Getting Self-Referential (Video Pre-Release)

I’m not crazy about songs that get self-referential
and most of this stuff should be kept confidential
but who even gives half a fuck anymore?
well you should know the truth
it’s both a blast and a bore

-Old 97’s “Longer Than You’ve Been Alive”

an afternoon of filming earlier this week

One of the hardest things for me to do is say “I” in a business meeting or when I’m talking about work. My default pronoun is “we”, which is only funny given I’m the founder and for a long time, didn’t have a staff that justified me using “we”. Some of it was to appear bigger than we were as a start-up. Some of it was the “fake it till we make it mentality” (even in typing that, I used “we”). A lot of it was simply because I feel like there is an army behind what I do, and the collective “we” is a representation of all the people who have believed in what I wanted to do and helped me achieve success.

“Well you should know the truth, it’s both a blast and a bore” pretty much sums up the last 2 weeks in my life–all those meetings, and there have been a lot of them–have been mentally taxing and physically exhausting. But, they’ve been beneficial, and rewarding, and allow us to continue to make big plans for 2015. Most importantly, I’m back in schools beginning this week and as I’ve always said, that’s the fun part of what I do.

With that being said, if you want to see me get self-referential on film, here’s an unpolished/rough cut of the soon to be released Nine13sports video. I might get yelled at by the crew for the release of the rough copy—but I’m pretty thrilled with how the rough cut came out and will operate under my usual, “it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission” in terms of posting this—and will post the final cut when it ships next week.

A big shout-out to Rocky, Nathan, Zeph and Braden from 12 Stars for this first production piece—I’m excited for the multiple videos we’ll be working on together. Also, I’ve been thinking a lot about the awesome crew that I worked with for the NCSR video 2 years ago and the numerous reporters and media personalities that have gotten me trained to feel very comfortable in front of a camera. There are so many people that have had an impact to get me to the point that this video was a possibility, even the naysayers–you’ve all pushed me to achieve and succeed in ways I didn’t know possible.

And, that girl at the end—totally unscripted and unprovoked commentary by her. The film crew asked her “anything else you want to say?” and her reply of “I just really enjoy Nine13!” was a candid moment only possible with a 4th grader.

Let me know your thoughts on the video, feel free to use the comment section at the bottom of the post.