Build a Gear Review Channel that Fits Your Lifestyle | Zach Mayfield

Pat Miller: 00:00

I'm Pat Miller, and this is The Professional Photographer Podcast. Welcome into the Professional Photographer Podcast. I'm your host, Pat Miller. We are live at Imaging USA 2025 in Dallas. You've clicked on the Scale Your Influence series, where we get a chance to sit down with some influencers and learn how they create content, and I think, more importantly, how they think about creating content. We've got a great interview today with Zach Mayfield. Now, our studio here is presented by Sony. We're using their Cinema Line cameras, and we're using their app, the Monitor & Control app. It's on an iPad. Like, there's zero wires hanging around. I'm pretty sure it's magic, but I don't know if Sony's released the press release on that yet. But let's just go with magic. It's pretty incredible. Now on the show today, we're going to talk with Zach and we're going to really kind of talk about how he thinks about creative content. We're going to talk about work-life balance a little bit. We're going to talk about the expectations and the pressure that he feels and the opportunities that are out there for content creators today. So if you're an aspiring content creator and you want to learn what it really takes to get to where you're going, this episode is for you. So let's welcome him in now. Zach Mayfield, welcome to the show. How are you today?

Zach Mayfield: 01:17

Good. I feel like I'm on hot ones, but I don't have to eat spicy stuff.

Pat Miller: 01:20

No, no spicy stuff. Although someone brought down tonight Tabasco bottles this morning. I don't know where they came from.

Zach Mayfield: 01:26

Were they, like, $18 at the market? Their sandwiches are ridiculous.

Pat Miller: 01:30

That's a separate podcast. We're gonna have a whole talk about the economy.

Zach Mayfield: 01:33

Yep.

Pat Miller: 01:34

Okay, let's talk about creating content. If someone has not seen your channel yet, tell them who you are and what you do.

Zach Mayfield: 01:39

All right, so my name's Zach Mayfield. I do kind of a blend of reviewing camera and filmmaking, photography technology, and slowly getting into more of the tech space, like Apple products, fitness tech kind of stuff, too. Trying to figure out what the heck I'm doing. Basically, my whole journey is like, throwing stuff at the wall, figure out what I enjoy, what works, the balance of, like, what does the audience enjoy, but what fulfills me as well. So, yeah, figuring it out.

Pat Miller: 02:06

Why would you add tech and health stuff? And is that just because your curiosity is leading you there?

Zach Mayfield: 02:11

Yeah, I think it is. I mean, if you talk to a lot of the camera creators, I think we're all a little burnt out on just talking about gear and feeling like salesmen because we're at the point now where genuinely pretty much any camera you pick up is good if you're good. So it takes, you know what I mean? Because like eight years ago, a new camera would come out, and it might have like a groundbreaking feature, like 4K, 10-bit footage or whatever. But now pretty much anything you pick up is solid. So it comes down to like, are you good at ideas, are you original, are you creative? So for me, it's less interesting reviewing cameras because it's like, it's good. Have fun. But getting into the tech space, I'm trying to figure out like, how can I review technology, cameras, tech, while telling people to not let it overtake your life. You know, like us dang millennials on our phones all the time. I don't want to be that. And we can talk about this more, but I have a 10-month-old baby at home and a wife, and I'm like, I don't want to be scrolling all day; I want to be present with them. So embedding that into my content somehow is what I'm trying to figure out.

Pat Miller: 03:23

Okay, let's talk about that first. Because a polished video that feels very first-person like you do. Yeah, that's not a five-minute project. How are you getting into this time intensive endeavor yet having time for the 10-month-old and the family.

Zach Mayfield: 03:40

It's got to be the Lord just strengthening me. Seriously, that's my number one is just like starting everything with my faith and then family and then business. So it's kind of like my last priority. So when I wake up in the morning, I spend the first hour with my son and then hang out with my wife. We have breakfast, and sometimes I don't get started till 10 or 11 am. But then when I get into work mode, it's just learning how to become efficient. And so, like Chris Brockhorst was saying, it just takes so many reps. Just like going to the gym or learning how to drive. It's like you just gotta do it a bunch of times until you stop crashing and stuff, and you get faster and better. So it's just learning how to like enhance your skills, get quicker, and use the time that you have to try to get it done.

Pat Miller: 04:25

How long have you been creating content?

Zach Mayfield: 04:27

Since I was a wee lad in Nebraska.

Pat Miller: 04:30

Yeah, Nebraska.

Zach Mayfield: 04:31

Go big ride. Yeah, we gotta talk about go big rides for sure. But I stole my mom's Sony Handycam as a child and me and my sister just made home videos.

Pat Miller: 04:39

Oh, fun.

Zach Mayfield: 04:39

So I've been making videos literally my entire life. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 04:42

Why video? What gets you excited?

Zach Mayfield: 04:46

And I think being able to just like tell stories and create funny moments. I like stills too, photography, but there's just something about motion and moments and learning how to like make a moment impact, whether it's funny or emotional. It's just so fun for me. I just, I love storytelling in general. Long form, and in Nebraska, as you know, pretty flat lands. Not a lot to do. Some days it's like, bust out the Handycam, let's go make a short film in the woods and see where it goes.

Pat Miller: 05:16

How in the world do you take the camera off the 10-month-old and put it on yourself? Are you obsessing about content creation with your son?

Zach Mayfield: 05:22

Oh, yeah. Actually, that's a big balance I've been trying to find. And I've been talking to other creators here too that have kids about like, how do you feel about filming your children on Instagram or YouTube, like privacy, stuff like that? So me and my wife are actually just currently trying to figure out like, do we want to stop filming him at 1 years old or do we just be like super careful with what we show because he's kind of like a part of–he's such a huge part of my journey. I can't not point the camera at this little dude. So I'm just figuring that out too, honestly.

Pat Miller: 05:54

How do you talk about your faith in your content? I haven't seen enough. How much are you bringing that in? Or is that something that's a personal journey, and then the business is the business journey.

Zach Mayfield: 06:03

Yeah. I definitely have had like such a long journey with my spirituality, and with Christ and everything. But it's such an intrinsic part of my, my day now that I can't not talk about it. I feel like the verse where it's like, He must become greater and greater. I must become less and less, and I just can't not do that. Yeah. So it just kind of naturally embeds itself in there. And it's something important to me because I know there's a lot of people that are so hurt by church, and I was too, but it found me again. So I just have to, It's just part of me.

Pat Miller: 06:38

And that's about being authentic. People say be authentic and not forceful. Correct.

Zach Mayfield: 06:44

That doesn't work. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 06:45

If you're spending an hour in the morning being personal and understanding your purpose and why you're here, good for you to include it in what you're doing and have it be part of your drive.

Zach Mayfield: 06:54

It just takes pressure off the subscribers, the views, the comments. It's like it matters for your business, but in the grand scheme, it's like, it's just not everything to me. So I try not to waste too much time on it.

Pat Miller: 07:07

You made a point of saying it's important to have family time, which means being more efficient and getting more done.

Zach Mayfield: 07:13

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 07:13

If someone wants to scale their influence, and going out and telling their story is not an easy task. How are you saving time but still looking great? Do you have any tips or tools or ideas that we should be investigating to help ourselves accelerate our storytelling?

Zach Mayfield: 07:29

Yeah, that's really good. I think I'll start with,. I have two main things. I guess, so first thing is I was at a wedding reception a few years ago, and one of the dads, it was the dad of the groom, stood up and was talking about how much he loved his son. And he basically just said like, you can always work more when your kid goes to sleep. And that just like that hit me so hard. So I try to like keep that. It's like instead of getting frustrated that I have to like go change my kid's diaper, it's like I should just enjoy that time with him. And when he goes to bed at 7 or 8, it's like, I could go work a few more hours if I have to. And again, maximizing your time, that's the second thing. But building processes. So I'm a huge, like, I love folder organization. I use, I use Notion. Notion, please sponsor me. I use Notion for all of my like YouTube build out. So it's like basically when I come up with a new video idea, I just click one button in Notion and like starts to build my script template and like place where the sponsorship is going to go and all this stuff and sync it to a calendar or whatever. So just like investing the time of like looking up tutorials on how to be more efficient and stuff like that. And you figure it out as you go. Like you've been in broadcast for how many years now?

Pat Miller: 08:37

Yeah, 20 years.

Zach Mayfield: 08:39

But you're probably at the point, I mean, you told me your home setup, you just kind of fire it up and it sounds incredible right off the bat because you built a process. So, it even comes down to the gear, like, can you just flip a switch, your camera, audio, and everything's just rolling. That will save time. Like, you guys are using rolling stands. I use rolling stands for all my stuff, too, because it's like, wheels. Save time. It's the little thing sometimes.

Pat Miller: 09:00

I mean this as a compliment is your bias towards efficiency and process. Does that get into your product reviews, that you're giving extra credit to something that does something faster, better, smoother?

Zach Mayfield: 09:12

That's a great question. And yes, totally. I'm all about not letting gear interrupt the moment. Because I did wedding films and photography for a really long time and just camera operating in general, and one second can, like, lose a huge moment. So, yeah, like, finding lenses that are fast, cameras that have good autofocus, SD cards that are reliable, hard drives that don't crash and lose a year of your work. That happened to me.

Pat Miller: 09:40

No, wait, hold on. Time out. What?

Zach Mayfield: 09:41

Oh, dude, I cried.

Pat Miller: 09:43

What happened?

Zach Mayfield: 09:44

I had, like, an old hard drive that I didn't have backed up to a cloud.

Pat Miller: 09:48

No. Oh.

Zach Mayfield: 09:48

Oh, yes.

Pat Miller: 09:49

Not safe for work video. Label this one. Okay, go. Brutal.

Zach Mayfield: 09:52

So I still have the hard drive, and I sent it to this company and they're like, we might be able to recover it for four grand. And I was like, nah, sorry, dude. Luckily, it was mostly YouTube stuff. So I still have, like, the videos and stuff, but, yeah.

Pat Miller: 10:08

That's still a horror story.

Zach Mayfield: 10:09

Yeah, it's one of those. I had to learn it the hard way, and now I have, like, a network attached storage that's synced to a cloud. I had to invest money into that. But we're safe now.

Pat Miller: 10:19

Let's talk about the content that you create. Something that struck me that I really liked. Tell me about the Mayfam. Where did that come from? It's very clever and cool. When did that become a thing? Did that just fall out of your mouth one day or what happened?

Zach Mayfield: 10:31

Most of my words do. Shout out to my boy Woody Paul over there. So he actually helped me start and build a Discord community. I don't know if you've used Discord much, but basically the Mayfam, I was like, my last name is Mayfield. Mayfam. Whatever. Anyway, we built this Discord community. It's like five or six hundred members now of photo video creatives. Sweet, kind people. And it's just kind of like a resource area. We're currently actually trying to figure out how to restructure it to make it more beneficial for people. But people can, like, submit their photos and videos in there. We can give feedback. Like, I've learned a ton from the community in there. Because I don't consider myself a fantastic photographer by any means. And like there's people in there who have educated me so much. And it's just like a fun little server that we started on the side. So the Mayfam is like the subscribers and the Discord members, like the close knit community.

Pat Miller: 11:22

I think it was the Mayfam presented by Notion. I think we just made that a thing. Right? Is that where we're going with this?

Zach Mayfield: 11:27

That would be amazing. Yeah.

Pat Miller: 11:28

We need to make that happen.

Zach Mayfield: 11:29

Yes, please.

Pat Miller: 11:30

Someone's watching this. They want to do what you're doing. Give us a couple of quick start ideas, inspire us. What would you want someone to know if they were where you were 10 years ago and they're just starting out?

Zach Mayfield: 11:42

I would say definitely talk about something that you could talk about forever, like with a close friend. Like me and you could probably talk about Nebraska.

Pat Miller: 11:50

Absolutely.

Zach Mayfield: 11:50

All day. So maybe you have a Nebraska channel.

Pat Miller: 11:52

Let's go.

Zach Mayfield: 11:52

It's got to be something you care about and you could talk about for years. And I guess the scary part is like, can you dedicate five to eight years of your life and see not many results? And I think that's the hard reality of at least my journey. But I knew I wanted the creative and financial freedom of like making a living off my own ideas. That was the goal from day one. And you just gotta start throwing stuff out there. And it's scary with like YouTube commenters can be really mean and stuff like that, but you really do learn to just kind of like laugh at that. It gets better. I was super insecure in the beginning, but you learn to kind of just like let it roll off your back. So, yeah, you got to talk about stuff that you're passionate about. You can talk about forever and just be willing to put in the time. And that kind of can take the pressure off too, where it's like, I'm not trying to blow up in three months. Not trying to go viral. I'm trying to build a career over 10 years. So it's like you can take time to be with your friends and your family, not lock yourself in a closet when your family's hanging out at Christmas or whatever. So yeah, just take the time.

Pat Miller: 12:54

But when you watch a video like this, sometimes you get the vibe that the creator will teach you how to SEO a video. And now you've got a career.

Zach Mayfield: 13:04

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 13:04

That period of earning it, of finding your people, of exposing like that there's a trough, it seems, because you're not the first person that's told me, get comfortable waiting, do the work, put in great work. But it's not going to happen instantly.

Zach Mayfield: 13:18

Yeah, that is really hard. How do you be patient through that? I think it's using the resources you have, like the YouTube tutorials. Like, there's genuinely so much helpful stuff out there. But not counting on that as like, this is gonna work. Because like everybody's creative journey is so different. Like I had to try so many different things. I never even wanted to make product videos because I didn't see a lot of story in it. So I had to figure out like, oh, I can package something that like works on YouTube, which is like, nice picture of product review. But like when you click on my video, you're going to get that, but it's going to be way more of like a story, a lot of funny moments. And that just took time for me to find people that jive with that. There's a lot of people that won't enjoy that, and that's okay. There's other creators out there that you will. So just like making sure you do what you love, but you can still like package it in a strategic way, like what's working on YouTube, what's working on Instagram, and yeah, learning to kind of like copy some things but make it your own.

Pat Miller: 14:18

It's a great conversation.

Zach Mayfield: 14:19

Yeah.

Pat Miller: 14:19

Go Big Red. Zach Mayfield, thanks for coming on the show.

Zach Mayfield: 14:22

Thanks so much, man. Absolutely.

Pat Miller: 14:24

Thanks for tuning in to the Professional Photographer Podcast live from Imaging USA 2025, and a big thanks to Sony for making this look great. Well, as great as you can make this look, but we appreciate you being here. So here's what's next. You need to like and subscribe to this podcast feed because we release this show every week where I get a chance to sit down with the leaders in the industry, and our point of view is to help you build a better photography business. So like and subscribe, and if you want bonus points, I'll email them to you. You'll get bonus points if you leave a comment on this episode. What did they share on the episode that you wanna make sure that you're going to put into your business so you can get further down the road? One other way you can get further down the road, become a member of PPA. If you're watching this and you're not a PPA member, come on bro. You are missing out of all the good stuff that PPA provides. I'm talking about equipment insurance, top-notch education, and a community of photographers around you that are serious about improving their craft. If you wanna know more, go to ppa.com. That's ppa.com. At PPA, you belong here. Thanks again for tuning in to The Professional Photographer Podcast. I'm your host, Pat Miller. We'll see you right here next time. Talk to you soon.