David Basulto: Episode 6

Transcript

[0:00:21] Charlie Hoehn: You’re listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about books with the authors who wrote them. I’m Charlie Hoehn. Today’s episode is with David Basulto, the author of Life. Camera. Action.: How to turn your mobile device into a film making powerhouse. Have you ever taken a video on your iPhone that was too shaky, or the sound wasn’t clear? Well, David figured out a solution to that problem. When he was 51-years-old, he invented the iOgrapher, a device that turns your iPhone or iPad into a Hollywood film-making powerhouse. David’s device is now being used by thousands of video enthusiasts all around the world, including Steven Spielberg. In this episode you’re going to learn the simple things you can do with your mobile device to become a professional filmmaker. You’re also going to hear the story of how David invented the iOgropher. They say the future of content is video, so if your company does any online marketing whatsoever, you don’t want to miss this episode. Now, here is our conversation with David Basulto. I am talking today with David Basulto, the author of Life. Camera. Action.: How to turn your mobile device into a film-making powerhouse. David, thank you so much for being on Author Hour

[0:01:59] David Basulto: It is so awesome to be here with you and excited to talk about one of the loves of my life, this little book now.

[0:02:06] Charlie Hoehn: Me too. I have a confession to make to our listeners; I am a huge videography nerd so I’m really excited to talk to you, David. I’ve been editing video for 10 years. I’m curious though, right off the bat, is your book for people like me who love video or is it for a broader audience that may not have much experience?

[0:02:30] David Basulto: Actually, I really think we did it for both. I really wanted it to have both audiences, people that — a lot of it is about people not knowing about mobile video in particular. Lots of people know, “Oh, I can grab my DSLR or I have, you know, the big cameras here and there.” But people don’t know the power that they have in their pocket and it’s my mission in life to let them become awesome story tellers with these things they have in their pocket. I think it’s got a big range there from where are you going to buy this iPad, which iPad should I get, what iPhone should I get, et cetera, up into, this is how you do multi-camera live streams to Facebook with awesome audio using your mobile devices. Big range in there, it’s pretty fun.

[0:03:14] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah. Absolutely. Before we kind of get in to your story, I like to do some warmup questions here. If you had to pick a drink or cocktail to go along with your book, what would it be?

[0:03:27] David Basulto: I would like you to take some time and absorb the book. I would have to say, I would be with a nice red, preferably Italian wine and maybe a little bit of cheese to go with it, some parmesan, grated parmesan. Just have a nibble and have your wine and read the book slowly and absorb it.

[0:03:48] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah.

[0:03:49] David Basulto: Now you made me hungry and trusty.

[0:03:52] Charlie Hoehn: Yes. Let’s say I get through the wine and the cheese, now in moving onto the main course, what is the meal that couples with your book?

[0:04:00] David Basulto: Well, you’ve got to bring out a nice big steak, a nice fillet or porter house, some kind of roasted potatoes and some kind of greens, maybe some broccolini or something. Because this book’s beefy, you’re going to get a lot out of it; you’ll know what audio, what microphones to use. You’re going to, if you’re a teacher, you’re going to go, “Oh wow, I can do this in my classroom XYZ.” So take your time and absorb a big meal with this.

[0:04:24] Charlie Hoehn: I like it. If you had to lay down a soundtrack for your book, what song would you pick?

[0:04:32] David Basulto: We’re actually going to go with the theme song from Lord of the Rings because the book is epic. There you go, drop the mic.

[0:04:41] Charlie Hoehn: Nice, yes. Which Lord of the Rings song out of curiosity, is it the opener?

[0:04:47] David Basulto: Yeah, let’s do Return of the King, the opening song from the Return of the King, which is the last iteration of the movie. So I’ve been gone for a while, playing, going around the world doing stuff with all the old style cameras and what not and now it’s time to come back and learn this new process of making awesome content with your mobile devices.

[0:05:05] Charlie Hoehn: Awesome. How did you decide on the title of your book? Life. Camera. Action.?

[0:05:13] David Basulto: Well, it’s funny, when we first started with the company, I was looking for a tag line ever going with it and I always liked “lights, camera, action,” I always thought, because I was in the film business for years and then I thought, “Now, you’re able to capture life as it happens in front of you so Life. Camera. Action. and then that just kind of stuck. It’s funny because we have that as a trademark and even though we had it trademarked, all of a sudden, this little company called Twitter was telling people you know, go out and make some video, #LifeCameraAction. I’m like, “Wait a minute, we own that.” But I didn’t really feel like going head to head to head with Twitter and I liked them anyway. It’s been great but that’s our little tag line. Yup.

[0:05:52] Charlie Hoehn: Hey, I think that speaks volumes about your character to not be opportunistic when a beast like that is taking something you have of your own, that’s good of you.

[0:06:03] David Basulto: Life’s too short to have to get into things like that, especially since I use their stuff a lot.

[0:06:06] Charlie Hoehn: 100%. So I’d like you to complete this sentence for me; “If you liked _____, you’ll love Life. Camera. Action.” Specifically a book.

[0:06:21] David Basulto: I’m trying to think of a — so it would be a book that I have read in the past or something like that? Gosh let me — can I Google a name of a book real quick that I know? Okay, let me go. My friend has a book, I’m really embarrassed that I don’t know the name of it. Let’s see, it’s a mobile film-making, it is called — oh, okay. So I have a good friend named Taz Goldstein who start of this whole thing many years ago. His book was released in 2012 actually but even before that he was blogging about it. We’ve met several locations and where we become friends. His book is called Handheld Hollywood that really, something when I was first looking into all this as a teacher, I started to go, “I really want to use these devices and this book’s really inspiring to me to go out and use these devices.” I would say Hand Held Hollywood’s Filmmaking with the iPhone & iPad book it’s on Amazon by Taz Goldstein. He’s a great guy and I think from his thing, I went on to modernized stuff a little bit and take my point of view on everything. Really derived from questions I was getting from all of our users out there. I had this huge list of questions and instead of going, “Okay, I’m going to either do a video or email them all back one by one, I’m going to write a book and that’s what happened.

[0:07:38] Charlie Hoehn: Very cool. What’s the name of that book again?

[0:07:42] David Basulto: It’s called Hand Held Hollywood, that’s his website, his blog, his handheld Hollywood and it’s Filmmaking with the iPhone & iPad and his name is Taz Goldstein, very good guy.

[0:07:54] Charlie Hoehn: Very nice. Cool.

[0:07:57] David Basulto: He was like the first to get into any type of stuff like this.

[0:08:00] Charlie Hoehn: Right, yeah. Okay, interesting. So I want to get into your story because you have a really cool story. You are an inventor and an entrepreneur recently right?

[0:08:13] David Basulto: An author now.

[0:08:16] Charlie Hoehn: And author. Tell me about not only your invention but take me back to the story, the moment where you realized you needed to invent something because you were frustrated or you kept running into a problem?

[0:08:31] David Basulto: Yeah, every time I do a talk, a keynote or something, one of my slides says, “Necessity is the mother of all invention.” It’s like the absolute quote that my life is about. Just being an educator in a fairly large school, that actually had some money but I had 130 students all day, I was tasked with keeping them busy, we had five cameras in our classroom, we had like three DSLR’s and two bigger broadcast cameras. It was during football season, it was impossible to get anything done because we’d use all those cameras to film the games and footage and stuff. So I wasn’t getting enough work done with my kids and we started so we kind of veer into that, “Let’s watch movies and dissect them.” I was like, because I was teaching media arts. I said, “You know what? We’re going to start cranking this up. You guys all have this iPhones or some kind of mobile device in your pocket. You might have an iPad. So we’re going to start using this things to create content, whether it’s a commercial for Spanish class or it’s going to be something that I’m asking you to do to shoot different shots so you can learn all the shots that you can have.” I was getting a lot more work done but I was getting tons of videos that were vertical or shaky as can be or the audio is horrible, et cetera and I’m like, “God, there’s got to be a better way,” and just about that time, Apple had just released — I had been a fan of the iPad since it first came out, I just love the potential of what it could become, this thing in your backpack at the time with the first one. But they just released a new one called the iPad Mini and I was like, “Wow, this little device, the potential it has.” Because you cannot only shoot HD footage in there with the video, you can shoot stills, you can edit right on there, you can do animation, stop motion animation, just on and on. I was like, this is amazing, especially, think of a program, a school system that maybe doesn’t have very good funding but, god, if they can grab enough money to buy a $300 iPad or $400 iPad, that could open the doors and that might be the next Steven Spielberg or I’m trying to think of — I’m sorry ladies out there, I can’t think of an awesome female director at the moment but it will come back to me. I said, “Okay.” So I started to doodle in my class and created this drawing and then made a 3D print of it and we all of a sudden had this working prototype of the first generation iOgrapher for iPad Mini. We were going around filming with it and it was just working great and I thought I accomplished a lot and that was it. I had no — I was going to be a teacher for the rest of my life because I loved it, I loved — it was like the I’d finally found this job that I just love. I loved reaching kids and really showing them things to do and be creative and stuff. But, as luck would have it, one of my students said, “Hey, you know what Mr. B,” Tthey called me Mr. B. They said, “Why don’t you look at this thing called Kickstarter?” And so I’m like, “What is Kickstarter?” So I looked on that and we all decided, I was putting my thing on Kickstarter and see if there was a market for it. What the heck. All of a sudden I find myself in Forbes, I find myself in the New York Times just interviews left and right from Mashable, all the big tech blogs about this teacher trying to do or revolutionized video for the classroom and things just really took off from there. I had one of my parents of one of the students I had came in with half a million dollar check and said, “I want to be your partner,” and I said, “Let’s go.” Here we are and four years later, it’s just entering our fourth year and I retired a year ago. All of about 16 countries now from USC to Harvard uses them, the Boston Celtics, to even Steven Spielberg has one. So it’s pretty amazing.

[0:12:17] Charlie Hoehn: That is unbelievable.

[0:12:18] David Basulto: Yes, I don’t believe it either. I shake my head every day.

[0:12:23] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, no kidding, that’s so great. Take me to the moment when you were doing the Kickstarter and you realized, “Whoah, this thing is much bigger than I thought it was going to be,” how did that feel? What was going on?

[0:12:37] David Basulto: Well, it was a great feeling to feel like, you know, I could contribute now and make something cool. Of course I had no clue what I was going to do after the success of the Kickstarter. How was I going to make this things? I made a 3D print and it worked, was I going to 3d print all this things?

[0:12:53] Charlie Hoehn: How much did you raise?

[0:12:55] David Basulto: We raised about $17,000, which was low because I didn’t know what I needed, I only asked for $15. I had no idea that the mold was going to cost me $40,000 and, you know, et cetera. It’s funny because I have a business background and then I’ve been in the film industry for years and then teaching and whatnot. But I am, ever since I invented this thing, I’ve been learning every day, the entrepreneur road and what injection molding is and packaging and marketing and, you know, it’s just been crazy. It was kind of — it’s very exciting because I was so passionate, I still am, just so passionate about the product and with the potential and things that people do with it that we get every day in social media, just people posting stuff that they’re doing with it. From schools in Africa, doing stuff that they never been able to do before. Filming little movies and stuff down there to the BBC who is our big users of it and Premier League and soccer of your soccer fan, unfortunately I’m not a big soccer fan but just places all over the world. Every day I get some of this social media. That’s just so exciting to see all this people just absorb and connecting with it and stuff so it’s really cool.

[0:14:06] Charlie Hoehn: That’s great, that’s so gratifying. So I want to talk a little bit about your book now, Life. Camera. Action. The first question I always have is what I like to call “too long, didn’t read”, which is for people who may not have the time to read your book, what is the number one take away from your book? Either the number one unique idea or story that listeners can remember and take action on this week?

[0:14:35] David Basulto: There’s a couple of things and it’s interesting because I didn’t really— when I outlined the book, I didn’t think that the entrepreneurial aspect would be something so profound to people. But I have a lot of people that message me just saying how they are so inspired because I started this whole thing at my right bold age of 49 and I burned the boats at the shore and went to take the castle and that was it, I was going to do this thing. I wasn’t going to look back and people thought, “Wow, that is,” — when I road mapped it in the beginning of the book, just talking about the whole thing how it worked. People were just like, “You’ve got to write another book just on the entrepreneurial aspect of it.” There’s those people that are taking that away, that’s like their favorite part of the book, which is all in the beginning. Then, if you get past that, it’s people that are going, “God, I really want to —I’m a local business owner down the street, local café. I really want to get the word out there about my stuff and I don’t know what to do but I have this iPhone or maybe I want to buy one or an iPad and which one should I get? How can I get the biggest bang for my buck? What kind of audio can I have? Et cetera.” So the first third of the book is really going into that kind of stuff and all the equipment that are out there. If you were just looking to get into this whole space, that first section is going to really get you what you need to know to get going and up and running. From lighting to microphones to tripods et cetera. Then if you’re a seasoned pro and you want to skip over the stuff in the beginning, which I wouldn’t recommend because it’s pretty interesting, but you can go towards the back of the book and really get into some workflows that I had done myself and then others are doing. We have some great interviews with big social media users and then some other people that are in the book. You know, just to see what kind of work flows they’re doing with mobile devices and it’s just, you can absolutely take one of those and replicate it. That was the whole plan of it.

[0:16:27] Charlie Hoehn: Cool. So I want to press you a little bit more. We know some of your entrepreneurial story. When you say, sort of the gear that people need to get going and up and running, apart from your own device, the iOgrapher is what it’s called right? Yup, the iOgrapher right? Apart from that, what is the number one thing you would recommend for somebody wanting to get started this week?

[0:16:50] David Basulto: The number one thing by all means, even if you don’t want to get an iOgrapher or some kind of case that’s going to make you stable, at the very least, you got to have awesome audio. Because you can have your eyes closed and the video can be horrible but if you have great audio, you’re going to keep your people and it’s entertaining content, you’re going to keep the people listening. You got to upgrade the microphone and there’s many ways you can do that from having the simple lavallière, even if you don’t have the budget for it, just use the head buds that come with your iPhone or other devices. You can buy some really cheap ones on Amazon, just kind of headphones that have a microphone in there. That’s going to give you better audio than the devices themselves, even though the devices themselves are getting better. But you can get a nice entry level lavallière microphone for like $50 and then you’re in business you know? You sound pro. I mean, especially people doing Facebook Lives and all this live video that’s the big hit right now. You know, have some good audio or else we’re going to lose people audience wise.

[0:17:52] Charlie Hoehn: I 100% agree with you. Author Hour is sponsored by Book in a Box. For anyone who has a great idea for a book but doesn’t have the time or patience to sit down and type it out, Book in a Box has created a new way to help you painlessly publish your book. Instead of sitting at a computer and typing for a year, hoping everything works out, Book in a Box takes you through a structured interview process that gets your ideas out of your head and into a book in just a few months. To learn more, head over to bookinabox.com and fill out the form at the bottom of the page. Don’t let another year go by where you put off writing your book. On a personal level, I’ve never been a big fan of lav mics. I just find them too many steps, basically. Is there one type of…

[0:18:54] David Basulto: Absolutely, yes.

[0:18:56] Charlie Hoehn: Is there one type of microphone apart from the headphones?

[0:18:58] David Basulto: Absolutely, you can spare about $60. There’s a microphone that Rhode microphones make, they’re a great microphone company, they really get the mobile wave that’s happening. They make this little on called the Rhode Video Micro and it’s a little microphone that you would put on opt of the iOgrapher case and it fits into a little shoe there and then you just put the cable into your device and now you’re going to get shotgun type microphone where you’re going to get more of a six to eight feet around you, directionally of course. It’s going to be so much better than having nothing I promise you.

[0:19:34] Charlie Hoehn: I love it, I’m going to get that. I’m a big fan of Rhode mics as well, they’re great. Now, I want to ask you, who is the one person you most want to read your book? If you could only choose one.

[0:19:50] David Basulto: Since Steven Spielberg has one of my cases and there’s a photo out there on the web of you. Search, Steven Spielberg and iOgrapher, you’ll see him standing with Tom Hanks holding my iPad Mini case. That was kind of the highlight of my life and I can go die tomorrow, I’m okay. Other than that, I would say, honestly, it’s the educator out there. Being a former educator and knowing how many of them, especially being the head of the media department and seeing how many of this educators don’t know the power of having video in their workflows, being able to do flip classrooms and most of the times because they’re afraid of it, they don’t know it and they don’t want to look stupid doing it. I really wanted to focus giving them the power to empower themselves and use these types of things in their classrooms. So it’s funny because I was in the film industry for years and when I got into teaching, this is like a camaraderie, a brotherhood, I saw how hard it was. Basically you are babysitting a 138 students for myself every day. So you’ve got to keep them entertained and teach them something. So I know of what a difficult job it is and then I don’t want to get into the pay because that’s a whole different podcast. So you don’t really get into it for money. You get into it because you love teaching and you want to help people out and so I get that from them. So I have such a big affinity towards them and want them to do well and I think having them read this, they’ll see that they can do some more things in the classroom and really empower their students and stuff.

[0:21:23] Charlie Hoehn: I love that. That is such a simple way for teachers to engage their students, that’s really empowering. I’m thinking about now getting my sister, she’s a teacher, an iOgrapher for her to play around with her students, I love that.

[0:21:39] David Basulto: Well I am going to throw this out there because she’s a teacher and she’s your sister I’m going to give her one for free.

[0:21:43] Charlie Hoehn: Oh my gosh, David, you just made my week.

[0:21:46] David Basulto: Done.

[0:21:47] Charlie Hoehn: That is great and I’ve got to say, I agree with you that if the greatest film story teller on the planet was using my product, I could die at peace. That’s so cool. So I am curious, with educators, what resource would you recommend to them if they are — It’s an emotional issue that’s holding them back, right? It’s not, they’re going to get the iOgrapher and suddenly everything is going to be perfect. What resource would you recommend for them to get over the emotional hump into get going and start it?

[0:22:25] David Basulto: I think it’s really just learning. I mean they already know these devices because most of them either have one of them and then they probably only have the Kindle app on it or something. But most of them have these devices and I’m sure they are shooting photos and little videos on their own and doing stuff. I don’t think that they realized that you could set this up in the back of the class. Let’s say you’re the Spanish teacher and you’re like, “Oh I don’t want to get into video.” But what about making your students do commercials but in Spanish and having them flip it around, they could watch this now or you’re the English teacher and you are doing your Macbeth in the classroom and now we’re filming that and as we’re done, we’re going to play it back for the whole class to critique. So now you’re getting more peer review and whatnot. So there’s so many ways that they can do this and I think it’s just them learning how to be in touch with all these tools and there are so many tutorials out there of getting up and running with these and we’re actually starting something called iOgrapher Academy where we’re going to have lots of really intro level all the way up to seriously advanced stuff tutorials and it would be free for teachers.

[0:23:30] Charlie Hoehn: Just on YouTube?

[0:23:31] David Basulto: No, it’s iOgrapher.academy, I will send you the website and we hope to launch it on the summer.

[0:23:37] Charlie Hoehn: Oh, it’s your call obviously, I would strongly suggest putting that on YouTube, it’s great.

[0:23:43] David Basulto: Oh no so we will have both, yeah we will definitely have both.

[0:23:45] Charlie Hoehn: Okay great, awesome.

[0:23:47] David Basulto: Yeah, I will post all of that stuff there, yep.

[0:23:49] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, you know, you’re speaking my language because one of the most formative experiences in my high school career was when I started playing around with video and I started incorporating it into projects and not only on a personal level as a student didn’t impact my grades in a more positive way because teachers were more blown away, but it developed the skill set that has carried me through and will continue to carry through the rest of my life in such a positive way. I don’t think teachers and a lot of people realized, yes, you are already doing this stuff on Instagram, on Facebook. It’s not that different anymore. It’s not that much more complicated or complex than doing the stuff that you’re already doing. Everything’s made to be so much simpler and faster than it used to be. So everyone should give it a shot I think.

[0:24:48] David Basulto: Well and especially with and it’s funny because these devices are so intuitive, I mean students these days, this is where they live. They are on these devices 24/7 so there’s no argument there that, “Oh well no, we’ve got to wait until we can buy a brand new $3,000 GSLR or I have to buy a RED camera or blah, blah, blah.” They don’t need that. They don’t care. They’re watching content and absorbing it minute by minute on Instagram on Snapchat on Facebook on YouTube, okay? They just don’t want to be, they want to be entertained by a good story and whether it’s documentary type stuff or it’s a comedy thing or whatever but god, you have the power and I get so passionate about this because I’m 52 this year. I’m like, “Why can’t I be 18 again and start my own show and get millions of dollars on YouTube and I would have been happy?” And it’s funny because I have my son who is nine and he does this little video reviews for his games he plays and he has this little following of like a 1,000 people but it’s like, “God I am so jealous. I love it. Come on let’s go,” you know? Yeah, it’s a good time to be a kid.

[0:26:59] Charlie Hoehn: No kidding so what success in — Well, actually let me ask this, what is your number one favorite success story of someone reading and applying the lessons in your book? Steven Spielberg is using your product, that’s amazing. There are educators all around the world using your product, what stands out to you as the number one favorite story?

[0:26:26] David Basulto: Just hearing people that you know we have a Facebook group called Life. Camera. Action, that’s something that actually I should tell you on the podcast that if you read the book, we invite you over to join the private Facebook group and I do a Facebook Live in there once a week to kind of maybe there’s new apps or do you have questions I can answer etcetera? Just keep the dialogue going. But I just love hearing from people from that were — I have some retired teachers that just love the fact that maybe they were in vid, this one guy in particular, Michael, he’s in the Midwest and he’s a retired broadcaster in the Midwest with the big giant cameras and the huge sound booths and all of that stuff and he’s having the time, he is probably in his mid-60’s, but he is having the time of his life using his iPad now and adding all of these gadgets to it and making little videos around his hometown and I love that. I love hearing stuff like that, that people are just out there telling stories. I think we all have so many stories to tell and let’s capture them now. Plus now there is a way to archive these like Facebook and YouTube and all these places. So years from now people will have this catalog of some work you did. So I just love that that’s what’s happening in the world.

[0:27:46] Charlie Hoehn: That’s beautiful, that’s got to be so fulfilling. I want to ask you a little bit about what your life is like now as a new author? So stuff related to having written a book?

[0:27:58] David Basulto: We I am doing a lot of podcast.

[0:28:00] Charlie Hoehn: Is this number one on the circuit?

[0:28:02] David Basulto: You’re the best I’ve had, wink-wink.

[0:28:05] Charlie Hoehn: No, that’s what you say it to everybody.

[0:28:09] David Basulto: No, it’s been a lot of fun. I’ve been having a lot of blast.

[0:28:12] Charlie Hoehn: Cool. So first off, when did you decide that you were going to write a book?

[0:28:17] David Basulto: Honestly, I have been thinking about it. I had an interesting story just talking about my life and trying to inspire people to never give up on your dreams and what you wanted to do and to really find something that you were passionate about and that was before I invented the iOgrapher. This was just more about where life takes you. If you read the book in the beginning, it shows that I was a football player in college, went to be a big stock broker in New York, got discovered by a casting director, became a movie actor for years, set us through that. I don’t want to drive across town in the middle of the day to audition for someone. I’m going to be a producer, became a producer, end up working with Mel Gibson’s company, Lifetime Television and some other places and I kept attacking it and attacking it. So don’t think that if you haven’t figured it out when you’re in your early 20’s or whatever that it’s over because it’s not. I mean if you had told me that I was going to be an entrepreneur in my 50’s then I would have said, “No way, I’m going to be doing something that I’m going to be closing my days out retiring and having a blast.” So now I’m like — and I am even thinking about my next idea that I want to do after this. So it’s just been super exciting.

[0:29:26] Charlie Hoehn: Very cool. What was the most challenging part about making the book?

[0:29:31] David Basulto: Really just putting it all down together on paper and stuff and just getting my notes done and just really having a clear vision of what I wanted to say I think is what the hardest part was.

[0:29:43] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, totally and are you using the book primarily to market your product, the iOgrapher or are you trying to get speaking gigs or what was your main goal on a business level?

[0:29:56] David Basulto: On a business level I really wanted to have some — everyone thinks my business cards are super cool. They’re really high quality and they’re these square cards but I wanted to have something better. So here is an even better business card. I was flying back recently from the east coast convention I was at and I happened to be sitting, I was lucky enough to have an upgrade to first class and I was sitting next to a man who turned out to be Planet Hollywood’s owner. we started talking, he has a new app coming out that’s going to be for celebrities in live streaming. Everywhere I go I have my iPhone iOgrapher somewhere on me. So I pulled it out, showed it how it worked and then I said, “By the way, here’s a copy of my book.” So all of a sudden you get this instant status that, “Oh you wrote a book,” you know? So as far as a calling card, people it’s just an amazing thing to do. I never once thought that it was going to be something on the New York Times bestseller. Where I can make millions of dollars. I’m not J.K. Rowling, I never wanted to be or asked to be. I just really wanted to have a nice calling card and also have the information in there that people would find value out of. So I always wanted to provide value and I think the book has all of that.

[0:31:06] Charlie Hoehn: Absolutely. So let’s do the speed round David, are you ready? First thing that…

[0:31:12] David Basulto: Okay, I’m scared but go ahead.

[0:31:14] Charlie Hoehn: You don’t have to be on edge, but it is the lightning round. So number one, what is your favorite internet resource or web app?

[0:31:23] David Basulto: Well, honestly it’s Facebook because that’s where everybody is and I have several groups including iOgrapher on Facebook where we do a live show every week. I just use it to connect to all of my users. I mean customer service, you read anywhere about our company it’s the number one thing. I don’t care if you had a bad experience, well, care if you did, I’m going to do everything on my power to not make you not have a bad experience. So I take great pride in that and customer service is the most important thing to me. So I would say Facebook if I had to choose one thing.

[0:31:59] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, that’s a great answer. So tell us about a recent embarrassment or a personal failure and how you dealt with it.

[0:32:08] David Basulto: Wow, I’ve been in a very big upswing in the last five years.

[0:32:12] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, no joke.

[0:32:13] David Basulto: So I would have to go back to film business and I wouldn’t say personal embarrassment but anyone looking to get into the film business I would say do it an early age because it’s not for the faint of heart. It is a feast and famine type business. I can remember having projects green lit, which means they are ready to go into production, only to say at the last second the network said, “No, we’re going to rewrite these and we’re going to hold this off for a whole year or whatever.” And all of a sudden your dreams of your new car and your mortgage payment are going out the window. So those were the tough times, I think. They were exciting like ladder went through them but the film business was very, very hard.

[0:32:52] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, I can completely imagine that. My friend Taryn Southern, she did the film routine for six years and she described it the exact same way and she said, “Screw it, I’m just going to do YouTube channel and make funny videos and hopefully at least I’ll be doing what I care about and what’s fun for me.”

[0:33:15] David Basulto: And that’s what it’s about. I mean you’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing and have passion for it, you know?

[0:33:21] Charlie Hoehn: Right and two years later, she said I had an audience bigger than the networks I was applying for and they were coming to me with more offers because they wanted my audience to come to them. So just do the work that you want to do and don’t worry so much about the outcome.

[0:33:39] David Basulto: No and it’s so exciting now. I look back at my early days in the acting business, I mean god if I’ve had these tools, I would have been making my own short films and who knows what. I definitely would have done some crazy stuff. It would have been awesome.

[0:33:51] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, so if you were going to write a follow book what would that book be?

[0:33:56] David Basulto: Gosh, I had an idea for one, it’s called “The Over 50 Entrepreneur” or something like that.

[0:34:00] Charlie Hoehn: Oh that would be great.

[0:34:04] David Basulto: Just to let people know — well it’s funny because I’ve outlined some of it already but people seem to be so interested in that part of the whole thing. You know, “How did you leave your teaching job? Wasn’t it secure?” I’m like, “Yeah, absolutely. I could have been a teacher until I was 75 probably.” But I felt really comfortable about this. The money was coming in, it was very consistent, the excitement was there from distributors all over the world. So I felt I that it was a no brainer to burn the bridge and jump over and be part of this now and leave that behind and become a little bit of a hero to my former fellow teachers that I work with.

[0:34:38] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, totally. James Altucher, he’s a podcaster and a blogger, he wrote a great article. I can’t remember the title. It was something to the effect of “I haven’t done anything in my 20’s. Is it too late for me?” He just did a great list of all these people who got their start in the later years of their life. Like Rodney Dangerfield who started his own comedy venue so that he could perform and there are so many stories like that. So I think that’s a fantastic idea for a follow up. What is a parting piece of advice you have for aspiring authors, people who have an idea or a story they want to share but they are on the fence about turning it into a book?

[0:35:28] David Basulto: Well thank God there are places like Book in a Box, which I worked with being able to do what they did with me and really help me formulate my book. I would have sat in front of the typewriter or actually there are probably no typewriters left in the world, but in front of my computer and just plinkity-plinked for years and years trying to put this all together into the way that I wanted it to and I think it was a great experience working with them and I am so proud of the work we did together. The book’s been, I think we did something like six or 800 copies the first two days so they were pretty excited about that and so I’m happy. It was an exciting process, pretty painless but I don’t think people should be terrified of doing it. It’s a great pride when it’s done and you have this thing in front of you. In fact I’m working on a couple of places, the local library wants me to come by and it’s funny because it’s just the local library but to me it’s like, “Wow, I’ve made it. I was a teacher in the school district and now I’m talking to them in front of all these people about my book,” and so it’s kind of fun. It’s a very gratifying process.

[0:36:34] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, oddly enough I think being featured at your local library might be the hype of feeling like you’ve made it as an author. Yeah, being featured in a library.

[0:36:47] David Basulto: Yeah, that’s pretty fun.

[0:36:49] Charlie Hoehn: Yeah, that’s really cool. So David what’s the best place for our listeners to connect with you? I know you mentioned Facebook, is that the number one place?

[0:36:56] David Basulto: Yeah, so one thing that, I mean, we are very small company that’s four of us and we are doing amazing things with just four people. But one of my daily jobs is I am in charge of all social media because I am the most social butterfly you’ve ever met in your life. So if you want to find any of us or me at any place from Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, etcetera it’s all @iOgrapher and I am the guy answering everything. If you Snapchat me, I will probably send you a video back talking to you and telling you what you want to know.

[0:37:29] Charlie Hoehn: Fantastic, David thank you so much for being on Author Hour.

[0:37:33] David Basulto: It was great to be on. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

[0:37:38] Charlie Hoehn: Many thanks to David Basulto for being on the show. Go buy his book, Life. Camera. Action. on amazon.com and be sure to check out our next episode where we’ll be talking with Tucker Max, the number one New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Book in a Box. Thanks again for listening to Author Hour, enlightening conversations about book with the authors who wrote them. We’ll see you next time.