With approximately 35 years of combined professional media experience, husband-and-wife team Chris and Crestina Hardie launched their own company, Red Speck Media, in December 2015. The duo said they survived their first year and are heading into their second year with a strong start.
Leander-based Red Speck Media creates promotional videos, and its portfolio includes features for schools, nonprofits and the Leander Chamber of Commerce. The Hardies also offer “legacy videos” in which an elderly person shares his or her story for posterity.
“[Starting our own business] has always been our dream,” Chris said. “We love creating stories.”
Crestina’s background is mostly in reporting, and Chris’ background is in video production. The couple met in 2002 when they worked as a team at Spectrum News, then known as News 8 Austin. Now the Hardies have four daughters, and the two decided they wanted more time with their family, which led to the launch of their business.
Red Speck Media offers services from brainstorming to the final video edits, which the Hardies said can be done within a few days. Chris said newsrooms required videos to be turned over within a few hours, but now the owners have the freedom to spend more time to perfect a video.
“We’ve done this so much now that the basics of video are second nature to us,” Chris said. “We get to focus on the fun, creative stuff now.”
He said video content is the next step in social media and is one of the best ways to connect with people. After nearly a decade living in the Leander area, Chris said he believes the area is especially tech-savvy, and the Hardies noticed more people searching for content on the internet.
“We wanted to create relationships through video,” he said. “We help businesses build those relationships through their videos. That’s how you survive—that’s how we weathered the first year.”
For both their personal and professional lives, the Hardies refer to a metaphor they once heard about life.
“All of eternity is a huge white canvas, and your life is a tiny red speck,” Crestina said. “We want our ‘red speck’ to create stories that live on beyond our own lives.”
Red Speck Media
512-699-4329
www.redspeckmedia.com
