Hollywood Video Editor Shoots for the Stars

This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.

[Music]

Hey there, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is Chris Guillebeau, your host. Got a great story for you today, a really excellent case study. In this story, a gentleman known as the AV Gear Guy, he has a name, but that's what he goes by, the AV Gear Guy.

We'll talk about that in the story. He uses a $5 a month Craigslist ad to land thousands of dollars in work. Listen, somebody's gonna go out there and try this today. And I hope you will. One of our listeners, maybe more than one of our listeners, go and try this guy's tactic and let me know how it works.

And by the way, there could actually be several different lessons or takeaways from this episode. The aforementioned AV Gear Guy is doing really well. He's learned a lot along the way. But in the spirit of having some focus to these episodes, I try to pull out at least one specific lesson or interesting point for your consideration. And so that's kind of why I latched on to this $5 a month Craigslist ad.

But as I said, there's a lot here. The story is called Video Editor Shoots for the Stars. And by the way, this is episode 1998, 1,998. I cannot believe that myself, but it is true. We are almost to 2,000 episodes.

Thank you for being part of this amazing community. The story is coming up after this quick message from our sponsor. [Music]

Graham Jones goes by Gray, works as a TV editor and writer. Because that industry has so many ebbs and flows, he's always filled in the gaps with side jobs, including a stock footage library and getting sponsorships for his video podcasts. But in 2017, when he was invited to shoot a music festival, he started thinking bigger.

Although he had a lot of gear already, he didn't have everything he needed for the job. So he rented it from a peer-to-peer equipment sharing platform called ShareGrit. That experience made him realize he could be running out his own gear when he wasn't using it. So he immediately listed everything he had and started making $1,500 a month. He then reinvested those earnings to build a bigger rental catalog and got it as high as $3,500 a month before COVID hit.

In addition to bringing in revenue, those rentals also allowed Gray to be more aggressive in pursuing jobs that needed a lot of specialized equipment because he knew whatever he bought could be rented to offset the purchase price. Later, he began advertising video audio tape conversions and immediately booked a $10,000 job that he could do in a few weeks during extra hours. Next, he used this gear to launch a multi-angle driving plates company, kind of a side brand, a side brand to his mini side brands, which now generates $15,000 a year. Now, what are multi-angle driving plates you might wonder, well, when you see actors in a movie or TV show driving in a car, most of the time they're in a green screen studio. Gray shoots the footage that goes behind them in 360 degrees.

So no matter what angle the director cuts to, they can have matching footage, increasing the realism. He also shoots an overhead angle that can be used for reflections. Where do his customers find him? Well, a lot of them are finding him through Sharegrid, that same platform that he first rented from. He's also experimented with different types of advertising, including Facebook, Instagram, Google, et cetera, but never found it to be worthwhile.

Then he stumbled on Craigslist ads. He can put up a small business ad for $5 a month and tons of people search Craigslist every day. They also find his Craigslist ads through Google searches that he doesn't pay for. Specifically, Gray generates ads for several different aspects of his business using targeted keywords. For instance, he has one ad that focuses entirely on documentary filmmakers, another focused entirely on consumers with family tapes, and a third ad that focuses on camera rentals.

And these $5 a month Craigslist ads really convert. In fact, one of them allowed him to land a $10,000 job capturing documentary footage with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society. Talk about fishing in the right pond. So far, Gray's biggest catch to extend that metaphor was a $140,000 job with an educational foundation for billionaire Michael Milken. That foundation had 14,000 video tapes, which was approximately 15 tons of tapes, just kind of lying around a warehouse that needed to be imported.

And by capturing it from 19 machines at once, Gray and a small team were able to deliver it in 10 weeks. Even the most established transfer companies would take a year or more for that amount of video. So he feels that speed is what's helped him succeed in that niche. He celebrated the six-figure project with a week-long vacation in Disneyland. Another key to the business came when he began offering 10% referral bonuses to anyone who refers in business.

In fact, that $140,000 project was the result of a referral, and he dutifully paid out that 10% referral fee. In 2021, these projects produced a combined revenue of $300,000, far more than he earns from his day job, and for projects that didn't even exist before 2017. His wife helps out. And if they win some of the big bids they currently have in the mix, they plan to get commercial space in Burbank and hire a full-time staff. And that's not all.

When Gray saw how much success he had renting out camera equipment on ShareGrid, he and his wife started renting their minivan through the peer-to-peer car rental site, Turo. In their first two weeks of doing it, they booked $3,000 of rentals. They plan to reinvest their earnings to buy more vehicles and gradually build up a fleet. Finally, because, you know, two multiple six-figure side hustles isn't enough, he's also in talks to buy a competing audio-video transfer company. [Music]

Oh my gosh, there's a lot we could take from this story.

Gray is obviously working really hard, hustling in lots of ways, and it's very productive and fruitful, as you heard. I especially liked that tip about the Craigslist ads, but as I said, there's a lot you could do. So Gray, good work, man. I also wanna give a shout out to our friends at Happier in Hollywood. That's how Gray first heard about Side Hustle School.

Happier in Hollywood is part of the podcast network known as the Onward Project, overseen by Gretchen Rubin. Happier in Hollywood in particular, run by veteran TV writers and my friends, Liz Kraft and Sarah Fain. You can check that out wherever you get your podcasts. Happier in Hollywood. Listeners, inspiration is good, but inspiration with action is so much better.

If you wanna see today's show notes, including links to Gray's website, ShareGrid, anything else I mentioned, just come to sidehustleschool.com/19981998. Two episodes to go to 2000. We're gonna keep going from there. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau.

This is Side Hustle School. [Music]

From the Onward Project.