Have you ever heard of Tripit? It’s another awesome app that we use & would recommend you to use if you travel a lot.

Sure, you can constantly check your check your email in search of your itineraries & confirmations numbers. You can try to keep track of your trips, money spent, & mileage -but why do it the hard way? Tripit started as a website & now (like everything else) has moved to an app.

So how does it work? After you sign up, Tripit will set up an email for you, & whenever you’ve purchased a trip, you simply forward all of your itinerary emails to the Tripit email. Then you can open your app & in one master itinerary, you can view details of your flights, flight delays, hotel reservations, car rentals; & for the Ipad version, Tripit will even give you weather updates, list local restaurants, & entertainment venues. Ever since we started using this app, we’ve never been confused & we’ve been so much more organized. It’s just awesome!

You can purchase Tripit in the app store by clicking here

Visit the Tripit Website by clicking here

You’re the King/Queen of hittin the save quick keys on your computer while you’re working. You’ve trained yourself to do it every 5-10 minutes. Maybe you have the program you’re working in setup to automatically save whatever you’re doin every few minutes?

Now most of us obviously will shut things down when we know the storms gonna be pretty bad, but what if the storm sneaks up on you? Even worse…what if you have neighbors like in this video?

Here in Nashville, our weather has a mind of its on. We also have a few over confident dude squirrels who like to play with power lines to impress the girl squirrels. Hahaha:) You get the point… we loose power quite a bit around our house:)

As trained as we are to save our work, its almost like the power knows the best time to go out, and we end up like this guy:)

The first time it happened it really made us mad…but once it happens the second time…we just looked at each other and had that “are you freakin kiddin me” look. For some people it takes more than twice though. hahaha! After the 3rd time we left as soon as the power went out and headed to Best Buy! We bought this bad boy!

So far its been one of the best purchase we’ve made this year. Of course we wanted it to storm right away, or for the power to go out so we could test it out. Instead I just turn off the main breaker. The battery backup didn’t skip a beat, while keeping our hard drives, and computers all powered up.

The back of the unit is pretty cool! You plugin what you need to have set on battery backup, but you can also have some things just surge protected so that lightning wont jack your stuff up! The front of the unit has a screen that lets you know how many minutes of power you have left on the battery backup.

We’d recommend everyone get some type of battery backup unit. No matter what type it is, but we really love the unit we got! You can find it on best buy’s website by Clicking Here

We’re always looking for things to make our lives way easier! If you wanna be sure not to miss some of the things we use to make things super easy, feel free to Signup here for our Filmmaker’s newsletter.

We get to see more weddings than a lot of people get to see in a lifetime. One thing we can always count on at weddings is for there to be a DJ. And honestly DJ’s can either make or break a reception. Not just for the bride and her guests, but for Heather & I too. Most of the time DJ’s are freakin cool as Isaac Hayes:) But every now and then, you’ll have a DJ who thinks the wedding is more about him/her than the bride & groom.

Example

We’ve worked several weddings where our relationship with the DJ was exactly like the one in this clip. Heather & I being Doug (the guy on the phone) and the DJ being Arthur (the old guy) It would seam like even the simplest thing was too hard for the DJ to do.

We for real had a DJ one time tell us he couldn’t say “check, 1…2…3″ on his mic because he had to wait at the door for the bride. He went on to tell us how busy he was. He kinda reminded me of this…

Let’s Be Real

I mean, honestly, I’d probably be the same way with some videographers if I was a DJ. Lets be real, there are still people out there who think wedding videography is a huge joke. I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many DJ’s have emailed us after they saw a video we had shot at a wedding they were a part of.

The emails would sound something like this…

“Hey Eugene & Heather,

I also had a chance to check out your Video at XXXX’s wedding, You two are legit. Hopefully we get another wedding together and this time I’ll get you whatever you two need.”

When Heather and I were in our begining stages of business we kept gettin so frustrated about trying to get things worked out with DJ’s, it always seemed like there was some excuse they always had.

The Solution Was So Simple

Now when we show up to a wedding, the DJ is actually waiting for us with the line we need. The DJ even checks in with us before anything big happens. Not the photographer, not the planner, or even the bride or groom. They always know where we are and we never miss a single thing. The solution was simple! Instead of us trying to convince the DJ taking care of us was a part of his job, we just had the bride and groom tell him/her. Basically after getting the bride & grooms name right, we are one of his biggest concerns. Couples hire us because they trust us, so when we tell them we need certain things in order for the video to be as good as what they see on our site, they make sure it happens.

We could give our couples a list of super technical things to tell the DJ, but instead we’ve just set up a site and have our couples point their DJ to it with an email. We even setup the email for them to send their DJ. It’s amazing how different DJ’s respond when they get the email from the bride instead of us.

A Little More Info

Now if you’re anything like me, you’re probably tired of reading all this text, so I wont bore you with anymore of the details. If you’d like to check out the email that goes out to our couple, the website we point the DJ to, or the email we have our couples send their DJs, be sure to Signup here for our Filmmaker’s newsletter.

A Little Bit of Fun

Since we’re on the topic of DJ’s, we just thought we’d leave you with this awesome video mix of 2010′s top 40

We are from a small town in Indiana where it seems that your life is summed up in one of the following scenarios: you get pregnant, married, then divorced (in only a few short years); you have a meth lab & your health goes bad; or you get out & try do something with your life. Don’t get us wrong, there are a few people we know who don’t fall into this category & we also know a few who have, but they’ve gotten their stuff back together & made their life work. Sadly, many people don’t get their life together -& they keep getting stuck in this rut.

We decided that, in order to do what’s best for our marriage, we had to move away. Start over. Little did we know that we would eventually build our own successful business. After we started our business, we came home & told people about it because we were excited, naturally; & like anyone who’s stuck in a rut, they told us we would fail & some even told us that we should move back home. Why? Misery loves company, right? Well, thank the Lord, we didn’t listen to them & although we were scared, we did what was working for us.

Every time we go home for a visit, we always find ourselves encouraging people to get out… “move to Nashville” is what we always tell people. Now, we know that Nashville’s not for everyone. We just throw that out there in case our friends think it’s a good idea & move closer to us

We decided that what was best for us was to get out of this small town to become something else, do something else, you know… get some fresh “life air!” So many people fall into this situation with not only their life, but their business too. They do the same things over & over & then wonder why they don’t have a different result?? There is a difference between being persistent & being stupid.

If you’re a videographer/photographer & you’re shooting the same way & editing the same way, but you’re not selling anyone on it… Do Something Different! We don’t have to tell you that trying new things aren’t always easy… you know that. Every one knows that! We just want to encourage you to do it! We’ll almost guarantee that if you market in a different way or live in a different way, then you will have a different result. Trust us, we’ve tried new things that haven’t always worked, but we keep going until we find something that does. Don’t get stuck in a rut.

Last week we had dinner with Ron Dawson, a fellow business owner, business genius, & filmmaker who shares these same ideas & understands what it looks like when people get stuck in a rut. Particularly in this industry. So, in order to encourage people, we’ve decided to do a two part post with Ron on this subject. WARNING: Depending on where you stand, his post just may ruffle your feathers. But hopefully in a good way.