Meet Don Money

We recently connected with Don Money and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Don, thanks for sharing your insights with our community today. Part of your success, no doubt, is due to your work ethic and so we’d love if you could open up about where you got your work ethic from?

For me, I think it all goes back to my childhood and growing up as an athlete. I loved soccer and basketball, and I was a bowler too. But I wasn’t born with immediate skills in any of those things. I got good at them because I loved them, and so I practiced and worked hard to develop the ability to play those sports, and play them at a high level. I was never the fastest guy, or the strongest, or the tallest, but I made sure to work harder than everyone else, because that was my way in and what set me apart from others who were more gifted or skilled than I was. I remember I had made my 7th grade basketball team, but I didn’t play a whole lot. And then when tryouts rolled around for 8th grade, even though I was better than I was the year before, I got cut and didn’t make the team. That was a really tough year for me seeing all my friends, many of whom I’d been on the team with the prior year, going to practice, playing games etc, and I wasn’t a part of it anymore. So I spent the year getting better, spending hours in my driveway shooting, dribbling etc and I came back my 9th grade year and I made the team again. And by the time I graduated high school, I had played all 3 years, lettered, and won the “Hustle” award two years in a row. I wouldn’t have gotten any of that for myself if I didn’t work extremely hard to get it. Literally getting the things I wanted, from early on in life, was a direct correlation to how hard I worked. I also remember my first time ever bowling, and I got a zero. Literally didn’t hit a single pin in ten frames. But I loved it, and basically grew up in a bowling alley because my mom was a bowler, and so I kept practicing and getting better. And by the time I was 16, which was maybe like 10 years later from when I first did it, I threw a 300. I literally went from not hitting a single pin when I started, to throwing a perfect game, all because I worked hard at something I loved. And I have continued that same work ethic in my professional life. I still to this day am not the most talented guy in the room, but I work very hard at what I do, and it shows and has allowed me to keep working in a field that I love, while others I started with have fallen off or gone on to do other things. I read a quote once that resinated with me long ago and still does to this day that is “hard work beats talent, when talent doesn’t work hard”. And for me, that couldn’t be more true.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Working in the entertainment industry is something I’ve always thought was cool and fascinating ever since seeing “The Shawshank Redemption” being shot in my hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. I first started out as an actor (but not until later in life after college), and had some moderate success, but was never able to make that into a stable career. My college degree was in business and computers, and I also had a production company I started when I was in acting school in NYC, so I always loved the behind the camera stuff as well. So when acting just wasn’t working out perfectly for me, I transitioned into editing. I had already dabbled in it by teaching myself, and cutting my own acting demo reels and reels for my actor friends etc and knew that I liked it well enough to go back to school for it. And what I found out was once I learned the editing softwares, all the time I spent in my acting career had given me an innate ability to know how to tell a story. Just because you know what buttons to push inside an editing program, doesn’t mean you know ‘how’ to edit or ‘how’ to properly tell a story. For me that comes with experience and doing it over and over, and because the storytelling part of it all was already in my bones from my years as an actor, once I switched gears into being an editor, I was able to hit the ground running and haven’t stopped since. I’ve had to turn down work as an editor and I never had to do that as an actor, so clearly I made the right choice. In a weird way, editing for me is like putting a puzzle together (which I loved doing as a child), but you don’t have the picture on the box to know what the finished product is supposed to look like. You only have the pieces, and you have to figure out how they best fit together (which can also be many different ways). That to me is an incredibly fascinating, and extremely rewarding process to be a part of.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Work ethic, professionalism, and efficiency are the three that come to mind for me and my field. Especially now in the world we are living in, no one has time to work with people who are lazy, aren’t nice, or can’t get stuff done quickly. In my experience, when it comes to the hiring process, people with go with someone who might be less experienced or talented, but they work hard, are awesome to be around, and get the job done on time. When it comes to editing, everything nowadays moves at a faster pace for the most part. I recently just finished a full cut of a movie the next day after they finished shooting. In my edit day, I would cut whatever they shot the day before and cut everything they shot staying up 1:1 the whole way through principle photography. As the schedules get shorter, it is important not to just be a good editor, but to be fast as well, making strong choices right out the gate. Every project is different obviously, but I haven’t had an edit schedule longer than 3 months max in a very long time. Most of them are 6-8 weeks, so you have to be able tell a good story in that short amount of time, while also not being a jerk while you do it.

One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?

I’m always on the lookout for good assistant editors. I work on a lot of different projects and so I need a good pool of people I can trust and bring on to different shows at different times. Some of the crazier schedules I’ve been on, wouldn’t be possible if I was doing everything solo. When I’m looking at who to bring onto projects with me, I’m looking for similar qualities to what I try and bring to the table myself. I need people who are technically savvy, but also aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and work hard right along with me. And I also prefer my assistants to have editing skills as well, or to be working their way up to become editors themselves, because on the shorter schedules, I give them things to cut along the way so that we can keep to our editorial deadlines. Depending the how fast the schedule might be, there literally aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done by myself. And I love working with other people, because everyone brings different ideas and sensibilities to the table, and that can breathe life into a project in a way that might not happen if I was working all by myself. When I’m cutting a project, I’m always for “best idea wins”, regardless of who it comes from, because for me, that is what is best for the project itself. And when you work that way, and the best interests are based on the project itself, and not what ‘works’ or doesn’t for the sensibilities of the individuals involved, to me that is the best situation to be in as a storyteller. And I’m always on the lookout for new directors and producers to work with. Almost every job I have gotten in my career is directly related to who I’ve worked with previously. So the more people I meet and work with, who then want to hire me again, the better it is for me in terms of not having to worry so much about where my next gig is coming from.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moneyedits.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dmoney596/
• Twitter: https://x.com/donmoney79