For years, I struggled to make consistent money as an editor. I loved the craft, but my income was stuck—until I fixed four specific mistakes. Those same fixes helped me hit over $1M from editing before 30, and I’ve seen them work for my students too, including editors booking their first five-fi...

After cutting more than $10 million worth of broadcast TV commercials over the last 20 years, I learned something that surprised me early on: stacking more technical skills like color grading or sound mixing didn’t help me land higher-paying jobs. What actually moved the needle were five non-tech...

Have you been editing for years and your work looks technically solid, but the better projects and higher pay still feel out of reach? I’ve been there. Early in my career, I watched other editors hit six figures while I struggled to land gigs. Everything changed once I learned how professional ed...

When I was early in my editing career, I thought a great showreel meant throwing all my best work onto a portfolio website and hoping clients would find it. They didn’t. Once I fixed my approach, my income completely changed—I started hitting six figures consistently and eventually made over $1M ...

If you’re tired of juggling tiny editing gigs just to scrape by, I get it—because I used to do the same thing. Then I landed a commercial campaign that paid $40K for just four minutes of content…and it completely changed the way I think about high-end editing. In this video, I break down the 12 l...

If you’ve ever spent weeks perfecting your editing showreel only to have it land with a thud—no callbacks, no gigs—you’re not alone. I’ve been there. When I first started, I thought the secret was to show everything I could do. But after years (and plenty of trial and error), I learned six lesson...

Becoming a high-end video editor isn’t easy—I learned that the hard way. Over the years, I’ve cut more than $10 million worth of broadcast TV commercials, but it took me a long time (and a lot of mistakes) to figure out what really moves your career forward. To save you some of that pain, I put t...

In this video, I sat down with my longtime friend and collaborator Scott Rice—an experienced commercial director and professor—to share some hard-earned lessons from working with difficult clients. This one’s packed with practical advice and mindset shifts for navigating tough edits and creative ...

Are you stuck on your editing journey? I can relate. I've been a professional editor for over 20 years, and it hasn’t always been smooth sailing. After editing over 500 broadcast TV commercials with budgets of $100,000 and higher, I’ve learned some brutal truths that I want to share to help make ...

How do you get amazing clients as a video editor? I’ve been a professional editor for over 20 years, and instead of just sharing my own experience, I wanted to bring on one of my longtime clients. His name is Scott Rice—he’s a filmmaker and a veteran commercial director—and we’ve worked together ...

My name is Austen Menges, and I've been a professional editor for over 20 years. And this is a hammer.🔨

What does a hammer have to do with video editing? We’ll get to that. But first, if I had to start over as a video editor today, I’d do it completely differently than most beginners. I want to ...