Canvas Rebel | meet jared rauso
A feature from CANVAS REBEL
We were lucky to catch up with Jared Rauso recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jared , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you been able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen? Was it like that from day one? If not, what were some of the major steps and milestones and do you think you could have sped up the process somehow knowing what you know now?
This is something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. How did we get here? Making a living doing our dream work is something we don’t take for granted, and we’ve had to put in a LOT of work to get here. When we first started, we worked with a small team mainly focused on doing corporate work and videos for schools. We always loved music and commercials and wanted to figure out a way to work in those fields so that we would take the smaller gigs in those areas on the side simply for the love of it. The bigger corporate jobs were floating our bills at the time, but we knew we wanted to get a little funkier.
I feel like a big step towards getting to do the work we wanted to do was our intentional branding. We needed to attract the right clients that could get a general impression of our vibe strictly from our IG and website. When Grant and I started the business, the word ‘BOLO’ attracted us; not only does it represent the bolo tie, but also the police acronym for ‘Be On the LookOut.’ We were both fans of Spaghetti Western and the vibe that the style of music represents. So we decided to brand the company off on this aesthetic. I feel like taking the plunge to do something a little different and not being afraid was a big step for us. We knew we wanted to break away from being an ordinary or safe corporate video production company, and what did we have to lose by just going for it, so we did exactly that.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
We are Bolo Brothers Creative, a full-service video production business based in Nashville, Tn. We work in the commercial space and the corporate music space. We always strive to do things a little differently and put our Bolo twist on most projects we work on. My business partner and I both went to college and majored in spaces relevant to our industry; he went for video production/photography, and I went for journalism. We’ve always loved working behind the camera, and somehow the world is in the same room together and a bond was formed.
We are proud to do the work that we love to do. But being creative can get little nuts sometimes, primarily when you work for yourself. When we started the business, I remember several weeks when we would get to the office and not have any jobs on the books. But, we stayed confident and networking with folks, and sure enough, by Thursday of most weeks, we’d had a lead or gig lined up. At that point in our career, we had to stay confident and know that we do good work and people like to work with us. That was a big one for us, just standing our ground and not giving in. When we started, we would take any job that came up; it didn’t matter. As long as it was working in our field, we loved it.
We are excited about the future; this past year, post-Covid, we’ve been able to ramp up to how business was before the pandemic. We are finally also working on projects that we genuinely are stoked for. Being able to fully immerse your job with who you are and doing the kind of work we’ve always wanted to do is a dream.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
This is an excellent question because we had ZERO funding to help us start our business. We are 100% self-funded and have paid for all of our equipment from our jobs. When we first started, we would rent out our gear and bill the client to cover those expenses. We also add a production fee outside our rates and fund the business to keep growing. After several years of putting our heads down and working, those production fees and day rates started to add up, and we were eventually able to buy our camera. We own most of the essential equipment for our industry but not everything. Luckily, we work right next to a camera rental spot with all sorts of superb lenses and gear that we use on most projects.
How do you keep your team’s morale high?
Take care of yourself!!!! This can not be stressed enough. It’s way too easy to get sucked into work and life and everything in between and forget that this body houses our most incredible resource, the mind! You have to take care of yourself. However, you choose to do so. I used to run and have now moved to do HIIT workouts every other morning. When I finally built this into my weekly routine, I noticed that my mind works better, and it helps to eliminate stress. Being self-employed can be stressful, and if you’re stressed, everyone you work with is stressed; it’s that simple. Running shots and being the company that produces the jobs requires you to be the best leader you can be and ensure that the vibe is on set. We also always strive to be friends with our clients and subcontractors; this can get a little dicey sometimes. But, generally speaking, this helps to keep the morale and the vibe up on set.
Contact Info:
Instagram: @BoloBros
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BoloBros
Other: Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/user5164086
Image Credits
Rory White IG: https://www.instagram.com/chilidogcowboy/ & https://www.instagram.com/rorywhitephotography/