Creatives Grab Coffee - #101 The ROI of Content (ft. INDIRAP)

Episode Date: August 27, 2025

In Episode 101 of Creatives Grab Coffee, we’re joined by Julian Tillotson, founder of INDIRAP (Chicago), to talk about why video alone isn’t enough. Julian breaks down how businesses can build a full content ecosystem, why “going viral” is not a strategy, and how educating clients on ROI is the real key to long-term success. We also dive into the debate of niching vs. staying generalist, the dangers of so-called marketing “gurus,” and what it really takes to build sustainable client relationships in the video production industry. Whether you’re a marketer, creative entrepreneur, or production company owner, this episode is packed with insights to help you scale smarter, diversify your client base, and deliver content that actually drives results. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 – Episode introduction and sponsor shoutouts 02:18 – Guest welcome: Julian Tillotson from INDIRAP 03:11 – The shift in content marketing: video isn’t enough 06:15 – Breaking down the content funnel (top, middle, bottom) 10:36 – Why client education matters for ROI 12:56 – The myth of going viral in today’s landscape 14:53 – How video companies can become strategic partners 17:25 – Repurposing video into multiple deliverables 19:28 – Why distribution and platform optimization are critical 21:46 – Educating clients through quarterly check-ins and content 23:52 – Building a personal brand with LinkedIn and YouTube 27:23 – LinkedIn strategy vs. Instagram engagement 32:06 – Cutting through industry noise and staying top of mind 34:16 – Time management, scaling, and building strong teams 39:09 – Avoiding burnout with systems and organization 45:34 – Expanding services into paid ads and distribution 49:55 – Measuring ROI: getting real results from video campaigns 53:24 – Choosing clients carefully: why not all money is good money 56:03 – Risks of offering paid ads without experience 59:38 – The importance of long-term brand awareness campaigns 1:01:02 – Fighting back against charlatans in the industry 1:04:17 – The niching debate: generalist vs. specialist approaches 1:09:42 – Retaining clients long-term by understanding their needs 1:13:29 – Diversifying industries to stay resilient in uncertain times 1:18:45 – Calling out fake marketing gurus and iPhone agencies 1:19:35 – Closing thoughts and wrap-upSPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140🎞️ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/#CreativesGrabCoffee #videographyhacks #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #videomarketing #videoproductioncompany #videoproductionservices

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Daria Nuri and Carol Lazaroff from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors.

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Welcome everybody to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. We got another returning guest, Julian Tillotson from indie rap productions. Welcome back, man. What's happening? Glad to see you guys. Always fun. Yeah, so, like, I mean, since we've already had you on the show, we're not going to do a little bit of a backstory. But give us a little quick update.

What have you been up to since the last, I think, one to two years since we last had you on? Has it been that long? Yeah, you were part of like episode 50 to 60 range. I forget which exact one. Yeah. But yeah, that must have been like season. No, it was like in the 50 to 60 range. I know that for sure because I've been going back to get reels from the old episodes.

And like the cutoff was like episode 60 for Riverside. But yeah, it's been about like a year or so. Yeah, it's fine a year. It's, uh, yeah, I guess time flies and you're having fun. Um, but yeah, man, I mean, it's, uh, you know, in terms of the landscape of content and all that kind of stuff, it's really full 360. I think the good thing for content creators right now and working with brands and things like that is like, like, brands know they need content now. You're not doing a lot of convincing. You're not doing a lot of selling and things like that.

People know they need it. The challenge is breaking down how to use it within their brand ecosystem. That's really what people, that's really what the education piece is for us and for our clients and just like, you know, marketers at large is to explain that to the brands that we work with how to actually use the content to max out the ROI. Um, you know, it's not just social. It's not big brand production. It's not just like paid ads all the time. It's a, it's a very, um, a good mix of all of them, depending upon the type of brand you are, you know, whether it's, you know, B2C, B2B, B2B, B2G, whatever it is. Um, and using it, uh, to your advantage degree brand. That's really what we've been up to building out the, um, you know, the blueprint for how to do that for brands, um, and educating our clients. What's B2G? Is it a government? Government. Oh, okay. The most boring stuff in the world, government and government content.

Hopefully the most well paid, though. Exactly. Yes, they do have a bag, so there's that. I feel like there's now a new scale in our industry where it's like boring to fun ratio, where it's like the more boring a project is, the more expensive it is and the more creative it is. Like the budgets go less and less almost. Look, I made a career. out of taking boring content, making it dope.

Like, that's what I do. I, we actually stay away from, like, like, you know, fitness or, like, a lot of, like, you know, TikTok shot. Like, we don't touch any of that. There's plenty of people out there that will do that. We don't want anything to do that. You know, music, all the sexy stuff, I don't want anything to do with it. Because it's usually a race to the bottom, you know, the people that are at the top,

there's, you know, one or two people that actually may make money creating that content. I'd rather swim in a blue ocean, not a red ocean, and that's kind of what we do here at Indira. We take, you know, whether it's corporate brands or real estate brands or whatever, we make them, we make great content, we make it set to, we make it cool, and it actually helps grow their business, which is what we're in business for. Before we continue, just Julian, I hear the mouse clicking. Oh, okay.

Yeah, you might have to. Can they switch to, like, touch, yeah. Oh, there's someone else there. you can go in there yeah now we've got to do a mental note for myself to come and cut this section out i mean you'll you'll see it but yeah what was uh what's the last thing we were talking about well he's pivoting you're pivoting now to more market marketing content for your for your clients or is that a pivot you've been doing or it's just easier for you to sell it it's an evolution you know what I mean like when we first started it was a lot of like you know it's a brand video or it's case studies and all that kind of stuff um and that was what people were doing and then you know people evolved into social media and things like that and paid marketing um but you know so because there's more options across the board for brands some brands are way more heavily weighted into one bucket than the others um so it's really about balancing it across the board and making sure that you know you're not put you're not using brand video

for top of funnel you just don't you don't put a brand video is not for top of funnel case study content is not top of funnel it's middle of funnel or bottom of funnel you know social content is top of funnel of the for the most part but there are social pieces that you can use for middle of funnel and and bottom of funnel so having you know the right mix of those three categories but also making sure you have that mix in the appropriate places in a sales funnel is extremely important for brands and businesses and a lot of market marketers don't understand us. A lot of businesses and brands do not understand it. They don't get it. So what we're doing is helping break that all down for them and educate them on how to

achieve the, you know, ideal mix of content for their business. And what's your process for educating them on that? I mean, you know, whether it's through our social content or through YouTube content, whether it's through our email newsletters, whether it's face-to-face meetings, you know, that I'm running with clients, whether I'm on set with a client like yesterday, just asking like, hey, what's working for you right now? What's hitting? The content that we did last month, what's working, what's not. Always being under the hood and always being curious. Because, again, there's no one size fits all. You know, what works for a real estate brokerage in Denver, Colorado might not work for one in Chicago or Miami. So you have to really be under the hood asking these

questions and making the tweaks, whether it's to their content or how it's distributed or to copy that goes along with something. You know, right now, like, you know, we have a client where a guy built a personal brand. He's had, he had, you know, hundreds of that hundred thousand something followers. When he came to us, he wanted to build a course. So we built the course. And it's like, okay, we need to create social content ongoing sales for him. So we did the, you know, foundational piece, which is the online course, you know, shot the

course put it in kajabi all that good stuff all right let's do some top of the funnel content so we're doing we've been doing monthly content for over a year now and then running the ads um to actually sell the course and build out the funnel and the drip campaigns within uh um his CRM um so it's really for him that's that's what works um and you really just have to understand and i think i said this the last time i talked to you guys like video's not enough creating one to creating a video is not going to do anything for any brand it's just not you know you need a series of videos you need an entire content ecosystem um that's working for you because you got to touch you got to find clients where they're at you got to be where they're at where they're at in their journey um and you know

spending you know 10 15000 dollars on a brand video it's not going to do anything for most brands it's a great start it's foundational cornerstone content you're going to be used for the next three to five years for most brands, right? Everybody does need a brand video. But if you think that that brand video, if you're going to post to Instagram and think somebody's going to stop and watch a two minute video, you're nuts. It's not going to happen for, it's not, you know what I mean? Like, you got to take that video, chop it down, remix it, add hooks at the beginning to get their info, their attention and turn it into top of funnel content so that they do become a fan so that they do start getting their FAQs answered so that they do start seeing like case studies and clients,

that you've worked with via testimonials. So that's just how it works. You know, if you're in the video production business or in the marketing business and all you're doing is creating one type of video, one type of content, you're just, the client's just missing out on maximizing the ROI

that they can get out of an actual content strategy, not a video. And you're also losing out on the potential ROI you can get on that client too, because if they come for you just for one type of video and you don't put on your strategy hat and really pick and poke at what their plan is, you're missing out on potential work. Like, I noticed quite a few leads that came in lately, and they were asking for something.

And then when I started breaking down, like, what they wanted and everything, I was like, you guys need the basics first. Like, I had one lead that wanted to do, like, a campaign. And I was like, do you guys even have, like, like, a regular video just explaining what it is you guys do? They're like, no. And I was like, we should probably start with that first. It was like a video with actors and, like, depicting like a certain. scenario about what their brand is and what their service offerings are, but in a very subtle

way. I'm like, it's basically like a commercial. And I'm like, you can't, you can't do that without first having like the basic company profile video. Like what are you? Like your website ban it. Like something just to explain what you guys do. And then and, uh, and, and the other thing I noticed that is also really good to ask is also what their expectations are of the video asset. So like I even asked them. It's like, because they kept talking about, oh, we want this to go viral and everything. And I asked him, I was like, are you expecting the video I create for you to go viral? And they're like, yeah. And I was like, are you putting any ad dollars behind it? No. And I was like, it's not going to go viral. No. So they have to kind of like tailored their expectations and

really explain to them like you need to put in the work for that. I can basically just create the video for you. But after that, it's in your hands. Like yeah. And otherwise like if they don't know this and you don't bring this up to them, they might think, oh, the video didn't go viral. It must have been the video production company that we hired. That's probably why it wasn't viral. They weren't that good enough. And that probably happens to a lot of creators in our industry where they create a video for a client, you know, expecting, okay, here's a video.

They've done a great job. And then the client, though, is probably thinking, this is the best video ever. It needs to get millions of views on its own organically. It's like, it's not how it works. It doesn't happen like that. No, especially not now. Like, to go viral now compared to what it was. Everyone thinks, like, they wanted things to go viral, like they did 10.

years ago where every week there was a new video that just blew up like crazy whereas now it's there's a lot of videos and then even like the big ones they just kind of like fall out of the ecosystem very quickly as well well that's the thing it's like being viral is not sustainable being viral means you blow up really quickly and then you go off the edge of a cliff and it's like then what and then you're constantly chasing this high of being viral versus creating a content ecosystem that when someone comes in top of funnel, it feeds them through a systematized, predictable way of digesting content that expose them to your brand,

what you do, answers the FAQs, and drives them to book a call or buy the product or whatever that is. That is something that is predictable, that is something that is measurable, that is something that is repeatable, and that is what businesses and brands need. Brands, you can't run, let's talk about just running a business.

You can't run a business if everything like, you know, fight or flight. You know what I mean? If you, if it's like, I'm doing good in business if this video is viral and then, oh, it's not. And then I'm dead. Like, that's not how you run a business. You know, you can't run a business like that. You can't build a brand like that. You have to have predictable measurable KPIs, predictable measure ways of getting someone from top of the funnel and a bottom of funnel. And that, that's our job, you know, and, you know, for video production companies and videographers and other marketing people watching this uh podcast your job is to educate clients on what this is it's not to take orders um from

clients because believe you're not you know i've been doing this for over a decade i work with startups i work with small business i work with large enterprise i work with some fortune 500 companies there are uh you know five person marketing teams at fortune 500 companies that don't know what the hell they're talking about and i have to come in and i have to come in and educate them on how this stuff acts you're the expert so you have to having the confidence in your own self as a marketer as a content creator to X to explain this stuff to people is a big part of getting content to actually work if you just take orders and give people what they want but they don't know what they're doing they're going to keep crashing and burning

it in and they're like the marketing company didn't work or the video guy didn't know you yeah they're going to blame the vendor yeah they're going to blame the vendor and you know it has to be you have to know what you're talking about you know i i eat breathe and sleep marketing um and content you know from from you know ideation to creative to production to paid ads to SEO and all this kind of stuff and in doing and understanding all of that the full 360 you look at content a lot different um i think when you come in the game as a video guy or production agency you think that video is the all and all it's just the video and this is all well it can be if all of these other things are clicking alongside that video um so if you if you're

able to explain that if you're speaking to a marketing team um who is in charge of running ads and building out copy and all this kind of stuff if you understand all that stuff the power of copywriting and SEO and how this video is going to be integrated into their website and whether their website loads faster, slow. All these things impact the performance of content. And if you're able to educate them, they will, again, start to believe in you and you will become an extension of their team. They will rely on you for the information beyond just the physical video. You know what I'm saying? And that's kind of where, you know, we want to be as an agency for our partners, for our brand partners that we work with. We're a resource. We're an extension.

of their team. And yes, a lot of times video is the answer, but it's video used in ABC way that we help bring to life. You know, another thing I noticed, too, is that at least for this year, I've noticed a lot of clients that are coming to us for video, but they want to get more assets out of like the main video they're looking for. So if they're looking for like a promo video, I've noticed like they're asking for like, you know, can we get like a social media version and then can we get like different cuts of

that to also promote and everything. This is something like I, at least for us, I never noticed it really in the past, but this year it seems to be like a big thing. And I've noticed myself also pitching it a lot more. So like when pitching new types of content, it's like, okay, there's a main explainer video. Why don't we also do a social media version? Let's do cut downs and all that stuff.

Yes. I mean, that is pretty, that's pretty par for the course these days. I mean, people understand that from a distribution standpoint, again, you, you, If you have a two minute video, that's only going to work middle of funnel, bottom of the funnel, if anything, mainly middle of funnel. So understanding, like, most of our deliverables, if somebody comes to us to say, hey, we want a brand video, it's like, all right, cool, this is what you're going to get. You're going to get a full one to two minute piece. We're going to give you a 60 second. We're going to give you two or three, 30 second cut downs, but we're going to give you that in one to one, nine, 16 and 16 to nine ratios, so you can use them for paid.

That's the usual, like, breakdown of one piece of content. And in doing that, from a production standpoint, it doesn't take that much time and energy to take a two-minute video and cut it down to those additional deliverables. So, A, you can charge more, and B, you're adding more value for the client. It's like, okay, yeah, I know you want a brand video, but when you work with us at IndyRap, you also get all this. It's like, oh, wow, okay, that sounds great. Or they'll be like, what do I need all those videos for? Well, you have this video. you need to distribute it across your LinkedIn, your Instagram, on your website, all this,

and some platforms need a one-to-one, or some needs a 9-16, or a 1080, 13, 50, 4, 5, and we can deliver that for you. Now, if you need help with distribution, we also do that. So we can take your content, and then we'll upsell them into a paid ads campaign. We do that for a lot of our luxury residential development clients, where we will run paid for pre-development or leasing of that apartment building. So it sells itself. I like that you include it.

I like that you include all that content in there, even if sometimes they don't ask for it. It's almost as if it's like an expected thing of yourself as a team of what you provide the clients. And it's an interesting conversation to have with a client where it's like, oh, I never thought that I might need that. But do you have that conversation more before you've created it or kind of like after? It's like, oh, what do I do with this kind of thing?

I mean, so when I first, you know, if I have a ideation call or, you know, strategy call with the client for the first time, I am on that call to understand everything that hurts what their problems are and then I prescribe what works. Nine times out of ten, they're going to need all of that content in order to get it out. Because I always say this. If you are, if you have a product at Whole Foods, do you want it on one shelf or 20 shelves? You want it on 20 shelves. And the way to do that is with all of these different deliverables.

So what I'm trying to do is maximize the impact of the content that I'm going to be creating for this client. So it is my job to explain to them that they need all this. It's not enough to do one video. Maybe 10 years ago, yeah, you need a brand video. Here's a two minute video. Great. But in today's landscape, you need multiple versions. Sometimes multiple sizes.

You might need a video that's under 10 megabytes or something for a website. You know what I'm saying? to keep sites be higher than and you don't get penalized by search engines. So it's my job to understand all this stuff as a marketer. It's my job to understand how content works within this is going to impact this business as a marketer and as a professional. And that's how I see myself. I am a resource. I am a professional. And it's my job to educate them on. It's like the doctor. You know, there's a lot of crappy doctors out there. Sure. But I want to be one of the best. I want to be a doctor to where people come and they can depend on us as a team here at Indyrap

that they know that they're getting not only amazing content that visually is kick-ass that the process of getting it to them is great but then the education on how to use it and distribute it is even better because if you showed them how to use that's the trick if they can take content and they can turn get ROI out of it or turn it into new leaves or whatever, they're going to want to do more video content. If they don't understand that, it's going to crash and burn. They're going to say video doesn't work and they're never going to do video again. So, like, the trick is to educate them. You actually get more out of understanding than educating them and telling them how to do it. Not less. It's more of a win.

Do you educate your, like, long-term clients? Maybe, like, once a year, you just follow up with them, maybe tell them about, like, new trends in the industry or stuff like that. Oh, yeah. So I probably, whether it's once a quarter, you know, I'm, following up with clients via email or whether I'm on set with them or I'm just like you know sometimes we'll finish up talking about a project and then at the end of the call I'll be like hey so what else is going on you know oh we got this coming up there I'm always trying to check take the temperature of where brands are right now you know also you know when we do send out like email communication email newsletters a lot of clients were like hey can we hop on a call so you can

tell me what this is this looks interesting so yeah I'm always that's why you know One of my biggest goals this year is to 10x the amount of content that we're putting out so that I can educate more people 24 hours a day about the stuff that I'm talking to you guys about right now. You know, long-form YouTube content, shorts and reels. I want to be talking about that information because a lot of people don't, especially when it comes to like B2B marketing. There's a lot of sexy marketing content out there when it comes to like apparel or running brand. or fitness or like TikTok shop. That's not the only type of content that is out there.

Again, I've made an entire business, an entire career out of creating boring content. Nobody wants to talk about that because it's not sexy. But the vast amount of content that gets created for a lot of these businesses is that type of content. B-to-B, whether it's dental, legal, whatever. There's not a business on planet Earth or brand on planet Earth that can't take content and make their brand grow,

faster with it. It doesn't exist because I've worked with them all and I've seen it happen. So for me, educating more people is only going to bring more business to us. And the best way to get in front of more people, it's not email, it's not cold calling, it's none of that old sales, whatever. You can still do that, but you're going to be moving very slow. Content is the answer to get in front of your audience faster in an engaging and entertaining way. And again, And my goal is to 10X staff this year for Indyrab. So it's just like the, like in terms of like content for yourself, you're talking about like posting videos on LinkedIn, social media,

just talking about like, yeah, yeah, just writing, you know, long form content. Like I just put a script together for, you know, or we're working on, I got a designer in this other room who you heard clicking and just working on a carousel pose for, you know, the eight types of videos to use within your sales funnel. um you know my my i'm working on uh you know and that'll be that'll be turned to a carousel post it'll be turned into a long form piece of content that i'll live on youtube which will be sent out to our email uh list but then i'll take that same thing and chop it down into reels um with hooks for instagram and lincoln you know i try to focus on instagram and linkedin that those are

the platforms i've neglected lincoln because i it just drives me nuts sometimes um it's yeah longs that's a whole another podcast. But that's where our clients are. And that, I believe that that platform needs more engaging actual value add content versus someone be like, hey, look at me. I got a new job somewhere. You know what I mean? It's changed a bit. Like, I used to be really against it. And then Grant Jameson from Lyft video production kind of changed my mind on it. I started using it more. But I noticed an issue that like, you know, you try to like help out other people that are posting by like liking and commenting on their stuff and I noticed the problem is if you start to do that the same people that of of whose content you liked will keep popping up in your timeline

so you don't see anyone new it's always like the same people that I'm seeing yeah I noticed that that that's why I stayed off that's why I stayed off the platform but go ahead cure the other thing the other thing is also like your clients are not necessarily always posting as well that's the other thing that's right it's that's the kind of challenge right there where it's harder to engage with your with your clients or potential clients if they're not also that active or as engaged on LinkedIn you know who is that more active and engaged on LinkedIn other production companies so now we're all in our own but you know what Carol I think we're from we're posting a lot and you said your clients might not be posting I think they're

not posting but I think they're still on it yes yeah they they're on it but the thing is only they can then engage with you through the posting rather than using that as long as they see as long as they see it yeah no that's the most important part right top of mind that's the benefit yeah yeah it's uh yeah i mean and again whether they're on lincoln or whatever that's again that's why you have to be across all of these platforms you don't know where they are you they might only respond to an email you send from your gmail you know or hub spot or whatever CRM they might be on LinkedIn they might that's why taking content and distributing it, and again, how many shelves do you want to be on? You got to put it on 20 shelves because you never know where you're hitting clients,

you know, directors of marketing or presidents or CEOs and companies or whoever, you know, sales managers and things like that. They live in different worlds for the most part. They don't live in the same world, like a director of marketing and like a sales manager for a big company, two different ways of digesting media. They watch different stuff. The former media is different. So you have to be there with your messaging and you have to be there or your content to maximize the amount of eyeballs you can get on, you know, what you're talking about.

One other major benefit that I've noticed with LinkedIn over the years. And I think this is something that some people might forget occasionally as well is when you're scrolling through your feed, you might notice occasionally a post that isn't someone from your connection, but someone that's connected to one of your connections that they engaged with. So it's showing also your connections engaging with other people. And then even sometimes a third removed connection. So it's interesting to see all the different layers. So if that's what you're seeing, that's what a lot of other people that are beyond your network are actually even seeing as well in terms of like,

okay, like you might be that second connection for someone else that they have seen. And then they might be looking for a video at that time. And who knows who might reach out too. I noticed that on like Facebook and Instagram. like half my feet is like not people I know yeah yeah you never you never know and you just kind of kind of put it out there in the universe and you know sometimes those hooks catch fish you know and that I've caught fish that are you know 10 year clients you know they're still here they're still doing doing business so you just have to put it out there because educating

in this world of noise in this world where every marketing firm is running ads, 90% of them are garbage. Everybody's got a video, a camera. Everybody's selling a course. Most of it's garbage. Okay, so it's very important for someone to be putting out accurate information for brands to actually grow and use marketing because a lot of times I talk to people. It's like, yeah, I work with this other video company and it was a terrible experience and I haven't done video in the past couple years, but I know it works. So a lot of things, so a lot of of people are just whether it's jaded or they've just been burnt in the past um because if we don't get out there and talk about how to actually use this stuff and grow it's all of these dipsets or

whatever you want to call them who are burning these clients and lighting their marketing budgets on fire over and over and over and it's lost opportunity it's our job to to let these people know how this stuff works yeah i want to go back to uh keeping in touch with your clients like your older clients like you said you do it quarterly like so that you mean that like every quarter you're reaching out to like the same clients or like do you like break it up yeah so i have i have automations um so i i have reengagement campaigns so depending upon whether a client is interacted with my website or clicked on an email or things like that i have automated reengagement emails just to like stay in front of them to potentially get them to book a call to talk about what's

going on or whatever um sometimes though i will have you know my top hundred list of clients who's you know spent the most revenue with us over the past you know three to five years and if i haven't heard from them i'll give them a call or i will shoot him an email like hey let's you know chat out up and see where you are so i'm always you never want contacts to fall to the bottom of the the river you know it and forget about them so you want to be constantly, again, whether it's putting out content or sending emails or going to set, you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of, there's a lot of times we're like, I don't go to set for the majority of

what we do anymore. I just don't, you know, and if I do go, a lot of time it's to build that client relationship or to see what's up. Like we just did, we had two photo shoots this week, one for a big hotel brand in the West Loop, the other ones for probably the largest or one of the largest pizza brands in Chicago. And, you know, I went there to build rapport with our client, you know, because we're doing that photo shoot. We're also doing like, you know, about to sign on for a 12-month contract to do a huge campaign and a bunch of collaborations between their brand and a bunch of

other food brands. So going to say what's up and then kind of talk about that contract, push that across the finish line and see how we can continue to grow the brand. It's important. You don't want to be a transactional marketing agency. You don't want to just be waiting for people to come back to you to like, oh, I need another video or, oh, I need another SEO campaigner. You have to be out there. You have to stay top of mind. Everybody's a marketer now. Everybody's a video guy.

Everybody's everything. You know what I mean? Everybody sings. And then they're a travel influencer. It's a joke. And a lot of it's noise. you know so I decided that I want to be the expert at something that I see myself as kind of being at the very beginning pioneering video content and continuing to educate myself along the way to be a better provider to the brands that we work with you know like that's how serious I take what I do like I eat breathe and sleep this stuff and I have since I first started this so for me it's the only way you know I have to cut through the noise I have to be on social I have to be talking I have to be behind the camera and in front of the camera I have to understand what businesses and brands need right now I need to understand like okay why are brands what do I do with these brands that's holding on to their marketing budgets as idiots talk about tariffs constantly and and people are scared to spend money how do I go and educate them on

okay, I know that's going on, but this is how you can still use your budget to expand your audience or grow your audience or help with sales enablement within your organization or help train the new recruits that you're hiring, the new Gen Z young people, because your 30-minute training video sucks and you need to create a training series. Like, that's what I'm here for, and that's what I'm supposed to do. You got to cut through the noise, and in order to do that, you have to stay in front of clients. No matter what, you have to stay in front of them, you have to talk to them, and you've got to get out here and make noise. I've always been a guy that, for me, it's like, okay, how do I stand out like a sore thumb? I don't want to do anything that anyone else is doing because that's what good marketing and advertising is. It is having a mission, having a very specific product offering for your clients, and them coming to you as a resource and doing that over and over and over. over again how do you manage your time because like you get it seems like you're doing so many things

and i'm in a spot right now where i find that in a given week like i feel like i'm barely getting anything done and there's like so much to do like how do you figure it out i hear you man i mean so i'm very like i have a i have i have i have i have i have the best team my team's fucking amazing like to say the least like lydia peter chris you know deep who I have my subcontractors that I work with like my team's fire right so it's not just me so so having a team allows me to um focus on this stuff that I'm talking to you about a little more which is sales and marketing right and education and things like that um it's very important to have good people in order to so they can do what they do and I can do what I do and continue to grow now

that's just on the team side but I am extremely organized um you know know, I do, I do work with a business coach and I have for the past, for years, just in terms of like keeping me on task and like, okay, what are our three-year goals? What are our five-year goals? You know, if we ever want to do an exit, what does that look like? So making sure that having people around you that can kind of hold you accountable, the thing with an entrepreneur, and you guys know this is like, you know, it's a lot of times it's just you standing on a mountain alone with nobody to talk to. You know what I mean? you don't know where to turn you don't know like this shit's rough this shit's tough being an entrepreneur

you know owning a business it's very hard it's very lonely at times um you can get in your head a lot so having a team and having you know mentors and things like that to to be able to rely on is very important and keep you on track you know what i mean my wife keeps me on track you know what i'm saying like i i talk to a lot of people um and i share a if if i'm having a bad day and i you know i'm going to shit i share with people i don't keep you shit bottle up I keep a heart of my seat Chris my editor might come in here one day and I'm like dude I'm having a shitty day you know let's talk about it or whatever I'm just that's how I am and it helps me process things and just stay focused on the task at hand I also time block so like

on Saturdays I have a 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. block to where I can just focus on growth right because during the week it's chaos anything can happen it is it between 10 a.m. and two on a Saturday nobody bothers me my phone's not ringing I can sit down I can write down all my goals I like I'm surrounded by paper here and things that I need to do and that's what I do most of the time 30 30% of my day is planning and writing copy like that's 30% of most days I'm writing copy whether it's copy for for a script whether it's copy for a website, whether it is copy for a new ad campaign that we're running out, or planning for indie rep content, writing a long-form script copy that I can load to a teleprompter and bang

out long-form YouTube's. I spend a lot of time doing that. So it seems like a lot going on, but it's controlled chaos. And I also, one of the things I do, I do, I, I, have paper and a pen, right? When I come into the office every day, I write down the five to 10 things that I need to get done that day, and I cross them out as I get them done. That way, if I get sidetracked, if somebody comes in, if I got to hop on a call, or I've had way too much espresso when I'm just bouncing off the damn walls that day, I can be like, okay, okay, I got to do that, boom, and then I get it, and I get back to it. Because that's how I am. I'm just, that's just me.

The biggest, one of the biggest issues I've had, you know, my entire life is, is procrastination and just not staying focused on being able to stay focused at times. You sound like me. Yeah, exactly. That's how we are. That's probably one of the reasons why a lot of creatives don't do in school. I didn't do good in school because I didn't want to sit there and listen to something boring. I just wanted to do my own thing and they call you a hyper or attention deficit.

I was like, dude, I'm just not interested in when you're talking about. Yeah. So for me, I write it down and I cross things off just to make sure and just to stay on track because I do have a lot going on. But sometimes you have to write down like, okay, this is the priority stuff. This has to get done first. And if I get to this stuff, that's cool, but I have to get this done. And those are the five to ten things that I write down on a piece of paper every day when I come to the office.

so that between the hour when I'm here from 8 a.m. to 3, 4, 5 o'clock, I'm getting through that list. And if there's a couple of things that doesn't get done, I put that number one and two the next day. So I'm constantly making progress no matter what. Yeah, progress is key. I was finding that the last couple of weeks, there was so much stuff I needed to get done that even though I was getting like, let's say, let's say I needed to get five to seven things done that day. I would get maybe two or three done. I'd feel like I was like failing because it's like, oh, there's like four or five things. I didn't finish.

And then it took me like a little bit to realize it's like as long as I'm getting some major stuff done that week, it's so good because it's progress. And I noticed another thing that helped me is that I created, I like to do what you do instead of on pen and paper. I do it on Google Keep. I'll have like my lists over there. I noticed that one thing that really helped was creating like, a longer-term goal for those tasks.

So instead of giving myself, like, I got to get it done today or I got to get it done this week, I would put myself, it's like, I got to get it done this quarter. And I noticed, like, it takes a lot of the stress off. And then I noticed that, like, it'll help. Like, I've been able to get through it a lot better because now I'm not stressing to finish it. And also because, like, let's say it's a big task, right? I'll break it up. Like, if I have 30 minutes today, maybe an hour and two days, like, it still adds up.

I'm still getting it done over the course of, like, you know, couple months right and I also find organizing the tasks in terms of like the kind of like who you're kind of like doing those tasks for you know you have like the certain tasks you need to do for client work you have the certain stuff you need to do for the business and then any other either smaller or other aspects that you need to kind of get done and and it's funny because there you're sometimes at least what I'm finding is like you're getting really into all the work that you have to do for your clients because that stuff can pile up very quickly over time and even though like sometimes even though you're

able to kind of like hire uh freelancers and contractors that can help you with a lot of that uh there's still a lot that needs to get done at times and then like deadlines come quicker than you realize so then sometimes all the other tasks kind of have to take a back seat so you can make sure you can deliver those things on time so it's always a little bit of that kind of um that kind of like mental battle I was like all right like I need a I need to work on this but also the client stuff needs to get done within the next day or two, right? Because I've been handling a lot of the post-production aspects over the last couple months. And one thing I found that's kind of helped is even breaking down even further, like the certain tasks for the clients that you're kind of like

working. It's like it's one thing to say, I need to get this video done for the client, right, by a certain day. That's, it's very general to say that, right? But I'm starting to kind of like break it down even more in terms of let me go through all the raw stuff for all my clients within these two days you know go through all the projects the stuff that's going to take the most amount of time but also at the same time not the most brain power right but then then when you get into the more creative where you're actually putting the videos together then you can start like putting different blocks and even though you haven't gotten say the full video done in that moment you've gotten a majority of the work actually taking care of and then all of a sudden before

you know it you're you're wrapping up three or four projects out of nowhere right right like this morning I did something from 7 to 8.30 where I wrapped up two video deliverables and I had already sent them off. I'm like, oh, great. Those two were like, even though they were minor tasks to do, they were still kind of like taking control over like, you know, like your mental capacity of like, oh, there's so much more to do. Now it feels like there's a lot less. So it's all about breaking things down, breaking your tasks down as much as possible. I think we'll really help over time. It's important to have it in your head to know what.

But some people fly better seated their pants. And I'm like, dude, you know, I coach, I mentor a handful of people. I'm like, bro, you have to have systems that are predictable and you have to write things down. That will get you so far in life. You know what I mean? Versus just like waking up and trying to figure it out every day. I'm like, when you do that, you're like starting over every single day. Like write down and track what you're getting done, measure it, and then either do it again the next day better.

or don't ever do it again. The information is so key, and especially once you get to a certain point where you have a couple of years under your belt, like, that's a lot of debt. Like, I wish when we first started, we were tracking everything. Leads coming in, margins on projects,

like even something as simple as, like, digitizing receipts. Like, I wish we did that right from the beginning because we started lately, but it's like, man, like we're missing like gaps that could really help us in, with something as simple as like retargeting campaigns for like leads that never panned out right like oh man like that information is so key to helping you grow and again like you never know how it can

help you either like you might even like start reflecting on like for example you might start looking at your margins right and you might go like hey how come i thought we were making a lot of money but when i'm looking at the numbers like it's actually not as high as i thought it would be me it could be something as simple as like you were offering an extra service and you thought it was bringing in a lot money and then you look at it you're like wait a minute that's not that's barely bringing in anything why don't even offer it like right you were just you were just doing a ton of work chasing your trail feeling like you were doing something you weren't actually making any money been here done that yeah that was a recent discovery like a few days ago dario called me it's like

hey this thing we've been offering clients for a little while yeah we're not really making all that much when you think about it I'm like oh well I mean look sometimes you take on different tasks in the beginning also to kind of help elevate the client experience so that that they come back for more of the other work necessarily. So there's sometimes that intangible that you, that can't be quantified, right? You know, where you offer like a service that you might not make a lot of money on there,

but you enhance the client experience so that they book more work with other, with the main service that you're essentially doing. So there is that flip side to it. But yeah, to Dario's point, like, you know, in general, sometimes you might be doing something that it's taking more time and brain power than actually what it's earning your business.

You know, sometimes you might need to figure out that energy and time. If I just took that and I spent it on trying to do more outbound outreach to find new leads, that could be more lucrative over time, right? You never know. For sure. You mentioned earlier you also do like paid campaigns for your clients. Can you like tell us a little bit about that? Because we've, it's come up before on the podcast.

is about how like you know we might have people come on that talk about like you know we're strategists and everything for the client but they don't take on the actual marketing role for them but you did that so like what prompted you to offer that as a service yeah i mean we've been running ads since 2020 i want to say um it really just boils down to most people know they need content most people don't know what the hell to do with it you know everybody knows any video Everybody knows that they need to be on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube or whatever. It's like, but if you just hop on a call, if you're on a discovery call, it's a one, it's like, okay, just ask them, be like, okay, what's your plan for distribution? Where's this video going to live?

A lot of people be like, huh, I didn't think about that. And you have to, you don't make money when you create a video. You create, you make money when you distribute monetize it, right? A video is just a vehicle for, you know, your brand, get in front of an audience but if you don't have a way to get that content in front of people you're dead in the water you know which is why a lot of people is a lot of big brands especially back in the day they would spend all this money on with a video production company and then you never hear from them again because you didn't have that conversation with them

you gave them this video and then you know two years go by and you don't hear from and then you look up and they're working with another marketing agency that did that they're like oh we're working with this place now. And they're doing everything for them. They're doing their website, their SEO, their ads. They're doing their video. But they're not actually doing the video. They're just subbing in some other video production company to work for this marketing agency. Right. But if you are able to explain that to clients, you can keep more where you're at. So that's why we did it. It's like, you know, if we go, if we go out to L.A. and shoot for two day straight for, you know, 750 unit luxury residential towers in downtown LA. It's like,

okay, we're shooting for two days straight. We have all this content. How do we take, how do we give the client the maximum amount of content possible so that they can distribute, monetize this and fill up all 750 units to 96% occupancy? That's how my brain operates. It's not, my brain does not operate anymore, or maybe it does subconsciously, but it's not like okay, how do I go and make this sick video for two days and then did it? That's where it starts.

Like, I could shoot sick content cool kind of with my eyes closed from a hospital bed. It's easy. I've been doing that great. I'm really good at it, but that is not where it starts. That's where it begins. How do we take this content

and turn it into 30 assets that this developer or the property manager can use to lease this stuff up. So, you know, asking, you know, and helping the client understand, like, okay, who is your ideal client? Okay, you're, the people that live in this building, they live around L.A. They don't want to live in West Hollywood because it's too expensive. A lot of these people are influencers and YouTubers and things like that.

Okay, great. So that's going to influence what content we take from this large pool of content and give it to them and add copy to run it across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, because that's where these people are. So it's just a deeper conversation. It allows us to do more. It allows us to provide more ROI for the client. And I think, Dario, we were talking about this before. I don't know if it was somebody else. A lot of video people, video production agencies, if you ask them how this, what this content has done for their client, they don't know. It's just a guest answer. It's like, oh, I don't know. You can't measure video unless you're doing distribution

and monetization. You do not know unless you ask the client and they can kind of tell you like, you know, this video did A, B, and C. You know, like I have Fortune 500 companies at a Fortune 500 company we work with that they have their own internal paid media team. And we just went and shot like six new case study videos that we're going to be putting on our website. And I had to ask So I'm like, look, I know we didn't do this reason, but can you give us three big stats for what this did for? And these stats were like way past what I thought. I was like, shit, this is huge. Oh, that's great.

Like asking the client for what the results were. Like, I never thought about doing that because, yeah, they would know, right? They have the numbers. Yeah, you have to. And I would just probably be like, hey, I know we've been working together for, you know, three, four years. I see the content all over the place. We're creating some case studies on our website. I'd love to get like two or three stats.

to talk about how this video's benefited you guys is, you know, whether it's bookings or whatever it is, you know, how many cars you sold or whatever the other thing is. It's important because when you come to another mistake that a lot of agencies do, video companies, their entire website is all about their portfolio on how pretty the video is. A client wants to know what the benefits and features are

and what you've done for other people. The only way to quantify that is to have these numbers. You have to have these numbers. these numbers in order to justify someone spending 15 to 20,000 or $5,000 with you. It's a lot easier to sell something if you have numbers to quantify the ROI. Do you guys, so you guys offer that in-house or do you have like a partner you work with? We do it in-house. Okay.

Like, was it, because it's rare. Like a lot of production companies usually don't offer that in-house. Did you have any issues getting that off the ground? No, because I've been running paid for myself since 2015. I've been running ads, you know, with me and the ad burning. Yeah, so we were doing it already for ourselves, you know, and that a lot of the, everything that we ever sell here at Indyrap, I was doing it for myself first, right? Like, before I started Indyrap, I was shooting video ads for my real estate company. You know what I mean?

Like, I was on camera and shooting. So I think we eat what we cook. Is that what I like to say? You know, as the chef, I like to eat what I cook. So for that first five years, I was running ads on YouTube. I was running ads on Instagram, and they were turning it, I was turning it into revenue for the brand. I was getting a lot of leaves and all that good stuff.

So Deepu Thomas, who I've been working with since then, or back then, 2017, I think, runs all of our ads. You know what I mean? So, like, we had a working relationship where it's like, he's, And right here, I'm looking at my screen, it's like, all right, this adds, the cost per click for this one's $6, this one's $2, how do we make it? Okay, cool. So, like, I understand how this works firsthand. If I go and spend $10,000 and I'm able to turn it into $40,000 in a month, or if I spend $10,000 and I don't get shit back, I know how that feels.

I know how it feels to burn money on marketing. So for us, it was trial by fire. We kind of learned it here and we scaled it up and now we offer it for our clients. Now, it is something that we have to believe in the product that we're selling or what they're trying to promote for us to do it. We will not do it for everybody. If we don't believe that we can get you an ROI on your ad spend, we don't, we're not interested, you know, and I have referral partners that I'll refer it to.

Like if you're trying to sell some stuff on TikTok shop, I don't do that. I got a partner that does that. You know what I'm saying? Like there's, when it comes to the real with that safe thing low, like I just, uh, uh, uh, mentioned, we kill that all day long. We kill it. It's easy. This reminds me of, uh, the retainer conversations we've had, how like the people that

have it working only do it with specific clients. Yeah. It's like similar to that. It doesn't work with everyone. And also not every client is going to want to relinquish all that control to someone else to, I guess maybe. like how have you found that type of conversation where some people are like oh like i need to give you all doing it he's only doing it with specific people so i'm assuming it's

people you already have a long-term like really good relationship with sometimes no i mean some people come to us because you know right now there's all of our advertising where again it's foundational brand content social content and paid so people come to us cold on a on a you know discovery call and they'll just i'll just have them kind of tell me about what they're trying to do And based upon that, based upon the report it, I bill with them right then and there. I decide on whether this is a good idea or not whether it's like, okay, we'll do the content,

but then for the pay, go talk to this person. You know what I'm saying? Sometimes I'll give it to somebody else. And I don't mind doing that because all money ain't good money. Sometimes I'll start talking to a client and I'll realize like, yeah, I don't wanna be in bed with them on a paid campaign and they're gonna be a nightmare every day. Right, right, right.

Like, you know, know like even like with the learning phase like of any ad campaign it takes say a week or two weeks to get an ad out of a learning phase and they're like oh we want we want to we want to make sure we get a sell if we start today we want to sell tomorrow it's not going to happen you're not giving the algorithm time to figure out how this shit's going to work your pixel's not even set up you don't even have a google ads account you know nothing about ads but yet you want to tell me everything about how to run an ad campaign so if that comes across I'm like I'm good it's not going to happen I'll do your content I'll shoot your video I'll do your brand

photography but in terms of running an ad campaign with you and being buddy buddy in bed and it ads word account i'm good and that and i say it with that amount of confidence because i understand advertising at that level i'm not i don't want i don't need all the money all money and good money it's just not i like that and i like i guess how you also went through it for yourself like you tested it on yourself so you knew exactly how it works and everything and that makes sense of me because at least if you mastered it for yourself makes sense that you can offer it because you know how it works versus like just offering it to offer it do you know what i mean just for the sake yeah you can get in a lot of trouble if you do not understand paid advertising

and you offer to a client um you can you can it's a very quick way to ruin a client relationship if you don't have you seen that happen with have you seen that happen with others or like you've heard stories and like i hear it all the time i'm there's always nightmare clients whether it's paid or like a video uh stuff i mean in marketing you're dealing with human beings and human beings have emotions and human beings have bad days so yeah i mean you know you can't hit a home run with everything you do in life so you know every paid ad campaign is not going to be a winner you know sometimes you know even in the past i believed in something that was going to work for a client um but then you know we're sending them leads and they're just not their follow-up sucks or they you know

their fulfillment sucks and it's like you know it's not our ads it's you need to get your stuff together in order for it's to actually work um it's funny how similar it is to like just delivering a video like when you just deliver a video you don't know how they're going to market it but then if you're also marketing it for them you don't know how they're going to intake the leads that you send them right it's the whole thing dude and like you have to have to run their business at that point it's like where does it stop yeah and that's what i mean like when you take that distribution and monetization part on it's not just the ads it's like understanding like okay who when the lead comes in who is this going

to and then what's the follow-up time and then having a weekly call with like okay did this turn did this turn into a sale or did and sometimes with a lot of products you know e-com's different And I know that's the sexy thing that everybody markets, where you can just measure things in stripe or whatever you're using. A lot of times, especially for B2B, the sales cycle is a lot longer. You know what I'm saying? So for a lot of B2B marketing, B2B, you know, for us, we have a large, work with a lot of B2B clients. I run a lot of YouTube pre-roll. And I understand that if somebody sees an Indie rep ad right today, I don't expect them, 3% of the population will buy right today and they'll convert.

most people what you're doing and what an ad campaign needs to be is a brand awareness campaign to where you start becoming top of mind for that thing that you're selling and then when they're ready to convert they reach out to you so they might see a YouTube pre-roll ad they might subscribe to us on YouTube and then six months later I get a lead that comes in like yeah I've been watching all your YouTube's we'd love to work you guys you guys know what you're talking about so it didn't directly come from the ad campaign but because of their brand awareness they went and followed us on Instagram, they wouldn't subscribe to us on YouTube, and they passively watched us, kind of how people do on LinkedIn. They're not on their posts and they're not doing it,

but they're watching all your content. They love your stuff. And the cool thing about now, you know, we use HubSpot. I'm able to track all that. I can see what people are watching and I can see how this stuff works, again, for myself, because I'm running ads and I see them clicking and watching and all that kind of stuff. And I can plan for campaigns around that. I don't expect everything to be an immediate conversion. You know, if I'm spending money on YouTube or matter or all that kind of stuff, you got to let stuff cook. You got to let stuff heat up. You got to, you got to, especially if you're going into a new market, you have to establish market share in someone's brain and establish brand equity over time before you can

expect them to turn to a customer. Yeah, I like it. You got me thinking already a little bit right now about some of the small, like, videos that we could potentially start putting together, Dario and I for, like, LinkedIn and other socials because sometimes you just need that, that, like, other perspective to kind of get you thinking again. So I think the other thing we could also recommend to a lot of other people in our industry is talk to other people within your network, you know, see what they're doing, have these types of conversations because you never know where you might even get, like, some ideas and inspiration for new content.

So, yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, you never know. And I would say, like, just try it out. Like, what do you got to lose? Like, create content, run an ad campaign. Like, start learning about SEO. Like, just become a professional. Become a really good marketer. You know, the world needs really good marketers. There's a lot of crappy marketers out here. The world needs good marketers. Good marketers are not a dime a dozen. I promise you they're not. You know, charlatans and BS marketers are. a dime a dozen they are out here open up any social app and you will see them running ads and you and they will be taking your customers and you get mad thinking like I got all this great video oh yeah but they're great marketers why aren't you got to get on the playing field with them um and knock them out you know that's what that's how i see it uh huh you got a vendetta this episode absolutely someone's been irritating you lately I'm coming after

any any crappy marketer video companies out there that are burning clients i'm coming after you that's my job you know what i'm doing a public service for clients you know it's a public service i'm doing a public service for for clients as well as the good guys like us yeah people that are actually doing this and you know trying to help brands grow that's who i'm doing it for because i understand that everybody not every video you know or business owner wants to be on camera as a marketer some people are behind the scenes and that's cool even though I think you should get on camera um it's it's my job to spread the gospel um because all marketing agencies aren't bad you know a lot of businesses been burned so many times they just marketers are bad oh i don't need marketing

i don't need video eh you just you just need a you just need a good partner i think if you're a production company owner out there you should be doing the marketing all yourself like getting in front of the camera like yes i don't know how you you like I don't know how you could potentially survive in the future and not doing that because it's becoming increasingly more evident that you need to be doing that stuff. Like you got to do like a land-see and air approach. Like all three you can't just like go by that. Because it shows you're open.

It shows that you're open as a business as well. Well, not even that. Like you just need to survive as a business. Like how can you run a production company and not be doing SEO? Like how did you make it? You won't survive. You won't survive. There are some,

there are some production companies are like rather you know what it is also a lot of the time it's production companies that are just single owned guys basically people that are working under the name of a production company that get all their work through word of mouth or just through connections which is fine so that's probably how they've survived for so long but then once that dries up which happens to everyone at some point yeah what do you have then like If you were only relying on, it's like production companies that are built on having 60% of their business being one client. That's not sustainable. Like if you do that, if that client goes, I've heard so many stories of companies that have just, and agencies that were built on that.

And then once that client went, they were decimated. Like it's, you have to figure out what's sustainable for you as a business over time. You know, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Put your eggs in multiple baskets. it's yeah i'd also say everybody talks niche niche niche you better be careful with those niches because of if you focus on one that's what i've been like thinking if that industry is hit by tariffs and you know they pull their market budget you're finished you know what i mean you better learn how to work with everybody and the niche the niching thing is extremely overrated i do not

believe in it um and i think it as a business it's just not a good idea um you want to diversify your client mix, whether that is the sizing of client or the industry that they're in, you need to have a diverse, diverse client mix if you want to sustain through, you know, economic, political to survive, yeah. Termoil, like, anything can happen. And, you know, again, 60% in one client, you're, you're crazy. Man, the nishing has been coming up so often this year in our episodes, but I'm like so hesitant. Like, and, you know, you hear the opposite to us.

like, oh, you need to niche in order to survive, but I'm like, man, I don't know, like, I'd rather just be like a generalist. I think there's a, look, I don't think, I don't think you need to go and fully niche down where you're going to start turning away any other type of work. There's, there's not that aspect. I believe that there is something to maybe like taking periods of time where you want to focus on certain industries, for example, if you want to try to target certain industries and focus some of your marketing efforts in that area, that's fine.

and because then like if it doesn't work then you can move on to something else you know what i think you're all i think that for every person we hear talking about how niching has worked for them there's nine other companies that tried it and failed miserably exactly yeah yeah i think it didn't really start being talked about it's a social media thing people start talking about it and people were bought into it and you know the other thing about that is like as a creative you know I think of myself as a creative person, right? If I'm working on one type of client doing one thing all the time, my creativity is siloed, right?

Whereas, you know, I've worked across dozens and dozens and dozens of industries. So I'm able to take creative aspects that I might have used in the real estate market and use it in a tech sales situation, whether that be the way that I shoot the space or the way that we approach the hook and the video or, you know, taking things from more exciting industries and taking them over to boring industries like manufacturing or logistics and supply chain and integrating it into them to take their content to a whole other level. That's the beauty of not doing that.

I couldn't imagine sitting and all I'm talking to are medical people all day. I'd go nuts or real estate agents. I would jump off a, I'd be finished. I have to be able, as a creative, to stay engaged, especially, I'd be. been in the game for over a decade, you know, for me to still be here and still be excited and pumped up and have all this energy to do it. It only happens because I've been able to do and see so many things in so many different places with so many different kinds of clients. And I'm, you know, I sit up and I think of new ideas like, oh, what if we did, you know what

I mean? I'm still excited. I wouldn't be excited if all I did was work with dentists. I can see it. I can see it working if you're like, okay, like we're, for example, what us we're starting to see like more clients coming in from the optometry space or like I can see it as like me going like okay Carol let's try to get some more in that space because we got a little bit of portfolio going on and they're easy to work with budgets are good that's what I was talking about like that but to just strictly go like no we're just going to focus on optometrist videos like that's crazy to me yeah I don't know how I don't know how people do that and I think there is value in if you're going to do that say optometry you do need to know how to

speak that language, right, in order to provide value. But like, all industries need the exact same thing, whether it's brand awareness, they need new leaves, da-da-da-da. But I might talk to an optometrist is totally different than I talk to a supply chain guy to somebody in medical. You just need to learn the jargon to prescribe the right whatever video to them. It's all the same stuff. At the end of the day, it's all the same stuff. I've sold the exact same products for years. Yeah. Yeah. Especially because. to me yeah it's the same thing it's not like me talking what if i have a discovery call with the dentist and then i have a discovery call with a a roofing contractor and then i have a discovery

call with a tech company it's going to be the exact same conversation but in three different slightly different languages it's like dialects almost yeah it's pretty much what it is it's the same thing it's not like you're not a genius because all you do is specialize in talking to like to an extent but like if I get if you go and have a conversation with a dentist I'm pretty confident that I can have an equal if not better discovery conversation with them and and prescribe them the right marketing to grow their brand yeah yeah I agree like the key is the key nowadays is to be flexible and to be willing to learn and try to understand your client's business like no matter whether you're niching down or not like you have to do that either way you have to

understand what their pain points are. You have to understand what their goals are. And you don't just get that only from niching down. And I think that's what people sometimes forget. They like to think, they like to look at it as black and white. You know, niching down means you will understand your client and what their needs are. Whereas generalists are lumped into the category of like, oh, like you need a video. Here you go. Great. Done. On to the next. But that's, that's what it used to be. You know, the generalists of today, at least at least the ones that are doing it well are ones that are kind of taking the niching approach and applying it to all their clients, because that's how you elevate the client experience. And when you do that, you retain more

clients over time as well. Because I've noticed, like, the more Dario and I have started to understand all of our clients' needs over the last few years, we've been retaining them for longer and longer and longer. I remember many years ago, we used to think to ourselves, oh, okay, you know, clients have a natural life cycle of like two to three years that's what we used to think but now we don't like at least i don't think that anymore you know like there's certain clients now that we've been working with for more than four years that we just started with like in late 2020 early 2021 or something like that and they're still coming back for more and more work because also we understand the history and like the kind of work and their pain points over time and it's just

it's always fun to see how a client can grow because like we had one client where when we started working with them i think it was in 2022 they had like never done video before and it was just it was a whole experience to try to get them into it and we started small with like quarterly videos you know getting them more accustomed to it you know it's simple like you say not the most glamorous you know it's the boring content that needs to get done but because they now got very comfortable with that they wanted to start elevating it to the next level doing more promotional content more creative content and once they see that success they want to see how much further they can start pushing things, you know.

That's how it works. Yeah, that doesn't necessarily mean you have to niche down to be able to do that. That's your job as an entrepreneur, essentially, right? Yeah, and again, there's no rules. You know, do whatever you got to do. But, you know, it sounds like, you know, we're all extremely creative people and we enjoy working with different types of clients, you know, be able to have a good productive conversation with anyone in order to prescribe them the right content blend that they need to grow

their business. I think that's what we're all here to do. You know, if you find, if you get the, if you get the level of fun that I get and working with everybody in the getting out of dentist, congratulations, you know, you're great. There's no right or wrong here, but I think as a creative, you just get more out of trying more things and experimenting, you know, I don't know, that's my theory. Yeah, because how, like, if you, like, if you start niching down in one thing, how do you know that that is the kind of work that you want to do? Right.

Imagine if everyone started niching right, right when they started. It's like, you know, I kind of think I want to do only car videos. Sure you want to do only car videos? Is that, do you think that's good sustainability over the long term? Not necessarily try different things. You might discover, like a lot of the really successful people who have niched down were generalists for a while when you think about it, right? because they tried so many different things. And then they found certain markets that just really were in sync with them and just it worked.

And the only reason they were able to figure that out was by trying a lot of different things. Because you never know. You never know if you take on that project what you might discover about yourself and your business. And I think, I mean, the key word that you said is sustainability. You just have to account for worst case scenario, you know, from a business, not even just to creative and having. fun and doing stuff. If you want to be in the game for a while, from a, from a, from a business standpoint, if you're putting all your eggs in one basket, you're exposing yourself to a hundred percent risk. You have to look at it like that. Is that what you want to do? You know what I mean?

Like you live in a crazy world. Things happen in businesses get gobbled up, industries collapse overnight. So if you put all your eggs in that basket, something happens. What are you going to do that case you know go try something different just in case if you're if you're doing dentists maybe go into medical medical is a whole world um you know what i'm saying like you could do a ton of stuff they got big budgets you know what i mean if you're into cars okay maybe go and look into manufacturing and construction and supply chain logistics trucking because a lot of that psychology can you know work within there um but and then you're not just putting your eggs in one basket if all you work with are fortune 500s you know those guys they'll pull your budget you like you said you work with one you

think you're making money because you know it's a big contract they pull that contract and that's all you got oh you're finished you know so you have to think you have to protect yourself as a business um by putting these moats around it um in terms of like the different sizes of companies the different industries that these companies are in the different you know types of content, you know, if all you do is big brand videos, what do you do when a client wants social? They're seeing all these other brands want social. Maybe you should think about rolling out a social offering, you know, and what I found with social is it actually allows us to have way, way, way deeper conversation with our clients than big brand videos ever did. Because

we're talking to them every month. We're having them try out all this different stuff. We're doing six, seven, eight, ten videos a month every month. We're seeing them face to face every month. And the conversation becomes normal versus with a big brand video, you have a pre-production call. They shoot the video. You give it to them and then. All right. We'll see you next time.

You know? That's true. So like it's something that it's deeper than the video. It's deeper than the niche, the niche. You want to say it. It's deeper than that. Think about it. You know, think about your business.

Think where you want to be in two to three years. Do you want to work with Dennis and that's it? Great. And I don't know why I keep saying. dentist, but I was, yeah, I was just thinking that. That's your go-to example. These poor dentists, they're being picked on now. I, well, there, there's a lot of agencies out here that go after dentists. And it pogged in my mind because my photographer buddy, this, some dental agent, they claim to be these

big dental experts. They're out in L.A., and they're working, they're trying to take a client down in Chicago. And my buddy knows this client. He's like, yo, you need to call Indie Rap. That Long story, but they're turning out to be garbage. Oh, yeah? So, yeah, yeah, they just, they don't know what they're doing. They want to shoot everything on an iPhone with no microphone. Yeah, it's bad. And they want people to shoot it on an iPhone, send it back to them in L.A.

Or wherever. Come on, dude. You're an expert. And again, this is probably a group of three people sitting around at a coffee shop, you know, running ads and having people shoot stuff on an iPhone send it to them and say that they do dental marketing that's the world we live in everybody's an expert yep so you have a couple ad dollars and you're an expert that's what it is hey if you can shoot a TikTok ad today you can do it everybody can do it you can go in chat GP petite kick out a script shoot an ad put

a hundred bucks behind it and you're in business it's that simple oh my god it's like that it's like those YouTube influencers online that are saying like I'll teach you how to be making $10,000 a month as a video business it's like there's a sad part is the views on those videos oh my god yeah because everyone everyone essentially everyone goes to them because you know like everyone's trying to think about how to increase their business especially new people and new people in the industry don't realize that if you're if you're seeing these guys making these videos they're not teaching you how to make your own money that you are the customer you are the client that they're trying to target yeah

They've never had an agency. They don't have any client. They don't have anything online about the Monagin agency or, you know what I love. I sold my agent. You didn't sell no damn agency. Oh, that's funny. I sold the agency. It got absorbed.

It got absorbed. Conveniently. You have to close. How convenient, yeah. How convenient is that? I had to delete everything. Right, right. Nothing's online about any kind of agency or anything.

Anytime I hear that, I'm like, they went out of business. That's what happened. That's 100% what happened. They tried to they, what happens is they tried, maybe they shot, maybe they went to set and shot a few videos. They bought a course on how to create a course and here they are selling that course. This goes to the classic Jack Black saying from the School of Rock, you know, those who can't do, teach, and those who can't teach, teach Jim. There you go.

There you go. And that's where we're at. And again, that's why it's important to get out there. there and put out content to combat that because it's it's important especially with the you know the younger the new guys coming in the game new videographers new website whoever um you know when we came in again there wasn't that much noise out there guys like it wasn't like ad ad ad ad ad ad ad ad now it's like it's insane so if you're brand new coming in the space you have to cut through all that and it's even harder um so you know you have to be able to decipher between the real and the fake and it's becoming

harder and harder for people to see that especially the new up-and-coming creatives i think i'm going to title this episode beware the charlatans beware of the dental agencies the dental the dental the dental video experts you know be aware yeah yeah have a tooth with a x through it as the thumb mail and a cavity and a camera with a camera yeah yeah yeah yeah let's go all right i think that's a good uh good spot to end it's been a in an hour and good chat fellows hot some minutes always always a pleasure julian we appreciate you joining for the second time with us and uh looking forward to the next one already third times a charm bro awesome all right thank you julian

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