We believe filmmaking is for anyone and education should be accessible.

So, as we plan Filmit Together, our 2-day online filmmaker summit and 30-day challenge, we want to ensure people can participate from anywhere, for little to no cost.

Recently, we got a "yes" from two nonprofit partners for Filmit Together. Yay! (If you missed our last newsletter, you can see the actual email we sent to these non-profit partners. Less "perfection" worked better in this case.)

But, now what?

Cover the cost

Organizing this event will take us about six months (we're estimating based on our personal capacity). And we'll need to fund our time for this work – at least partially, since we still have some income from website client work. Although it’s not as costly as an in-person event, our online summit will still create expenses we need to cover, too.

Here's a side note about expenses if you're curious (otherwise, feel free to skip this section).

Now that we have larger nonprofit partners to boost our event's credibility, we can get the attention of businesses and individuals who are willing to financially support our event. Especially those who align with our values around shifting independent filmmaking to be more sustainable, inclusive, and wellness-focused.

The question now is: What do we say to them?

Time to create our "sponsor packet"

That's not an official term, just something we say when we refer to the professional document that we want to make for potential sponsors. It would include a summary of Filmit Together and the sponsorship packages to choose from. Something that shows Filmit Together is legit, we know what we're doing (since we've organized similar film education events before), and it's something they want to be involved in.

It would be nice if we could just write this:

In reality, that probably wouldn't get us very far. Bummer.

We realized quickly that because this is our first completely online event like this, we'll have LOTS of decisions to make for the first time. It felt like it would be too easy to get stuck in details, decision fatigue, and the perfectionistic mindset we mentioned in our last newsletter.

We needed something more structured we could follow. Something to help tell us what to focus on next instead of doing it all on our own. Sometimes it feels nice to follow a recipe instead of creating a new meal from scratch. 🥗

A recipe for success

This is where our fun business coaches, Jason and Caroline Zook, come into the picture. They help us navigate through our overwhelm and also make us laugh. They run the un-boring coaching program, called Wandering Aimfully (or WAIM) Unlimited, for solo entrepreneurs who want to build a Calm Creator Business.

We have a membership in WAIM Unlimited and have found their courses, workshops, roadmaps, and community to be practical, realistic, supportive, and fun. They are a goofy couple, who place high priority on their well-being and dismiss hustle culture – so, naturally, we can relate. 😜

Specifically, to help create our sponsor packet, we are using WAIM's course, Calm Launch Formula, which helps business owners launch their online product successfully without the stress. It's very step-by-step, decision-by-decision, and sprinkled with humor and silliness. It's the recipe we needed.

Since we are considering hosting more Filmit Together events in the future, using a tested formula designed by people we respect and trust felt like a comforting, calmer, and overall wiser route forward.

Although we'll likely use the Calm Launch Formula course to help promote the "launch" of Filmit Together, our goal for now was to get clarity for the sponsor packet. Conveniently, this info was all covered in Module 1 of Calm Launch Formula, Your Irresistible Offer.

Over several work sessions together in our cramped bedroom office, we went through the Module 1 lessons to define the event, the audience, and the value of Filmit Together. Module 1 even helped us name the event. Thaaaanks! 😉

We did our best to focus on the essentials and not get bogged down in the details. (Yeah, easier said than done.) Even with some struggles to stay efficient, it was helpful to have a trusted resource that provided structure for our decision making.

Instead of deciding what to focus on, we could just make the actual choices, one at a time. For example:

• What is the event?
• Who is our audience?
• What do they gain from the event?
• What's the event called?
• What's the value of the event?
• What's an appropriate price?

We knew these answers, generally speaking, in our heads. Although, being able to articulate all that in a concise and compelling way to potential sponsors takes more clarity. That's where Calm Launch Formula came in handy.

Reliable resources

We have found that having reliable resources we can lean on brings clarity or focus to our process. Especially when we have many decisions to make. Not everything has to be done from scratch or on our own, which felt like a relief. In our experience, it's often better when we don't do everything on our own, even though our tendency is to try.

This is why we believe it's valuable to share our process. As we work toward making our feature film about sleep, we will encounter many problems to solve and decisions to make. As we figure out solutions for ourselves, we want to share how we got there in hopes that we may become a reliable resource and support system for people who want to make films they're passionate about.

For example, right now, we're trying to build a community of filmmakers who share our values. A community that cares about working together to make positive changes in the independent film industry. And, we're sharing how we're doing that – by creating Filmit Together and writing our newsletter.

In the future, when we build a website, we'll show you how we build it.

When we research sleep for our film, we'll show you how we conduct the research.

When we are in pre-production, we'll walk you through as much of the process as we can.

Hopefully, by sharing our process openly, you will have reliable resources to help your filmmaking journey, like building your website, researching your film idea, or navigating pre-production confidently.

What are some reliable resources or systems you lean on when you feel overwhelmed and need a bit more structure? Let us know – we'd love to learn with you.

Take care,
A Creative Duo

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