"One day you are in one world, the next day in another." Olle Karlsson, OPTV.
No story begins at only one precise moment. Olle had it since childhood. A fascination and a need for telling stories. “I was running around with my friend's parents’ camera”. That’s how it started”, says Olle. So this career was somehow really natural, and since 1999 he has been working with film productions.
— Back then, TV was a very different media, says Olle.
Working on many different productions, meeting numerous people and being curious took him far. He learnt a lot from his older co-workers at SVT and TV4 (Swedish TV channels).
However, he has always been self-employed, and choosing this path of a "one-man-band" has been a success as well as a necessity.
Instead, Olle has developed his own customer base over time, and has satisfied repeat customers.
To succeed in one's business, one still needs help with various things. From an early age, Olle heard his own self-employed father say:
— Let other people do what they do well, so that you can focus on what you are good at.
So Olle embraced that wise advice:
— Anything that facilitates, and makes my workflow easier, so that I can spend more time with the customer, it helps, and that's where Sprend comes in.
Olle's work is less about technology these days, and more about helping the customers get their point across. Knowing how to listen to people and make a story with a purpose. OPTV is clearly a film production company that gives its customers a voice.
— My job, I think, is to help customers with wording and making it look good in front of the camera, storytelling in that way. The camera is a tool. You initially ask questions and turn it into a movie: what do you want to communicate, what do you want to achieve, what is the purpose?
Getting the message right quickly is also becoming more and more important. "When I started, you could make very long films. Now, it's three minutes long. Often you have to be very concise in one, two minutes as well. I always strive to find a new angle to develop. You can’t invent the wheel every time, but something that stands out for every production, is fun to put a little extra energy on."
To share his productions with the customers, Olle has been using Sprend for a long time.
— To "sprend" a file has even become a verb.
"And that’s actually what my customers and I tell each other: we’ll sprend it", says Olle.
— When the Sprend service came, there weren’t many other alternatives, and the alternatives available were not nearly as flexible as yours.
"It’s really a "basic" service you have, but it has always worked! My customers appreciate the simplicity of it. It must have been quite a cool journey for you I believe. You started at such an early stage. Now there are so many options, but it's hard to beat Sprend if you ask me".
Olle doesn’t only use sprend.com to share large files with his customers.
— I use it as short time storage for myself, since I work at several venues and on different computers.
Olle deems that with short-time storage everything stays clean and tidy and you don't have to keep clearing away accumulating redundant material on your drive. “Say I work on a project that is done within four weeks, it’s great to have everything easily accessible. I can then download the file and it will be erased automatically".
It’s always great to see how Sprend is put to good use. “OPTV has been with us for many years now”, says Sprend creator Arne Evertsson, and adds:
— We actually sent Olle a cake a couple of years back, to show our appreciation.
"When I told my children about this Sprend case study they remembered how much they loved the cake" says Olle.
OPTV is an example of a small company, but the word “small” exists only in the wording.
The concept of one sole person taking care of his or her own business is a large task, especially while caring for your family as well.
The ingredients of the cake always required to start and run a company are courage, curiosity, persistence, creativity, the ability to listen to your customers and to adapt to the market. But let’s not forget the crucial ones: luck, good timing and good old hard work. Olle Karlsson from Värmland is a representative of all of those.
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