He Spent 15 Years Making Movie Trailers. Then He Turned That Same Skill on Small Businesses. It Worked.

Behind the Scenes of a Founder's Life + Drew Dorenfest

I asked Drew Dorenfest to tell me about himself and his journey as a founder.

He started with movie trailers and ended up helping a gift shop owner have her best January in 15 years of business.

Drew Dorenfest has spent his entire career in Hollywood, making trailers and marketing campaigns for movies and television. He arrived in Los Angeles in 2007, right out of college, picked up lunches and delivered tapes at a trailer company, and never left the industry.

He worked his way up to editor. Then Producer/Editor. He worked at major agencies on campaigns for Netflix, Warner Brothers, Disney, and more. He loved the work. He loved the art form of it.

"A trailer is at the nexus of art and commerce. It can be something really artistic that doesn't even feel like a commercial, and sometimes it's very much the other way. Hopefully you find that sweet spot in the middle."

And then, a few years ago, something shifted. The entertainment industry went through COVID, then a writers and actors strike. The freelance work kept coming, but Drew started asking a different question. What else could he do with what he knew?

The answer surprised him.

A PBS Contract Changed Everything

In the Fall of 2023, while freelancing for PBS, Drew got an unusual offer. PBS had reached near the end of their freelance budget, but wanted to keep working with him. They asked if he would be open to converting from freelancer to agency owner by forming his own LLC, thus treating him as a vendor instead of an employee.

He said yes. And the shift in how he thought about himself changed everything.

"I was a company now. I could market myself as a company. I could take on my own clients."

He named his company Drew Dorenfest A/V, his name with “A/V” (audiovisual) on the end, and started thinking about what else he could offer. Entertainment clients were natural. But what about everyone else?

He started doing cold outreach to businesses outside entertainment. And he ran into a common roadblock almost immediately.

"People were like, that sounds great, but I don't really need video marketing. Your portfolio and your experience is really good, but I don't know how to even start with video."

So he kept thinking. What does a business actually need? Not a nice to have. A real need.

The answer was more reviews.

The Gift Shop That Had Not Gotten a New Review in a Year

Drew noticed that every purchasing decision he made started the same way. He checked the reviews, whether on Amazon products, hotels, restaurants, or services like plumbers or mechanics. Reviews were the deciding factor.

And most small businesses were completely ignoring them.

He had a friend who owned a small gift shop in Los Angeles called Pygmy Hippo Shoppe. She had been in business for 15 years. She was a curator, not a marketer. She loved finding beautiful and unique things to sell. She was not thinking about SEO or review automation.

Drew offered to help her for free. He set up automated review requests after purchases, went through every product page on her website, and optimized the meta text so Google could actually understand what she sold.

It took time. SEO is slow.

But after six months, her online sales had increased by 50%. She started getting returning customers who had not bought from her in nine years. And she discovered she had a dormant Pinterest account that, once synced with her Shopify store, started driving double the traffic than Instagram without her posting a single thing.

"She had her best January she ever had this year. Her best February of all time. Her single best sales day of all time! It was crazy. And I now apply these same SEO strategies to every small business I work with."

Client Magnet CRM Was Born

The results were real enough that Drew launched a second business. He called it Client Magnet CRM.

The idea is straightforward. He takes the skills he has spent 15 years developing in entertainment, distilling a complicated story into its most compelling, bite-sized version, and applies them to small businesses. He helps them get found on Google, get reviews consistently, build their email list and email marketing channel, and show up where their customers are actually looking.

His second client was a tax firm called The Tax Shack, with offices in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He set up automated review requests after every filed return. In four months, their reviews doubled from 26 to 52. He wrote a blog post about student loan deductions. It now ranks on page one of Google above the IRS, H&R Block, and TurboTax.

Tax season just wrapped up when we spoke. It was their best ever.

"They had the most returns they ever filed in a tax season. I'm writing a case study to showcase all of the aspects that went into that success."

He also worked with a pool remodeling company in Los Angeles. He took old before and after videos they had sitting on Yelp, edited them together, published them on YouTube, and embedded them in a blog post. That before and after page is now their highest performing page after their homepage.

The principle is always the same. People want to see the process. They want proof. Give it to them simply and clearly and Google rewards you for it.

What He Learned From Making Bad Movies Look Good

I asked Drew what lessons from his trailer work shaped how he thinks about marketing for small businesses.

He made a connection I had not thought about.

"A lot of times you get a movie that's not done, and it's not very good. But you can see what they were going for. And that's okay. You can sell it as if it's fantastic, because there's an audience for everything. Action movies, people want to be excited. Comedy, make it look hilarious because people want to laugh. Same thing with a business. You have to distill it down to its simplest, most captivating version."

SEO is the same craft. Someone is typing something into a search bar. They want something. The job is to be the clearest, most relevant answer to what they are looking for.

He does not overwhelm clients with technical jargon. He does not write them long reports full of rankings and metrics. He asks one question.

"Can you feel the difference? Is the phone ringing more? Are you getting more email inquiries? Are you making more sales? All the other stuff is just noise."

The Challenges He Is Still Working Through

Drew is honest that Client Magnet CRM is still young. He is balancing it alongside his editing work, which has picked up again after the post-strike slowdown in entertainment.

The biggest challenge is the same one most service businesses face. Getting prospects to commit.

"They get very excited on the sales call, and then when it comes to actually signing and paying, they hesitate. Because it isn't a guarantee. You're adding something to your budget and asking them to trust that it will pay off."

He is also still figuring out his niche. He has not narrowed down to one industry yet. He is open to everything right now, building case studies, learning what works where, and letting the results do the convincing.

The case studies are getting easier to point to. And the results are hard to argue with.

What Is Next

I asked him what he is working toward right now.

He has just started appearing on podcasts regularly and has more booked. He is focused on raising awareness and showing what is possible for small business owners who feel overwhelmed and do not know where to start online.

He also told me something about email marketing that has stayed with me.

"I read someone say that they’d rather have a thousand people on an email list than a hundred thousand followers on TikTok. I think email is super underrated. You own that list and when that audience hears from you. No algorithm can take it away from you."

That came from someone who has spent years in an industry where one strike, one pandemic, or one algorithm change can shut the lights off in an instant.

He is building something that compounds. Something that does not depend on any single platform to succeed.

He learned that lesson the hard way. Now he is teaching it to everyone else.

Want to Connect?

You can find Drew Dorenfest at clientmagnetcrm.com and on Instagram and LinkedIn at Client Magnet CRM. If you are a small business owner looking to get found on Google, build consistent reviews, and stop depending on social media alone to grow, reach out to him directly.

And if your challenge is execution, hiring, or freeing yourself from the day-to-day work, that is where we come in.

At Meet 5 Star Pros, we help founders hire high-level remote operators like Online Business Managers, Marketing Project Managers, and Executive Coordinators.

At Smart VAs, we provide dedicated virtual specialists who support marketing, operations, and growth so you can focus on what you do best.

Growth is not just about pushing harder.

It is about having the right people in the right seats.

And if you are a founder who wants to share your own behind-the-scenes story, DM me on LinkedIn.

Your story might be the one someone else needs to read today.