Jared Judge: 0:00

All right, what's up, Denver event professionals? Welcome to another episode of the Denver Nate Podcast, where we interview amazingly talented members of our Denver events community. I am Jared Judge, your host and music director of Extreme Strings Electric Violins. And I'm joined today by a good friend who has probably seen me more through a lens than with his own two eyeballs. And that is Devin Scheer. Welcome to the podcast, Devin. How are you doing?

Devin Scheer: 0:27

I'm doing great, Jared. Thanks so much for having me on.

Jared Judge: 0:30

I really appreciate it. Yeah, you you're so welcome. And so for our listeners who are unfamiliar with you, could you tell us a bit about yourself and of course your company, All Digital Photo and Video?

Devin Scheer: 0:43

Yeah, so as you mentioned, my name is Devin Scheer. I am a filmmaker, videographer, producer, uh, visual media expert, uh, pretty much anything visual media related we dabble in, if not uh do a lot of. Um, so I own All Digital photo and video. I bought it eight years ago uh from a gentleman named Cal Cheney. The company celebrated its 26th year in business this year. Um, and we do a lot of weddings, a lot of corporate. Um, we do about four to five hundred total shoots a year. Most of those are corporate conferences, weddings. Really just events is kind of our specialty. When you don't have a chance to redo something, you've got to have a person that you can trust, that's reliable. Um, and that's really where we've come in. Our our main specialty is putting together teams of photographers and videographers that work together cohesively, make it seamless. Um, and that's kind of where we've we've uh earned our reputation, I guess, is in the events space, really events of any kind. But most of those are weddings in corporate, and then you know, a few uh life events here and there sprinkled in.

Jared Judge: 2:00

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, how did you personally get into this world of photo and video?

Devin Scheer: 2:08

Uh depends on how far back you want to go. Um, but I have always had an affinity for mainly video, but also photo. Um, I I have to say that it kind of all started. My dad was really big into cameras. Um he wasn't necessarily a professional photographer or videographer. Um, he actually built cell sites for Verizon and All Tel and T-Mobile and all the big cell carriers. And and part of that process was what they call a quality assurance check, where you have to go through and take photos of the of the job. Um, so he had photo cameras um on hand that he had purchased. This is back when like you know, two megapixels was a big deal. And I would steal, I would steal his cameras uh when he was on the tower or on a job site, and me and my brothers would just go make just videos that are they're just hilarious, like little home movies, and that's kind of how it all started is creating those uh videos, and you know, I would do some landscape photography and stuff, but really stealing my dad's like home cameras um and creating videos is kind of where my love for it began.

Speaker: 3:22

And then um after high school, um I went to school for video production, um, got my degree, and then just kind of jumped into the industry uh full time 12 years ago, and I've been full-time ever since, thankfully.

Jared Judge: 3:41

That's awesome, very cool. You said that you purchased the business eight years ago, is that correct?

Devin Scheer: 3:47

Yeah, it's 20 2017, yeah, that'd be eight years ago. Okay. 2017.

Jared Judge: 3:52

So there was about four or so years between college and when you purchased the business. What were you what were you doing that uh during that time?

Speaker 2: 4:02

Well, so I uh I graduated high school in 2007. Uh, I spent about five years uh just really just wasting my life, um, if I'm being super honest. Um didn't really get serious about my professional career until I was 23, and that's when I went to school. Uh so I was a little bit behind the curb there. Um, but yeah, I decided to go to school. And it was really when I started paying for my own school that I started taking it seriously and actually started getting good grades and was on the on the dean's list. And um yeah, I was able to graduate. I was I was gonna go back for um my bachelor's degree, and I had a mentor who sadly passed away a couple months back that told me um, he said, Don't go for your bachelor's degree, it's a waste of time, is at least in video video production, it is. Um, not saying that for all careers, but uh he's like, you should just jump in and start doing projects. You know, you need to start building your portfolio. So I took his advice, started doing that. Um, and then Cal, we we sort of bumped into each other at events. Uh, we were both preferred at Lionsgate Events Center. And when he uh when he got uh cancer in I think it was 2015, he started looking for buyers for his company. And um the story goes that I was seventh on his list of people. So he got six no's and finally I said yes, and here we are eight years later, thankfully. Wow. But um I I don't regret it at all. I love my job, I love the team that we've built. Um, I love all of our partners and clients. They are um it it's such a great job. I I literally have to pinch myself every day that I wake up and that's that's my job. Like that's what I do for people. So very, very blessed and fortunate and thankful to um be going 12 years strong.

Jared Judge: 6:03

That's amazing, man. Congrats. Thank you. Um, I know we'll we'll get into some big news in a little bit, but I am still curious about a couple things because you know, when you first start started doing this for projects and for other people rather than just home videos, what were some of the lessons that you had to learn behind the lens and maybe in the editing bay in order to be successful with clients as opposed to just doing it for yourself?

Devin Scheer: 6:33

That is such a great question, Jared. Um there's so many things that I've learned over the past 12 years, the eight years specifically, that I've um been uh the operations manager and and now CEO of All Digital um I think the biggest thing with with clients, and I think anyone in the events industry can attest to this, is spotting red flags and spotting them in time to be able to you know say, hey, we're not the right fit. And really just having that mindset of not every not every client is a good fit for you. I think early on in my career, it was like, oh, you want to book me? Oh my gosh, I can't believe this. Cool, yeah. You know, and everyone kind of goes through that phase, and I and I think that that's healthy to do when you're first starting, you know, just throw yourself in and understand that some clients are going to be more challenging than others. Um, but I've sort of reached this this part of my career, and I and I had the benefit of we really scaled up 2019, 2020, and then COVID hit. And we've been slowly like scaling, we've spent a few years kind of scaling everything back, and now we're just sort of steady in this this space where every one of like literally every one of my clients I absolutely love working with, every one of um the people on our team I love working with. There's really nobody that I can say like, you know, uh that I don't that I don't love working with. And that's a really cool spot to be in. And so it allows us to be a little bit more selective in our process of you know taking on new clients. A lot of our current clients have moved to like a retainer type of schedule where every single business needs ongoing content, in my opinion. Uh, whether it's a carpet cleaning company or an events-based company or a software company, every single industry, every single business within that industry needs ongoing content, especially in 2026 in the age of social media and all these different social platforms. Um, it's just getting the demand is going uh up and up and up, and that's why you see a really, really saturated market. So I'm not sure where I was really going with all that, but um the the thing that we want to try to be for everyone is like we want to meet the needs um of all of our clients, no matter what they are, but also not be to the point where we're offering so many services that you do them all kind of mediocre. Everything that we do is in that photo and video world, um, in that footprint. Um, and so we're just trying to create like an entire kind of ecosystem of visual media that uh sort of checks all the boxes, you know, and comes from a team of creatives that is friendly, that's flexible, that's reliable, that communicate, and that collaborate. That's kind of our core values.

Jared Judge: 9:41

Yeah, well, that's awesome. I don't think I realize that it from what it sounds like, you guys also do a lot of non-event work. Did I hear that correctly?

Devin Scheer: 9:50

We're trying to. We're um we're working into that space. I would say, you know, from a revenue standpoint, I would say 80% of our work is corporate and weddings. Um the other 15 to 20 percent is is what we would label as commercial. Um but even then it's sort of a gray area because a lot of the commercial work that we do is in sort of that same event space. It's just for the businesses themselves, the individuals themselves that need, again, promotional content, headshots, branding material, all the things that you need to run a business that you know, perception is reality and you want to be perceived as a professional. And so you need professional content. I mean, everyone does. Um they need social media content, they need all these things. So yeah, we're um we're working into the commercial space more. It's something I'd definitely like to expand on just because it's not seasonal, you know, where events are you know how it is, it's like middle May through, you know, depending on when your season ends, usually December, you're just slammed. And then you go through like quarter one where we're we're here in Q1, and it just completely dries up, you know. Um, there's a few corporate events and stuff, and we do travel nationally, so we have like uh an event coming up here at the end of uh January down in South Padre, Texas, and you know, things are still happening, but it slows down dramatically. Whereas commercial work is more ongoing, it's a it's a retainer type situation, it's it's monthly work, which is fantastic.

Jared Judge: 11:29

Yeah, that's awesome. It reminds me of one of the first podcasts I recorded with uh former president Des Kelly, and she had uh at that time she was launching like a cake subscription service to deliver to companies where they would have like a for all the August birthdays, here's cake. And yeah, it's it's interesting how we we kind of find that recurring revenue in our business to supplement the event side. Um we're kind of transitioning a little bit less into the artistic talk and more on the business owner talk. Uh since becoming the owner of All Digital photo and video, what have been some of the skills of running a company that were not like natural because you were a photographer that you had to had to learn?

Devin Scheer: 12:19

I would say the top three would be recruiting, developing, and retaining. I mean it's a talent. It it really is. Um and it goes it goes along with culture. When I first uh inherited the business, um the the culture was okay. Um it wasn't great, it wasn't bad. Um it just it just wasn't great. And I really I really for years um really desired a company where people were proud to work there, were um were excited to work there, we're we're passionate and committed about about working there. And over the years I've I've just really worked towards that. And I feel like we're finally in a place, again, like I said, where um I can't speak for everyone on my team, but I would I would hope that they would say that they love working with and for All Digital as well, you know, because I love I love leading, um, I love leading the company, and I really do like the business side of the company just as much as the creative side. I mean, I love to create, but in you know, in in my eyes, the the business is sort of like a little creation in itself, you know, of you're you're creating uh I love strategy, I love um, yeah, I just love building things from the ground up, and that includes the business for sure.

Jared Judge: 13:52

Yeah, I love that because a lot of creative types frown upon the business, but I also similar to you, I see it as like it is an artistic creation in and of itself to build a fully functioning machine that can work with or without you and help help pay people's bills. Like we're helping people grow families with what we do. It's awesome.

Devin Scheer: 14:14

It is, and you know, it's like you said, a lot of creatives hate that side about it. Um, I feel like that's what they love about working with All Digital. We kind of handle all that, all the day-to-day minutia of just you know, tasks that need done. Um, but I think the creative part, at least for me, is the easy part. The business side is the hard part, you know, because um I just watched this reel that was like everyone wants to work for themselves because they're like, oh, I'll I'll create my own own hours and set my own schedule. And it's like, no, this is a this is a war, it's brutal. Every day somebody's gonna be trying to take what you have, they're gonna be trying to, you know, it it's it's not as easy as a lot of people um might think it is, but it's so worth it. I mean, I'm not discouraging anyone from entrepreneurship, I just think that you you better be ready for for uh the ups and downs, you know, for sure. That sounds like uh was it an Alex Hermozzi reel? I don't remember. It was a couple days back, but yeah, it was like it basically was like don't come into this thinking, well, I'm gonna be setting my own schedule. It's like, oh, I don't have a boss. Yeah, you don't have a boss because you have hundreds of bosses, you know, every client is is your boss. So there's a lot of misconceptions about running a business as well, but um it's not always easy, but it is always worth it, in my opinion.

Jared Judge: 15:40

Yeah, that's awesome. Um, how did you go about learning the marketing and sales of what you do?

Devin Scheer: 15:48

So I would say most of the marketing and sales, um, I you know, I don't have any formal training. Most of the marketing sales strategy I adopted from Cal. Cal was uh a master networker, and he believed that um digital marketing, paid marketing is you know usually not the best route to go. And I I tend to agree with that. I do I do think that there are situations and companies and circumstances where paid ads, digital marketing is necessary just because you're a new business or you have a really niche clientele or whatever. Um, but the way I feel about sales and marketing is, and I've always said this, that I would much rather versus spending $100 on Meta or Google or whatever ads and reaching a client that I don't really know, you know, that I'm not sure is a good fit, I would so much rather go to, I mean, you've seen us everywhere, Jared, where we're we're sponsoring every event under the sun that is industry related, whether it's NACE or MPI or venue hub. I'm not sure if I can shout them out here, but yeah, no, for sure. Every three, four, five uh letter association that is out there, that is Colorado-based, that's industry, events industry based, uh, we support them because I would much rather uh there's so many different pros to doing it that way, in that um we're creating more content, which is what we do, right? Uh we're keeping our team busy and we're putting that money back into our own ecosystem versus exporting it to uh a corporation that doesn't necessarily uh care about us or our industry. And so that's something I've felt really strongly about. And I um we we sponsor generally about our our budget is about 25 to 35,000 a year in in-kind services that we give back to not only those associations, but you know, people in need, uh, our friends and family, you know, that to me, you know, nonprofits that we believe in and share their same values, that to me is like the coolest part about having the resources that we have and having the the talents that we have is to to give it back to people. I mean, I I honestly think that that's the the biggest um payoff, in my opinion, is being able to do that for people.

Jared Judge: 18:18

Yeah, that's awesome, super admirable. Um, you also gave us a perfect transition to our NACE-related questions. Oh, good. So, how long have you been uh involved personally in NACE?

Devin Scheer: 18:32

Oh, that's a great question. Um, really, since since I bought the business in 2017, there was kind of like a again, I sort of I didn't want to rock the boat at all when I bought the company. I was like, you know, whatever you're involved in, Cal, I'm gonna continue being involved in. Um and one of those was NACE. And actually, right here, this is this is from before my time. I gotta show you this. Uh this is best overall event 2015, All Digital photo and video.

Jared Judge: 19:00

Oh, sweet. Congratulations. That's awesome.

Devin Scheer: 19:03

Well, I wasn't this was this was before my time, but this is something that Cal won. Um, Best Overall Event 2015 Bites and Bottles Annual Fundraiser from NACE. So it was something that Cal was involved in long before I showed up, and I just sort of like you know grabbed the baton and took off. Um I joined the board of NACE in 2019 as a communications and marketing director. Um, and then we all know what happened in 2019 and 2020. And so I I uh unfortunately had to leave the board because I was like, listen, I'm I'm trying to like save my company here. And I don't think I think at that time like we were all freaking out. We didn't know if there was gonna be like a world even to come back to.

Jared Judge: 19:49

Right.

Devin Scheer: 19:50

Um, and so I I moved on from the board at that point, but I've always been a sponsor of events, you know, a member, and really just tried to support NACE and again every other industry associated uh event that I could possibly could possibly do.

Jared Judge: 20:09

Sweet. What would you say to somebody who's listening to this podcast and is uh considering NACE but is a little bit on the fence about it?

Devin Scheer: 20:18

That's another great question, Jared. You're just loaded with great questions. You came prepared. I love it. And I'm sure Jat GPT was not involved at all. Um so uh with NACE you know, uh a membership with NACE is really banking on yourself. A membership with NACE is not going to do anything for your business. Using that membership to come to the events, meet people, it's sort of like the the membership is cracking the door open. It's your job to push that door open and say, hey, I'm here and I'm ready to help. A great example of this is uh the other Jared, Jared Bunn, who is uh part of our company. Um he's our he's our sales director, and he's just the perfect fit for it. But he he came to his first industry event, it was a different association, but he he immediately jumped in and started helping arrange awards. And I feel like that's that's really what it comes down to. If you're and again, you can even be on a board, on a committee, you can be super involved with um your local chapter. But I think that just coming in and when people see that you have a servant's heart, you're there to serve, you're there to you know make that event or that association or just the event industry in general a better place, they see that and they gravitate towards it and they want to be a they want to be a part of that. So um I think that not just having a membership, but just showing up to when when you guys did the food bank of the Rockies, you know, giving again, giving back that's not even event community related, but it's something again that like I felt strongly about. So I actually uh hit by Money up and I was like, hey, can I cover this for you? Like, this seems like a really cool cause.

Jared Judge: 22:03

Yeah, that's awesome.

Devin Scheer: 22:05

And um those are the types of things that I resonate with. But I would say to someone who's who's considering the membership, you just have to jump in. And you might not even see a return on your investment in the first definitely not month or a few months. It might take a year. It might take three years. It might take there's there's certain people I bumped into for five or six years before they you know gave me my first referral. But you just have to continue showing up, continue building that trust. And your network is at least for me, my network is is all I have, you know. Um so just starting to build that network, it's there's it's a compounding effect, you know, because one planner might finally give you that first chance that you get, and her planner friend sees that and they're like, oh, you know, and then it's just kind of a snowball effect to where each person you work with, each part of your network that you add, the trust builds, your reputation builds. Um, and that's something that I learned from Cal, to be honest. I give all the credit to him for sure.

Jared Judge: 23:16

Wow, that's awesome. I appreciate you selling NACE for us. Absolutely. And I hear from the a little birdie told me this morning, and that little birdie was you, that there is some big news on the horizon for All Digital. So is now a good time for us to spill the beans on that?

Devin Scheer: 23:35

We decided uh as a team that we are going to be rebranding to Emberlight Media. Um, this is something that's been in the works for really a couple years, but really we dug in and made the decision a couple months ago. What's cool about this is you know, I I didn't I didn't create All Digital. I was not the founder of All Digital. Um it's it's been such a great company, um, and but it's not mine. I didn't create it, you know, and I've always wanted the opportunity to create a business from the ground up with the branding that I like, um, and something that I feel like really reflects our team, our values, you know, our creative style. And I just don't feel and haven't felt for a long time that All Digital really does that. And so what's cool about this process is we had the whole our whole team sort of um have their input on the branding, the logo, the the fonts, the the name, which I will tell you right now, there's like no name under the sun that's available for a business. It's so hard.

Jared Judge: 24:46

Oh wow.

Devin Scheer: 24:47

It like we had so many ideas that we were like, oh, there's already this, and it's in Colorado. Oh, there's already this, and it's in LA, you know. Um, but we landed on Emberlight, which like I was surprised that the domain was available and the name was available available. Um, but we feel like just the lights of an ember, like think of like a campfire, you know, where that that flame, it's a soft glow. It's not this burning bright thing. It's something that lasts for a long time. That's a soft, soft, warm burn. It's not um, it's not a torch, you know. We're not here to to destroy things and and take names. We're here to give you a nice, warm, long-lasting glow. And and we feel like that's kind of it kind of embodies everybody on our team. Is we uh we're not there to be the star of the show, you know? We're there to just um just be present and everyone, everyone on our team, like they've put their egos in check. Like I said, when we show up to an event, it's not about us, it's about our clients. And I just love that about everyone on our team. So yeah, we are rebranding. We got a new office space at the Hanover RiNo. Um, yeah, new branding, new, new everything. Um and not just branding and renaming, but we also every year this time we spend optimizing our systems um and everything that we're doing to make it as efficient as possible. And we're taking that to the next level as well, just really analyzing every process that we have, every software we're using. Is there a better option? Can we make that transition? Um, and it's a good time to do it, you know, because like I said, it's quarter one. What better time to do it? This is probably the only window we'll have, and I just don't want to put it off any longer, you know. It's like one of these things that uh I feel like when I first bought the company, there's a lot of name recognition that goes with All Digital. Um, and I had honestly nobody knew who I was, right? Like I um I was brand new to the events industry, um, just just a just a young lad trying to make a name for himself. Um, and now I feel like you know, it's it's it's it's less about the name of All Digital and and people people actually kind of know who I am. So I I feel like everyone that I've told has has obviously taken it really, really well. And it's the same people behind the camera, it's just a different name and cooler branding, um, in my opinion. Some people will probably hate the name, that's fine. Um, but something that I've just really wanted to do, and I was like, listen, we're gonna pull the trigger on this and finally get it done. Uh, we have a ton of momentum going into next year, and let's just do it.

Jared Judge: 27:34

Awesome, man. Well, I love the name, and I'm really excited to see your branding. So thank you. Can't wait to see the new website.

Devin Scheer: 27:41

Absolutely. I can't either.

Jared Judge: 27:42

Fantastic, man. Well, we're getting close to the end of the episode. Were there any questions that you felt like I should have asked, but I didn't? Like, I wish he asked me this so I could tell people about this.

Devin Scheer: 27:57

Uh, not really. You know, I I feel like you you had really great questions, Jared. You covered pretty much the whole the whole spectrum there. Um, and I know that I wanted to give you a plug as well. You're gonna be on our podcast later this month, so looking forward to that. Let's go. But yeah, I mean, that's pretty much me in a nutshell and uh All Digital slash emberlight in a nutshell. Um, you know, the biggest thing I would say that I I didn't really cover is like with Emberlight, we're expanding our services a little bit to include a few more of those marketing services. Um I won't go into all of them, but just sort of expanding to we want to be on the cutting edge of technology, but we also want to offer all the cool vintage options like film, like Super 8, all those really cool old school things that like we're all old souls at heart, you know, and so we really um we really love the old vintage stuff as well. So we want to keep that alive while also being on the cutting edge as far as like our workflows um and you know our our processes. And I always say it anyone who's talked to me for more than 30 minutes is I've probably brought this up. But in production, there's this thing called the unattainable triangle speed, quality, and price. When you move that lever in any direction, you lose one of the other levers, you know what I mean? Oh yeah. And so our our goal is still and always has been to provide the best balance of speed, quality, and price uh in the entire state and and hopefully nationally as well. Um we're not gonna be the highest quality, the fastest, or the lowest price ever. We're never gonna be the maybe the best at any of those. We're gonna need the best value overall for everyone. So that's kind of that's kind of our has been always our goal is to maximize each one of those levers as much as possible until the triangle breaks, you know. But um yeah, but yeah, that's that's kind of the goal moving forward.

Jared Judge: 30:03

That's awesome. I love how deliberately you you've thought about that. Uh it reminds me of the the college triangle. It's totally unrelated to the episode, but maybe somebody will get a laugh out of it. When you're in college, you can either focus on good grades, sleep, or social life. You can have two, not all three.

Devin Scheer: 30:21

That's exactly how the unattainable triangle is as well. Yeah. Two, uh, if if a client wants all three, that's that's uh what we call a red flag.

Jared Judge: 30:30

So cool. Well, that is good to know. Uh Devin, thank you so much for this. If people want to check out what you're doing and now Emberlight Media, assuming it's now launched, where would be the best place for them to find out about you guys?

Devin Scheer: 30:44

Yeah, well, the the website by the time this publishes should uh be ready to go. It's www.emberlightmedia.com. Um our social channels aren't up yet, so I can't really give you tags there. But um definitely also check out vendorcast as well on YouTube. That's V-E-N-D-R-Cast, C-A-S-T. That is our monthly podcast that we do that that Jared is going to be uh guest on this month. We do it the last Tuesday of every month. We showcase two event vendors and one we have it hosted at a venue. So it's just been a we we started that in April of last year. It's been a really cool way to see different corners of the event industry come together and talk through it. We don't even really talk about business, we just talk through like things that we've all been thinking about, and it's kind of like this platform that I hope makes everyone in the event industry feel uh a sense of belonging. And um because we're all important, we all we all have our roles in an event, and um that's something that we've been uh really passionate about as well.

Jared Judge: 31:52

Awesome, I love that. Well, I can't wait to be on your podcast. Thanks so much, Devin, for this amazing interview. Congrats on the rebrand and all your years in uh in business. And for our listeners, if you're interested in meeting cool people like Devin, the Denver NACE chapter is always open to new members. Come check us out. All that information and all of our other events you can find online at nacedenver.com. That's n a c e denver.com. So thanks for tuning in to another episode of the Denver Nates podcast. I'll see you at your next event.