Rising Stars: Meet Josh Emerick

Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Emerick.

Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I want to try and keep this short and focus on milestones. My story starts with following my passion, which sounds good in theory, but landed me a ton of stress. I’m not a stranger to hard work, and my foundation begins there. When I started taking video as a career “serious,” started in 2011, transitioning away from completing an Industrial Engineering degree to making art “work.” We did it all for about a year, and in late 2012 we got an opportunity to produce our first music video.

This point was unique because it was natural, and we excelled here. We understood our client and their goals better, and this created our leading video production company JECP. We worked to get great here, built many relationships, and did great work. Around 2015 we dabbled in weddings, found another strength in storytelling, and had a lot of love for learning about couples and what made their relationships work. This created our second video and photo company, PRSRVE.

On the sidelines, I was still freelancing for commercial gigs and learning about marketing, video strategy, and varying scales of video production. From 2011 to 2018, we pursued our career with the mindset of getting good, really good, but this mindset was challenged when we released our 2018 demo reel. We had six months of no work. Technically our work was what I had been working on for those seven years, but no one wanted us, which was puzzling.

A lot of soul-searching and self-reflection happened until I realized a few things. We were “selling” technical and vision over what brought us early success, relationship building, and trust-earning abilities. From here, things started to change, and I finally started stepping into the role of business owner over being technically sound. A big jump in my leadership happened, and we experienced some bigger growth. This was crucial with COVID setting the whole industry back and our perseverance.

In late 2018 we also started another video production company, Myelin. This company is focused on commercial video production. So with all of these companies feeling different and what happened in 2018, we finally started working on what’s kept it all together and feeling cohesive in setting company values, company mission, and structured, repeatable processes.

This felt like freedom and harmony because it brought all the companies together, realizing they are all identical in many ways, with varying (to some degree) client types. To sum it all up, building businesses wasn’t easy, but over time, everything gets more and more clear and I’m finding I love doing the work around impacting our partners and our team.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
My biggest hurdle has been myself. There are challenges with any endeavor, but realizing that doing the hard work is most fulfilling for me has been freeing. At the start, there weren’t as many responsibilities, but over time you build working relationships, cycle through team members, and make a name for yourself. That comes with responsibility and pressure.

In various stages, I have been too overwhelmed or stressed, and every time it’s required me to zoom out and process why, which has become a superpower. That ability to be honest with me, seek help or inspiration, and work through hurdles has helped us navigate many hurdles. In 2015 I was juggling a day job and my businesses and putting in 80-100hrs weekly; this challenged my health for four months with ongoing colds, loss of voice, hearing problems, and general weakness.

I had to start resting, and my old “grind hard” mindset was challenged. I learned that rest is valuable to performance and thinking is as much a strength as hard work. From 2016 through 2018, my wife and I bought a house, had our first son, and I went full-time in my business. This battle of time management and wanting to be present was the most significant emotional battle I’ve faced.

I desperately wanted to be a good father and husband and run a business. I was letting my freelancers down, clients down, and family down. I got serious about managing my time, setting boundaries, and gaining control. This took lots of educating and listening. Through this struggle, I feel like I found myself and became clear on what my work stood for, how I serve our business, and how it serves me. Grateful I made it through this period, and it strengthened my mindset.

In 2019, we were warming up, moving fast and clear-headed, and then we were robbed of $12k in video production gear which set us back pretty hard, but mindset helped. I reminded myself and my team that it was just gear, we all were fine and safe, and we had the skills and mentality to rebuild. In the midst of this, we were showered with lots of love from our filmmaking community and past and present clients, and it reminded us that we were doing more than good work but making an impact that was felt.

I can’t begin to express how important that support is through messages and donations made to our spirit. I could of on and on, but ultimately every hurdle has made us better, and any time we face such a hurdle, I try to recall these events and remind myself we’ve beat hard obstacles, and every time it’s made us better. It’s not blind optimism, but it reminds me of what is within my locus of control and moving one play at a time.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m grateful I get to tell stories through video for a living. It’s a privilege and what’s created harmony across all three brands is who we serve. We seek the underdogs and help them feel less overwhelmed, more focused, and ultimately confident in what video can do for them. We say we are a relationship-first company, meaning we work to earn trust.

Our core values guide our process, and we worked to create values that aren’t just external (for our clients) but internal (serving the team and culture). Our core values are Curious, Honest, and Supportive, and they work in sequence. We embody a learner’s mindset entering relationships, understanding that if we get vulnerable, we can solve problems and diagnose a good solution. Leadership works the same in creating harmony and exciting project to project.

Once we reach this level of trust, we have a foundation that can withstand honesty. Being honest together improves both parties and ensures we work towards results over pretty videos. These projects have to be effective to reach goals. That leads us to support, which is understanding a win-win-win scenario is the best outcome. When we all win together, it supports better projects, referrals, and trust within the video marketing industry.

We spend a lot of time finding suitable projects verse any project. Client alignment was an area we doubled down on early. We don’t just look at available money to produce but make sure we align as people. There’s always less friction and a better experience, which makes a big difference for my team, myself, and our clients. We want to grow, but it’s been a slow and steady approach vs. taking big gigs with many red flags. This mentality has allowed us to stay firm in our processes and create consistent and repeatable processes.

We’d love to hear what you think about risk-taking.
Truthfully, I’m not much of a risk-taker and I know that’s why we’re slow and steady in growth. I read a book a few years back it described businesses as sailboats or speed boats and I pretty clearly identified ourselves as a sailboat. We move slowly and consistently, within control and structure. I enjoy this approach and I think that’s partially because I’m a patient person. I seek lots of opportunities for long-term payoffs over quick wins.

Early in my career, I would make purchases around gear or new tools and while I don’t fully regret those decisions, they created a lot of data. The biggest thing it informed me was that I would invest in the company and not feel empowered to charge for upgrades. I still struggle with this, but I’m much more conscious about how a tool impacts our performance or efficiency over the flashiness.

I spend more time upgrading our systems or challenging processes. The biggest thing I consider when taking a risk is how it will improve a part of our process. How can I make sales call more personal, hand a project over easier, remove the pressure of investing in a larger project, create more collaboration or educate potential audiences more humanly? These risks usually pay off over time, but being patient enough to see the wins can be tricky.

A recent risk I took was in productizing many of our services, creating automation to our pipeline, and thinking through our impact. This was time-consuming, but the end product is pretty impressive, and we’ll be able to impact more clients at various budget ranges, which excites me. This is all in preparation for the 2023 projects.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jecp.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jmemerick/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@jmemerick 

Image Credits
Hunter Wurzelbach, Will Fairbanks, and Trent Bourke