Chapter 2 – Who You Know

With some of the gear and half an idea the next task ahead of me was finding clients. Actual people and companies, with money, that would want to pay me to produce video content for them.

Trouble is, I didn’t have any usable portfolio to back me up.

I had stories about the work I’d done in the Press Office at Nottingham Trent University, but nothing I had access to or was allowed to share, save for these pictures of me micing up various celebrities.

Images: David Baird

So, I turned to LinkedIn to start growing a network and keeping my ear to the ground for opportunities that might present themselves. And I got lucky.

A friend* spotted a post from another mutual friend**, enquiring as to whether anybody could “recommend” somebody to help with producing client testimonials for their company.

“You should give Wallace a shout…” – said the reply.

And that was it.

Within a week I’d been commissioned to produce a client testimonial for OnGuard (Now Visma | OnGuard), a specialist in credit management software.

I drove to Manchester to meet and interview a senior finance department person from their client Speedy Hire, along with capturing B roll from their depot to help stitch the edit together.

And somehow, it all worked out fine.

So much so that OnGuard went on to become a regular client of ours, sending me as far afield as Milan to shoot more client testimonials, with other trips to Amsterdam, Belfast and all over Great Britain.

Word of mouth became our (my) principle marketing tool, but the origin story for the vast majority of our work ten years later is still rooted in the very earliest jobs that came to me from professional and personal referrals alike. There’s no denying that.

Relationships with large companies such as Nest Pensions, Rethink Mental Illness, Foster Refrigerator, Pay4Later (now Deko), SMBC, Argus Media, Brakes, Capita and Vitra, all began with somebody that was kind enough to push the door open for me.

Don’t get me wrong, I had to do the work and produce results that allowed those relationships to thrive, but having those early doors opened for me by others is something I’ll always be hugely grateful for. What you know is very often only useful to who you know, especially in the early days.

Those early relationships went on to set the foundation for what would become our guiding principle for business development at Janno. We existed to create videos for anybody that needed them, but we survived with relationships that had a consistent and ongoing need for content.

This was our lodestar. I’d found and tapped into demand. Now I needed to make sure I was able to continue to supply.

*Nick Preston
**Benjamin Davies