Life Stage Films – Blog

Another year gone by! We can’t believe 2009 is over already. This year seemed to go by extra fast because we had Penelope, our new born baby girl turn 1 year old in December! There is no way she is 1 already. I just don’t believe it.

Although 2009 may be a year most people want to forget what with a recession and widespread uncertainty about the direction of our country, I just want to testify how much God has blessed not only my family, but all of us. Melissa and I were able to travel to some very cool places this year, go on vacation, make new friends, and grow closer together. We were able to do a plethora of home improvement projects together, and that was a blast! Our family was healthy, our child is beautiful and we appreciate what we were given. So as we do at the end of every year on the blog, we just wanted to share with everyone what we feel blessed to have accomplished in Life Stage Films. We highly recommend doing this for both your business and/or personal lives so you can always look back and see how far you have come! We can’t say enough how excited we are that we get to do what we love for a job everyday! Its not even a job most days! That’s not to say we haven’t learned some hard lessons and made big mistakes.We are looking forward to 2010 with much excitement and hope you can come along on the ride with us! Without further adieu, here are our LIFE STAGE FILMS GREATEST HITS of 2009!

• Expanded our staff to 6 people! That includes our talented primary cinematographer, Josiah, and our new dedicated sales consultant, Beth! Amy and Jamie have continued to be incredible assets to our team, as Jamie has moved to full time Studio Manager, and Amy was heavily booked filming weddings in 2009! We couldn’t have gotten so many of our goals accomplished without our rockin’ interns Wilson, Mary, and Lorin.
• We fulfilled one of our 3 year business goals to be speakers/educators on a national level. We were incredibly humbled to speak in Orlando, FL at WEVA 2009 (Wedding & Event Videographers Association). We spoke on sales and marketing w/ wedding videography. We also met a ton of new friends and colleagues that will be sure to help us and inspire us for 2010. We also spoke up in Detroit, MI at MIVA (Michigan Independent Video Association)
• We also won another International award for creativity in our wedding films at WEVA. We won a CEA (Creative Excellence Award) for our Demo Reel! The CEAs are our industry’s version of the Academy Awards, or Oscars. Very cool to win this one!
• We were asked to be a featured speaker at IN[FOCUS] Video Conference, in Austin, TX in Jan. 2010. I’ll be sharing the stage with the best in the industry! Very excited to learn from them as well. Watch our promo video for the event!
• Another dream of mine to be an educational resource for the wedding video industry came to fruition with the launch of our Business Coaching Program for Video Entrepreneurs. (www.VideoBusinessCoaching.com) . With our initial launch, we had over 450 business owners sign up for our webinar…all over the world! We had people tune in from England, Australia, Greece, Malaysia, Philippines, Canada, Ireland, Mexico and Italy. I can’t decide what’s more rewarding, hearing how much our clients enjoy their videos or helping others like myself make a better living for themselves.
• We were able to invest in ourselves and our own education at Re:frame, an intimate gathering of 50 of the top studios in the world. I learned so much and left inspired with new ideas for our wedding films.
• We added a new video product to our Legacy Video Product line. It’s called “Baby Stories” by Life Stage and we can’t wait to take the initial excitement about it and market it with full force to families in the region. Check out a sample here.
• I was able to fulfill one of the goals and VISIONS of why I started the business in the first place. I was able to document the story of the redemption of street children in the town of Nakuru, Kenya. Documenting stories of faith and missions was my goal for our business when we started it, and I finally got to go overseas. It changed my life. And I’m addicted. I promise a video is coming soon!
• Even in a recession, we were able to grow our team, book over 45 weddings, increase our sister company’s revenue by 300% from 2008, and come out of 2009 with a profit! We couldn’t thank our awesome clients enough for choosing quality over price and allowing us to come into your lives. We had some AMAZING clients this year.
• Melissa was able to step away from the day-to-day business and be a full time mom! To be able to have a business that provides us a living while Melissa can raise our child instead of day care is an incredible answered prayer.
• I was voted onto the Board of Directors for our Local Wedding Association in Wilmington, NC.
• Voted as the “Best Videographer” in the region from the Bride’s Book for the 3rd year in a row!
• Honored by “The Knot” as a “The Best of Weddings” Videographer for 2010! (formal announcement when the magazine hits stands!)
• We already have 25 weddings booked for 2010! That’s a 100% increase from this time last year. We have already filled up most of the busy summer wedding season and couldn’t be more excited about it. If you are getting married and interested in having us with you, better call Beth soon.
• We added old vintage Super 8mm film to our services at weddings and re-branded our name at the same time! We are one of only a handful of companies in NC/SC to offer this unique service. Check out our demo here.

We hope you can tell we are very proud of our accomplishments in 2009 and are not merely trying to “toot our own horn”. This is such an awesome cleansing process for us every year at this time as we reflect where we have come from, and where we are going. It makes us happy to share it with our blog community, clients, friends and family and would love it if you chimed in and commented! So….what are your major accomplishments and successes of 2009?!