The Journey from Editor to Entrepeneur

More creative professionals than ever are monetizing their skills by selling training courses. But the world of entrepreneurship can be overwhelming, particularly if you’ve only worked at corporate jobs throughout your career.

As an ex-Hollywood editor and co-founder of Film Editing Pro, Chris MacDonald has successfully completed this journey.

Here, he outlines what it really takes to start a business teaching editing and filmmaking, in an interview with Zack Arnold, host of the “Optimize Yourself” Podcast.

Imposter Syndrome

One of the biggest fears that holds people back from creating a teaching course is imposter syndrome; the idea that you’re not ‘good enough’ in your field to teach others. Despite his professional career, Chris felt like this when starting FEP:

When the idea first came up, I wasn’t an experienced editor at that point… I don’t deserve to be teaching this. I’m still learning this looking back, I guess we’re kind of always all still learning it at some level, and at some point you just have to say ‘All right, I guess I know what I’m doing for the most part’.

Rather than let his own concerns about experience hold him back, he started Film Editing Pro anyway, and continuously improved his editing skills while creating training on what he knew already.

If you’re thinking of starting any sort of teaching program, such as a live class or course, don’t worry too much about your level of expertise. You probably know more than you realize, and you can learn the rest along the way.

Teach High Value Skills First

If you want to make a course on creative skills such as editing and filmmaking, selecting your first topic can be difficult.

Choosing the fundamentals of your subject area, or perhaps a basic software tutorial is one option, but Chris did it the opposite way:

Eventually we’re going to teach all the (NLE) software’s, but we kind of did the training backwards. We started with the hard stuff and now we’re filling in the bottom with like, ‘Okay…we’ll show you how to use Premiere’. But there were so many of those resources out there already that when we started, it really wouldn’t have made anything that we were doing special or different.

By offering courses on “the hard stuff”, such as creative processes or complex skills within a field, you’ll differentiate yourself from everyone else.

Before jumping into creating your first venture, think of the highest value skills you can teach. That way, you can demonstrate your proficiency, and position what you’ve made at a premium price point.

What Else Are You Into?

It’s easy to assume that entrepreneurs only draw on skills related to their core business, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Chris thinks that your seemingly unrelated interests and skills may help you in unexpected ways:

Do you have more than one skill that can synergize with each other?…That’s the happy intersection.

One great example is his friend Zack Arnold, who is an editor but also really into fitness, as well as productivity and time management techniques.

Becoming a freelance editor who manages their time well is the most obvious synergy, but what about an editor specializing in fitness coaching videos? Or even a productivity consultant that caters specifically to editors?

…that can be a very targeted market with a unique perspective that you can offer to those people.

When starting your own business, try to draw on several skillsets or areas of interest that you’ve accumulated, to create a niche that you can dominate.

Learn A Bit Of Everything

Using multiple skillsets is great, but that doesn’t mean you have all the knowledge you need already. As Chris found out, part of being an entrepreneur is understanding all areas of your business:

If you want to be in charge of a business that can turn into something and have people help you out with it, you need to know what they’re going to know, or at least you need to know the basics of it.

He makes a key point here – whether you’re working on different areas of the business yourself, or hiring someone to work on it for you, you need to learn the fundamentals of it. Ultimately, if you don’t understand parts of your venture at all, you’re not in control of it.

 Learn a little bit about online advertising. Learn about each social platform that’s currently relevant. Read some books on marketing and just kind of get into it and understand that you’re going to be wearing 15 hats.

Depending on the type of person you are, that might sound overwhelming or exciting! However, if you put the work in to learn about every aspect of your business, you’ll gain a major advantage over other aspiring business owners who don’t.

Wrap Up

Starting your own business and creating courses can be a difficult, but rewarding journey. Why not head over to Film Editing Pro’s training page? There, you can find free and premium training packages created by Chris and his team.