’t able to find a way to work on any other pieces until almost exactly a year later when he asked me to come on tour with him and to tell stories along the journey.

I believe Leon knew last year that his story was worth capturing, but with all of the issues in the music industry and budgets being tight, it took a while for us to find a way to fulfill his content and storytelling needs. Safe to say, we did just that this past month.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a video producer and storyteller. Unlike the trend that seems to have blown up since covid, content creation isn’t how I like to categorize my skills. I specialize in taking complex stories and boiling them down into concise, digestible, unique, entertaining videos with the intent to have each person who views my videos feel the need to watch them more than once.

More directly, my niche is in live event and concert videography/photography, as well as video production in the running and fitness space. I have done a TON of corporate storytelling as well for universities, small and large businesses, cyber security companies, non-profits and more. I love that work and will always do that work, but i’d say my heart is in the more creative spaces.

Recently, my touring experience with Leon Thomas taught me a lot about my abilities to produce strong storytelling pieces in a VERY short time frame. I challenged myself to release a storytelling-driven recap of the first 5-6 shows on his tour, which I was able to turn around in about 24 hours after the show.

I pride myself and my business on being efficient and high-quality, while maintaining strong relationships with my clients. I realize I have a STRONG ability to work in the music/concert/live event space, especially working directly with artists and their teams to tell authentic stories that their audiences can relate to. My main focus is on listening to my clients to make sure that at the end of the day, I’ve done my best to bring their visions to life.

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

A lot of people preach that doing free work is the pathway to a high volume of work at a high value. I’ve learned that there’s a small period of time in which you should be doing free work, and once that time period ends, you have to hold yourself and your work to a standard in which people will pay for what you provide.

There are countless examples in which I’ve settled for doing projects for free or for less than I believe I deserve. The outcome of those types of experiences is a lack of passion for what you’re working on, and typically a level of friction between you and your client.

It took me a LONG time to realize that the work that I do is worth more than I was valuing it. Once I flipped that switch and stood on my word that I’d never devalue my work again, I started noticing the shift in value that OTHERS placed on my work.

Being in the industry im in takes a balance of high self-confidence and a low imposter syndrome that most of us struggle to find. But when you find it, ride it out, stand on the quality of your art/business/skills, and don’t settle for anything less than what you deserve.

We’d love to hear about how you keep in touch with clients.

My main focus has always been in touching base with previous clients on a dedicated timeline. After a project or contract finishes with a client, I let that work breath for at least a month or so before tapping back in to see if there’s space to work on something new or solve a new problem for them!

A lot of times, clients are sitting with problems that you could easily solve, but the likelihood of them thinking of you on a daily basis is small. It’s our responsibility to follow up with our clients, check on the impact of the work we’ve previously done with them, while discussing new ways of helping them solve something new or work through and existing problem.

I do my best to have as quick of a turn around time on projects as possible. That isn’t always feasible, however, and those are the times in which clear communication and a restructuring of deliverable goals is important so that the relationship maintains intact and morale is high between both you and your client.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thejordancorp.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/thejordanstudios
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-jordan-patterson-311237100/
• Twitter: https://x.com/realjstudios
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jordanstudios
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/jordan-studios-atlanta