Vtrep - Video Entrepreneur Magazine LogoVtrep is short for Video Entrepreneurship.  Vtrep.com is positioning itself as the leading media publisher and community resource for creative professionals who are ready to capitalize on the unprecedented business opportunities digital video presents in the future of just about everything.

Being created by, for, and about the most determined filmmakers and entrepreneurs in the video marketing profession, Vtrep.com aims to lead the conversation about the future of how we create, use and, most importantly, SELL video content services to those who need it most.

Vtrep.com offers a foundation for sharing innovative ideas, marketing know-how, ways to integrate filmmaking with entrepreneurship, and hard-won lessons from the bright lights of center stage and uncertainties of the pit. Vtrep.com is YOUR online community for commercial filmmakers, entrepreneurs, editors, talented performers, and video gear professionals.

And for the aspiring filmmaker who needs to feed his insatiable passion for expensive cameras, lenses, rigging, lights, software and everything else you think you cannot live without Vtrep.com is an all-access backstage pass to the inner-workings of what it takes not to starve to death in pursuit of your art.

Now that I’ve gotten our formal mission statement out of the way, let’s get down to real introductions.

About Me: The Personal Version

L Scott HarrellMy name is L. Scott Harrell, and I’m the Founder and CEO of Vtrep.com, an online subsidiary of Broadside Incorporated.

I’ve founded and sold several previous online startups and have owned a few successful brick and mortar businesses, too. I’m not going to bore you with my background here, I’ve got profiles up on LinkedIn and About.me, a personal blog and social network accounts galore if you’re otherwise interested or want to connect.

Apart from my previous professions and every professional title I’ve had along the way, at my very core I am a tenacious marketer. My greatest passion, aside from my family, is watching entrepreneurs succeed. There is nothing I love more than to build businesses and watch other businesses thrive and grow! Of course, I believe that the secret to success is in the ability to market.

For me, the equation is simple: Marketing = Growth = Success

But one absolute truth I’ve learned in 20 years of entrepreneurship is that marketing is ALWAYS evolving. In 2014 and beyond we are all facing a very new equation as it relates to online marketing:

Marketing = Video

Every single minute there are thousands of hours of video content being uploaded to video sharing services, search engines and social networks, like YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, Wistia, etc. Video content is clearly not a passing fad.

A multimillion-dollar survey recently completed by Cisco predicts that in 2016, over 66% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video and by 2018, video will account for nearly 95% of all Internet traffic; there is ZERO doubt that video is the way forward for Internet content.

Beyond entertainment value, video content is the preferred way for online viewers to obtain consumer information, make purchasing decisions and learn more about absolutely anything that interests them because it is both easier to share and consume; videos can clearly communicate complex concepts or technical instruction in a manner that is often much more time consuming and difficult to accomplish with text.

Ack!!!!

The lessons I’ve learned as a skilled wordsmith and copywriter are being turned upside down. The thousands of inbound marketing articles and blog posts I’ve written are quickly becoming obsolete. Headlines and persuasive prose are giving way to headlines and scripts! Neatly justified paragraphs punctuated with images, bullet points and bold italics for emphasis are being replaced with compelling high definition video…

And, according to Forrester Research, a minute of video is worth 1.8 million words – Ain’t nobody got time for that!!!

“I have little to no video production capabilities, zero ability to create digital motion graphics and animation, and absolutely no time to spend mastering these skills AND actually provide services and products to my customers, too.

How the heck am I ever going to afford expensive filmmakers and video production without a Hollywood budget?”

Looking around, I see that I am not alone… my entrepreneurial friends and colleagues are in exactly the same boat, which led me to create Vtrep.com.

L. Scott Harrell
Publisher, Vtrep.com