Top 7 business books for Wedding Filmmakers
Seven of the finest business books that can help wedding filmmakers, especially those wanting to achieve even more success.
Disclaimer: The following information is NOT to be considered financial advice. It is for informational purposes only. It is also accurate as of the time of this writing.
Please perform your own research and due diligence before making any financial decision.
Lastly, we purposely DON’T use affiliate or referral links. So you can have confidence we are making an impartial analysis free of any conflicts of interest.
Overview
There are a ton of recommendations around books to read, for personal growth, business growth, acumen, and the like. We curated this list to be most impactful for Wedding Filmmakers to start with. They serve as Foundational books.
They are also books that we have personally read many times over, gained incredible value from, and can attest to their power. Enjoy!
Book list:
This book was recommended to me by a close personal friend that I greatly respect and has achieved extraordinary success. I have listened to the audiobook and read the physical book. This book has been foundational to breaking through barriers and limiting beliefs about what is possible. It is easy to get bogged down with the day to day and fall back into comfortable habits that don’t move you forward in your business.
The Magic of Thinking BIG provides a framework for big dreams and really unshackling your mind around what is possible. It grants permission for you to have unreasonable goals and provides a boost to take action. Definitely worthy of your time and attention. May the Schwartz be with you.
I heard about Eckhart Tolle from a YouTuber back in the day. The book was originally published in 1999, well before many of the modern technologies (and distractions) we have today. The genesis of this book as the story goes, places Eckhart, for a period of about two years, spending much of his time sitting, "in a state of deep bliss," on park benches in Russell Square, Central London, "watching the world go by."
One of the main themes in this book is what Eckhart calls “Being Present in the Moment.” He expands in great detail about why this concept is important, and how you benefit from it. For wedding filmmakers, this idea holds true when in deep concentration at a wedding, while editing, and other facets of your craft. You won’t go wrong investing the time to read this classic.
Arguably one of the most impactful books any person can read on sales and negotiating. Voss spent years as an FBI hostage negotiator, where the stakes were as high as they get. He distilled unique insights about what drives people to make decisions. The book is a combination of real life stories as an FBI hostage negotiator and then practical steps to incorporate the concepts into your wedding business.
I remember when I was about 100 pages into the book I tested out one of the concepts I recently learned and negotiated a $1,500 discount. My mind was blown and I was hooked!
I also have used his hail mary email technique to revive deals on life support. Understanding and using the concepts in this book will certainly help you be more successful in communicating the value of your services to your wedding clients and understanding why and how they make decisions.
#4. Atomic Habits
This book was recommended to me by a successful customer. It has been a game changer for getting started with something new. The idea is simple: start with a daily action that is so easy to check off, you have no excuse for not doing it. Example, reading 1 page a day from a book, or even 1 line. Doing a single push-up each day. Putting one thing back in its place each day. You then build on these successful wins.
I have used the concepts in this book many times to build habits and improve them over time. As an example, I wanted to start waking up earlier each day. Instead of trying to do it in one go, and likely creating an unsustainable habit, I started waking up 5 minutes earlier each day. Over the course of several weeks I was able to gradually build a successful habit and continue making progress towards my goal. It was a real game changer. You end up focusing on the small, incremental, daily wins towards your bigger goal, vastly improving your odds of success.
You can take the lessons learned in this book and apply them as a practical framework for nearly anything you are trying to achieve.
This book was recommended by a successful Wedding Filmmaker. The original version came out in 1995, and has been updated with more recent references. The book is incredibly thought provoking about why people start their own business. Michael Gerber uses a concept called the “Entrepreneurial Seizure” whereby a person decides they want to work for themself, or be their own boss, or no longer be an employee.
The problem with this approach is that many people end up “self-employed” with a bad job they own and their “boss is a lunatic.” The E Myth Revisited is a foundational book for anyone running their own business and attempting to do everything themselves and then wondering why they aren’t achieving the success they want. As a wedding filmmaker, there is huge power in tackling the issues Gerber presents as the real obstacles to greater success in your business. Spoiler alert: It isn’t because you don’t have the newest camera :)
The information in this book might be regarded as one of the most powerful foundational principles for any successful Wedding Filmmaker: Resilience
Calling upon many of the great stoic philosophers, Holiday provides many great quotes and ideas of Stoicism going back to Seneca and Epictetus.
Instead of being disappointed or feeling defeated when something doesn’t go right, you realize that things being hard or challenging are exactly the way they should go. This becomes your default state, and NOT in a negative way at all. Quite the opposite. You plan ahead that things may not go right the first time, or might take longer than anticipated, or might have more challenges.
This builds a level of resiliency such that you can overcome these obstacles and push forward to greater success. As a wedding filmmaker you can likely remember how hard it was to learn many of the core concepts, like composition, lighting, color grading, video editing and more. Learning each of these skills involved making mistakes, learning from them, and continuing to move forward.
The Obstacle is the Way sets the stage that the challenges you faced were par for the course, NOT the exception. By accepting this truth you build a mental framework for tackling new challenges with a greater degree of confidence. A must read for any Wedding Filmmaker.
Arguably one of the most profound and life changing books you will ever read. This book sits at the very foundation of success. It might be hard to correlate how two Navy Seals navigating their time in the Iraq War would provide applicable advice for a Wedding Filmmaker. However, the information absolutely applies to our industry.
The core idea is that by taking ownership of everything in your life, both the good and the bad, you take control of the ability to change and improve your situation. Jocko and Leif tell detailed stories of their time as Navy Seals as well as successful entrepreneurs. By taking “Extreme Ownership” in everything you do, excuses and finger pointing evaporate. When a situation doesn’t go as planned, instead of trying to find someone else to blame, you start with yourself and address “what could I have done differently”, “what can I learn from this experience” and “what can I do differently going forward.”
It seems counterintuitive, but taking ownership of all things in your life is incredibly powerful. This approach empowers you to make the changes and improvements you want. It takes a bit of a mental shift; however, the results you can achieve are incredible.
As a practical example, we all know filming a wedding has many challenges, such as lighting, weather, capturing clear audio, guests blocking your perfect shot and more. One “accepted” approach might be to blame others, like the officiant, Aunt Becky, or Nikon.
The “Extreme Ownership” approach is looking internally and reflecting on what you could have done differently and how you can improve next time. Implementing the ideas in this book can definitely take courage; however, the ensuing results are well worth it. This book is worth reading, and re-reading several times as well as listening to the audiobook several times. Enjoy!
Author Notes
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