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August 4, 2025 28 mins

After wrapping up 7 incredible years and over 400 episodes of How to Film Weddings, it’s time to start something new. In this episode, I’m sharing why I made the shift, what this new show is all about, and how changing your focus can completely change your business I break down the meaning behind the name Shifting Focus, why most creatives are stuck (hint: it’s not a talent issue), and how getting clear on what actually matters is the real game-changer If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, distracted, or unsure of your next step, this episode is for you. Let’s talk about clarity, momentum, and building a business that works for your life, not the other way around

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Episode Transcript

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(00:02):
Check, check, one, two, three.
Woop, check one, two, three.

(00:26):
Welcome to Shifting Focus.
The time has finally arrived.
It's been a long time coming, but we are here.
The brand new chapter.
I'm really excited about Shifting Focus.
I'm really excited that you're here.
If you're just joining for the first time, thank you so much to those that are here fromthe How to Film Weddings world.

(00:50):
If you've been with me for a while, ah you know, we just wrapped up an incredible
almost eight year chapter, 400 plus episodes of the How to Film Weddings podcast.
Last week was bittersweet, so many messages.
I just remember choking up so many different times.
About to choke up right now, just as that was such a big part of my life for so long.

(01:13):
I'm really excited to look back at How to Film Weddings and I'm just so proud of it.
And I'm honestly just so excited to be shifting my focus.
and moving forward.
I'm just thankful.
you know, this to me, I want to have an episode, this intro episode of Shifting Focus tokind of explain where I'm heading, what I'm doing and get you excited or not excited about

(01:40):
what I'm doing next.
You know, I've had thousands of you that listen that have been with me for a long time.
And I just want to say the the Jon bun that you know is not is not going anywhere orchanging.
A lot of the content, the vibe, feel will be similar to How to Film Weddings.
But I have shifted my focus and over the 20 year career that I have now, I've learned thatI am only as powerful as what I'm focusing on and if I don't stay focused and committed to

(02:11):
doing the right things, doing the right work, I'm never gonna get the traction that Ineed.
And so um this isn't just a continuation of How to Film Weddings but...
This is a new chapter for me.
This is a new, I know who I am as a creator.
I know who I am as a business owner better than I did in 2018.
And you know, I love Nick Miller.

(02:33):
He's one of my best good buddies and I want nothing but the best for Nick.
But I knew a couple years ago it was time for me to do this on my own.
And as we said in the final episode of How to Film Weddings, we are still friends.
We're still.
doing a lot of stuff with each other and I'm still gonna be heavily involved in thewedding videography world.

(02:56):
I'm still a wedding filmmaker.
um But I just knew it was time for me to do this on my own and to expand what I'm offeringto the wedding industry.
And I feel like with How to Film Weddings, we did a really great job of 400 plus episodesof consistent.

(03:18):
Helpful content that has changed the lives of so many and what I want to do with shiftingfocus is I really want to dig even further Into the things that I've been doing on my
business and what I've been doing to build multi six-figure businesses Yes, and make goodmoney.
Yes, but About five years ago.
I really started to focus in on the things that I wanted to do in my life Not what I I sawother people on the internet doing

(03:46):
And I think that it's really important for you, the listener, to know what you're focusedon, to know where you're going, to know why you're going the direction you're going, and
not just trying to be like Jon Bunn or trying to be like whoever it is that you follow.
And I really want to help you to see that if you don't have to do everything, you can't doeverything, but if you focus on the right things, I think that we can help you, I can help

(04:11):
you to really, you know,
The goal for me is to help you make more money.
I want you to make more money by listening to this.
I want you to work with more of the clients that you really want to work with.
So you're happy to be doing the work.
And then I want you to create work that your soul absolutely strives to create, to be acreative and a business owner.

(04:34):
And I've been talking about it a lot lately with some of the podcasts I've been recordingthat'll be coming up in the next few weeks.
But there's this tension between
being a creative and being a business owner and you can't just be really creative orreally good at business.
You gotta be somewhere in the middle there and you gotta, know, a lot of us are naturallymore artistic or more creative than we are at business.

(04:58):
And so I want to, you know, be a myth buster.
I want to bust the myth that you have to be a crazy good business person in order to makea lot of money.
And I also want to bust the myth that
You have to be the most creative person to create work that you absolutely love.
And I want to show you that if you do these things, you can work with your dream clients.

(05:23):
As I sit here in August of 2025, I have 23 weddings booked this year, around $300,000 ofbookings with those weddings.
I added photo this year.
have nine photo weddings.
I've done about 50 photo sessions.
I'm doing bridal portrait sessions and couples and families and just exploring the worldof photography.

(05:45):
I've also shot about 600 video weddings at this point and I've worked with about 500wedding photographers.
And I think that that's interesting because a lot of people that are listening to this orwill be tuning in, maybe you're a photographer.
You haven't had the ability to work with that many photographers because you are aphotographer.
And so for me, I have this unique spot where I now know so many people and haveinterviewed so many people that do wedding filmmaking.

(06:13):
And I've worked with so many people that do photography and I've traveled all over theworld doing it.
And so I can see things that maybe you can't see.
And I want to show you what I'm doing.
And this year I've pushed past six figures in my very first year of doing photography.
I'm booking $10,000 plus photo weddings already and $20,000 plus video weddings.

(06:36):
And so some of these weddings that I'm doing video and photo for are pushing past $30,000.
And when I started in 2018 podcasting, my first episode was how I built a $5,000 businessor how I'm filming $5,000 weddings.
And...
I was okay in that middle market making $5,000, but I shifted my focus and I got laserfocused on who I was serving and why and everything changed.

(07:05):
It took some time, but that's what I want to show you.
want to show you.
as I started talking to more people, more photographers, more planners, more florists, andas I added photography into my own brand, I realized these things that I'm doing aren't
just for wedding filmmakers.
And I almost felt a burden.
to share these tools with the rest of the industry.

(07:27):
As I speak at different places and I'm on different panels and I'm in front of the weddingindustry a lot more these days, I am able to kind of see and hear questions from people.
I was at an event the other day and I had a lot of planners coming up to me asking mequestions if they would be able to be mentored by me.

(07:47):
a lot of photographers and florists and I just realized I want this content to be for thewedding industry.
That's what I've done for almost 20 years and that's the kind of the content that I wantto produce.
I will mainly be talking from the perspective of a videographer and photographer now, butI want to interview more wedding planners that I've become friends with and other wedding

(08:09):
photographers and that's what I'm going to do on this show and I'm not going to stopinterviewing wedding filmmakers.
So
How to Film Weddings, the podcast before this one, was solely for wedding filmmakers.
And I have a lot of different questions I want to ask to some of the guests that have beenon before.
But I really, I'm going to be interviewing a lot more people.

(08:31):
And really, my goal is to see what they have focused on in order to be successful in theirbrand.
And so, um you know, I really want to lean into that in this podcast.
And so,
I want to talk real quick about why I'm calling it shifting focus.
um The phrase came from something you've seen over and over, talented creative stuckbecause they're focused on the wrong things.

(08:58):
We obsess over gear and reels and viral moments and we ignore the deeper work, thebranding, the messaging, the pricing in your mindset.
um And I want to help you um to shift that focus and realize that those things matter justas
just as much if not more than your creativity.
For me, focus meant clarity, knowing where you're going and cutting out what doesn't helpand not spinning your wheels thinking you've got to do everything.

(09:27):
You need clarity in your brand.
Focus is subtraction, saying no to good things to say yes to what actually moves theneedle for you.
Maybe your business doesn't need Pinterest right now.
Maybe your business needs to solely focus on Instagram or whatever, but we need to helpyou find what your focus should be because you can't do everything at a high quality.

(09:53):
You need to focus on one, maybe two things at a time to do and then you will grow in yourbusiness.
Focus is power.
When you're locked in on the right things,
you show up differently and results follow.
So this show is about helping you get clear, get confident and grow a business that'sbuilt to last.

(10:15):
Before we move on, I do want to talk real quick about some of my sponsors that have movedover with me to the Shifting Focus podcast.
The first one I want to mention today is brideandgroom.video.
Man, I'm so in love with the edits that brideandgroom.video is doing for me and...
They've started doing a lot of my video edits and honestly, their communication has beenamazing.

(10:39):
Their editors have been great.
I've had lots of changes on some of the first few videos and they've been amazing atchanging them and working alongside me to edit my wedding film.
So I want to give a big shout out to my friends over at brideandgroom.video.
So I want to also talk about the real impact of focus in our businesses.

(10:59):
um I want to talk about
whenever I switched over to John Bunn Films in 2021.
And I wanna, I was redeemed productions.
That was my brand name for the longest time.
And in 21, I had finished a rebrand and moved over to John Bunn Films.
And it might sound simple and it's like, well, your name's John Bunn.

(11:21):
But my mindset completely shifted on who I was aiming at.
And I shifted my focus to solely focus on my ideal avatar.
I worked with my good friend Sam Jacobson and his team over at ID Action and they helpedme build a brand avatar.
And what we learned about who I want to work with because I determined who I wanted towork with is that um we determined the exact kind of bride that I want to work with.

(11:49):
And we also realized that my market is not only the bride but her mother.
And the kinds of clientele that really work with John Bunn Films are affluent,
brides and their affluent mothers and different there's different things about thesepeople but as I got more focused on who that was I was able to really lean in and say this

(12:11):
is who I'm aiming at we even put names on these ideal avatars and we put pictures of whatthey look like and where they went to school and their vocation and how much money they
make and all these different things so I could get a really clear and focused picture onwho it is that I wanted to serve and in this podcast
I want to show you how I did that.
I want to show you how important it is for you to focus on things that actually matterbecause I don't know about you, whenever I have stuff I need to do, somehow distracting

(12:39):
things that I want to do somehow show up.
Maybe I'm needing to edit that photo gallery, but what do know?
I'm going to update my website today, even though that wasn't on my list and that wasn'ton anything that I was focused on for the day.
But now I'm spending three hours wasting time over there.
or I'm not networking at all or I'm not doing social media at all because I'm over herejust editing films or editing photos all day long and never put time on my calendar to

(13:05):
work on my business instead of just in my business.
And so that's all like a big portion of what I want to help you see.
And I want to ask other creatives what they're doing.
And so, you know, as you can, as we're talking about what you can expect from this show tome, m
It's gonna grow.
It's gonna change.

(13:26):
I'm committed to weekly episodes and I'm committed to interviewing some of the best, ifnot the best photographers, videographers, planners, and other wedding creatives in the
industry.
But within each episode, I'm wanting to dig in with each person and I want to hear whatthey're focusing on or what they thought they should focus on and they shouldn't have

(13:48):
been.
And I've already done a handful of interviews that I'm really excited to put out.
uh Next week, I'm gonna have miles wit boyer on the podcast.
He's a photographer and become a good friend of mine He's based in Arkansas and man theconversation we had about what we're focusing on as he's built a multi six-figure business
as well It blew my mind by rephrasing some of these questions I've been asking for yearsand digging more into with a focus why we're focusing on that and going one level deeper

(14:18):
and just
really understanding our relationships with money, our relationships with business, ourrelationships with people and how that affects us when we're selling, when we're creating.
um And what is really cool about this, the Shifting Focus podcast is that it also openedthe door for me as I've interviewed a handful of people already to dig into their

(14:39):
creativity and how they stay creative.
So the creativity side of what we do is not going to be forgotten on this podcast.
m To me, I look at it as a how to film weddings 2.0 where we're leaning into the entireindustry and we're focusing more on the things that matter and not just the sizzle reel

(15:00):
things and If you want to be in business and sustain a business and if you want to builduh at least six-figure business I want to show you how to do it and I'm gonna be rolling
out a lot of different things in this podcast um
You know, and so if you're here, whether you followed me from how to film weddings or ifyou're just finding me, I really want to say thank you.

(15:21):
um It's you know, it's called shifting focus for a reason.
And I believe that if if you can shift your focus, you can change your life.
I really do.
um I started in twenty twenty one with the new brand, John Bonne Films, the new Avatar,Peyton was the bride's name, Cindy was the mom's name.

(15:42):
And with that clarity, it helped me tremendously.
It helped me to say, this social media post would not be attractive to patrons, so I'm notgoing to post it.
the imagery on the site doesn't make sense to that kind of buyer type.
Or the email signature doesn't feel fancy enough.
Or the way that I gift a bride after they booked me.

(16:03):
Or whatever it is, everything was blurry.
then,
it came into focus.
And whenever you can find that for you and your brand, when you have those aha moments,that's when you take ground.
And that's what I want to show you how to do.
I want to show you how to take ground in your business.
And the truth is you don't have to have it all figured out.

(16:23):
You don't need a huge following.
You just need to focus on the right things and do them one day at a time.
Just one day at a time and you'll look back and you're like, whoa.
I've come a long way and that's the point.
I want you to enjoy the journey of running your business.
I'm tired of sales being a cuss word in our industry.
I'm tired of people that do sales poorly or try to take advantage of people.

(16:46):
And I have built a business over the last two decades by being morally uh upheld.
I'm up holding all my morals.
I'm not cheating people.
I'm not a crook.
I'm always trying to give people the best value for the best dollar.
but I also have put a high value on what I do.
And I want you to get out of your own head because I think a lot of times we just need theencouragement to get out of our own head, to say, I can charge that.

(17:15):
I am worth more than this.
I am better than what I'm charging.
I'm confident enough.
And I want to give you the tools to see that you should raise your prices or to see thatyou should stay the same with your prices.
I want to give you the tools to network with people.
I want to give you the tools on how to get published.
want to give you the tools on how to get booked.
And that's exactly what I'm going to do in this podcast.

(17:36):
And I can't tell you how excited I am to do this.
It feels like the network gave me my own show and I can kind of do whatever I want.
And I know that, you know, with how to film weddings, was me and Nick and we could dowhatever we wanted as well.
But there's just something about this, something about this change for me that's justgotten me fired up.
And as I made the change into John Bunn films,

(17:58):
I noticed myself raising my prices and booking more people and finding new areas that Iwas lacking.
About two years ago, I realized my networking was just really bad and talked to somefriends that were doing really good job networking.
And I committed to do one networking event a month here in Oklahoma.
And I'll tell you this, it has paid off multi six figures in the last two years by justbeing a networker.

(18:23):
That was a huge thing that I was missing out on.
And I think all of us can either be working on one area of our business or another.
And I want to shine the light on those things so you don't get comfortable because comfortis the enemy of success.
It really is.
And I want to show you tools so you can focus on the right thing.
um that's the idea for the podcast.

(18:46):
And I want to leave with an analogy about fitness.
And I'm going to do this a lot, I think, so in this podcast.
But.
If you're wanting to get in shape, that's a great thing to want.
And most people want to be in better shape.
But most people are overweight and most people are not in good shape.
And I ask you, why is that?

(19:07):
Their intention is good, but they don't have systems in place.
They don't have a tangible goal in place.
They don't have routines and habits in place to get them where they want to go.
And when you're thinking about being a fit person, it's not something you can doovernight.
You might get skinny.
You might be able to take a pill and get skinny or whatever, but to be truly fit in yourbody, there's so many different areas to work on.

(19:31):
You might be really strong in your legs, but your arms need work, or you might need yourcore to have some work, or you might have a pulled muscle, or you might have a herniated
disc or whatever.
And there's so many things in our bodies to that could go wrong that we could be focusingon.
Some of us are better naturally equipped.
to be in shape, some of us have better genetics or whatever, but if you don't figure out aunique plan for you that works for you to get into the shape that you wanna be in, it's

(20:00):
just a wish.
You're just gonna wish that you're in good shape and you're never going to get there.
But if you have an I've had it moment and you say, can't let myself get this overweight orout of shape because I want to be there for my kids' graduation.
Now you've added some purpose behind your uh ambition.
You've added some purpose behind your intention.

(20:23):
And if you've lost somebody from being overweight, that makes it a lot easier.
I don't want to be that way because my so-and-so didn't get to come to my wedding orwhatever.
And as you determine some of these things that really get you a visceral response.
uh my goodness these things make me this is why I'm doing weddings I need weddings and Ilove weddings because of these reasons or I need to pay off debt and weddings are a great

(20:53):
way to do that It's different for every different person and in a fitness world you mightbe six foot ten You might be five foot one.
There's a difference in everybody shape and form uh Fitness is different to differentpeople too.
You might want to become a runner
and have a long lean body.
You might want to become a bodybuilder or a swimmer or a tennis player or a golfer.

(21:15):
I mean, there's a lot of different things you can do to be fit in your business.
And each person can determine what a fit business looks like.
And I think that the internet has made it so difficult for us to focus on what we reallywant because everybody is shoving it down our throats saying this is what you need to be
to be successful.

(21:36):
I'm going to help try to clear that out for you and help you focus on what do you need tobe fit for you?
What does that mean to you even?
And why do you even care about being fit in your business?
Then we're going to walk through a strategy for you so that you can build somethingconsistent, a consistent system in your life to be fit.

(21:58):
You know, in the fitness scenario, that might be hiring a trainer.
You might want to hire me to mentor you or find someone else to mentor you.
You might want to join a group class or one of my mastermind groups that I'll be puttingout.
Um, you know, you might want to just look up videos on the internet and use podcasts likethis.
It just depends on the intensity and how fast you want to get fit.
Um, that will determine a lot of what you do.

(22:21):
And then I want to walk you through this and say, to get to the fitness level that youwant to be at, to one of you want to be charging $20,000 for wedding films and you're at
2000 right now.
you're not gonna wake up tomorrow and be charging $20,000.
You might get lucky on one or two, but to actually have that level of fitness in yourbusiness, you're gonna have to put in some work for some time.

(22:48):
You might have to hit the gym for five years to get to that point.
And I wanna show you those tools.
I'm not here to just give you some motivational speaking.
and grow a big audience just to have people pat me on the back and say I'm an educator ofthe biggest platform of whatever.
I honestly am here, even if my audience gets smaller, that's fine with me because I wantto work with people that get it and get that they need the trainer, they need the plan,

(23:17):
they need the system and they want that shot in the arm and they want something consistentbecause they're tired of where they are.
So that's you and you're tired of where you're at.
You're trying to figure things out.
you've come to the right place.
I have built my six figure business so many different times in so many different ways.
I added photo last year and it's added that extra six, another six figures to thebusiness.

(23:39):
And I'm sorry, I keep saying six figures.
sound like a douche, but I'm not trying to.
um But I'm very passionate about this and I want you to know that I'm here for you.
And there's a couple of things just before we sign out for today.
I just want to let you know I'm working on.
I've got a new website at john-bun.com.
I'm thinking about getting a different URL to point towards it, but all of my education isjust going to be basically at john-bun.com.

(24:06):
Johnbun.com was taken and it think it was like $8,000 for me to buy it, um which I didn'tthink was a smart move yet.
Maybe if this podcast grows, I'll buy that.
But john-bun.com um is where everything is at.
I'll be uploading these videos to YouTube and my Instagram accounts.
I've got two different accounts.
that I want you to follow.
The first one is just my name, at John Bunn, with an underscore at the end.

(24:30):
That's gonna be where I'm gonna put a lot of my educational content, clips from this show,things like that.
And then my wedding work is John Bunn Films.
um I wanna keep those separate, because I don't want the algorithm to be like trying toshow educational stuff to brides that are following me, and I'm using that account as a
tool to, and I just don't wanna mess that up.

(24:52):
um
And so those are the two accounts and then John dash bun dot com.
And before signing off today and kind of leading forward with this new chapter, I justwant to say thank you.
Thank you to you.
Thank you to Nick.
And thank you to the How to Film Weddings listeners.
Thank you to all the new listeners that are jumping in here as I shift focus myself.

(25:15):
And a huge thank you.
I've got seven sponsors just starting out the show that have come along with me.
And I just want to say thank you to each one of them individually.
Bride and groom video.
I've already said, mentioned them on the podcast, a CRM that, uh, that signed up to be a,uh, uh, sponsor with me, Lemley L E M L I I, a great group of guys running a platform for

(25:40):
wedding professionals, a CRM where you can have your contracts, different things likethat.
Music bed came alongside me.
They've been alongside me since the beginning.
Thank you guys so much.
Imagine.ai, I've made some posts about them recently, but they edit all my photos andthey're editing all my video color.
um They use AI tools and it's amazing.

(26:03):
Wanderlust Videos just signed on with me.
They did a teaser for me ah recently.
I just posted it on the John Bunn Instagram account.
It's amazing.
I had no changes.
Honestly, kind of blown away with Wanderlust.
um And then another CRM become a good friend of mine, and I'm actually using them for allof my Contracts for this new channel in Lee I NLY um Thank you guys so much for um Signing

(26:29):
up and last but not least our friends at story mix media came over from the how to filmweddings if you're looking for an affordable option for Outsourcing your wedding films.
I would strongly check out story mix media They do a great job, but they also are at aprice point for some of you beginners out there
that are looking to get into some outsourcing.
So those people already, those seven sponsors, I've got a few more that want in.

(26:53):
I'm gonna try not to bombard you guys with ads, but if you need any of these services,help support me by supporting them.
This is a, know, education, you know, people might think, you're, you know, just raking itin.
That's not necessarily the case.
The goal for me, I love making money doing stuff, but the goal for me is I wanna give backto the community.

(27:15):
If I didn't get paid at all, I would still do this.
I really would.
I wouldn't be able to do it as much as I'm able to do this.
So the sponsors allow me to do that, but we've got everything, all the sponsors over atjohn-bun.com.
There's a link in the middle of the page that just says sponsors, and you can click any ofthose for right now and it'll take you straight to a page all about them.
There's different promos and things like that.

(27:37):
um, last but not least, I'm asking a favor.
If you're still listening to this podcast right now,
Will you please go over to at John Bunn underscore at the end, just rolls off the tongueon Instagram and just send me a quick message saying that you listen to the first episode.
I wanna see who's listening.
And if you have any feedback for me on what you would want in this episode, it would meanthe world.

(28:02):
like literally, if you're listening to this, please do me the favor of heading over toJohn Bunn on Instagram and sending me a DM.
I'll try to respond to every single person.
and just uh say that you listen to the show.
Let me know what you think.
So anywho, that's all I have for today.
I said anywho because I'm almost 41 now and I'm a dad, so words like that are gonna comeout of me from time to time.

(28:26):
um I was nervous to record this and excited at the same time.
um So many things are changing.
This is just the beginning.
So as I grow and progress, stay here for the journey.
I would love.
Love, love for you to be here for all of it.
So thank you so much for tuning in and I'll see you next time.
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