Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: Marci Klein on Storytelling and Work-Life Balance

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios, it’s time for Women in Motion. Brought to you by WBEC-West. Join forces. Succeed together. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here. Another episode of Women in Motion. And this is going to be a good one. But before we get started, it’s important to recognize our sponsor, WBEC-West. Without them, we couldn’t be sharing these important stories. Today on Women in Motion, we have Marci Klein with Klein Creative Media. Welcome.

Marci Klein: Thank you. It’s great to be here.

Lee Kantor: I am so excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us about Klein Creative Media.

Marci Klein: Well, Klein Creative Media is a video production company, and we work with other small business owners, medium business owners, and corporate business as well as government to help create branded video content that they can use to expand and grow their business and get brand recognition.

Lee Kantor: So what’s your backstory? Have you always been involved in the video game?

Marci Klein: Actually, yes, I have always been. I was a television director for 20 years in the reality genre and loved working in television. Crazy at times. It’s definitely a different lifestyle than your traditional 9 to 5 job, but I loved every minute of it.

Marci Klein: We were telling stories with video. I was doing news magazine shows, like things like Dr. Phil, Inside Edition, lots of shows on E! Entertainment, and it was a really great career. But I did end up leaving television to have kids in about – I was working at the Dr. Phil show at the time and that was about, well, I can’t remember exactly. Oh, my gosh, my dates. You know, when you get so old, you can’t remember those dates anymore. But I’ve been doing business videos for about ten years now.

Lee Kantor: So when you decided to get back into kind of the working world, why did you not just go back into the, you know, storytelling via television rather than kind of going into your own private practice, going for a more business side of things?

Marci Klein: Well, that’s a great question because I did say that I loved every minute of television, and that might have been a little bit of an exaggeration.

Marci Klein: What I didn’t love about it was the long hours. There’s so much commitment you have to – there’s so much time commitment that you have to put into being a television producer and director that I just didn’t feel like it was a good match while also being a parent. I really wanted to be a hands-on mom and I didn’t see that balance playing out if I went back to television, so I thought I would do something that I could have a little bit more control over, which was having clients and working with them and working around my kids’ schedule.

Marci Klein: And I’ve been very successful in being able to do that. I have a really great work-life balance now, and – I mean, sometimes it gets crazy in this business as well. You’ve got clients that are on a deadline that needs a video right away, and it’s not – but it’s – I don’t think it ever has gotten to the level that television got to.

Marci Klein: I mean, television was, you know, your video is going to be on the air. You need to get your, you know, your video done within minutes or seconds. And it’s just the intensity is, it’s different than working in business videos. It’s definitely different than working with clients.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. And especially in that kind of reality TV and that kind of world where it’s everything is hurry up and wait, and hurry up is kind of a thread that runs around everything. Everything has to be done today, yesterday. And they don’t care. You know, the show must go on, they say, so you got to make it happen somehow.

Marci Klein: That is so 100% true. Yes.

Lee Kantor: So now when you were kind of, said, “Okay, I’m going to go into business here for myself and I’m going to target business clients,” was that a difficult transition to kind of educate the business consumer of, hey, I have this background in TV and it’s going to transfer to business because it’s the same type of storytelling – I’m just storytelling in a different manner?

Marci Klein: You know, that’s actually really funny. It is – it was very hard for me at first to get clients to understand my skill level. What – and I have a funny story. My kids went to preschool, and this was before I had really dived back in completely. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t really know how to get back, started back into the business. And so I started doing keepsake videos, and my clients were moms from my kids’ preschool. Now, these moms from the kids’ preschool, they did not – they had very low budgets to work with. Yet they had expectations that I think were higher than some of the biggest executive producers I’ve worked with in Hollywood. And I thought that was really funny because I always had to prove myself that I was capable of editing their kids’ first five years together.

Marci Klein: And yeah, here I was, having television, half-hour shows, hour shows, segments on the air, broadcasting to, you know, the whole world on a nightly basis for many, many years. And then you have these moms that are really concerned about my ability to edit their kids’ home videos together. So it was quite interesting at first.

Marci Klein: And I did realize that that’s probably not the right space for me to be in. And I did move on to start doing business videos. But that was my starting point. I needed someplace to start, and it was the keepsakes that got my foot back in the door to telling stories with video again.

Lee Kantor: And it’s interesting because like in the reality TV world, like you said, you’re doing this every day. So in some ways, it’s super important that day, but it’s not very important the next day. But a keepsake video is important every day because that’s the one video they’re going to have. They’re not going to produce another video next week. This is going to be the video that is, you know, kind of forever.

Marci Klein: Well, that’s a good way to look at it. I never really looked at it that way. But yeah, maybe that’s why they were very, very detail-oriented and so perfectionistic about what they wanted. And maybe I just needed to learn to price it better.

Lee Kantor: There you go.

Marci Klein: And that’s – I think that’s an issue with women and that’s what I – you know, I’m a member of WBEC and WBENC and I think that’s one of the things that I like about this organization is they really help you to try to learn to price your services better. And I really learned a lot from working with an organization like this and being part of it about how you create value and how you value yourself. And I think it’s a – I don’t think all women have an issue with it, but I think probably more women have an issue with it than men in my humble opinion.

Lee Kantor: Well, I’ve interviewed a lot of people that coach in this area and they agree with you that women – guys tend to price on what it could be, and women tend to price on either what it is or what. For sure, they feel like they can deliver. They’re not as willing to kind of fudge upward. They’d rather fudge downward and know for sure they’re going to be able to deliver.

Marci Klein: That’s an interesting way to put it. And I mean, I like the way that you put it. I don’t like the way that it’s true, because I do think it is true. And I wish that that wasn’t the case. And I need to learn every day. I need to learn something new. And, pricing is something that I keep trying to learn and get really solid with.

Marci Klein: But it’s always a struggle. It’s always a struggle. I think the maternal instinct kicks in and you just want to please your client, you know? It’s like one of those things you’d rather be, the, you know, concerned and compassionate person than that, you know, I don’t know, a bulldog that’s like, “Oh, this is my price. This is what I go. You know, this is what I’m valued at.” It’s a hard thing to – it’s a hard balance to get as a female, I believe.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. Well, pricing, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got regarding pricing was through a guy named Seth Godin. I don’t know if you read his blog, but he’s a marketer and he says pricing is a story. There is no price that’s the right price. Like any, any price can be the right price with the right story attached to it. So, I think a lot of times people price on, you know, just whatever the tangible value of something is. But the value of something is so much more than that. You know, that’s why a piece of art can, you know, cost millions of dollars on the same canvas and paint could cost, you know, tens of dollars. So it’s just the story that’s associated with it.

Marci Klein: Very good point. Love that.

Lee Kantor: Now, when it came to building out your business, how did you go about doing that? Because having a team and building a company around a vision, it’s one of those things where in your head, maybe it seems easy, but in reality, it’s hard to get a bunch of like-minded people on board, you know, delivering what the vision you have in your head.

Marci Klein: That is so true. My company is a bootstrap business. So I started it with a computer with my own money, well, my husband and my money. We – I said, hey, – I said to my husband, “Hey, Ken, I want to, I want to start a business. I need to buy a computer.” So I took some money out of the bank, bought a computer, and started going to work, and then I bought a camera, and then I bought some lights, and then I bought, you know, and it went on and on and on.

Marci Klein: And what happened is my children, they were I think nine and 11 years old, and they decided that they didn’t want to share a room with each other anymore. And so they said, “Mom, can you – instead of working in the office, can we use the office as our bedroom?” And then I was like, “Oh, my goodness. Okay, what am I going to do now?”

Marci Klein: So I set out to look for office space, and I accidentally came upon this office where I’m sitting right now, which I absolutely love. I have a studio and an office now, and I ended up going to a meeting at this location, and the landlord mentioned that they have, that they have office space available. I took a look at the space. I fell in love with it and decided to open a business.

Marci Klein: And that was a big, scary step to actually move out of my house where I was just working remotely and create a real place of business. So I found a place to rent. I moved in immediately and my business tripled. It was amazing, but so did all the things that I needed to do to run a business.

Marci Klein: I did not know of all the different hurdles I’d have to jump through to actually have a legit business, from workman’s comp to HR, to hiring, and just so many different things that I didn’t know about, even becoming a WBE, a women-business enterprise. I had no idea that the steps that would take to get that far.

Marci Klein: And I’m still learning new things all the time. I still have to get audits by workman’s comp every year, and I have to have an accountant and a bookkeeper. And wow, I didn’t realize. You know, it’s not just all fun and games and telling stories with video, which is the part that I love. It’s all the business stuff that goes along with it, which I feel like I’m not an expert at, but I’m definitely getting a lot better at it. And I know so much more than when I started ten years ago.

Lee Kantor: Now, when did you have that first client where you were able to deliver something and go, man, that really worked for them, and this is something I’m going to really be able to help a lot of folks.

Marci Klein: Well, that’s funny. That was my one – one of my very first clients stemmed from something I did in television. So I would – picture me. I’m still a stay-at-home mom at this point. I don’t have my office yet, and I actually went to the plastic surgeon’s office because I had this horrible C-section scar that I needed to get rid of. It made me look ridiculous in a bikini. And I live at the beach, and I play volleyball and wear a bikini all the time, and I needed to fix that.

Marci Klein: So I’m sitting in the plastic surgeon’s office, and I get brought into the office and the nurse comes in and the nurse is one of my clients. She was one of my mother’s who hired me to do her kid’s first five-year keepsake video. And I’m completely confused. You know, that this woman’s in here because I didn’t have – I had no idea. She worked in a plastic surgery office, and she started bragging about what an amazing video I did for her child. Meanwhile, the plastic surgeon is talking about a project that he has. He’s doing a mommy makeover project where he is doing a contest where one woman in the community was going to get a full-on plastic surgery makeover from head to toe.

Marci Klein: Now, ironically, I worked on a TV show called The Swan. It’s actually a very controversial TV show. But The Swan was about these – all these women they called themselves, or they were called ugly ducklings. They weren’t really ugly ducklings, but these women went through complete makeovers, body makeovers, head-to-toe and psychological makeovers, and diets, everything. And I was a producer and director on that show for two seasons, and so I had so much experience working on plastic surgery shows that the combination between, you know, the keepsake videos, doing those myself and the professional mommy makeover shows that I did for television, I was able to work on this mommy makeover for this plastic surgeon.

Marci Klein: I did 12 segments, which turned into a half-an-hour television show that I did all by myself. I shot it, I edited it, I interviewed everybody, like from soup to nuts. I did this whole program and that was very, very rewarding and made me realize that keepsake videos are not really where I need to be. I needed to be doing real stories for real businesses, and that was a big transition for me.

Lee Kantor: And what a wonderful bridge for you, because that made it seamless. Like you went into the business world kind of leveraging all you would learn from the reality TV world through this keepsake thing that you were just trying to do to keep, you know, stay involved in the business, you know, at the beginning. So it was a perfect bridge into the business community.

Marci Klein: It really was. You know, it’s so interesting the path that we go down. You know, I think there must be some sort of master plan somewhere because, you know, I do feel very blessed and very lucky because things do fall into place for me. I do feel like my, you know, life’s been – I mean, yes, I have ups and downs. Everybody has ups and downs, and I have had plenty of downs. But I feel, for the most part, I’m a very fortunate person. I’ve had so many positive things in my life and the direction that I’ve been led on just sort of serendipitously happens for me, and I feel so fortunate about it.

Lee Kantor: Well, when you do good work and you’re passionate about it and you put out kind of these good vibes, I think that you have better chances of finding the success that you’re finding.

Marci Klein: Well, thank you. I hope you’re right. I hope that that success continues because I’m looking forward to having my business keep growing and making a mark and and satisfying a bunch of happy clients. That’s my goal all the time.

Lee Kantor: Now, you mentioned a little bit about the impact of WBEC-West and those types of organizations, but can you share – is there anything that being part of that WBEC community has tangibly helped you kind of grow your business or you’ve gotten business from it, or just learned or found a collaborator through it? Has there something happened through that relationship that you can talk about?

Marci Klein: Oh, so many amazing things. I don’t even know where to begin. One of the things that I loved about WBENC and WBC is they have a thing called a Platinum Supplier Program. That was the beginning. So I’ll talk about that first.

Marci Klein: It’s a training program that teaches you how to come up with your own capability statement and your elevator pitch. And I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t even know what a capability statement was prior to the Platinum Supplier Program. So I cannot give kudos enough to Marianne Ellis, the teacher, and Jaymee Lomax, who throws the program through WBEC. Amazing program. And it changed my business and just changed the direction, the trajectory of everything. They opened my eyes to the fact that I could actually do work with corporations. I never knew that I could do that. I never knew how that was happening for other businesses. And they opened my eyes and they’re still helping me make strides every day with that program.

Marci Klein: And let me talk about the second thing that, I mean, I’ve gotten a lot of business from WBE, so much business I can’t even tell you with a lot of fellow women business owners. But one of the best things that happened to me was I was at a WBE National conference in Nashville and in the Uber line, I met an amazing woman.

Marci Klein: Her name is Elin Barton, and she owned a company called Riveo Creative, and we just met in the Uber line, and we were chatting and we liked each other. Next thing you know, we’re collaborating with each other over the phone a few weeks later. And next thing I know, her client, Black Angus, had a corporate commercial, a national corporate commercial that they need produced, and she’s not able to come to California to do it. So she brought me into her loop and introduced me to her client, and we did a collaborative shoot for Black Angus and did a commercial that Black Angus loved so much that they hired us to do a second commercial.

Marci Klein: And I just have to attribute all of that goes back to WBENC for having the conference and for having the most amazing women at the conference, and for them encouraging collaboration and set of competition, because it’d be real easy for me to compete with another video production company and think that they’re a threat to me, but I don’t look at it that way. I look at every company, whether they do the exact same thing that I do or something different, as an opportunity to collaborate and grow. And I think this was a perfect example of that.

Lee Kantor: And that’s a great lesson for the listeners when it comes to going to events like this or joining communities like WBEC-West. You don’t just join and pay dues and think you’re done. Like, you have to go and be part of it and be active and open and reach out and look for those opportunities because they don’t happen by themselves. You have to be proactive if you’re going to get anything out of these either events or joining these organizations.

Marci Klein: I agree 100%. The more I go to these events, the more the most amazing people I can continue to meet. And the more times that you meet these same people, you start forming relationships and they start trusting you and referring you. It’s really amazing. And the whole networking and being able to do it in person with all these amazing women and amazing corporations, it’s been very rewarding for me.

Lee Kantor: So who is that ideal client for you today and how can we help you meet more of them?

Marci Klein: Well, it’s still a combination for me. I love the Black Angus of the world. Those are amazing. Those are corporate clients. I’m definitely looking for more corporate clients who want to put their trust in us. I feel like we can do a great job at any level. I still have all my television crews and talent that I work with that I bring in on shoots.

Marci Klein: But then I also really enjoy working with other women business owners and minority business women – and minority business owners as well. I really feel like there’s a connection, especially with the other women business owners. I feel like there’s a shorthand with women. We just get along. We’re able to communicate so clearly. I mean, I get along with men, too, don’t get me wrong, but I just love helping other women. I’ve always been a proponent of supporting women, even as far – even when I was in college. And I’m just going to divert here for a second.

Marci Klein: I just went online the other day and was able to find a documentary that I made in 1987, my college, my senior college project, which I got an A on, by the way. But PBS in Chicago purchased my documentary from me. It was called Breaking the Boys Network, and it was an empowering video about how women are making strides in the film and television business.

Marci Klein: Yes, it looks at where there, you know, that the issues lie, but it also looks at a positive stepping forward and how we’re going to change that and how we’re going to, you know, make strides. So I’ve always been into supporting women and empowering women and bringing up stories of inequality that we can work on to make better. And I think that – I’m kind of losing a little bit my train of thought. I forgot where the question started. But supporting women is something that’s really important to me and empowering women.

Lee Kantor: Now, the organizations that you’re working with as clients, are they coming to you because they’ve never done video before, or are they coming to you to solve a marketing problem?

Marci Klein: That’s a good question. A lot of – a lot of businesses – there’s both actually. A lot of people have, you know, homemade videos on their website that just don’t show the quality of work that they really do. And so, they come to me for an upgrade because they want something more of a higher quality. And, you know, sometimes people have nothing on their website and they don’t have any video at all. And video is the most powerful tool to bring in an audience. And we all know that by just by, you know, looking at Instagram or any kind of social media where you post videos. The stats are so much higher for viewership when you bring video versus still photographs. It’s just much, much more – brings much more of a –

Lee Kantor: It’s more – right. It’s more impactful.

Marci Klein: Yes, it is much more impactful. I have a bunch of stats about it too. I just didn’t bring them up on my computer screen prior to this phone call. I should have.

Lee Kantor: But yeah. So if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on the team, what is the best way to connect? Is there a website?

Marci Klein: Yes, kleincreativeMedia.com. And you spell Klein just the same way that you spell Calvin Klein. That would be K-L-E-I-N. So kleincreativemedia.com. And we have a contact page on there, and all you have to do is there’s a button, you can book a consult, and we do a free 30-minute consultation and get your ideas flowing. And even if you have your – if you have your idea already set or if you don’t have any idea at all, we can work with clients.

Lee Kantor: Good stuff. Well, Marci, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Marci Klein: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate you doing this.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on Women in Motion.