Meet Jonathan Acosta of Content Creators Lounge in Gwinnett County

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonathan Acosta.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
Since the age of 12, I’ve been a self-proclaimed “tech nerd” at heart, obsessed with two things: telling visual stories on camera, and automating all the things in life.

Following these core passions have allowed me to spend the last decade orchestrating visual stories in almost every spectrum of the production industry (corporate, creative, television, web series, and music videos).

In my early 20’s, I began interning for a successful post-production studio in Atlanta and then working at Apple as a software trainer in Final Cut Pro. A few years later, I opened my own production company and served clients in Atlanta and San Francisco, California.

In 2011, I produced and directed KeKe Wyatt & Ruben Studdard’s music video, “Saturday Love”.

In 2015, I indulged my automation curiosities and co-created “Woowave DreamSync”, a one-click software solution to help iMovie users synchronize audio and video. My joint-venture company was invited to premiere our software at NAB 2015 in Las Vegas with resounding success.

These days, I’ve successfully merged both of my passions into a video marketing company called Content Creators Lounge.

On the outside: We create video case studies for tech companies to help them win more business.

On the inside: We’re slowly changing the paradigm of post-production by building software tools to simplify the process of video editing.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
My personal journey has been littered with failure, let down, and relentless exploration of the unknown.

At the age of 22, I quit my full-time job at Apple to start a multimedia company with a former friend. Within the first year, our business venture had acquired an investor, which led us to rent a studio in Midtown Atlanta.

From there, we proceeded to hire all of our friends, lease a 2nd studio space, and meticulously run the company to the ground through mismanagement and sheer business negligence.

This whole experience left me financially bankrupt, mentally depressed, and emotionally fatigued.

I spend the next few years living in California to get a fresh start and work on resetting my life. Within three years, I had re-built myself as a freelance video producer, working with multiple Silicon Valley companies including Apple Inc.

Going from rock bottom to suddenly being more profitable than ever before was exhilarating… and slightly terrifying. I was constantly haunted by the thought, “what if failure happens all over again?”

In late 2014, I moved back to Atlanta to be closer to family & friends. However, as a one-man-team, I was absolutely burned out from video production. So, I spent the next two years exploring different business opportunities to make sure this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

Upon deep reflection, I realized video production was exactly what I wanted to do, but if I couldn’t pin down my creative process into a repeatable workflow for other editors to follow, I’d never be able to scale the business to a successful degree (without losing my mind at the same time).

Since 2016, the guiding principle for building my current company (Content Creators Lounge) has been to “systematize the process of creativity”.

At first glance, this goal sounds paradoxical… isn’t the very nature of “creativity” something that isn’t easily repeatable or “systemized”?

It turns out, creativity is often misunderstood. When broken down objectively, creativity is nothing more than making connections from various resources that others have overlooked, to create something novel.

I took that definition seriously, making it my mission to document every “creative” editing decision I made.

The end result has helped me build a successful video marketing company, with a team of editors that create outstanding visual stories for our clients… every single time.

Content Creators Lounge – what should we know? What do you do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I founded Content Creators Lounge (video marketing company) in 2016. The company focuses exclusively on crafting “testimonial-style” videos for technology companies (a.k.a- video case studies).

Our philosophy is simple; people trust other “like-minded people” to tell them how good a product or service is more than they trust unsolicited, blatantly annoying advertisements. It’s like when your friend tells you about a really good movie they saw… you are 99% more inclined to watch the movie because of their pre-approval.

Operating under this paradigm, Content Creators Lounge takes the artful approach of blending “referrals” and “visual storytelling” to produce super effective marketing videos.

CCL’s team is comprised of a small group of editors that craft our marketing video narratives. These days, my job is primarily to oversee the operations, logistics, and video deliverables for our clients.

What I’m most proud of is the way we’ve been able to systematize the process of creativity. Every video we create for our clients is guaranteed to have the polished look and feel our company is so well-known for.

What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
Content Creators Lounge has been doing internal research and development to change the paradigm of video editing on a serious level.

From my perspective, a lot of the processes we undergo as editors have become obsolete. Especially considering all the new resources available, like machine learning or artificial intelligence to help leverage the video creation process.

As such, we’ve been investing time and resources to develop internal tools that make video editing easier for our post-production team.

For example: we’ve developed a software that automatically organizes, transcodes, and names 20+ interviews for a given case study project.

What used to take us 3 hours to prepare, now only takes 30 seconds.

We’ve also partnered with IBM to develop a tool that auto-generates “transcription markers” for our projects. This gives editors the power to search for a sound bite using keywords or phrases, instead of re-watching an entire interview to find a particular moment.

What’s most exciting is once these tools are out of beta production, we’ll be releasing them to the public so other video editors can leverage the software for their own productions.

Contact Info:

• Website: contentcreatorslounge.com
• Phone: 404-625-1834
• Email: jon@contentcreatorslounge.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/contentcreatorslounge/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ContentCreatorsLoungeCCL/

Image Credit:
Images courtesy of: Barry Gray, Diane Doersch, Jillian Hayes, Cory Garbin

Suggest a story: VoyageATL is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.