How To Get Started and Stay In The Business

It's mid-July 2013 and wow what a year so far!

We have a new film incentive passed in Nevada which will hopefully be good news for everyone here and most parts of our business from rentals to Steadicam are growing.

However, life happens and on March 21st I injured my knee while filming a Cirque du Soleil shoot. That means reconstructive ACL surgery and no Steadicam for about 6-8 months.

So, how am I capitalizing on this apparent set back? I'm using this time to stay connected in the industry, clean up my suspect / prospect list and to further improve my websites and marketing program.

We also just purchased a new set of Zeiss Ultra Primes for our rental business and they're booked the first month on a Brazilian feature film!

But enough about me!

Tell us what challenges you've encountered this year and more importantly how you've solved and capitalized on them!

Thanks and sorry for such an extended absence keeping up this thread!

Robert
 
Rob, that's a huge bummer about the knee. I would have lied and made up a story about a fighting a bear that was attacking an elderly lady or something.

Very smart to have a rental component to your production wing, it's kinda like residual income in a way. I've kicked that around, but we're just busy with day to day things, but I will explore that in the future.

This year has been extremely eventful for sure. The biggest thing was parting way with one of the partners of the company. we all stayed friends through the whole process, and now our business is already stronger, more agile and it doesn't hurt that there's one less partner to split the checks with. We've been working hard on developing and refining our project management.

From a business side, one of the biggest lessons is managing client expectations, so there are never any surprises. People don't like that. Over communication is a million times better than under communicating.
 
ACL sucks Rob. Hope you are receiving top notch care and recover soon. I wish I have the funds to buy a set of Ultra Primes, so I don't feel THAT sorry for you haha!.... Actually scratch that. I prefer health over money :) I'm also battling a few smaller injuries myself, nothing as major as an ACL of course.

Workload is definitely far better than it was in 2011 when I was posting on this thread like every other day. Been able to charge higher rates and land bigger jobs. I even got a paid short film gig as an AC this Spring. However, I'm still more or less an one man show. Hopefully that will change soon as I'm trying to partner up with an animator/graphics designer to provide a higher quality solution.

My biggest lesson is that diligent marketing, making connections, and providing a good service, pay off in the long run. I think I am reaping the rewards of my grinding marketing work for the past few years. All of my best repeat clients are folks that I have met, worked with, or found through my marketing efforts. As a result, I have been able to enjoy the summer this year and only do what I must, and still pay the bills. Having said that, I know that I will need to continue to do the marketing and connection building work I have done in the past to expand my business further out. Though now I would like to rebrand, rebuild my website, strengthen my portfolio and get my name out there in a better light.

That itself is what has been occupying my mind over the last few months, as I'm not sure if I should specialize in a) cinematography, b) post production c) both shooting and editing, d) add typical marketing agency work such as photography and graphics design, e) film work, f) better corporate video work, or g) all of the above.
 
Sorry to hear about the knee Rob! hope you get well soon! This thread is pure gold, thank you and everyone else who shared their experience!
I have one question; me and 2 of my mates are planning on getting into music videos and corporate video business. However we are still starting out so we are at level 0 - planning,researching potential clients ,figuring our strategies etc,etc. Filming for free in the mean time or working for someone else to gain experience.
Is it possible to start off as freelancers and once a certain client base or cashflow is secured to form an actual company? Or do we have to form an ltd straight away?
Thanks a lot!
Mike
 
Happy Holidays 2013 to everyone and thanks for reading and contributing to this thread!

With 2013 coming to an end, let's hear what your successes were and even some of your challenges! Tell your story here.

However, the most important thing we all need to do this time of year is get our plans together for 2014!!!

Now is the time to post your questions for getting off to a slamming good start for the New Year! Let's talk New Years resolutions and how to get there!

All the best!

Robert
 
baoliun said:
Sorry to hear about the knee Rob! hope you get well soon! This thread is pure gold, thank you and everyone else who shared their experience!
I have one question; me and 2 of my mates are planning on getting into music videos and corporate video business. However we are still starting out so we are at level 0 - planning,researching potential clients ,figuring our strategies etc,etc. Filming for free in the mean time or working for someone else to gain experience.
Is it possible to start off as freelancers and once a certain client base or cashflow is secured to form an actual company? Or do we have to form an ltd straight away?
Thanks a lot!
Mike
Click to expand...

Mike, I don't know if this will answer your question, but I'll give it a shot.
I don't know how different the laws are in the UK, but here, you 'should' form some sort of legal business entity, for nothing else but to legally protect yourself. You don't have to do that, it's not legally required, but it's a good idea. It keeps the money separate, you can establish a credit history for the business, and it keeps you and the business separate.

I think your plan is pretty standard. If you don't have any experience, you have to get it somewhere, and there's always companies out there that will take free video. Just make sure you manage their expectations about what the final product will look like.

Another thing you NEED to do, and it may feel strange, is meet with an attorney or at least, sit down with your mates that you want to form the business with, and discuss the company structure BEFORE you get too far down the line. What happens when someone wants to leave? What happens when you have to buy someone out? What if the company goes under? Who gets the gear? How are the profits split? What are the job responsibilities for each person? It's unresolved details like this that can bite you in the a$$ later.

As far as starting as freelancers separately before you form a company together, again, I don't know if you legally have to form a company first. Otherwise, I think it's more of a big picture/philosophical question in my mind. If you want to form a company, and chase big fish, produce films, commercials, music videos, porn, whatever, then start now. The sooner you can establish the company name and reputation, the better. It takes years for people to recognize you, to gain even the smallest bit of traction in the market, so you should start now. Your first website may not be that great, or it may be. Your first videos may not be that great, or they may be, but start developing a presence and a personality ASAP.

Of course, this is based on the fact that you and your friends still want to work together 6 months from now. I'm not trying to be negative, but give some serious thought to who the people are that you want on your bus. Are they the right people for the work you'll be doing, or are they just good friends? The idea is to make videos and pay your bills, and if someone is getting in the way of that, you have a huge problem. Especially if that person is a good friend. We dealt with the same thing this year.

Hope that helps.
 
robstar1 said:
With 2013 coming to an end, let's hear what your successes were and even some of your challenges! Tell your story here.
Click to expand...

Business has been great. Up another 35% or so this year, very grateful. Robert, can you share your thoughts on best practices for hiring?
 
AwakenedFilms said:
Business has been great. Up another 35% or so this year, very grateful. Robert, can you share your thoughts on best practices for hiring?
Click to expand...

Wow! First, congratulations on a 35% growth!!! Considering most fortune 500 company's would be thrilled with 3.5% growth in this economy, you're killing it! While small business may not have the luxury, comfort and safety of a giant "cruiseliner" big business, we can almost always be more responsive and maneuverable! I'd love you to tell us what you think contributed to your success please!

Hiring is one of the most difficult things to master for any small business. Over the course of 35+ years we hired and employed well over 100+ people in various capacities. The most we ever had at one time was eight but I'd say the average was 4-5 not including myself. I think I could write a book with all the crazy stories good and bad but I will say that almost all my best employees went on the become best friends and even 20 years later they are still friends. On the other end of the spectrum, I was physically attacked once by an employee but saved by other employees and one of our bookkeeper/office managers embezzled a stupid amount of money from us and there's a felony arrest warrant still outstanding for that person!

I could just about write a book on hiring but meanwhile here are at least a few tips that I learned along the way and most I wished I learned a lot sooner:

1. Hire Slow, Fire Fast!!! Learned this way too late! I was always so busy that I did the exact opposite and this one point along cost me a lot of stress, time and money. Get to know people, read between the lines for personal issues, job history etc.. The best job some people do is interview well. I was guilty of giving people too much "chance". Forget that! If they are not blowing your socks off in 30-90 days, can them because you'll be dragged down dealing with them. My #1 mistake!

2. Ask about their other jobs and other bosses over the course of several interviews. I definitely found that people who later went on to tell stories about how they told the last boss to F* off and left in a dramatic fashion followed the same pattern with us. That meant when the crunch was on and these people who we should have "Fired Fast" long ago were dropping the ball, they'd implode and leave. Hiring slow will hopefully help you catch this. Previous employers can no longer tell you anything other than salary, hire/termination dates and whether you'd rehire this person and no prospective employee will tell you they got fired for good reason.

3. Make an employee manual even for one employee. There are samples online. A manual is the only thing you can always refer back to as defense when a lawsuit hungry employee comes after you. A manual is cheaper than a lawyer. I use Employee Manual Maker by Jian I think. Get it looked at by an attorney in your state because state laws vary. Have the employee sign for it.

4. Have a professional background screening done. It's cheap $25-$50. Do it for yourself AND do it for your clients especially if you are dealing with children and/or sensitive clients. Otherwise, you could be found negligent for not doing a BG check if something happened.

5. Get a second, third and fourth opinion before you hire someone

6. Have your final prospects take the Myers Briggs personality profile. Its not a pass fail test but it will give you good insight into someone's core operating system is. If you want to know what makes me tick, look up the ESTJ profile and it's scary accurate; like the story of my life. In Disney offices it is not uncommon to see a sign on someone's wall or desk that says "ESTJ spoken here" or whatever their profile is. It lets you know where they are coming from.

7. Buy Workers Comp insurance. It is cheap and a lot better than losing everything you own if someone gets hurt, plus it takes care of that someone if they are hurt on your clock. Sadly some employees will get hurt outside of work, claim it was work and milk it but hopefully you detected that personality before you hired them.

8. Empower your employees to help you make the business and processes better. Enjoin them to help you plan, grow and change. As entrepreneurs we can use another point of view.

9. Empower your employees to give your customers 110% customer service! Give them the power to fix things and make things right and not have to ask you up to a certain level. No one wants to call a business and have the employee say "I'll have to ask the owner". As a customer how would you want it handled.

10. Hire Slow, Fire Fast ! This pretty much is the #1 piece of advise I can offer you.

Again, I could write a book or create another long thread on this one topic alone but these are my top ten thoughts on it.

Let me know how it goes!

Robert
 
I've read every post in this thread and made notes of the advice as I went along - great read. Thanks everyone for doing this.

I have a quick question (I have a lot more, really), but what are the best strategies for finding businesses to call? Would certain ones be better than others?
I had a thought to just call every local mom & pop shop within a certain mile radius, but is there money there (local restaurant/store/gym/etc commercials) or should I be thinking bigger?
 
Rob, thanks again for the advice. Having hired our first employee, we got lucky because we had a solid, existing relationship with Stephen, so we knew what we were getting into, and it's been great.

SCG: How much do you need work? How much do you think you're worth? How much do you need to make to survive?

This will dictate how you get clients and the types of clients you pursue. If you're desperate, than any job is good. How much do you charge for an average commercial? If you charge $2k or less, then visit with the mom and pop businesses, otherwise, they can't afford you and that's the truth. Here's why, because when you start talking with a medium size business about a video that will cost them $5k, they aren't going to understand the value of it, so, unless you're an amazing salesman, you're trying to convince a brick that it's a sandwich. Also, they're making less money than you think. We learned long ago to stay far away from mom and pop shops. Nice people, no money.

I would make lots of cold calls. They suck, but they work, and all they take is time.

The other thing I would do, very quickly, is start forming relationships with complimentary businesses such as web design, marketing, and PR. These folks are usually on the video band wagon, and when they recommend video, or one of their clients asks about video, they need somewhere to go. Make sure you're that person. We get several referrals each year from these types of people, and it keeps growing. Free business!! One of the best ways to do this, is give them a video for free, or super cheap. It shows that you're willing to be invested in their company, and if they aren't interested in getting a video from you, then they probably aren't going to recommend you anyway.

If you're looking for business, and we all are, here's an idea. Split your time between networking and cold calling, and making your own videos. Make videos about your company, about your dog, a short feature, time lapse, whatever. Then, you'll have more content to show to perspective clients after you've done your cold calls and networking.

Good luck.
 
That leads me to another question: PRICING

A little on my background first, I very recently quit my day job to work for my dad's company that does Web Marketing (web design basically). This is something I've been cautious about doing, but decided to just "go for it." My dad can be a "cart before the horse" type in that he leased a big building for the company. He covered the lease by renting to a big tenant, but that tenant has recently left, so he needs to either find a new tenant or new business (or both). He employs my brother, who does web design and he makes enough to pay the bills, but not much more. They want to add video into the mix, which is where I come in. I majored in film in college, but sort of gave up on that and got a real job, but now have this opportunity to get back into Video as a whole.

There is a receptionist, who somewhat doubles as a sales person. She hasn't actually made any true "sales" (most of the website clients come to us via the web) but is pleasant enough that she could be utilized a little better and it could work. The business sometimes seems like a "side" thing for my dad and not a major focus as he is at retirement age and makes most of his money from his retirement pay.

Anyway, I feel like this is an awesome opportunity as they have a lot of pieces in place for me that I can take advantage of. But they are somewhat settling for clients that just happen to find them and not pursuing anything else. I want to market to our existing clients as well as help us find new (larger budget) ones.

I had my brother e-mail/call his older clients just recently (this is all recent), and one said they might be interested. They have a budgetary meeting and want to know if we can provide an estimate of our services.

This brings me to my pricing questions:
Should I make a pricing guide of each service? Should I just provide an hourly rate? How do you respond when people ask "how much"? Do you publish the pricing or keep it private?

My main struggle is figuring out how to price things, since there is such a variety of service available with video. We can do web video, motion graphics, on location shots, etc.
I worry about selling too low or too high.

My initial thought is to go with the "free estimate" route and price it based on that, but if they just flat out want to know "how much?" without any details to the project, what is a good response?
 
Pricing.

Here's what we do. When someone asks how much for a project, we say, "Our project pricing starts at blah and goes up from there, depending on the scope of the project." This immediately qualifies the prospect. If they think it's too much, then fine, but if it doesn't scare them off, then that's also fine. We're up front with our pricing, because we want to weed out the riff raff. No is good, yes is good, maybe is terrible and should be taken as a no.

Rob probably has more insights on this one, as he's been at it much longer than I have, but one thing that might be helpful is to establish a range of pricing for a basic video package. Do you want to offer simple, basic videos, or are you leaning towards higher end productions with a script, director, producer and crew? This will determine your pricing and the type of clients you should pursue.

Let's just say, for example, that your basic video package ranges from $1500-$3000, and that includes so many hours of shooting time, editing time, whatever. You could start there and see how it works. I can't really tell you what's right for what you're doing, just pick a strategy and work it for a while, take notes to find out what is working and what isn't and adjust from there. I'll say this, you're far more likely to price yourself out of business by charging to LOW then charging to HIGH.
 
Thanks for all the great questions and thank you Woody for sharing so much to help others! Well done as always!

If you are getting questions about pricing that is a good thing! It at least means someone is interested. Whether they are interested in paying your rates determines whether they are a qualified prospect right?

A little bit of pricing needs to be worked backward from what your needs are, your level of experience and the going market for similar services in your area. How much do you need to live on and what do your competitors charge? Answer those questions and you're close to determining your cost of goods and services. Do a little market research and get to know your competitors and try to develop a relationship with them; they'll likely be able to send you business and referrals if you are colleagues instead of competitors and maybe they'll share pricing strategies in your area as well as who pays and who does not.

When you get the how much do you charge question, it is the perfect time to gather more information and to educate the client. Ask what have you been paying? Who are you using now? Tell me more about the project? The longer you can put off answering the pricing question the more information you can get and with each bit of information you get more opportunity to develop the rapport with the person. As soon as you give a price you've given away your bargaining chip.

A good way to explain pricing to start is using an analogy of building a house or buying a car; you can build a one room 10x10 plywood shack, a 1500 sg ft log cabin or a 10,000 sq ft marble mansion. Sometimes people will say I'm not a Rolls Royce, more like a Lexus.

Use this time to get to know them, have them tell you what their vision is. If you think they're pretty serious and at least in the Chevy level range you can offer to stop by at no charge and chat with them to come up with a budget and price to help them.

There's a lot to all this and no 100% perfect answers but this is a start.

Something a CPA told me one time was that prices fluctuate based on how busy you are. Just like big stores and small companies who have slow times and offer sales. It's not quite like selling furniture and appliances but you do have to adjust on what you need to pay the bills.

Thanks for the great questions! If anyone else has ideas to share on what works for you please share! Everyone is welcome here!

Robert
 
Just want to chime in a little on pricing. When I started out, I offered fixed quotes because, as you say, most people just want to know "how much?" As many who have gone before me have learned and posted about, this is great for the client and pretty often terrible for the producer. It seems that even the nicest people will try to get everything they can out of you until you say "no." The common refrain is someone calling and saying "how much for a little, tiny, easy project" and then, once I give the quote, them trying to expand it and expand it as much as possible until I have to say, sometimes in the middle of production "Ok, that's more than we talked about..." And there's nothing more awkward than trying to negotiate prices when you're on set, they're mic'ed up and everyone is watching you.

Charging per hour is hard for new clients. It means they have to trust you, because you could so easily over-bill, lie about your hours, or just take so much longer than you thought that the bill doubles or triples overnight. BUT, I would say that once you've offered a good service and have been honest about your hours and maybe even discounted the hourly total on the bill, then you've built a good client who may come back. On the producer's side of things, hourly is great because it puts the budget, at least partially, in the clients' hands. Now I can say: "Well, we can get your video done for $800, but we will have to stop shooting by noon, and we won't be able to put in animated titles. It's completely up to you." Then if they decide to add a page to the script or have their cousin do a testimonial, they know it's their fault you filmed until three and they are tacitly approving the extra cost by keeping you there all day. When they call up a week later and complain that the titles are a little static, they are tacitly approving the extra cost by asking for the extra service.

I hate negotiating price, and since each video has a life of its own and grows as it's made, I hate having to renegotiate the whole time, saying: "That'll be another $100 for the titles" or "I'll stay until three, but I'll have to ask for another $200." If they know it's hourly, they know that if they are on time and organized and don't ask for a million extra things, then they'll stay on budget. But there's also the option for the extras if their willing to pay.

Now certainly you will scare people off. If you post "$500 Explainer Videos" on your website, you'll get more clients right away. But, as I found, it wasn't worth it. People kept taking advantage of me and I started to hate making videos. I gave the client all the power and each new idea they had or each time they didn't properly prepare, I ended up working longer hours for the same exact price. The funny thing is that now, even if I make less on a job than I would have quoted, the stress level is so much lower because I'm not worried about them demanding a sudden change and having to work through the weekend for free.

The best advice I saw posted on Dvinfo.com was to never discount your hourly rate, but to often give hours away for free. I know I'm worth $75/hour so that's what I charge, but I give the first 2 hours of editing free to new clients. If I lowered my rate to $40/hour then not only would I be lowering my value in the eyes of my client, they would also expect that rate to stay the same for the next job. Getting a bill from a $75/hour editor who gave you $150 worth of free work is just more pleasing, psychologically, than getting a bill from a $40/hour editor who charged you full price. And when they come back, they know they're paying the full $75 and they're willing to because they've seen my work and they know they can trust me.

The other thing that most people do that works well is to charge a day rate for filming, not hourly. Charging hourly for filming means that when you take 30 minutes to set up, they're watching you thinking "Great, that just cost me $50." Day rates means they pay to get you to the set and to do what you can in a fixed amount of time. Go over the limit, and then it goes to overtime hourly.

The other thing I offer is first revision for free. Some people don't do this, and some people offer two revisions for free. If my client notices that the audio volume is too low in the middle of the video, or that I mismatched some shots or misspelled a title, I don't want them to think they have to pay for this. And, at the beginning of the contract, I want them to know that if they hate the video, I'll fix it for free. The second revision is usually where they start to nitpick, which I'm fine with but I want to get paid when they do it, and I want to discourage them from doing it too much.
 
What do you guys suggest about working for free to get your foot in the door in a new area?

A little about me I'm a videographer, been doing it 2 years. I've had a lot of work considering it's all been through word of mouth. I never studied film I just decided to try it and I've made a little money doing it. I have a full time job which I need o pay the bills but one day am hoping I can make that leap.

I would love to get into filming the custom car scene in the UK and Europe. I have an opportunity to goto a show but there is no budget to pay me (I've heard this before). I was tempted to say no thanks but it's an area I would love to get into so I see it as I would be getting something out of it.

Is this a naive way of doing things? I am creative but my business/marketing head certainly needs improvement!

Thanks,

Dan
 
Hi Dan,

Welcome to the thread!

There is a time and place for doing free or pro-bono work throughout your career. Early on, it's not so bad to do a few things to build your experience, your reel and your relationships. However, before you do any job for free, you need to have a very clear understanding of exactly what value you are getting out of it and how you manage and use that opportunity. For example, to get access to shoot a cool car in a cool location you might work for free as long as the client puts that money into making sure you have a great location, proper lighting, cameras and other tools so that the work you do looks first class. It might be reasonable to say I'll waive my fee as long as we shoot this with professional talent and crew. You should as well have a contract for free work that includes you waiving the fee for either leaving the set or guarantee of footage withing 1-2 weeks spelling out if you don't get it they have to pay you rate.

Then set some guidelines. Agree to only work 10 hours day max, that your expenses are paid and also that it is a one-time waiver. Many will promise future paid work but I'd say less than 15-20% ever do. Most will just move on to the next free guy because it's not that they don't have the money, they don't value the talents and service.

I've done a few where I would tell them to pay me for this job and I'll do your next one for free; a reversal of what they offer. That will be a true test of whether they have future work or intend to work you for pay next time.

Later in your career you might find projects that really interest you and stories that need to be told and you'll do those as a give back to yourself and community.

The key here is limit free work, make the client value your contribution and make sure you can write down on paper exactly what you will get out of it other than another opportunity to work for free.

Good luck and keep us updated on your progress!

Robert
 
Exactly what I would have said, because we've been on the losing end of a few free projects through the years. Worst thing, I'm not even that proud of those projects.
 
It's IRS tax season 2014 and do you know who your CPA is?

A common question I get in my consultations is what kind of entity should I be and how do I pick a CPA? If you are or have ever found yourself in that position, you may benefit from what I've written below:

Finding and filling the CPA vendor role over the last 35+ years has been one of the most challenging things for me; probably the most difficult vendor to assess.

I've found that a lot of them tout themselves as business consultants, advisers, tax planners and such but by and large many of them are simply tax form preparers. Obviously we all need our tax forms prepared and accurately but much like a recipe for meatloaf, there are many recipes for getting to the final numbers of your tax liabilities or refund. The method they use was probably passed on to them by their early professors and mentors and while all the proper forms might be filled out and you end up with meatloaf (tax return), the taste and results can vary widely.

So how do you know?

Frankly it is entirely difficult if not impossible to know ahead of time who is the best match for you. Getting referrals and references as you're doing here is the first step but not the answer. Someone who may be perfect for me or someone else may not be perfect for you at all. Everyone's financial situation is different even though we all do roughly the same thing to earn a living.

Using the meatloaf analogy some chefs (CPAs) lean towards hot and spicy, some toward sweet and some mix beef, veal and pork in their tax recipe. Few have more than one base recipe. Probably the best thing you can do is get 4-6 names of CPAs and sit down and interview them face to face.

First I would insist on someone who is working with other freelances who have at least a similar income and expense base. For instance that would be 1099 income, payroll W2 income and rental income. Don't skip over the types of expenses you have as well; rented equipment, leased equipment, purchased equipment, travel, food and lodging specific to what we do and what is customary in our industry. A good example is a previous CPA from many years ago only took 50% of my food and lodging which is sort of typical for a small business who entertains clients. What he and I failed to realize that in those numbers for my production company I was paying lunch / craft services and lodging for cast and crew which is a 100% deduction. I easily left $500k of deductions on the table over 6-8 years. Unfortunately by the time the next CPA found that mistake it was too late to file an amended return.

The ingredient in this recipe is your tolerance and the CPA's tolerance or philosophy for pushing the edge or being conservative. You may hear a CPA say "you can take that deduction but it might flag you for an audit and I don't recommend it". That can be good or bad advice depending on your aversion to risk. My thought is if I can legitimately claim a deduction, prove the expense and prove that I would not have incurred that expense if it were not for my business then I earned it and I want to take it and why should IRS intimidation stop me! I'd also suggest if you are hearing this kind of warning from your CPA and it's a legit expense then you should be asking them if you are set up and operating as the correct type of entity such as sole proprietor or S-Corp.

I keep meticulous records and receipts and have never feared an audit so I want my deductions. Two years ago we had our first ever audit and no matter how prepared you are its a pain in the ass, expensive and aggravating as hell. In short, the IRS disallowed roughly $25,000 of expenses. In the long run I was able to satisfactorily substantiate all but $1200 worth without going to much greater time and expense. In the end I paid them $1200, the CPA $6500, temp office staff $1500 and spent about 100 hours of time between Jeanne and I working on it all. This is with organization to the level that I can put my hands on receipts from as far back as 1975 for large purchases. Based on spending $9200 total and 100 hours and a whole ass-load of stress for six months I'd probably write a check for $25,000 the next time, be pissed and move on... and those bastards know that. I'd need more espresso and a few more pages to detail the process but the feeling is just the same.

As for interviewing a CPA right now, you can forget that during tax season; they are buried until April 15th. If you need your 2013 return filed I suggest you file extensions which you can do on your own and start the interview process May 1. If you expect to owe taxes you are supposed to pay 90% of that with the extension but unless you are making a lot of money the penalty is likely less than you gain on a good return. YMMV.

After all this, my advice is to hire slow and fire fast. Take your time, interview at least four who work with other production professionals and understand our unique circumstances and see which chef matches your taste for finances.

Robert
 
I'm a sole proprietor and I do my own taxes. If Canada's tax agency audits me I'll be very surprised as I don't make very much.

Anyways, 2013 has been my best year to date, finally kind of sort of making a middle class income. The majority of my income comes from maybe 6 repeat clients so I'm very aware that if one of them leaves there will be a noticeable decline in my income. So when I have time I'll continue to grind away with my marketing.

Having said all that, I now like to explore new video production markets that I have not touched upon before. I have been targeting mostly small to medium size marketing agencies over the last few years, each year adding maybe one to two repeat agency customers to the list. Each corporate project averages around $1500 to $2000, really depends. While it would be great to continue adding more to the list, I would like to start doing documentaries and music videos as a cinematographer. I guess my main target client will be documentaries producers and artist managers? I've avoided those types of people because I have always thought that they don't have money, but then I got a little one week AC gig from a DP friend of mine early last year for a short film, so maybe indie producers do have grant money to spend.

Does anyone know how to target these folks?
 
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