 To Connecting Hawaii Business on Think Tech Hawaii, my name is Kathleen Lee, owner of Kathleen Lee Consulting, and I am your host for this program. Think Tech Hawaii is a platform that encourages civic engagement through conversations that educate, enlighten, and inspire. We are live streamed on ThinkTechHawaii.com as well as on Think Tech Hawaii's Facebook page. And for those who are watching us live, you do have the opportunity to send us questions and we can ask our guests on the air by sending them to questions at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Today's show is pretty exciting. We have one of my friends, Phillip Lemoy, a cinematographer and owner of Supreme Video Production. I have to slow myself down sometimes, so I end up stuttering. But we are going to be talking about creating useful content for online mediums. So Phillip, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. Man, you crushed that intro. Good job. Thanks, man. But tell our viewers about yourself. So my name is Phillip. I'm originally from California. I moved here and actually I lived here for a few years in middle school and high school, and then I moved back here in 2009 to finish my degree over at UH, and I'm a full-time cinematographer. Okay, and you are the owner of Supreme Video Productions. Tell us about that business. What do you do? So I originally started my business in 2010 focused mainly on weddings and events, but I'll pretty much film anything. At that point, when I first started out, I was really just kind of getting the business started and notice that, you know, weddings in Hawaii was so, you know, it's a wedding destination location. It was so easy to get into the market and, you know, just start shooting weddings. So I've been doing that a full time since 2010, but we do other projects, commercial shoots, corporate events, a lot of event coverage, social media content creation, and then we'll even do some like internal videos for businesses and that sort of thing. So anything that needs video will pretty much produce it. Awesome. And how did you, how did you start it? Like how did you start Supreme Video Productions? Like where did, where was your inspiration? Got it. So it all goes back to when I was a young lad. Now, I actually started shooting video in 1996. Like I said, we moved to Hawaii in 96 with my parents. My father was in the Air Force, and we got stationed from California to Hickam, actually. And when we moved here, my father decided to buy a new camera to kind of document, you know, our new life here in Hawaii. So he actually handed me down his old VHS, you know, that big shoulder mount VHS camera. He handed it down to me and he was like, yeah, just do whatever you want with it. So I really got into, you know, just filming whatever it was going on. And I wasn't trying to be creative or anything, but around that time I actually got really into skating. And I started bringing that camera around with me everywhere and I started filming skating videos actually. Fast forward, we moved back to California in 2000 and that's where I finished up high school, and I still continued to shoot video. And it kind of transitioned into, you know, like high school stuff where we would like house parties and fights and you know anything that like happens and I just document fights. And I would just film everything and I was just kind of known as that guy with the camera. I would upload the videos on to, I think it was my space at the time. And it got really popular and everyone was like, hey, I'm throwing a house party, you need to come fill my house party so I would be the guy that would go and shoot house parties and make party videos. And one of my friends at the time, his name is Donovan, he was a club promoter. And then he's like, hey, can you film my club events like you film, you know, the house parties. So that transitioned into, you know, event type coverage. And then he also got into actual events. So I don't know if you're familiar with like Cattilians and Kinsignetas and, you know, those sort of things, which is similar to a wedding. I started filming events. Those are very California events, you know, go on. So I started filming like events and parties and birthday parties, you know, more formal events. And then I met a professional skater by the name of Vinnie Minton, who saw my stuff on on Friendster and or my space. And then he said, hey, do you want to come film with us. And I thought he meant like skating videos and I was like, you know, this is like my idol I couldn't believe that he was wanting me to like work with them. I was like, yeah, I'd love to. And then he's like, no, actually we're filming weddings like we don't actually make money, making skating videos, we do weddings full time. And so he introduced me to weddings. I did that for a few years in California before I moved to Hawaii. And once I moved to Hawaii in 2009, I was able to go full time weddings by 2010 and I've been shooting weddings full time ever since. That's awesome. Let's go ahead and bring up one of the wedding videos that you recently made. I remember when I was looking through it it was very beautifully made actually it's over at the Royal Hawaiian is that correct. Yeah, it was yeah. Let's see if we can bring it up and talk about, you know, the like the wedding industry, the challenges that you ran into as far as, you know, focusing on that initially when you started supreme video productions. So when I first started things were actually really easy for me. I feel like I came into Hawaii with a different style that not everyone was producing. And it was so easy for and I was coming at a really low price point, because I was just starting out. So my first year I think I booked like eight weddings. And my second year I booked like 38 weddings. And then from there just kept growing to where I was getting over at least one wedding a week. And my business just kind of took off. And I think one of the challenges that kind of I learned about business was that I'm not a bit I wasn't a business owner. I didn't know anything about business I just knew how to shoot and edit videos and that's all I knew. So I ended up having to learn the business side of things where I was like hey I need to create contracts and I need to have invoices and I need to have a team and I need to manage this team and you know there's all of these I need to create systems you know what I mean so that way I'm not reinventing the wheel every time I book a client and streamline my business so the first years were great, but they were also probably the most difficult because I didn't know how to run a business and in a bookkeeping I didn't know So I, you know I went through that up until I honestly think like 2015, that's when I was like hey I need to really kind of get this stuff figured out, and that was kind of around the same time where I was just getting a little bit burnt out with weddings you know shooting them every week and I was even helping shoot for other companies so I was shooting you know multiple weddings, and in a week and it just kind of took its toll on me and there's just a lot of stress and I think one of the things that really pulled me out of that funk was I ended up hiring some great editors that really helped me out they helped me clean up my backlog of all the edits that you know all the weddings that we filmed that just had all this huge backlog of weddings that I had to deliver that I was running late on. They really like honestly saved me and saved my business and if it wasn't for them I probably wouldn't I've still been shooting weddings that probably would have just given up, but that was sort of kind of the biggest lesson for me was just learning how to actually operate an actual business and not just it's not just a hobby that I'm getting paid for I need to treat it like a business. Right. I know when we were talking about the wedding industry the other day you talked about the challenges of, you know catering to just weddings and on top of that like with everything going on in the pandemic. You talk a bit more about that. Say that again just catering to weddings and then. Yeah, so what are the, what are the challenges that you've ran into, as far as just focusing on weddings or initially focusing on just weddings as far as your video production company goes. Oh, got it. So, as time goes on. And my wedding business and as the, you know, industry evolves. And just equipment in general was just being a lot more affordable there's just a lot more companies that were popping up. And as I established myself in Hawaii as a cinematographer you know my rates wouldn't increase and you know along with our quality and the value and you know my team was growing, but you know you have these newer companies that are just like kids at a high school that just got a DSLR camera that is so affordable now, and you know they're just wanting to produce content or videos and they're just doing it on the super cheap so the competition really came up a lot in Hawaii, the pricing really went down into almost like a race to the bottom everyone was kind of undercutting everyone and you had to really push your brand as like, you know, how can I say it like worth it I guess you know what I mean like the quality of the product is, you know it's worth it. And then the other things that I started running into is just trying to find staffing. You know, one of the great things I love about Hawaii is that I feel like we are all peers though we're not really competing with each other there's plenty of work to go around when it comes to weddings. However, with that being said we'll even help each other like I said I'll shoot for other companies if they were double booked or if they just needed someone to man a camera I'd love to just show up and shoot. I kind of work that way with a lot of the companies but because of that we were all kind of like using all the same shooters are sharing the same people and and sometimes when during the busy seasons it's really difficult to find someone to help shoot a wedding for you you know. So, that's kind of one of the things and the other thing too is you know you're trained someone your style and you'll teach them everything you know. It's something that they'll work with you for as long as possible but then they decide that just want to go up and do their own thing so it's like you're almost training your quote unquote competition. So it's just this never ending cycle of teaching and you know shooting and, and I think the other big thing too is I think we discussed it was that we don't have returned clients. In the next video, it's a one time client that hire you just to shoot their wedding. It's not like they're going to hire you again to do something else and especially if it's a destination couple. So you're constantly having to market to new clients and reset like sell to new clients and it's like a vicious cycle of just, you know, new marketing and selling and marketing and selling and it's not like you have this client tell that you build up and you can always just kind of like pull business from your really your clientele is going to be the other vendors the other the coordinating the coordinators the photographers and the venues those are the ones that you want to build the relationships with so that you can get, you know referrals for more business in the future. Okay. So we're about to go one break since we're at the, can you believe this we're almost at the halfway mark. We actually are that's where we're going on break or almost at the halfway mark. But when we return, we'll talk about how, because of what you mentioned right the wedding industry having you know sort of like it's limits, you've now diversified to go into YouTube videos. So when we come back let's lodge into that and then you can talk about creating content for that. So people who are watching can learn from your experiences and see whether or not they want to do that. So we are going on break. Stay tuned. To connecting Hawaii business on think tech Hawaii. My name is Kathleen Lee with Kathleen Lee Consulting. And today we have Philip Lemoine of Supreme video productions, a cinematographer who veered from just focusing on weddings to now going into YouTube content. So, Philip, when we left off you were talking about the challenges that the wedding, wedding, there you go, there's this that are the wedding industry ran into, even before the pandemic, right. Like, repeat clients are a little bit hard because ideally you don't only want to get married once. So now you delve into YouTube videos so tell us about that. Like I was saying earlier, it was one thing to have like individual clients and it was difficult to, you know, resell but I think the other thing I forgot to mention was that I'm creating one product, and then once I sell it, it's gone. I made the income and I'm not making any more money off of it. And I started learning more was to learn more about business and reading more books about business I started learning about I found out about the term passive income. And basically creating a product or an item or, you know, content that can continually make continuously make money and YouTube one of those was one of those things that I can make that kind of income with. So I wanted to make YouTube channel for a long time and I just wasn't sure what I wanted to do. So I kind of just threw everything on the wall and then whatever stuck I decided to go with and it just happened to be cooking videos. And then prompt that out real quick. So you have a cooking video that you shared with us if we can get that on there so people have an idea of one of the many videos that we've done, but okay. Talk about the video or the cooking videos that you've made. Yeah, so I think the one thing I really want to point out is that I'm not a chef. I just enjoy cooking. And it's funny that I make cooking videos on YouTube, and it's creating income. And I just kind of want to point out the fact that you don't have to be a pro at what, you know, you're talking about I say just talk about what you're genuinely interested in and share it with people. I love cooking and I just started just sharing some recipes and it kind of just took off. And I just kind of like double down on the cooking content once COVID hit because like wedding stopped completely they still have stopped. And I just have all this free time I was like I'm just going to go, you know, double down on YouTube. And that this year just producing as much cooking content as I could. And my channel just kept growing and growing and growing. And it's just, it's honestly crazy I just, I can't believe how much it has grown, and how much income that I've been bringing in, doing something that I already do for free, you know just just happened to be posting it online so it's great. And then you had also talked about how you deviated or in addition to making cooking videos, it dawned on you that it would be also useful to create videos on how to make videos go over that. So, as I was creating these videos, I would join a lot of Facebook groups with like YouTube cooks, right that would just make YouTube videos and I just found out there's, there's a whole group of people there's like hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people out there that are just like me, that love to cook, love to film it and then just share it on YouTube. I would share my videos and then in those groups and then they would always ask me questions like oh how did you get that shot or how did you do this or what are you using for lighting what's your camera and all that and I was like you know I'll just start making videos with videos on how I make my cooking videos. And that ended up really taking off, and I ended up creating my own community of, I call it YouTube cooking creators it's a Facebook group that I have that it's basically just trying to educate people on how to shoot cooking videos. I like I said I'm not a chef but I am a professional cinematographer, and I know how to, I know how to film. So I feel a lot more comfortable sharing my experience with shooting video than I do cooking. And if there's a way that I can combine the two, and you know help other people and potentially turn it help them turn it into a business and potentially turn that into income. That's a huge win I'm getting to do what I love, helping other people make money doing what they love so I think that's I think the real win in this whole thing. Yeah, absolutely I mean your video helped me out let's let's put up the how to video, which actually not only applies to cooking videos, but great videos in general, so let's see if we can play that. And while that's going up but tell us about some tips that you have given in this video or what you want to share to people when it comes to creating content for either YouTube or any social media media. I think one of the biggest tips is that you don't need to have all the fancy gear. Actually, this video that I'm that we're showing here is a five part series on how to make YouTube cooking videos with just your phone. And I think the biggest tip that I have is that you don't need all the fancy stuff to get started just get started with what you have. And if your only camera is your phone, you can do it with a phone. So I just give some tips in this video on you know some of the other things that I'd recommend investing in like a tripod and maybe a microphone to get better, more stable shots and audio and yeah just a few tips on you know how to pretty much produce film the video how to edit the video how to create thumbnails and even how to upload your video on YouTube. So even though these videos are made for cooking videos. They'll definitely work for any type of video that you're interested in making. Yeah, absolutely. As I learned today, walk us through the process of what exactly goes into making a video even if it's made with just someone's phone like how your video kind of went over that so walk us through just to give people an idea that coming up with content it's not just you propping up the phone and then hitting record. If you want to make good ones anyway. Definitely, it's like a full time job, it's a lot of work, and that's why not everyone is doing it you know if it was easy everyone would be doing it right. So it's definitely a process and I think the more time you spend planning your videos, the less time you'll spend shooting and less time you'll spend editing. If you just put your camera up and you start talking you don't know what you're talking about. You're going to have this long video that you're going to have to trim down, or you might even forget some of the things that you needed to say. So the next process is I create a script. I write down exactly what I want to say and what I'm going to say and what I'm going to shoot. And then I create a shot list, you know, on what the shots that I'm going to get. And then that way, once I hit record on my camera. I know exactly what I need to do what I need to say, and I can just pump it out. And then once you're done filming the next process would be you know to go through the editing which is really the longest and most tedious part and that's where you can get really nitpicky with it, but that's also where you can kind of clean up all of your stutters and you know stumbles and maybe some of your shots weren't great where you can you know throw in some photos or something like that. I think the real big one is how you position your videos online so just making sure you have a really good title, a thumbnail that is enticing to make someone want to click on it. And yeah just making sure you tag and share that video everywhere possible that way just kind of get some great traction of once you put it online. I think we have maybe five. Five more minutes. Are you able to go over how to monetize that content, and then go over to what your goals are moving forward for like now so you know through 2021 and beyond because I know you wanted to. You are already expanding your business. Yeah, so I think one of the big things is you get paid off the views with YouTube for every 1000 views you get anywhere between $2 and $50 it just depends on what your niche or your, you know video topics are on, but in order to make money off of YouTube you get at least 1000 subscribers. That's kind of like the minimum requirement and then once you got that, it pretty much just automatically enables ads that can play on your videos. I think one of the big tips that I would give is that you want to create videos that people are actually searching for, and you want to create videos with content that is helping people. It's easier to get discovered if you're a solution to a problem that people are searching for, compared to just like hey look at my life in Hawaii or look at my life look how cool look at all the cool stuff I do. No one's really interested or searching for that, especially if you're nobody like me. So you have to get people on your channel first by you know creating content that people looking that people are searching for be the solution to someone's problem. The other thing I want to mention is it doesn't have to be YouTube it could be a podcast it could be a blog. It could be anything. Ultimately what you're trying to do is drive traffic to some sort of online platform that you're comfortable with. Maybe you like writing or maybe you don't want to be on camera and you want to do a podcast where they can see ads. But I think the big thing is the views and everything's the worst way to make money. That's why there's other ways like affiliate marketing sponsored posts. You can sell products like I could sell like a cookbook for example. There's all kinds of ways that you can make money on YouTube or online in general, and I would really recommend diversifying, you know, the way that you do make money because YouTube could just say hey we're not paying our creators anymore. And you're all lost out of your income so you want to make sure that you have other income sources that you can, you know, pull money from very sound advice actually any final thoughts or words that you want to share with people out there. One final thought I would say is that you only have one life and you only have so much time in a day and so much time in a year and you have the opportunity to now is like more than any time ever that you can do what you want and make money offline, you know what I mean, and if you're able to just learn how to share your experiences and what you're familiar with, helping other people, you can create income and you can have the freedom to do anything you want. And I just think, yeah, I don't know you just got to do it you know so you just got to kind of take that jump in, just stay consistent and set goals and stick to it, and it'll all pay off. And I just love these words Philip. If people would like to get a hold of you how do they do that. What is your contact info. You can check me out on Instagram probably my best one just my first name underscore and then last name on Instagram, or you can check out my website, fill up limoyne.com. And yeah, that's pretty much it or on my YouTube channel, the YouTube backslash. We're on here because of your YouTube channel. Yes, there are people to your YouTube channel what where is it. It's just YouTube calm backslash and then my name Philip limoyne. Awesome. Thanks Philip for joining us today we went over creating useful content for online mediums this has been connecting Hawaii business on think tech Hawaii my name is passing Lee, and we do want to thank everyone and the entire staff at think tech way, we had Eric helping us out today for making this program possible. Thank you everyone and this, if you were not able to catch this on live stream, this will be available on YouTube as well. So, thanks everyone for joining us. Happy holidays.