My name is Kelly Zlatic, wife of an extremely creative shooter & editor. If you ask any of our friends, they’ll tell you Zac is the creative one. But where Zac is creative, I run the business and get things done. I have a marketing degree from the University of San Diego and have spent the last 10 years helping businesses grow or starting businesses of my own.

I get fired up when we sit down with other creators and we start talking about ‘the boring stuff,’ like contracts and taxes. Weird, I know.

After we got married, I came on full-time to help Zac run Double Z Productions. Six months later, we doubled his income, with way less stress when it came to dealing with client communication and paperwork. I finally decided to tackle the goal of putting our systems down on paper, so I did some research to see what was already out there. When I googled “How to start a video business,” I didn’t find much. A few samples from the results included: A very vague blog post that walks you through basic steps of starting any business, an article from 1996, and “10 reasons you should never start a video business.” Cool cool cool....

I wanted to create a business guide because we get asked all the time how we support 2 people financially, running a super lean (i.e. efficient) production company. The second question we get asked the most: “HOW DO I GET MORE CLIENTS??” If I had a penny for every click bait article I’ve seen selling you how to get more clients, I wouldn’t need to be working. For us, it starts with running a legitimate business and having systems in place for everything we do. We created a guide to help other videographers build a successful business that naturally attracts more clients, builds relationships, and makes more money.

The main point of The Ultimate Filmmaker's Business Guide is that it is specifically designed FOR VIDEOGRAPHERS. Anyone can google how to start a business, but what about charging sales tax AS A VIDEOGRAPHER. Billing, invoicing, negotiating and managing finances AS A VIDEOGRAPHER. Are you paying yourself legitimately? Have you ever filed for franchise tax? Do you even know what it is? Does your contract protect you AS A VIDEOGRAPHER? Or did you just download it off the internet? Do you know what “work for hire” actually means or are they just some fancy words in your contract?

I made sure our guide is packed full of content and templates actually focused on running your video business. So many of the business guides that I did find spent 2-3 (picture-filled) pages covering business fundamentals, while the rest was focused on how to adjust your camera settings for different types of lighting. If you’re here, I hope you already know how to do that, or you’re in the process of learning that from a valued source.