Making the hard choices.

I want to start this blog post by saying, this is going to get a bit personal.

Creating something new comes with a ton of different “learning experiences”.

Mine came in the form of learning to run a business vs run in a business.

Back in 2022 I made a specific choice: I’m going to partner up with a good friend Brady Rogers (Owner / Operate at Mind Fusion Visuals) and build a studio for local creatives to come work and grow as creatives.

We hit the ground running (We even made a youtube series).

Building a concept like this, was honestly pretty easy and fun.

Most of the choices were easy.

We made a production studio, and podcast studio. The concept was simple: Bring in clients and film their content inhouse to make fast easy content.

Simple right?

Wrong.

About 9 months in everything started to change.

The market, which had been fairly predictable took a complete right hand turn instead of a left hand turn.

Call it recession, call it post covid crash, call it whatever.

It didn’t look good for the studio.

This is where we really begin to learn about business.

Making the hard choices began.

I had a team of creatives who were looking to me to bring in work.

To my heartbreak… The work we had been chasing, had…

Gone.

Our retainers dried up.

The hard choices had to be made.

We pulled any extraneous costs.

When that didn’t help we had to take extreme actions.

We turned around and reduced the crew to absolute skeleton.

No more extra work, we had hit the bottom.

This was the biggest lesson for us. We realised that businesses are great in good times, but in hard times they become hard teachers.

That being said…  We emerged with a fresh perspective. Business logisitics & client satisfaction.

One of humility and a renewed respect for what the client actually needs.

Because of this, our business survived.

It turns out, other businesses had the same issues as us.

They had made the hard choices too.

The team, now scattered, slowly settled into new routines.

With these hard choices made, it allowed us to operate lean.

Teams became truly freelance again, with no expectations of future work.

We will slowly rebuild in a responsible manner, and limit what we onboard. Client focus first, we often asked “what do they REALLY need”.

The studio? It survived, it’s a amazing asset for our clients.

The podcast studio continues to grow, it’s probably the best way to effiently get awareness out there for B2B & B2C clients. We slashed pricing from $2500 per session to $1000 per session. This allowed us to onboard more clients.

The production studio has been renovated into a rental shop for local creatives.

The agency has been growing, the true transistion happening in the middle of all this chaos.

Our sister company Mind Fusion Visuals  continues to grow, with a more specific purpose (We tell stories about Outdoor Lifestyle Brands).

The hard choices will be made again, but for now, we’re happy we can focus on the work, and less on the panic.

Business & freelancing ain’t for the weak hearted.

See you all on the other side!

Ash