The Offset Podcast - The Offset Podcast EP038: Color Education PT 2 w. Cullen Kelly

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

In this episode of The Offset Podcast we’re continuing our conversation with Cullen Kelly on color eduction.  If you missed part 1, be sure to go back to and check it out.  In this episode some of the topics we explore include:Finding the right instruction and right instructor for how you learnThe role of 'robustness’ in color educationWhy concepts trump recipes Why some practitioners aren’t great teachers and some teachers aren’t great practitionersHow to get people to ‘launch’ post instruction From  tutorials on YouTube to a building a brandThe Pros/Cons of different instruction types - in person, asynchronous, audio only etcThe responsibility of a student and how to good student The challenges of teaching the ‘soft’ side of color  - room & client management What constitutes success as an educator?Dealing with trolls and criticism as an educatorA huge thanks to Cullen for joining us these past two episodes.  You can learn more about Cullen’s courses, tools and community by visiting his YouTube channel  - www.youtube.com/cullenkellyIf you liked this episode consider supporting the show by buying us a coffee - https://buymeacoffee.com/theoffsetpodcastThanks as always to our amazing sponsor Flanders Scientific and our editor Stella!

Hey, everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Offset podcast. And today, we're continuing our discussion about color education with special guest, Colin Kelly. Stay tuned. This podcast is sponsored by Flanders Scientific, leaders in color accurate display solutions for professional video. Whether you're a colorist, an editor, a DIT, or a broadcast engineer, Flanders Scientific has a professional display solution to meet your needs. Learn more at flanderscientific.com. All right, man, we're back with Cullen Kelly. And Cullen, thanks again for doing this.

If you haven't checked out part one, be sure to check out that. Colin has some great gems and some great insights about kind of the ethos and the background of his approach to color education, which I thought was good. But, you know, I wanted to ask you a very poignant question. And I don't know if you can answer this distinctly, but you can try. What is a quality education, like, you know, a quality teacher or a quality education product for you in the color world. Like what, like, would you, if you look at other people's stuff and you go, yeah, that's pretty,

that's pretty good. I like that. I learned something. What should people be looking for in content when they're evaluating, uh, the stuff to like, to try to learn? Oh, man. Yeah, that's, that's a question that, like, I didn't have to answer when I was learning this stuff.

It was like, dude, whatever the one person talking about this is, that's all you got. Like, maybe you learn, then you decide, oh, that wasn't that great. But it wasn't even a question. And now it's like such a big thing. Like who do I trust? What knowledge? What resource do I, you know, really like seek and continue to try to learn from? And I think we actually touched on a couple of pieces in the first part of our conversation that we can put together.

So there's a few that come to mind. The first one is robustness. Like this is a callback actually. We talked about color science like in the beginning of our very first conversation about like how much do you need to know about that? How relevant is it to a functional color grading practice? ironically one of the most strongest contributors from what I've learned in color science to my color grading practice

are the principles of the sciences in general and robustness like when I use that word I use it in the context of the sciences So like scientific method kind of thing you mean? Yeah, exactly. Like robustness just means how much, how broadly does this hypothesis hold? So if I tell you, you should always grade using offset.

Okay, does that hold for like one shot? Does that hold for 10,000 shots? Does it hold across genres and cameras? Like, how broadly can you apply the concept or the technique, right? The broader you can apply the concept or the technique, the higher the quality of the concept or technique. The more valuable it is fundamentally. So that's something that like you can, with a little bit of effort,

discern from the people you're considering listening to. Like, okay, how broadly applicable are the things that this person is saying in my world? That takes time to sniff out. But like, that's the first one for sure. like how broadly applicable are those things. Sure. And then the other one, again, we kind of talked about this in our first part of our conversation, but really connects here.

You want to look for concepts more than like techniques or recipes, you know, like techniques and recipes can go away, tools can change. Someone else can come in and tell you the next day. Like, here's a, I'll give you a concrete example. If I learn like some sort of really nifty combo of lift gamma and gain from some video and I'm like, wow, they got good results in their video. I'm getting good results on the three or four videos I've tried it on now. And then I meet some rock star-star colorist who, like, I can barely even speak around because

I'm so starstruck by their credential. And they say, dude, never do that again. I have no foundation from which to say, I'm sorry, but that works for me. Like, I have no foundation from which to really refute that, as opposed to if I've learned a concept and I've seen it play out and I've seen it apply better and worse in different situations, but I know that concept is right. Even if the best colors in the world tells me that, I can confidently say, dude, I totally get it. That's just the way. This is just the way I prefer to do it, right? Yeah. And I've had those conversations before, like plenty, you know? Yeah, I feel like,

like teal and orange is something that we, you know, that is kind of like that, right? It's like, everybody has their own recipe to do it. And if I hear what you're saying, it's more about, do you know why it's teal and orange, first of all? Yes. Do you know, like, like, so you could do it with this set of tools. You can do it this set of tools or whatever. It's more of the motivational factor behind it is what I hear you say. Yeah, why are you doing it? How are you doing it? How much control do you have over it? How much control do you have over revising it? If you see it the next day and you're like, dude, what was I thinking? Or your client says that to you? Those are like all big factors just as much as like, hey, look what that person on this video did as you said, Robbie,

on this one still frame in this very controlled environment. Like you've got it. Yeah, when it comes to any kind of technique, I think repeatability is so important. Like, And I think that gets lost in a lot of what we would consider the hypothetical lower quality educational resources out there where somebody says, here, look at these steps that I took to make this image. And you could try repeating those exact steps, but without a concept behind of the why, those steps will not make the same result on every image. and that technique might work horribly on some images. And then if you don't have that kind of width of, Colin, how you put it, where this applies to a wide variety of things

versus one specific thing, then you're not only going to not really gain anything from the education. You might harm yourself because you're going to paint yourself into a corner on a project and find yourself stuck. Look up tables are a perfect example of that. right? I can't tell you how many people over the years I've, I've interacted with, you know, they're like, you know, up until three o'clock in the morning, downloading lookup tables, trying this one, trying that one, whatever, because they have no underlying understanding of

how the, you know, how the actual lookup table works, what the input space is designed for, et cetera, et cetera. And so yeah, they just keep trying. But like, I guess another way of asking a similar part of this is just like, what do you look, is it important? important to look at sort of the bona fides of somebody giving the education. Because like one of things I think that is is challenging and I found in my own personal journey is that, you know, the best practitioners don't always make the best educators, right? And sometimes there's always there's sometimes there's really good educators that couldn't grade a film to help themselves, but they can explain concepts really well, right? So like in your experience, like, in, I guess like,

do you find that the best educators are the ones who are balancing that out, like doing the craft and then talking about it? Or do you find that like you can do one side or the other? You can, you know, be a professional trainer, professional colorist, like, or do you have to mix those two together? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's so tricky because you ultimately are, you're totally right. You can't correlate. I have seen unproven practitioners teach really, really good stuff. I have very seen very proven practitioners teach stuff that's like, dude, you are like, that's borderline malpractice to be saying what you are saying right now. That may work for you in your scenario right now, but to go back to my principle of robustness, that will not travel for the people you're conveying it to right now.

But I've also seen the opposite. I've seen unproven practitioners teach dumb stuff. And I've seen proven practitioners teach really good stuff. So it's all four quadrants, you know? Yeah. So I do think like you can, I would put it this way, you can use those things more to confirm than to refute. Like, if someone's really good at what they do, you can be like, okay, that's a clue. That doesn't mean this information will be good, but it means it could be good. Whereas like, if you're like, oh, an unproven practitioner, that means they could not be good. I think that's probably less true.

Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. So then in a situation where, you know, I think that, you know, and Joey, before we got on the record, Joey, was teasing you a little bit about your, your group. is falling you're around NAB and other trade floors and stuff like that. But like, yeah, right. I think that like, you know, people look up to you as, you know, you are a trusted source of this education stuff and now they want to do it. Like, is there another challenge of like, I want to teach people, but I don't want to teach

people to be mini Cullins, right? Like, you know, like that's not, knowing you, that's not your goal. But like that seems like a good, a little bit of a danger point or a balancing act that you might have running your own community teaching people. your methods, et cetera, is that like, you know, how do you chat, how do you balance people? Okay, fine, they've gronked onto you. They like your style. How do you get them to develop on their own rather than just like mimicking everything that,

you know, you as colorists do? Yeah, man, I think about this one all the time. So the things that come to mind, first of all, are like just that continued emphasis in all areas. Whether we're talking about craft or collaboration, you know, remember I coach colorists too in small. Right, yeah, yeah. I'm getting into that.

It gets, you know, we talk about, we talk about sales, we talk about marketing. We talk about what's going on in your personal life that's locking you up professionally. It really runs the spectrum

and there's the danger multiplies in those areas and I'm like, am I just going to teach you guys all to be a 39-year-old man who lives in Southern California and has got a three-year-old and a one-year-old

and it's crazy. Right. That's not really a good goal for anybody, right? So I think like the principles are the number one thing that guard against that. I'm not teaching you recipes. I'm teaching you principles.

Okay. And the other one is, again, like captured in my book, The Colorist 10 Commandments, Chapter 10, the last chapter, question assumptions. Like, I'm going to tell you some stuff. Now you have to go test it. And you have to see if it works. And if it doesn't work, you're dumb if you keep applying, you know, which is something that I don't think gets emphasized enough in a lot of education. Like, you have to go battle test this. And if for whatever reason it doesn't work, you need to come back

and be like, what am I missing? What do I need to better understand? Or say, hey, that doesn't work. that teacher or that teaching is not for me. Like that's a huge part of what led to like a lot of the stuff I teach. I teach the opposite of stuff that I was taught. And I came to the things and the convictions that I teach because I was like, dude, that's wrong. Like you are incorrect about that. I don't believe that to be the right thing.

You know, but that had to come from being given education that I was glad to receive and then giving myself the opportunity to question the assumptions regardless of the source, even from people who I know, like, respect, you know, even to this day, mentors to the day. Plenty of stuff that they've taught me that I'm like, that just doesn't hold for me. I don't believe it's right. Yeah. And I mean, I do think, I mean, I think it's always, I like to think about it too as you're not going to gel with every single student, right? I mean, I think all, I think three of us have been in a situation where like, you know, let's say for sake of argument, we're more or less saying all the same things, but somebody gravitates to the way that Joey said it

versus me or versus you, whatever, right? And that just happens. Like, you, can't you can't win everybody right like you can't be the guy for everybody um which is which is a challenge now let me ask you this is what i'm really fascinated about by you and i i got to say like i have a little bit of a man crush on this part of your life right and that is is that like i've always considered myself to be like a risk taker try new things start a new business try this or whatever but it seems to me like you're cullen you're the guy on youtube doing these cool and then it's like all of a sudden, snap of fingers, I now have this little bit of an empire that I've built

with a community and products and stuff. Obviously, that was a very intentional approach to how you were going to do things. What was the, like, how did you conceive of that, the design of it? What are the parts of that that go into it for you, right? Like, how does that your, how does the empire of Colin Kelly,

how does that work in terms of how all the different pieces of the puzzle play with each other? Listen, I just love to serve and build up colorists. That's my thing. And it was less of a calculated day one grand picture. It's more a picture that has gotten bigger and clearer as the path has unfolded. And it's one that the further I've gone down, I'm like, it doesn't even feel like a choice. I'm like, there just has to be room in my life for doing this at the largest scale to the best of my ability that I can.

I just feel like I feel very, very, this is what I'm meant to do. with my time is to support and to nurture and to grow people who are like me and who people people who need what I needed at critical points in my journey and who didn't and who I can give it to at points that I didn't have it and I just had to like stumble around and make mistakes and take the long way like I'm really really passionate about being there for those people and giving them a different experience and that's something that you know Robbie and I've talked about at length and never really had a good answer to is the fact that, you know, when we grew up in the industry, mentorship looked extraordinarily different than it looks now, right? All three of us worked at

post houses. I was, you know, I was at a post house from a very young age. Robbie got his start at a post house. We always had, at least he and I, had very good access to, I would say, pretty high quality mentorship. Everything that we've talked about thus far in terms of, you know, how to learn, what to learn stuff applies to that as well. But the access was there because we started early in a post-production world that simply doesn't exist anymore in terms of the generally the large post house, the junior guy coming up under the senior working on the same projects, the same clients,

in the same building. How does that look to you? I mean, obviously, I think you come to mind when the more, with the idea of modern mentorship of colorists, your community and the way you're doing it seems to really come to mind first. And one, I think that's fantastic. But how do you feel about, you know, how mentorship used to be versus how we can do mentorship today?

And that, and sorry to interrupt, but that's why I said, like, I felt like it was an intentional thing because it seems like to me that you, like the teaching people how to use resolve was never going to be good enough in the grand plan, right? It was, I need to have those discussions with you about how to deal with crappy clients. I need to have those discussions with you about dealing with, you know, old invoices and the proper way of getting paid. And I need, you know, all those parts of it were like, you know, part of the bigger picture that everybody needs to know, but not a whole lot of people are focusing on in a more kind of unified way, right? Like, I can go and watch some, you know, some person on YouTube about color training, but then I'm going to watch somebody else about business practices or reading a book about, and it seems like you've been able to unify that. And it's just, it's pretty fascinating to see that in practice because, like, I watch a lot of times in your. in your Discord community, you know, when people purchase your products, they can get, that's worth noting, by the way.

People take your classes, you know, purchase your products, etc. They can get into this pretty amazing Discord community. It just seems like that's just inherent to that community now. People, like everybody transitions from, we're talking about, you know, Matrix transforms in one post to talking about like getting paid for past bills and another one to talking about my spouse is about to throw something at me because I've been at the office for, you know, 18 hours, right? And it's just like, that's a real world life situation for people who get into this business. And it's always been a, I think even when I was doing education more than I'm doing

now, it was really hard to explain to people. And it just seems like, I don't know, it feels intentional to me, but it's interesting to hear you say that, no, just the way it panned out kind of thing. We're teaching a little bit of, you know, the colorist life. Well, I mean, thank you for those compliments that's really nice to hear and i will say there's there's intent there in the sense that like i i really make the effort to i i have an impulse i think a lot of colorists have this impulse of like i like being in like a quiet dark cave where it's like me and a couple clients like that's right sure you know like and i try to moderate that impulse and be willing to share things that i learn even if they're messy even if they don't like cast me in the most like

favorable light. And I love learning stuff and I love learning in the areas that you're talking about, not just like the actual craft of color grading, but like with the craft of being a creative professional and how to work with clients, all these different dimensions, personal development, like all these aspects of just being a fully dimensional human being. Like I really try and struggle and strive and fail to like achieve in all those areas. And I try to like, as I gather those lessons, I try to give them right back in real time. You find it challenging to be that transparent with your community, though, to be like, you know, because it's really easy to share wins, right? It's much harder to share like the failings, right?

Is that, is that, did it take time to develop that level of vulnerability that where you were comfortable doing it? Or is that just something that you've always kind of been that way? You've always been like, yeah, I'll talk about whatever. Oh, no, no. I've historically been a very, like, guarded, private person. and I've learned that the only actual failures come from heating that impulse. It's like, oh, I'm just going to, like, hide my pain and not learn from it, not allowing anyone else to learn from it and try to protect myself and sort of like wall

myself in in that way. That 10 times out of 10 will be a fail. Meanwhile, sharing things that in the moment may feel like a failure, often in the act of sharing, you realize, oh, wait, there's actually something. Somebody else had that exact same problem or issue or whatever. Yeah. Or even just the process, like, I know you guys have had this. Like how many times when you're talking to your spouse, you just by talking through something

that you experienced, you realize like, oh, wait, that was for me. Or like, there's something really valuable to glean from that experience. So, like, no, like the more I've gotten into that cycle of like, yeah, I just try to be honest and authentic and share, you know, what I'm doing in my life, the more I've gotten hooked on it. I think it's so important because I think it's so easy. And I've had this experience. I'm sure I've read about it in your community, too, where people have literally.

I've read people literally saying, oh, I didn't realize that, you know, Colin was an approachable guy. I didn't realize that he had had that problem too. I have that problem, right? And it just seems like, you know, in the YouTube education type of world where everybody's just trying to put their best foot forward and show everything is, you know, is unicorns, right? Everything is magic. Yeah.

It's good to see those, like those problems, right? Because that's the real world. Like, shit, I didn't, I didn't bill a job. in the past three weeks. I'm screwed making my rent or whatever. Like, those are real world problems. And I, I don't know. I just think that that is a pretty, again, not to bloviate too much and give you too

many positive reinforcement, but like, that's a lovely thing about your community is that just that vulnerability of being there is just a nice breath of fresh air just because it's sort of like, okay, yeah, we can, you know, we're in this sort of safe place where people can talk about this stuff and not be judged about. screwing up. That's a great thing to have, right? No, thanks for saying so, and we can, I'm sure all agree. Like, when we've been I'm still not over my printer. I'm still

not over the fact that I don't use printer points as much as I should, but that's fine. And you know what? Printer points are out, bro. The internet is not, not the real world. And it's so easy to look at, especially when you do look at some of the, not to keep bad-mouthing you two,

but you look at some of the stuff that people put their best stuff out, on YouTube. I had this big win. This thing looks amazing, whatever. That doesn't really show you the 15 other projects that somebody might have done that they did their best on, but like they got really bad footage that was shot really terribly. And it's never going to be art, but I'm making my career here. You know what I mean? It's hard to judge yourself based on everybody else's wins only. That is a great point, Joey, because like sometimes like it might be a bigger win to turn a like a bucket of turds into something that's watchable than it is to deal with like the best content

and just like you know when we we we've we've had a conversation in the years past with our mutual friend walter volpato and i i remember talking to walter about you know grading star wars or whatever he's like like what did you have to do it's like it was it was easy like you know what i'm not easy but like you get to a certain point where it's just like you know he talks about respecting the photography a lot in that discussion and it was like cool man i wish i could respect the photography but they had no idea what they were doing. And I feel like it's a bigger win getting in shape than it was, you know, working on Star Wars or whatever, right?

So that's cool. Sure. Let me ask you one more practical community question is what, knowing that people operate in different ways, some people are visual learners, auditory learners. It seems like you've, you know, you've kind of done a good mix of like, okay, this stuff's going to be asynchronous on YouTube. These are live streaming sessions with me. maybe here's an article or a newsletter.

Like, how do you, do you try to offer different ways for people so they can best gravitate for what works to them? Or is, are you still trying to figure out like, okay, I'm trying to figure out what sticks with people and resonates? Like, what's the thinking behind that? Yeah, you know, you're right. There are different forms of communication. And we're always kind of thinking about and playing with that.

And there's like, for example, I would love to be doing more stuff in person. I've done more in person education like in the last. I don't know, a year or so, then definitely the three or four prior to that. And that's a very unique special thing when you get to do that. So like that's its own category that I want us to be doing way more in. And same thing. Like, you know, even just a pre-recorded YouTube video versus a pre-recorded video that is distributed in some other way, those are different.

Certainly we've learned like from all of my courses that I've done. The thing that I love most, like if I, like I feel like where I'm most effective, if you want to learn from me where I can give you the most is if we're doing something live. And I've kind of learned that just from experience. Like I am the least self-conscious, the least self-editing just sort of by inherent format. Like, you're not going to go back and do another take. Like, that's going to have to do, dude. So you know, can I tell you something?

And this is a little inside baseball. One of the reasons that I have gravitated a little bit away from tutorial type stuff over the past five, six, seven years is because I was like, like the worst with it, right? Like, I could get up. I meant my, my wife makes fun of me all the time that I'm like an introverted extrovert, right? That like I could get up, you know, one time I got up at Adobe Max and there was like

6,500 people in the crowd and I got up and gave a presentation, right? Totally no problems with it, right? But sitting in front of the computer and trying to record something by myself and like flubbing, like, stop, record, re-record, stop, re-record. And it just, you can get in your own head about that stuff, man. But I'm with you. Live is where it's at. It's more fun.

Yeah, you can get mental doing those, you know, talking to a camera sessions, for sure. Yeah, for sure. I love the live format, whether that's remote or in person, but I think they all serve different purposes. For example, I know we've got a course coming up. We're going to be doing in August where we're going to get to do a hybrid for the first time where we will have, you know, like as many people as we can fit into my DIY theater in person, but it's also going to be going out over Zoom to a lot more people than that.

And that way we get to scratch the edge on both sides. Do a little bit of both, right? I got you. What, um, so we've talked a lot about the role of you as the educator. What is, what is a student need to be doing to get the most out of education these days, right? Because, I mean, it's not like you can just, I mean, whether that's everything from, you know, prerequisites and previous experience to just having an open mind. Like, what could you, what advice could you give people who are trying to learn this stuff to become better students at it, right? Like what what characteristics and things should should people be doing to get more out of training like yours? You know, it's when when this kind of question comes up, the same lesson from college always comes up from film school, which is funny because like, you know, people ask me about, you know, film school or should I go to film school and like, you know, 20, 25.

The answer is definitely no for me, at least in any application I can think of like you can go to YouTube University at this point. So I feel like I end up talking kind of a lot of smack on film school. I actually got a ton out of film school. And one of those things was a lesson that I'll share right now. This was something from a writing teacher who said, look, look, if you want to be a really good writer, you only have to do three things. Write, rewrite, and watch movies like a writer. That was his whole description.

You can transpose that one to one into color grading. I think it works. Grade, grade more, and watch movies like a colorist. Like, if you don't do anything else, like you can be drinking from a really high-quality knowledge source. You can be drinking from the tap. Hopefully that you find you gravitate toward the better stuff over time as your knowledge increases, but all else being equal, just doing those three things, you will grow over time. And then if you start to put a couple bonuses on there, like, hey, be mindful of learning concepts over techniques.

Hey, be mindful of discerning between people who can really share things that are going to serve you well in lots of projects for a lot of years versus people who are just going to make you feel good for the next three weeks. weeks, like you start to overlay those things on there and you can build up a really good, really simple answer to that question. How do I become a lifelong student of this stuff? Yeah, yeah. Because I think, you know, I think one of the challenges that I've personally faced is I'll learn a new technique and then it's just sort of like I have blinders on for a while, right? Where I just feel like I'm just doing that thing for the longest time. And it takes some conscious thought to kind of go, okay, nope, I'm going to put that in the toolbox of things I know and move on to the next one, right?

Because it's like, it's very easy to get stuck in your ways, right? inertia and momentum can be an enemy to growing. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I agree with that. Just a few more questions and then we'll wrap this up. I'm curious. So you mentioned kind of like the business side of things and you also mentioned kind of just like the, I don't know, lack of better term, the life management thing. I think, you know, we've talked about it on previous episodes that we've done just about how I think that there's this, this picture, this aura that a lot of people have about professional colors, especially those at the top of the game that it's all just roses, right?

It's just like you walk into a room every day and everybody's soaked and it's high fives all around. Like, have you found that side of your educational practice to be harder in some ways to communicate, to talk about? Like, because it just seems to me every time I want to get into that kind of stuff, people are like, no, no, no, do we're here to learn about color. We're not here to learn about like your life experiences. But like it seems to me it's very much one of the same. Like we've talked a lot of, Joey and I have talked a lot about how like, you know, in the context like of having clients in the room, that's, that's 90% of the room.

It's like owning the room, controlling the room, managing the room. You could be a crap colorist and still have everybody give you high fives at the end of the session, right? have you found as you've gotten more into that side of things that it's just different for you as an educator like I'm imagining the color stuff comes pretty naturally kind of just flows does the life stuff the business stuff is that harder to teach on some level it it is hard I think in the exact sense that you described a minute ago that like there can be some sort of like hesitance or like shyness of like man what do these people want to hear this they just want to see some color grading right I'm going to shut up and stay on message here.

But the thing that, like, I'm sure we'll track for you guys is, like, the longer you stay in this game, the more you realize, like, oh, the client thing. Like, that's just the tip of the iceberg. Like, dude, the energy you walk into a room with is everything. That's why that example we gave, like, at some point in one of our conversations about, like, some of the top practitioners in the game are not necessarily particularly particularly. The best features, right. technically astute. You just like, like, here's what I'll say. I can, I can, like, frame it as an example. Every single of like, you know, the really, really elite top level color grading practitioners I've met in my career. You stand across them and you're like, okay, yeah, I get it. I'd spend that

amount of money to spend time in a room with you. You're just great. I just love your energy. You make me feel better in my body. And that's just like their personality in the way that they're managing the room, not the way they're pushing the buttons, yeah? No, that's, and even more than like, this is like, where I feel like some of my confidence of sharing things that are outside of the color field come into play is like those colorists, it's not even just the way they're managing the room. It's the way they're living their lives. Like they're not like slamming a six pack on the way to the office. They're not like, you know, mowing down Cheetos and like wiping it off on their shirt when they get in the room.

Like they're taking care of themselves. Mentally, physically, like lifestyle and all these different areas. Like they're a complete, realized, happy whole person for the most part. Which can be a challenge in our interest? to be a happy whole person, right? It's so hard. And that's why those people, that's what makes them exceptional just as much as anything else. And as like that started to become really obvious to me and more and more obvious to me as

I've stayed in this game, it's just gotten to me and I'm like, look, you might think this is what you need to hear or not, but I know it's what you need to hear. You say you want X and you think it involves, you know, it's like people who go to the doctor and say, doc, my arm's broken, put a cast on it. It's like, right, I will diagnose. I will decide whether your arm is broken or whether. something else is going on. That's my job as your doctor or as your educator. So that's something that I feel like I've found more confidence and clarity and is like, look, I'm going to prescribe what

I believe to be what you need, not what you tell me what you need. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's really true. And I think that it's, I think we're also at a point in time where people are, whether it's mental or physical health issues, whether it's, you know, some of this stuff that we've in the past, I just feel like people are more open, right? Like people are more understanding of these conversations, which I think is a really good thing. So somebody, you know, comes into the call and call in universe and starts out with maybe one of your live classes

or maybe got to know you from your newsletter or something like that. And they stay with you for a while. Like as you as the practitioner of this practice, what is success? Like when you start with a student and they, at a certain point, they're off on their own doing their own thing or whatever, How do you measure that, hey, our process, my community, is it an ongoing thing that you hope they never leave?

Or is there a point where you're like, nope, I'm ready to launch you out into the world and you're good? What is a measure that you've done your job in the holistic way that you've described over these past two shows for us? Like, you're doing a lot for people. Where is the mark that you've done a good job doing it? Man, it can look like so many different things. Like, I am one of the big first hurdles I had to get over early in my, like,

My YouTube channel, I owe it 100% like really the whole brand. I owe it to my wife. She was the one who was like, dude, you should do this. And I was the one who was like, there's no way I'm giving this away for free. I've spent so much time like acquiring this. There's no way I'm giving away most of what I know for free. Because that is what I do today. I give away most of what I know for $0.00.

So like the and I now have like a huge portion. Most of the people who engage with my brand, watch a video, watch half a video, maybe drop a like, maybe drop a comment, go and apply it, hopefully, get something out of it. And they may go no further down the highway than that. They're basically taking the first exit off of it. That can be success. I'm not mad that me and that person cross paths, however briefly, you know. The other end of it is like, you know, I've got, I feel like especially community members

and even more so than that, my coaching clients who are the sort of like smaller community within the community to see those people go and win at the like highest level within this business, that is definitely an easy answer to that question. of like, okay, like, you were probably always always going to kick ass, and I'm just glad that I didn't mess it up for you. And maybe I was able to help you steer and guide you along the way. So it's really everywhere along that path of like whether you're on for, you know, like one mile and you take the exit, but you enjoyed the ride for that. Cool. Or if you're, I'm so jealous of your, of a lot of your community members in doing this because, and at one level it's a genius move on your part.

But like, I just, those two things were never together for me. most of my professional life. It was the technical science kind of stuff. And then it was the like, you go see a psychologist. You don't talk to your colorist buddy about this. Right. Yeah. And it's, it's just, it's reward because like about two or three years ago, I was just like, I was just, I don't know, kind of just in a bad place where everybody had been gone, we've gone through the pandemic. And that was a big, you know, to do for a lot of reasons. I had exited at a couple businesses that I owned. And I was just like, I just wasn't engaged in. what I was doing sitting behind the panel doing that kind of stuff and I realized that part of that was

just like I needed people in my life who also got it and understood right and so like I look at your community and I don't really you know just because nobody want to hear me bloviate about things but like I don't participate that much in your community but I like I watch it and it really even as like a as a viewer it's really rewarding to that because I'm just sort of like oh okay yep Now I learned something from that one. I learned something from that post. And it's very holistic. So I think you're doing obviously an incredible job.

Thanks so much. That's that's what we're trying to do. And it means a lot to hear that that's landing. Yeah, I got you. All right. So, you know, obviously I've been singing your praises over two episodes here, Cullen, but I want to be that guy for a second. And I want to be the troll, right?

This is something that everybody who has published anything, Has anybody who's ever tried to share knowledge, let's put it that way, has always had somebody coming back going, nah, that's a stupid way of doing it. What are they doing? And I'm sure you've been the recipient of a fair bit of that over the years in various forms. How do you internalize that, manage it, et cetera? Because like, it can, it can be hard. It can really get you down. I remember a conversation, before I knew who he was, there's a relatively well-known color scientist. And I was doing I did a tutorial. I'm like, this is 15 years ago,

kind of like the basics of Lutz, right? Not intending to talk about input, you know, input color spaces output. Like, not the math. It was just for, it was for video editors.

You don't really know how Lutz work. You're an idiot. Why are you doing this? And like, it really got me to me. Like, I was just like, oh man,

I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm like, I'm, you know, even though that wasn't the audience, I still found a way to like internalize, the feedback and the criticism.

I'm curious, how do you deal with it? Because it can beat you down, right? If you let it. Yeah, you know, I'll start by saying, like, I feel really fortunate when I look at, you know, I'm not a huge YouTube consumer, but I consume it enough to see that they're, like, people get all kinds of ridiculous stuff said to them

and commented on their videos. And I feel like, I don't even know fortunate it's the word. I mean, I'll put, I'll show this with you guys. I've gotten, I feel like such. of they've treated me so nicely for the most part on YouTube that every now and then I'll look around at the team and be like, are we doing something wrong? Are we just like two? We're not ruffling enough feathers, right?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But that notwithstanding, there's plenty of people who like, you know, there's plenty of stuff that comes in and it's like, wow, that cuts a little deep or that stinks or whatever. Like it's, yeah, it's not something that's not that nice to hear. So I guess I feel like the principle that I return to, there's a couple of things that I return to, but like probably the biggest one is like, I am, I am willing to radically own my part of wanting to help. So like, that's what every video I put out on YouTube is for. I want to help.

And if I didn't help, like, you got to take some ownership for that. Like, anytime I do help, that's a handshake. That's a collaboration. So like in the same way that I can't take sole credit for helping you if it helps, I can't be solely responsible if I don't help. But short of like a zero 100 split where I own all of the fault, I'm willing to take responsibility and be like, dude, I get it. And mean it when I say, I'm sorry I wasn't able to help and use it as an opportunity to be like, all right, how could I have helped? Is there simply no way I could have helped this person in this venue with the amount of time I had for talking about this topic?

Maybe. A lot of the time, there actually is something I could have done differently. And that ends up fueling more content. That's the awesome thing about YouTube is like, you can always go make another video, you know? Yeah, sure. So I try to just make it a thing of like short of 100, I'm pretty elastic in how much I'm willing to own of the help not working. You know, like, I'm willing to own.

Yeah. Totally. I've always thought about it. Joey, I'm sure you felt the same way, too, is that, you know, there's something about sharing knowledge that invites this type of person to enter the mix where they just, whether sometimes it's good-spirited. They're trying to further the dialogue or something. But oftentimes, it's more of like a stump-the-chump kind of thing, right?

And it's just like, you know, and I've had it off, more so in person where somebody will be disruptive to the room and be like, yeah, but you didn't answer my question or what about this? And it's sort of like, would you like to come up here and leave the class, please, right? Because it's like, you know, everybody can be armchair quarterbacks when they're not doing the way. And then every time that happens when you say, okay, cool, what's your perspective? Why don't you come up and tell everybody what your perspective is? They go, no, I'm good, man. I'm just going to, I'm just going to see. When it comes to, because I've had this a few times because I, you know,

especially when you put stuff out asynchronously online on whatever platform that we're talking about, you know, YouTube, some of the old, some of the tutorial sites that we've worked for, you know, forums, anything, right? It offers the opportunity of someone to leave some comments and those comments can be anywhere ranging from insightful and productive. And those are the ones I really like to engage with, especially even if I am wrong. If somebody, if I put a tutorial out there or if I put a video out there somewhere or we do a podcast episode and somebody comes, says, hey, you know, you said this. It's actually more along these lines and we can have a conversation and it's productive.

And even if I'm in the wrong and I say, oh, yeah, no, that's a great point. Let's expound on that some more. That's wonderful. Right. Yeah. To me, when I go down that road, there's a point where I'll give anybody the benefit of the doubt and look at a comment and read it and think about it. And then I immediately have

the mental calculation of am I going to respond to this? And I can kind of predict, right? Is this worth dipping into and providing mental energy to and also amplifying or is this guy just

not being helpful to the competition? They're just trying to beat you and try to catch you out. And that does not in my mind, my being right or wrong on an issue. does not have bearing onto if a comment or feedback is worth engaging with, right? It's all about how's it thought out, how's it said, is this adding to the conversation? Am I going to learn something from this than anybody else reading this thread can also learn?

But just to play that flip side of the coin, the flip side of that coin is that I have found it over the years to be somewhat debilitating at times for this reason, that you, yeah, gets in your head and then you're then I run into this world of like I have to be a completest about whatever subject it is I'm talking about right that I have to make sure that I dot every eye and cross every T because somebody's going to call me out for not mentioning whatever and that can be hard too that's right yeah so that's very cool um okay cool hey man thanks for joining us today I'm curious uh we've talked a lot about your community but tell us a little bit more about where people can find, you know, the YouTube channel where people can find the community, the various

products you're working on. Give us the, you know, Colin Kelly Sales 101 pitch here for what you're working on. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So for those who don't know, you can find me on YouTube, YouTube.com slash Colin Kelly, C-U-L-L-E-N, K-E-L-L-L-Y. That's really the entry point for anywhere that you might want to go with me from there. So there's links to grab some of my free resources on there. And, you know, from there we can, you know, that'll get you on my email list and you'll start hearing my musings, both professional and personal like we talked about today. And that's also how you end up finding out about things like courses that I do. And then I've got my, I've got lots of other products and solutions and stuff out there as well

that are usually best discovered by watching my YouTube videos and seeing him in action and going like, okay, cool. I think that could help me. Very cool. And I can speak from experience that, you know, some of the tool, DCTL, some of the newer tools you working on like contour. Like you can tell that Collins not just whip something up just for the fun of it. put it out there with a lot of,

a lot of, you know, intentional design. And, like, we got into a discussion about which way a slider should move earlier today, right? Like, those kind of things. And he had great reasons that it should work the way it does, right? So I think it's great that you're putting that stuff out there for sure. Just one thing to add to that. We did an entire podcast episode on plugins.

And the conclusion of the episode was basically us talking about how, why you shouldn't use plugins because they're logistically difficult. and all the reasons why it could be painting yourself into a corner. And then at the end of the episode, we're like, unless they're really, really good and they have a reason to be in your workflow. Everything from Cullen's original set of DCTLs that I used early on to contour and the other products that he has now,

now that he's moved into the open effects world, which is honestly a much more advanced way of developing tools, they all fit in the category of this is, if it solves the problem for you, this is worth the effort of installing it on your systems, managing licenses, paying for it. It's worth all of it to actually use those tools because they are excellent quality. I agree. Yeah.

No, thanks for saying. So, guys, and I think, you know, the fun part about that question for me is, like, you can apply the same principles that we've talked about during our couple of conversations and in my book, The Colorist 10 Commandments, like, you know, the same principles that apply to color grading apply to plugins, if it allows you to make greater gains for less effort. That's a point in its favor. It allows you to, you know, like think photograph, like any of the things that I talk about in my book, those same principles can be used as evaluation criteria for anything in the world of color grader. Excellent. Well, Colin, we can't

thank you enough for jumping on with us. I know that our audience is going to find a lot of really good nuggets in this discussion over the past 90 minutes or so and breaking this up into two different episodes. Definitely worth a listen or a watch. And for those of you are just watching this part to be sure to go back and watch part one as well and look for cullen on youtube and all his various products like i said our highest level of endorsement for for everything that cullen's doing uh and if you are not a colorist but a client also and you're on the out there in l a a be sure to uh give cullen and his team a call to they can help you do the next uh creative project as well uh because he does actually great too besides just for an awesome community uh

so that's really uh really good stuff cullen really appreciate you spend the time with us um so for all of those of you who are following along, remember, you can follow us on Instagram and on Facebook. Just search for the Offset Podcasts. We're on all major podcasting platforms, including Spotify and Apple podcast. You can afford to force find us on YouTube. And you can head over to The Offsetpodcast.com for additional show notes and additional links. And thanks again, Colin. Joey, this has been a fun one. I think, uh, yeah, man, I've learned, I've learned a whole bunch just from this conversation and it's really great picking your mind. We'll have to, we'll have to do it again sometimes soon. So I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Good. Bye-bye.