Meet Lemar Griffin

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lemar Griffin.

Lemar, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I knew I wanted to work for myself after having a lot of amazing 9-5’s. I say that because some entrepreneurs try to make it seem like having a 9-5 is a bad thing when it’s not at all. Sometimes be much better than being an entrepreneur just depends on the person and the job. I love being challenged, I love competing. I love the process of the process. I’m that kind of person.

Starting my own production company and not having taken any classes was a challenge. I had to learn EVERYTHING from the ground up, and to this day I am still eager to learn anything and everything that will make me better. The thing about where I am today is that people would call that successful, and by no means am I not grateful for the opportunities I have. The thing is to work very very hard to create those opportunities, I try to network as much as possible, I try to over exceed the client’s exceptions.

Lastly, I view my business right now as I view my 6 month old daughter Maliah Faith Griffin. Let me explain. I do videography and photography for companies, brands, NFL, NBA, WNBA, Olympians, and many more. I am only one person and cannot do all these things alone, I have tried and sometimes succeeded, but other times I failed. As a result of those failures I learned you need help, and I got help! To come back to why I view my business like my daughter Maliah is because it’s a baby.

With my daughter, I’m learning what she likes, what she dislikes, what makes her happy, what makes her sad. This is the same way I feel about my company and my brand. I am still learning so many things about it. It’s a baby. I don’t want to just be a photo and video company… I want to be something special, but until I grow and learn more I will just keep working on my company until it reaches its full potential!

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has not been smooth at all, but on the flip side, I have things that help me that I think other entrepreneurs or first-time business owners wish they had. To start my family is without a doubt 100 percent behind me and never questioned the pursuit of my own company. My wife is without a doubt my secret weapon. She is the smartest person I know, like no BS. She has always supported me and helped me with ideas and always just knows what to do to keep me motivated and inspired. My mother and my mother-in-law also support me without thinking twice. When the people you love love what you are creating it makes the process a million times easier. Then last but not least my business partner Gabriel Lerma. He has been with me since the early days of me starting my own thing and is always by my side no matter how tough the task is. There’s a quote I was told about the business that stuck with me, I hope I word this right lol. “You never want to be the smartest person in the room in your company, if you are that’s bad.” Now I say that because Gabe is a genius like he is a thinking machine. So in my business, I’m not the smartest guy in the room, he is. Not all the time but some times I operate entirely on impulses and sometimes that leads to things that are huge for us and my company, and other times it leads to me getting my car towed. There have been a couple of times where things got really bad money-wise and I lost my car, it was rough but I always ended up figuring things out and getting my car back within two days. Now I say this because in my mind buying stuff for my company was more important than paying my car payment. I now have learned thanks to my wife lol I can just be smarter and handle things better, but that was something I had to learn the hard way.

Side-note… I get afraid anytime I see a tow truck, it reminds me of them taking my car and that makes me wanna work hard in my company every time I see one!

Please tell us about your work.
Lemar Griffin Films is Gabriel Lemar and I. We create content for brands and professional athletes. We do wedding videography, photography, and my favorite, engagement proposals. We are known for the stuff we make with WNBA & NFL athletes as they have a huge fan base and that sometimes leads their fans back to our company as we create the visuals for their favorite players.

I would say I’m most proud of the charity work we get to help with. Players like Von Miller, Emmanuel Sanders, Tiffany Hayes (WNBA) have amazing charities and we get to help make content that reaches people to inspire them to give and help the kids and that will always be more meaningful than a lot of other cool stuff we do.

I’m also proud of how versatile myself and Gabe are. By that I mean we can do anything anyone needs, we try to have a skill set so wide that we can help anyone do anything in our field and do it at the highest level. That is something that takes a lot of hard work.

I think what sets my company apart for others is that I do have my clients best interest in mind all the time. I want to figure out how to give them as much value as possible out of the product I provide. I want it to make sense for them to hire me and work with me, understanding that they will get all of hard work and effort as long as we are working together.

Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
Hard work. There’s just no other way to explain it. I try to work my ass off all the time. But in addition to working hard as hell, working smarter help as well. No shortcut to success, if there was.. well you know how that goes.

Also, I never give up, just always have to stay the course and trust the process. I have a podcast called “less talk more do” where I interview successful people and all of them always have that one thing in common, they never gave up or give in. You just have to grind it out no matter how hard it gets, and that shit will get hard…

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.lemargriffinfilms.com/
• Email: lemargriffinfilms@gmail.com
• Instagram: IG @ Lemargriffinfilms
• Facebook: Lemar Griffin Films
• Twitter: @Lemargriffin9

Image Credit:
I took all the pictures and the one’s of me Gabe took them 🙂

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