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Joe Allen Founder of Hunt Company
: Welcome to another episode of Whitetail Rendezvous. This is your host, Bruce Hutcheon, and we’re going to head on down to Branson, Missouri and we’re going to connect with Joe Allen. And Joe is the founder of The Hunt Company, and it’s a TV show. Joe welcome to the show. Joe Allen Founder of Hunt Company
Joe Allen: Thank you Bruce. I’m happy to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Bruce: Well it’s our pleasure, and I just want to start off. And let’s tell the listeners about Hunt Co. TV.
Joe: Well that kind of depends on how far you want me to go back. Right now, currently, we are airing on two different local stations in Missouri – one out of Springfield, Missouri, one out of Farmington, Missouri. We’re airing out of a local station in Florida and we should be live on, or semi-live on CarbonTV.com beginning sometime in September. I know they’re building their page right now. And then beginning in January, we will be back on the Pursuit Channel for the first two quarters of 2016.
Bruce: Excellent. Now, let’s give the folks some idea about the Genesis, your beginning. Can you take us there?
Joe: Yeah. In 2011 I got a message from a guy who was producing a local TV show and just…I didn’t know the guy and he just said, “Hey, do you want to be a part of our TV show?” That meaning that he knew that I hunted very seriously. Of course I jumped on that opportunity and bought my first camera and knew nothing about what to buy or how to use it other than finding the power button. So, to make a long story short, that kind of progressed into me developing a group of guys of mine own. I didn’t know what I was getting into, and eventually realized that I loved doing this. I loved going out into the woods and taking the camera with me and filming the experiences and the adventures. And so, I kind of wanted to do this with my own group of guys.
taking the camera with me and filming the experiences
I guess I’m just kind of naturally a leader. And so, I decided that I would just kind of do this myself, and over the last three years have developed a really good group of, I don’t call them hunters, I call them producers – producers who happen to hunt as well. But, a group of guys who have a proven track record in the woods, are great woodsmen, great hunters, and who have also learned how to use cameras to film. We were a featured team on a couple of different shows on the Pursuit Channel, shows called The Hit Man and The Search. We also aired on North American Safari a little bit. I did some commercial work for a producer who’s on the Pursuit Channel. That just kind of progressed into being self-taught, sharing my knowledge with others. And then, this past spring, early in 2015 we voted as a team in a business meeting to just go ahead and do our own television show this year, and produce it ourselves. And then that starts a whole other story – developing this show and raising the money that it really takes to do your own TV show.
Bruce: Well, thank you for that background. Let’s stay on the subject of producing your show because we get a lot of listeners throughout North America who say, “How could I do that? I’m interested in doing that. What does it take?” So let’s talk about “How do I get into the outdoor video or filming industry?”
Joe: Well, you know, the short answer and what some people may incorrectly think is that all you need is money to have a TV show. That’s partially correct in that you’ll see many TV shows pop up on some of the major outdoor networks, and they’ll be there for one season and then you’ll never see them again. So, a lot of people will say “Okay, I’ve got this money. I’ll just go ahead and spend the money and do it”, and then realize later on that it’s very difficult to raise the money to do the show so you don’t have to pay it out of your own pocket. Or, people will go out and get loans.
So the difference with us is that I decided back in 2012 when I decided to do this, develop my own team, that I would take things slowly. It was much easier for us to gain exposure to the outdoor industry by being a featured team on someone else’s show rather than just starting your own show right away when nobody knew who Joe Allen or the Hunt Company was. So we did, my strategy, was to move slow, kind of piggyback off of another producer and he knew that we had talent and the ability to get good footage and a lot of wildlife footage. So he knew that it was a platform for us, it was a stepping stone, and that we would be moving on. He was very helpful to me and really became a great mentor to me.
So we gained exposure, and then after we decided “Okay, after a couple of years doing this we’re going to go out on our own”, at that point we had a very big head-start on being able to raise money. So we’ve been able to raise enough money this year that we haven’t had to pay anything out of our own pockets. We’re actually into red meat right now and have made a small amount of profit that we can go ahead and reinvest into our company and use to do positive things to help promote the people who support us.
Bruce: Sometimes listeners don’t understand the business side of the outdoor industry. It’s great to get in a tree stand and film a buck coming in, film a kill shot, film a sunrise or a sunset. But the business end of it is just tremendous, and thanks for some insights right there. You got to mention to me that you do some seminars on how to get better at filming. Let’s talk about that a little bit.
you buy airtime from these outdoor channels and with that airtime you get a certain amount of commercial space
Joe: Yeah, and I apologize, Bruce. I probably skipped an important thing, going back to the previous issue of the business. Some people, I made the assumption that people already know this but some people may not, but you buy airtime from these outdoor channels and with that airtime you get a certain amount of commercial space. So we don’t have people coming to us. We don’t have these networks coming to us saying, “Here let me pay you to be on our network. Let’s create a few TV shows about you.” So these hunting television shows will buy air time and you’ve got to figure out a way to pay for that airtime. Then you’re either going to edit yourself or pay for a professional editor.
So you have two major costs there, the airtime and the editing. So if I wasn’t clear on that before I apologize. So that’s what we’re raising money for and what all of these TV shows have to raise money for, and make sure they can get paid, and that comes first. If you don’t have exposure, you can’t get money. If you don’t have money you can’t get a show to have exposure. So it’s a bit of a difficult game there, kind of a catch-22.