Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake Johnston.
Hi Jake, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
So I got started at a pretty young age, I had been writing music and playing in bands in Minneapolis (where I grew up) since I was about 14. I started touring and writing music for other bands, that turned into me making low-budget music videos for local bands I would write for, as well as doing videos on tour to make money to sustain! From there I started working professionally in the music and video industry around age 16. I met Jake Woodbridge, a local video director who originally did my band’s music videos – we hit it off, and he started mentoring me throughout the Minnesota video scene.
I met Tim Henson from Polyphia when I was 13; he was my guitar instructor and a massive mentor to me (and is to this day) he took a chance on me and Woodbridge, and we were able to do most of the music videos for Polyphia. Our video for GOAT is around 37 million views to this day. His trust in us got us in front of so many eyes and skyrocketed the awareness of us.
Throughout high school, I started developing a pretty legit client base through the local scene – and truthfully I would just be working on video projects throughout the school day at the back of the classroom. By senior year I was making an adult salary through making video content for brands and artists! My parents were supportive of me not taking the path of college, as I was already financially stable by the time I graduated.
When I graduated, I picked up a job at a real estate brokerage doing photo/video. It really made me realize how much I disliked the day-to-day of an “office job”, no matter how much that it paid. I left that job and geared up to move to LA. I was already going out to LA here and there for music videos, so it just made sense.
I moved to LA knowing about three people and hauled ass for about two years doing every project that I could get my hands on. I knew that I didn’t want to be doing the physical labor of video production forever, so I started focusing on building the company out to be a well-oiled machine. We were getting 8-10 music videos a month, so I partnered back up with Jake Woodbridge and started our music video production company “We’re all gonna die”. We definitely made an effort to cater to artists, as I had come from the background of self-funding the music videos for my band!
From there, I got really into streamlining my income. I took the profits from music videos and started investing into real-estate rentals in Ohio, my girlfriend at the time introduced me to real estate, and I fell in love with it. I also started an Amazon FBA business from my profits to scale up more residual. The goal with this was to be able to move my profits to residual streams of income so that I could pick and choose the projects that I wanted to be creative on, as well as get back into music in my newly freed-up time.
This really ignited my love for building businesses and that’s where I sit to this day. I operate as an EP of my production company and manage an Amazon business as well as multiple rental houses across the country.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Honestly, the biggest struggle along the way were learning how to manage money for a business. My dad was a small business owner, so I would be nowhere without him. He taught me the right moves to make, as well as how to manage people and how to manage my money.
The other struggles are growing pains. You take a massive amount of risk whenever you want to scale; it’s financially stressful, and it feels like you’re shooting in the dark. Learning how to interact with your employees and the systems to put into place to have a functioning business are incredibly important and incredibly difficult. All of this is taught through trial and error.
On top of that is sacrifice. You sacrifice your social life, your physical health, and your mental health on a large scale to get to where you want to be. What keeps me sane now is an aggressive regimen and “bankers hours”. I make a very large effort to get my morning routine in an everyday workout, meditate, eat, and only work from 9-4 to make sure that I have enough time for myself! It makes me more productive and more focused when I’m at work.
As you know, we’re big fans of We’re All Gonna Die. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
We’re All Gonna Die is a music video production company based out of Los Angeles. We strive in being able to cater to all artists of all sizes, as well as provide as much content as possible for the price with the current state of social media – you need a massive amount of content. I spend a lot of time trend forecasting and making sure everything that we produce will catch the viewer in the first 15 seconds. We offer tiered pricing packages so that we’re accessible to anyone wanting to create a music video. We don’t want to push anyone away from making their dreams come true, and we’re here to “make cool shit with cool people”.
Where we are in life is often partly because of others. Who/what else deserves credit for how your story turned out?
My dad has been my biggest supporter and lifeline throughout all of this. he’s given me the support and backbone I needed to be able to get to where I am; he’s my mentor and my best friend
My mom – she’s taught me how to be able to still have fun in life, stop and smell the roses sometimes. How to give energy to the people around you that deserve it.
Jake Woodbridge – has taught me how to stay in touch with my creative side, to not get TOO wrapped up in the numbers. We’re all creatives at the end of the day
Tim Henson – I’ve known Tim since I was 13, he taught me how to strive for bigger and better. He taught me how to navigate the music scene and gave me connections that skyrocketed my career, as well as the opportunity to get our work in front of millions of eyes from the work we did for his band – Polyphia
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.wereallgonnadie.rip/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jake.johnstonn/?hl=en
