Over the past few years we have undertaken small business coaching with Esme Filsinger and it has completely transformed the way we work at Black Bark Films - and brought our business further inline with the way in which we see the world.
Here are a few of the positive changes, thoughts and feelings we garnered from our time with Esme.
Our business should work for us.
We didn’t create Black Bark because we wanted to stride into the filmmaking and television industry with guns blazing, to bag loads of cash and make a name for ourselves. We are both deeply curious about the world that we live in - and we love people. We are committed to both listening to and sharing people’s stories in a careful and caring way. We created Black Bark because of this, and the business should reflect that it is an extension of ourselves, not just a money earning project (although we are so grateful to both be full time filmmakers making our income from Black Bark!).
Communication is key.
We are both deep reflectors. We reflect before, during and after projects; we embed action learning and check-ins into our business; we have worked hard to communicate well with each other (which can be tricky when working with one of your best pals). But how do we communicate this to our clients and collaborators? Together with Esme’s prompts we have put together an ethical manifesto of how our business values live in the way that we work (which you can see below), and we now have a workflow including how we communicate with our clients and collaborators.
Blue sky thinking is important.
We are a very real company operating within a very real world, representing real people as authentically as possible. But we dream widely about the world we want to see, about the people who we want to follow, who we want to see on our screens, and of the stories we want to hear. We also think widely about how to make our work better, and how to be humans in the world. Then we take a step by step approach into making those dreams a reality for us both - and for the business we run.
