- MASTERCLASS
How I transitioned my business to be vegan
With Damian Sciberras, award-winning vegan videographer and filmmaker
Damian is a vegan videographer and award-winning filmmaker who works with some of the biggest vegan influencers in the industry, including ‘Earthling Ed’ Winters and Joey Carbstrong.
However, jump back to early 2020 and Damian was mainly making corporate videos when he received the worst news of his life. After a colonoscopy, he was diagnosed with stage 3 bowel cancer.
Fortunately he survived. But whilst undergoing treatment, Damian had a lot of time to reflect on his life and what he cared about. Already a very talented videographer, Damian wondered if he could take his skills and use to promote the vegan cause which he cared so passionately about.
In this very frank session, recorded to celebrate our 100th episode of The Vegan Business Tribe Podcast, Damian talks about how he transitioned his business to become vegan, first turning down the work that obviously didn’t align with his ethics, then managing to work with wholly vegan businesses.
Now, three years later – not only is he working with some of our most loved vegan influencers and activists, he also recently released his first film ‘Saved By Jane‘ which has won awards across multiple film festivals.
What you will learn in this masterclass:
- Damien took his first steps to ‘veganising’ his business by first refusing to work on projects that were directly not vegan (such as campaigns featuring meat and dairy).
- Damien first focused on finding work for ‘accidentally vegan’ companies, or companies that were not directly promoting animal-based products.
- Taking that ethical stance lost Damien a number of regular clients at the start, and the first 12 months really hit him in the pocket. Now, it’s a different story.
- It took Damian over a year to start winning purposefully vegan companies as clients, and he found that vegan companies started to favour him (because of the ethical connection) over non-vegan suppliers.
- Damian went hard on LinkedIn to start connecting with other people in the vegan business scene – which is how he found Lisa from Vegan Business Tribe!
- Being part of a community of vegan businesses really helped Damian in terms of help and support and having people to turn to.
- Other members of Vegan Business Tribe started to put Damian forwards for jobs as he built his visibility up in the Tribe.
- Getting known in Vegan Business Tribe led to Damian getting made aware of an opportunity to work with vegan street activist Joey Carbstrong, who was looking for a new videographer and editor.
- Working with Joey, and learning all the ropes of creating content for influencers, led to an opportunity to work with one of the world’s biggest vegan activists – ‘Earthling Ed’
- Damian’s top tip for when messaging people who don’t have a lot of time is “make it brief!”
- Damian handles people who try to use him as a bridge to get in front of the influencers he works with by telling them he’s under an NDA so can’t make an introduction.
- Damian’s volunteering with vegan charities led to him making his first documentary short film, Saved By Jane, about Starfield Farm Animal Sanctuary.
- This led to Damian transitioning from being a videographer to a vegan filmmaker.
- The FilmFreeway platform allows you to submit a film to thousands of film festivals around the world, and his film ended up winning 6 awards.
- The publicity around the film led to a big increase in donations to Starfield Farm Sanctuary, using the Waterbear video platform to drive donations directly from the end credits of the film.
- Damian’s advice about veganising your business: “Time is your ally”. It’s not going to happen overnight.
- Leading with your ethics is frightening and you have to take some risks. But putting your heart on the line will guide you along your vegan business journey.
