Creatives Grab Coffee - #105 Systems, Margins & Mindset (ft. Six Strong Media)

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

In this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, hosts Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov sit down with Kris Simmons, founder and CEO of Six Strong Media, a U.S.-based corporate video production agency headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee.With more than 280 vetted camera crews across the U.S., Kris has built one of the most operationally tight networks in the industry. He shares how Six Strong Media maintains local presence in every major market, manages pricing consistency, vets freelancers, and protects margins while scaling sustainably.Topics Covered:00:00 – Intro & Six Strong Media overview05:00 – Building a 280-crew national network08:00 – How to vet freelancers & build trust remotely13:00 – Freelancers vs production companies – who to partner with16:00 – Rates, value perception & industry ego20:00 – Budget pressures & short-term thinking in production25:00 – Insurance & legal bottlenecks on corporate shoots29:00 – Process improvement & client communication38:00 – Running a true family business with defined roles48:00 – Margins and pricing strategy for sustainable growthKey Takeaways:Why success in production is about systems, not just creativityHow to build a national crew network that feels local to clientsThe importance of pre-negotiated rates and expectationsWhy clear processes protect profit and culture simultaneouslyThe difference between running a creative studio and a scalable agency🎥 Guest:Kris Simmons – Founder & CEO, Six Strong Media📍 Based in Chattanooga, Tennessee🎧 Hosts:Dario Nouri & Kyrill Lazarov — Lapse Productions, Torontohttps://www.lapseproductions.com🎙️ About Creatives Grab Coffee:Creatives Grab Coffee explores the business of video production, bringing together studio owners, producers, and directors from around the world to discuss growth, operations, and creativity in the industry.SPONSORS: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#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.

Do you have a shoot in Toronto? Do you need crew or a strong production partner to help you with your project? LAPS Productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. LAPS Productions is able to offer you production services, white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at LAPS Productions.com to learn more. My name is Maran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto.

We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages or lighting and group band packages You can see our contact information in the link below. You're more than happy to help you guys out Make sure you follow and subscribe to creatives scrapcoffee.com. Thank you Thank you Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, fully. We service equipment.

We do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered. Come on down. Audioprocess.c.a. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrab coffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you.

And we're all gonna have a real good time. And now, let's begin the show. All right, welcome everybody to Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we have Chris Simmons from Sixth, from Six Strong Media. Welcome, Chris. Hey, thanks, guys. So before we kind of just jump into it, tell us a little bit of a, give us a little backstory of who you are and how you started your company. Yeah, sure. So I'm Chris Simmons. I'm the founder and CEO of Six Strong Media. And I've actually had a production company for this is my 25th year. And in this company, actually I've

had for 15 years. I had another company with a partner kind of pre-economic meltdown back in the 2009, 2010 years. But since then, you know, I've had this company for 15 years. But yeah, we're primarily a corporate video production agency. We have over 250 camera crews across the United States. And, you know, we work with national clients, global clients. And we're actually headquartered in Chattanooga, Tennessee. 250 people across the states yeah i think i was i was telling carroll i think it's more like 280 now but we're having i haven't counted so i don't put that in the marketing how did you even guess to that point is it like people you're working with like occasionally or like people you work

with somewhat consistently so we we work in you know we like to say we've got local boots on the ground within two hours of any u.s. city right and so essentially what that does is just enables us to compete as locals, you know, in cities across the country. So we do a lot of advertising, a lot of marketing, a lot of social media outreach type stuff. And so what I think I was talking to Dario a while back about the idea of, you know, we're doing a lot of competing for contracts in other cities. But typically what happens is, is you have to go, oh gosh, well, now I have to find a crew. And I have to wait to get a quote from that crew. And what I was learning was that we were losing because we weren't fast enough. Like we weren't getting a quote back to the client

in a timely manner because I was waiting for these guys to get off of shoots to give a quote to me and that kind of stuff. So I was like, you know what? No more. So we started reaching out ahead of time even before we had a job and saying, hey, this is who we are. This is the way we like to work. We have opportunities to work in your city. We'd love to partner with you to do the projects for us to be that kind of our local folks to capture the footage, then send it back to us to our HQ and Chattanooga. And basically pre-negotiate rates, pre-negotiate expectations, so these crews are vetted, you know, so they're really partners for us so that we have complete confidence if a client

calls us from London, England, and they have a shoot in Chicago, well, we already know that we've got three crews that we 100% trust and have fully vetted. and have already negotiated rates. So I don't even have to check availability before I close that deal. I can just close the deal, right? And then basically that gives us an advantage because while our competitors are still trying to figure out what they're going to quote, we've already sent the quote and had the meeting, right?

And so we do, and as long as we're competitive, you know, in terms of our pricing, we get the job a lot of the time. So that's been a huge differentiator for us is really the mindset of, Yes, we're a creative business, but more so than that, we're a talent recruiting and development business because we have to constantly be on the search for good team members to partner up with in these cities all across the United States. We're actually starting to move a little bit into Canada and to Europe and that kind of stuff, but just taking really small baby steps in that realm.

It's hard to do. We tried to do something similar for us here, like just expand our roster of free. real answers and I think I mentioned this on the last episode but like it's very hard to find people that you know fit your style and everything because like for example with videographers I did like a call twice and I got maybe like over 200 people that applied and there was maybe like two people that I was interested in because everyone else it's like their portfolio is all like film and TV or like big time commercials and I was like I just need someone that knows how to do like a corporate interview and like events and I was like I

don't see any of that in your guys's portfolio yeah so it's like cool you can do a movie I don't do movies can you do this and so I don't I'm curious as to how you were able to like find like reliable people because like I was struggling in my main city right so I think the the what you have to do is you have to set up these kind of Easter eggs in the process right that will show you a little by little who could be a good partner. And for instance, if you submit a post for your calling out or you're trying to recruit some teams to help you do something, put some things in that post that clearly show you do these people even follow instructions on day one, right?

And it's like, hey, don't contact me through this platform instead, send me an email to this address so that my production manager will get the information or whatever. A lot of these people think that, well, I'm not going to do it that way. it through the platform because no one else is doing it and that somehow is going to give them advantage. All that tells me is you don't follow instructions. And so therefore, as a director, as a producer, you're probably right off the bat, I'm like, you're probably not going to be a good partner for us. Nothing personal. Just not, I mean, that's just not how we are. So it's like little things like that or it's like specifics. Hey, send me a link to your reel, send me your website,

send me these specific examples. And oh, by the way, here's a few samples of what I'm talking about. you know this is the kind of stuff I need to see and then again if they don't follow that you you toss it right and again you might get to the end and go well maybe I have to be a little more lenient and what I accept is okay if literally no one you know met the requirement but it's rare that you don't get anything back but what I've learned over doing this thousands of times and trying to reach out with with these crews you just have to be so you have to overcommunicate what you need and and to the point where you feel like you're going to offend somebody because you're making it so simple.

You know, you're breaking it down so much. I know I drive our crews crazy because I'll be like, okay, just to reiterate, we're not going to cross the line with this two camera interview set up, right? And they're like, yeah, why would we do that? And I'm like, well, because you did it last time. And, you know, and I'm trying to do that. So it's like you just have to get micro, very specific. And in your case, if you can't find, or if you, let's say out of those hundred people

that came back, if you're like, man, these, this, these five kind of followed all the instructions they were good to communicate with they seem hungry they seem excited their work is good it's just not exactly the kind of work that we do go back to them and say hey do you have anything that's more corporate you know and even if they're like no we really don't what you could do is you could say okay well they clearly have filmmaking chops maybe you bring them onto your set a couple times and hire them as a shooter or whatever where you're hands-on directing exactly what it is you're trying to get from them and then once they learn kind of the style and what you're going for then there's a good probability that they're going to be able to continue to do that you know but all

of those other tangibles and intangibles are just as important right in terms of how do they communicate are they easy to get along with we're very a very big stickler on culture like is the crew creating a a good environment for our client are they enjoying themselves are they you know are they relaxed or are they stressed out and just everything's a problem you know because that's not a good fit for us because we don't want our clients to we want to we want to absorb all of that stress right we don't want our clients to feel that you know in the field and so sometimes even just in how we communicate via email and on a zoom call or whatever with that crew gives us a lot of that information to know ahead of time how are they going to react when everything's

hitting the fan and and you know timelines are screwed up or it's pouring down rain and they have to re-figure the whole production schedule because of the weather, you know, how is that going to be? So, I mean, it's definitely a process and there's no silver bullet, but there are a lot of things you can do on the front end to at least get to the point and say, okay, they've got all these intangibles, they have the chops. A lot of times, same thing. I think crews are confused about what we want to see as producers and directors in their reels

and in their whatever. And I tell them, hey, a reel's great, but give me the most boring. interview project that you have because that's going to show me way more about your capabilities than this cool, sexy, you know, real, show real. Yeah, I never look at the reels. Yeah, I think I should just yeah, I think you're right. I think I should just go through the final list that I have because I kind of the I did go like the post I made I said I'm looking for cinematographer slash videographers. And then the second time I did it, I was like, videographers, I'm strictly looking for corporate content if you don't have corporate content don't apply but I still had the same type of people

applying right so I think you're right I should just go through the ones that have like a good commercial like content and then just kind of see if they do have corporate and then kind of just go through that but I was surprised that was like I was like why don't they have a lot of uh I was surprised how many applied that are in like the film and TV space because I'm like is there not enough work going around that like that they have to apply to like postings like this so that was a bit surprising for me but yeah there was one there was one kind of like that dario where he had a lot of kind of like more commercial stuff and he had like some small event stuff in his portfolio that you had to look for but i always found whenever we ask for two to three samples of

actual corporate work that's where we start to be able to filter out a lot of the people and it was a lot easier because that's i have that i have that in the google form so i have a google form i have them submit their stuff to and it has like everything there i think in up in the post though you should also say it front and center because that might also like dude i did no i did some people just post quick but i did no because it goes to their to the google form way and then over there i have like specific things i asked for right yeah the thing i'm curious about chris though is like with all these partners, are they mostly like independent freelancers or are they production companies that you reach out and partner with? Because that actually can make a big difference in terms of how

you look for good people, right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I prefer to work with crews that are more kind of in the freelance mindset versus, you know, you know, I always think it's funny when you do a job and there's like the end client, then there's the ad agency, then there's the social agency, then there's us as the production company who hired another production company who then hired the freelancer, who then hired another freelancer, right? So it's like there's 14 layers just to deliver this, which again, I don't have a problem with that, but you start to lose control, right, over kind of the whole experience and all of that. So the preference, I don't say we're looking for, we don't necessarily say freelancer versus production company

or whatever, but some of the best relationships are with the, like, I want to be able to talk to the DP, right, about what my vision is and what the client needs and that kind of stuff. I would prefer not to talk to a production company owner who's then going to have to regurgitate what I told that person to that DP, because I think there is some communication lost there. Doesn't mean, and we do have some great production company partners that do that for us, we always require to have the conversation with the person that's actually going to be running the show at the shoot on the ground, right? Because that's, we just, we have to have that type of communication. Now, you're going to get better rates, obviously, if you're going, if you're hiring

the freelancer versus the production company. But even on that, a big part of our success has been, you know, a long time ago, I was like, you know what, let's quit asking people what their rates are and let's just tell them what we're going to pay. And that, again, yeah, you might, you might lose the top 20 percent of qualified people because they don't want to work for that rate. And that's okay. I mean, no hard feelings. It's either works for you or it doesn't. I don't care. You know, I mean, I'm running a business, right? And so, and our rates probably are maybe not quite what you would want to make, but you didn't have to do anything to win the business. I mean, I just called you one day and you got it. And then you did, you went and worked for the day and then you sent me the footage and you didn't

have to worry about it anymore. So I remember back when I used to freelance, yeah, I would love to get my full day rate, but if somebody was like, hey, I can offer you 25% less, but you're not going to have to do anything, but just show up, you know, and do what you do. And then at the end of it, you're done, I would be like, all day, man, I'll take that. You know, I don't have the stress to having to follow up the client and write the contracts and chase my money down and all that and figure out how to get set up as a vendor with this big company, you know, that delays everything by another 30 days, you know, I'm like, hell yeah, I'll take a, I'll take a discount for that, you know. So, yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's really been a big point.

part of what works for us and you know and occasionally we'll get you know if we have a job in a city where maybe the crews that we already have they aren't available right or for any number of reasons so we may still have to reach out and recruit another crew kind of on the fly and sometimes you'll get some interesting emails back where they're they're pissed that we're not offering the rate that they want to make and then they they also want to take the time to tell us how pissed they are and I'm like really dude whatever man just keep keep keep rolling like why are you Why are you wasting your time and mine on this? You know, it's not going to, you think I'm going to go, oh, you know what?

You're right. I'll pay you $5,000 for that day rate just because you scolded me via email. No, you know, I mean, and you just got blacklisted. Like, we will never work with you ever, you know. I don't care if you're the last guy on the planet with a camera. I will not hire you, you know. I saw a similar thing on a Facebook group. Someone I knew was looking to hire someone in-house.

So they did a post on one of these producer groups. And the rate wasn't the highest, but I mean, I know it's hard, especially like being a business owner to like try to find someone and pay them, you know, in-house. Right. Yeah. It was like part-time in-house and like people were commenting like saying, oh, this rate is hard. How can you do that, that, that, that, that. And I was like, guys, like, I don't think they're not on our end. So they don't really see how like unpredictable are our business.

And to be even offer like a, you know, part-time position or even full-time business. big deal it's a big is a big deal like I don't think they understand like the risk we have to take to do something like that or the amount of investment it's just it's just funny to see well I mean the people the people who I believe the people who do the most complaining are the ones who are also struggling and who you know have tried it and failed and and they just want to they just want to you know ship that anger or that sadness whatever it is to the people that are out here still trying to do it and and that's the biggest I think the biggest difference for me too, as a professional and really just as a human, was like when I finally realized, you know what, everybody has their stuff, man. And you might say something that rubs me the wrong way, but before I just immediately attack you, let me think, man, what are you going through right now?

Like what's happening in your life that's causing you to feel like you need to attack me for something, you know, and not that, you know, I mean, I just try not to get in the back and forth with a lot of this stuff. I mean, I'm busy and I don't, and I don't like to stress about, that kind of thing and and so we just we just typically move on you know I mean a lot of times

we don't even respond to it I mean the only time I really respond is when somebody's attacking one of my employees then usually I'll step in yeah but but beyond that I mean you know I don't you say what you want to me I don't care yeah there's too much there's always too much work to do to be bothered with with noise you know right right oh yeah yeah and yeah like every the thing we've learn like especially like through doing this podcast is that every production company is so vastly different in many different small and tangible ways that we may not realize us right you know like yeah everyone has their day rates everyone has there might be like a somewhat of a rough industry standard sure but everyone every business also has their own ecosystem their own type of clientele

their own type of work and you've figured out a system for yourself you figured out what works to make things operational, especially across different markets and stuff like that. So, yeah, like, sometimes, like, telling a freelancer, it's like, hey, this is what the budget is. This is what you'll be required to do. Do you want it or not? And I find a lot of the time, a lot of people are receptive in that regard as well, because it's like they can, they realize that they could either take the job or not. I remember it was the same for me when I was freelancing like crazy, like even now occasionally, like a friend or someone I know. would be like, hey, I need help with this video, this is the budget, but this is all that needs

to be done. It's like, okay, I'll fit that into my schedule. You know, I'd be happy to help you out as well because that's also how you build relationships also with people, right? You know, being there for people when it would be otherwise difficult, you help them in that situation and then, oh, there's going to be a bigger budget maybe down the line. And people don't realize that. Everyone thinks short term, not long term in this industry.

And that's one of the biggest problems. Absolutely. I mean, that's the thing that's crazy is that, you know, a lot of these crews that we work with is like, yeah, it might be less than what you want to charge, but we're also going to hire you 10 times this year, you know? And so it's like that it's, it's, you know, lifetime value. And that's one thing I try to look at. And granted, we have like rate structures, you know, with what we charge our clients. But that does it mean that, you know, next time to, and again, it's supply and demand, right? I mean, if we're if we're slow, you're probably going to get a better price for me for the next little bit. until we get busier, you know, and I know it's very popular, especially in the forums online, to be like, well, once you charge one thing, that means you can never change it. And I'm like, according to who? I was like, I'll change it the next time. And I don't care if it's the same client, you know, I mean. Never heard of inflation? Yeah. I mean, it's like, you know, and again, and I also am big on like, you just never know what people's situations are. You know what I mean? I mean, there might be guys out there that have a full room of equipment and they haven't worked in

months and if you offer them 500 bucks that might that might save their house i mean that might feed their kids or whatever and i'm not saying you intentionally low ball but i'm just saying you know don't don't come down on somebody for accepting a lower rate because you have no idea what their situation is they are not killing the industry you know because i'm like if if you wouldn't work for that 500 dollars why do you care like let somebody else make the money who cares yeah you know and and you know i'm not saying that's what we offer but i'm just saying that it's you know, it's, I just, I've seen that where it's like, everybody's different, every lane is different, you know, we just mentioned it even just in this conversation about all the

different types of productions that people are doing. Well, those are all kind of separate industries, really, or at least niches within our industry. And if you break it down even further, you can fan those niches into more sub-nitches, right? So it's like, it, I really don't love just the overarching, oh, you're killing the business or you're killing the industry or you've got these young bucks that are coming in here and buying these, you know, $2,000 DSLRs and they're going to kill everybody. And I'm like, no, they're not, dude. You know, I mean, you know what? They're hustling and they're hungry. And yeah, they don't have the overhead. And guess what? I was that guy 20 years ago. You know what I mean? I mean, I was killing the local market because I was

doing great work for half the cost. All the old cats were pissed at me. But I'm like, you know what? Do a better job. I mean, don't let me take your business, you know? And then obviously I've been able to increase my rates over time. But now I'm dealing with the same thing. I've got young bucks that are knocking on my door trying to take my business and the funny thing is I hire most of them to come work with us as freelancers because I'm like I'm not threatened by you guys and you do great work so why wouldn't I want you to be part of my work product even if you're submitting a bid to compete with me on the same job yeah I think also a lot of these freelancers don't realize especially especially from our end like the kind of pressures that we deal with and trying to

close projects too like I don't know how it is currently in the states but up here like i know like the budget the budgets have shrunk so we've had to become a lot more competitive to keep the same amount of work coming in yeah so i've still tried to pay our guys like similar rates but sometimes i might go like hey listen it's going to be a shorter day can you do it if you can't all good but sure or what happens when a client or in negotiation comes back and wants to change some clauses in your contract to something that is very very different that you're not expecting because that happened like somewhat recently on a project where I think it was like a liability clause you know like where in ours it says like you know like the project liability

doesn't go past what the actual cost of the project is and then they wanted to throw in something where it's like change it from that to five times what the what the what the cost of the project is and then I called Dario I'm like have you ever gotten this before like this is an odd request yeah I told them no and they were like okay that's that's fine I think I think they might have that is a suggestion from chat GPT because it seemed like a chat GPT type of edit but yeah well and the lawyers the lawyers are starting to do a bunch of stuff now too we're seeing a lot of that kind of thing and oh yeah like my response to that would have been no problem but i'm gonna 10x the price and then and then they would have said oh okay well never mind that's fine you know i mean like i'm not going to

increase my risk without also increasing my reward and you know and so yeah but there's been situation i swear all the lawyers went to the same conference last year you know what i mean and they're like because now it's like they're like oh well if you want to shoot a video inside a building in manhattan in new york city like now it's like you're not just dealing with the client business you're also dealing with the business own with the building owner and then the building property management company and it's like you have to you have to satisfy everybody's insurance requirements and i mean i'm talking like you've got to be 50 million dollars in this and 50 and I'm like in the in the quote just to just the increasing head yeah the quote just to increase

that insurance policy is going to be like 10 grand and I tell the client I say look I'll pass I'll pass this to you if you want to do that and I was like but I'm I'm not paying that you know and and they're like and then more often than not I just say look I'm going to send you my COI my certificate of insurance and that is good enough for every job we've ever done ever and and the jobs that we have done are a hundred times bigger and more complicated than what we're doing on this one so if this doesn't work for you then we're just not your guys sorry you know and then what happened did you close it oh yeah they always they always come back and go yeah no problem like it's not even a big deal and I'm like why why have we been doing all this you know why have we been you know so or what'll happen

is our client will then go to bat basically go to the building owner and say look we're a long time tenant get off their back like we're not this is ridiculous you know that's crazy how does that conversation even come into the picture with the building owner it's like you're talking with with these guys directly and what world is like the building owner going to be like sorry who are you talking to what vendors coming in who's going to paint your walls we see it we see it more in the big cities like new york chicago hilly um la you know where it's like i mean where the real estate world is just so complicated and it's almost like the the tenants have less rights in those big cities than the, then the owners do, which is not really the case, but that's kind of how it

comes off. And so what will happen is like, if you're a company that's renting space and a skyscraper in downtown Manhattan, well, you'll have to actually submit like requests for permits and stuff to have vendors bring stuff into your building, right, for whatever reason. And there's a very specific, like, you can't come in the front door. You can't even come in the back door. You've got to like sneak around this side alley, knock three times and wait for so, you know, and then go up, you know and all these things which again i'm like it's literally one cart with a few things i mean it's not it's not like we're we're not loading in a concert venue you know i mean it's it's literally and again i'm okay with hey you don't want me to come through in your marble floors no biggie but give me an

easy way into the building i mean don't don't make me have to you know jump through all stairs just to yeah we had that happen one time they wanted us to go to a service elevator i sure got it was like an hour process and then at the end i was like fuck this we just took the regular elevators i was like yeah it's just they were making difficult they were making it so difficult for no reason and they were dragging at least have the service elevator like available it's like i'm standing around here there's no one to talk to like i was like i'm just gonna go and it's like the type of building that we've been in like a hundred times too i'm like this was this was at like also six or six 30 a m when there's no one in the building well and it's funny too because every

time it's i'm really big about process right process and process improvement and every time we run into a snag like that we immediately get back together as a team we say okay how do we write something in our process that can help with this. And so, and again, that goes back to like, I'm sure a lot of the people that we work with and work for are like, oh my God, really? Why are we so focused on, you know, PPE, you know, that you have to wear? And I'm like, because if we don't deal with it now, personal protective equipment, if we don't worry about what we're supposed to wear in your plant now two weeks before the shoot, we're going to lose 45 minutes figuring it out on day of, you know, and you don't want that. I don't want that. So now's the,

time to deal with it you know and the same thing you ask questions like okay call time 630 you're saying service elevator but i feel like most of the time these buildings don't even have anybody that work in for the building until 8 o'clock or 730 or whatever is that going to be a problem and most of the time the client's like oh man we didn't even think about that or they'll be like oh well we'll just make sure that our office manager meets you down there at 630 okay cool i can i can live with that you know i mean that works for me but don't don't and especially when it's our local crew that's doing it so they're not even part of these initial conversations you know so it's like i dang sure don't want to just make them have to troubleshoot and figure it out at 630 a m in downtown

manhattan you know when they started traveling at 3 30 just to get in on time you know what i mean i mean just just crazy crazy stuff like that but yeah it's all it's all those little nuances that just make the experience better um not just for the crews but for the clients and for for the whole thing because it's it's all of those little friction points that that you know if you can constantly improve those points of friction, just your company gets better, your reputation gets better, and the repeat business goes through the roof because people like, man, I worked with this other company and it was just, it was a total shit show. And it was very frustrating. But then I worked with six strong media and they were like asking me questions that I thought were kind

of dumb. But then day of, I was like, huh, okay. There's a reason why they asked all these questions because this thing is smooth sailing. Chris, because you do a lot of stuff across the country. I'm wondering, like, in terms of, like, where you locate yourself geographically on Google and whatnot, is it still in, sorry, is it in Tennessee? Or do you have, like, separate websites for different pages for different cities? No, I mean, in terms of just kind of how Google sees us, they see us in Chattanooga, Tennessee, right? So we haven't really tried to game that system much. I haven't had to, really. I think about it a lot and then my wife Mandy who actually runs all of our marketing and sales

she's always like please don't give me another thing to worry about you know but because I always talk about I'm like man back in the day you know you wanted a different landing page for each city and all that kind of stuff and I was like but I'm not 100% sure that it really matters anymore and especially if you're if you're trying if I mean because we're you know we are national in terms of how we work and I'm not trying to tell somebody, oh, I have an office in downtown Chicago, but I do have teams in Chicago, you know, and who have offices in Chicago. If it's important to you as the client to know that somebody's got an office, these guys got offices, you know, and it might be in their basement. I don't care. But, you know, so it really hasn't been an issue, but I do think about it from an SEO standpoint, like would we potentially get even more leads if we were doing that?

So I don't know. I haven't really gotten there. again 10 15 years ago I'd be like heck yeah all about it and I think I've even done it before but now that we have the model that we have I just haven't I haven't really done it because our advertising works our social media stuff works and we get plenty of leads you know from from a lot of these different cities but I don't think it matters as much anymore and like there is one company I know from the states that does that and it's it looks honestly it looks a little yeah there's a couple but like the one I was thinking of like because I'd worked

with them on a freelance job many years ago. And I remember like seeing how they were going about their marketing. And I'm like, but you guys are not based in these cities, really. You're just making a cold call to like local crews. Right. And then saying it's like they say they're in Toronto as well. And then I check the locations that they're putting and it's like it's all, it's all fake. And I'm like, I feel like this is a little bit disingenuous in terms of how you're going about it in that sense, right? Yeah. And this company doesn't even have an actual base of operations, you know, I'm like, so where are you actually located? And you can't even determine that. So it's a little, it's a little weird. And I, and yeah, like I, I'm not sure how like

sustainable that is long term. Well, and we'll have some clients will be, they'll be bothered by that, right? They'll reach out to us and they'll say, hey, you know, we, you know, we, we have this thing in, in wherever Seattle, but we're on your website. All we can find is that you guys are in Chattanooga. And now we say, well, yeah, our HQ's in Chattanooga, you know, but we've got teams all over the country. And they're like, oh, well, how do you do this? How do that? And I said, all right, so let me ask you a question. I was like, are you guys a national company? I said, yeah. So, well, how many offices do you have? And they're like, well, like, 13 or whatever. I'm like, cool. Are they all in Seattle? Well, no. And I'm like, that's the point.

Like, we're all doing this now. You know, and post-COVID, we're all meeting like this. I mean, when's the last time you actually sat down with somebody for a business meeting? Never. That wasn't two or three layers deep, you know? And even then, or not, I mean, unless it's local, and then we might be, or if we're like, hey, you know what, we've got a direct flight to D.C. and we're going to, you know, we don't do a pre-pro, but, you know, Mandy and I'd be like, hey, let's go take a two-day fun trip to D.C. and see a client at the same time and write it all off, you know, for tax purposes. And so it's like, we'll do some of that, but it's rare. And usually that's just for like the really big clients that we've already

done a lot of work with and we want to keep, keep them coming back. But, but yeah, I mean, everything is virtual these days. And as long as, you know, you can prove, that you can get the job done, nobody, who cares? You know, who cares? Where you pink overhead? Have you ever had a situation where like one of the crews like didn't show up to the project or maybe one of the one of the crew members didn't show up? We haven't had, I don't want to say never because we've done thousands of these and I've finally have gotten to, I'm not super old, but I finally got to the point where there's some things I don't remember. I used to take pride and like I could pull up any project.

and tell you the exact details even if it was 15 years ago and now I'm like I don't even remember doing that job but you know no so it's it's I don't think we've ever had a situation where morning of the crew didn't show up now there's

been situations where like morning of the crew got in a car accident or whatever or like this massive storm hit kind of and just caused chaos and then so they were going to be late or whatever or somebody popped up and had you know tested positive for COVID as they were being tested going into the building, you know, back when that was a thing.

And so we'd have to scramble and figure that out. But normally that was like either we would delay it or whatever and the client would understand. More often what happens, and again, it doesn't happen much, but it might be like the day before a crew might flake out on us and just say, you know, any number of reasons, man, I'm so sorry. I just, I can't make it my kid sick or my whatever, whatever it is. so occasionally we'll have to like pivot and find another crew but that's usually where us having you know we try to have three crews in every major city just so that we can roll to the next guy and just be like okay let's immediately reach out and do and and figure out next person up for the job um if for some reason they're not available a lot of times we'll try to put a little bit of of responsibility on to the person who can't make it and just saying hey who's one of your buddies or something that you trust to to to handle this you know and again it's not ideal but we also don't want to do a last minute cancellation on our client because we're under contract um so it it's not enough to be worried about

but it's definitely you you always i'm a contingency plan kind of guy right it's like you always want to have a plan B um if you can but i mean within reason so but yeah i mean it's it's it's not worth like not growing because you're scared of that being a possibility because it will if it can't happen, it will, right? You know, what is that? I don't know which law that is, but, you know, Murphy's law? Yeah, maybe. And so, you know, so it's out there, but we might do 499 shoots and the 500th one is the one that has a little bit of an issue. So I'm like, it's not worth stifling growth for that possibility. And not to mention, like, you're also going through this vetting process with these people and you, like acts of God are a different story. You know,

Like if there's a storm, if someone got sick to the point where they can't show up or anything or they get in a car accident, it's like that's something that's understandable for everyone, right? But it's like in terms of those other situations where someone just bails, like it's more rare than people realize because also how you vet them. If that is happening more often, that is happening more often in your business, that means your vetting process is not as good. That's right.

So that is another process you have to, or that is another part of your business you have to work Well, and that's the thing I always look at. Anytime there's an issue in our company, I look at two things. I look at the process and I look at the people. You know, it's like, is the process broken? And most of the time it's the process. You know, then, okay, cool. If the process is good, let's start investigating the person.

You know, what happened? And a lot of times it's just the person didn't follow the process. And again, that's fixable, right? In theory, it's fixable as long as they're not, they don't have other issues that you don't know about. But so it's like, and a thing, too, and again, a lot of this feels like overkill. But when you're operating a company kind of at the scale that we have, all this stuff becomes necessary. More touch points becomes necessary. You know, like I might agree to hire you for a shoot next month today, but my project manager is going to reach out to you probably once a week over the next three or four weeks.

Just say, hey, just checking in, you know, just making sure we're still on track. You know, we kind of drip feed information, right? We've learned that that's better than giving them everything in one email, you know, and that'll be the last. communication will be everything we've sent you over the last month is going to be in one email and a nice package for you to access at the shoot tomorrow. But we're going to send you, you know, a little bit of background information in the first week when we first reach out to you. Then the next week it might be some additional notes that we picked up or maybe some creative direction. And then the call sheet would come, you know, so it's like we're, we're there's

several touch points with that crew, which keeps them engaged, which also gives them plenty of, plenty of opportunity to be like, oh crap, I forgot. I've got to. conflict and we know about that conflict two weeks out versus two days out how big is your company right now so it's you and your wife as the main owners and then who else you have so we've got so in our building right here we've got my wife mandi our director of productions madeline and our project coordinator production coordinator dylan and then my dad actually works with us he's our like our office manager bookkeeper kind of thing so there's there's five of us in the building right now um but yeah so basically us five kind of run run the whole show

he's crazy got your dad working with you too that's pretty awesome yeah how did you how did you manage uh how did that go in terms of like uh finding that role did he kind of like because that's actually an interesting thing to keep in mind you know like uh having family involved in your business you know like we've heard several times people would go into business and then their and their spouses would be part of the business in some way shape or form but i've never thought of i've never heard of like someone's parents being involved like was there like a retired accountant yeah it's not an accountant which is interesting but yeah it's so my belief in the in the family side of things is that family just happens to be a benefit of it right it's not you don't hire somebody

because they're family you hire them because of the skills that they bring to the business so that they can contribute to growing the business right and and the fact that your family just means awesome man I get to hang out with you more than I normally would you know in in real life but you have to have you have to bring something to the table and like even with Mandy you know we've been together 10 years married for six all second marriages and basically she was a client of mine 20 years ago 15 years ago oh wow so it was like she worked for the chamber of commerce so I've seen her in action I mean she is an incredible relationship builder business development. She runs events like no one I've ever seen. And she's just, she's so smart and she's

fast and she's efficient. And basically I was like, all right, I need somebody to run marketing for our company. And she and I actually just started dating at the time. And she was just like, ooh, she's like, I don't know that I want to do that because I think this is going well and I don't want it to crash and burn. I said, well, here's a deal. I was like, when I look at this job description, you're the face. You're the one. I mean, that can do this. I mean, even if you and I weren't dating, I would be offering you this job. And so she reluctantly took it.

She was thinking she might do it for six months or whatever to run its course. And here we are, you know, 10 years later. But it was like her skill set is very much, she's way better at, she does all the boring details of sales that I could never really get into. And so it was hard for me to get really good traction on a regular. I mean, I would do well, but it was roller coaster, right? I mean, up, down, up down. She's just beating this thing to death every single day, following up with hundreds of people,

all these things. She's writing a contract. She can write a contract at about one-tenth of the time it takes me to do it. And so it's like she's just so fat, because I'm an overthinker. I overthink everything. So what works is that she gets it out, but then she sends it to me,

and then I just give it a quick once over to make sure that legally we're not obligating ourselves to anything weird. And then we send it out. So it's like our turnover, our turnaround with contracts and leads, and everything is light speed compared to what it used to be. Tremendous value. She's also very good on the HR side of things. She's great at hiring people.

She's great at even helping. She assists with kind of the more of the softer side of these crews that we hire and recruit and that kind of stuff because I'm good at the tech and the creative and all that. And Madeline is really the one that's looking at how they communicate. But Mandy is almost like she can just look at you and know, okay, yeah, that's a good person. you know and it's really it's really kind of a cool uh skill set that she has and then my dad um you know he was you know he retired as a commanding officer of the u.s. Navy right i mean this guy is like process dude right operations guy so it's like so when he first came in he cleaned up a lot of our processes and then

and really kind of got us to a point where i was able to then kind of say okay let me take those processes and amplify them and make them truly more like what we need and our business and so he he early on because he joined us in 2016 he was much more helping with operational processes and getting those things figured out so that I could grow the business the way that I wanted to but then he's kind of settled in as he's become more retired right he's he's settled into more of just like he handles accounts receivable accounts payable you know he sends the invoices he works with our CPA on the tax stuff I mean so it's really it's all that non billable crap that I don't want to deal with you know is

is the stuff that he's been working on. And then it's interesting, the project coordinator, Dylan, is actually my son-in-law, which is kind of new. Oh, wow. Is there anyone that's not related to you that's... Madeline, yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, but we like to say she's, but she is family. So it's like, you know, we love her just like family.

So that's why it works. But yeah, but, you know, Dylan comes from a background of, you know, he used to be the guy that a Maple Street Biscuit Company would hire to go into a city and like open a store, you know, and run the store and all that. And I mean, he was doing this at like 22 and 23 years old. And he's, he's 30 now. So he's just very, very process driven, very detail oriented, very technical. You know, he doesn't have any true training in this realm, but he just gets it. I mean, like this whole setup in here. And I mean, and again, he did all this in like five minutes. I was like, I was like, man, I don't know what I want to do, but I just wanted to look

better than the normal Zoom meeting. And he's like, well, how about this and how about that? And I'm like, man, shit, that looks pretty good. Yeah, let's run with it. You know, I mean, and again, we could have dialed it in even more, but it was just like, you know, hey, it looks pretty cool. Let's, let's do it. And so it's cool having him on board, you know, and he and my daughter just had our first grandchild. So it's like, so the benefit too is I get to see my grandson pretty often, you know, because, you know, she slides through in the middle of the workday, you know, and it's like

intern. Yeah, and of course, everything just stops. A little intern, yeah. Yeah. When Milo's here, everything just stops until she's ready to leave and then we go back to work, you know, or whatever. That's a true family business right there, like really, like very literal in the sense, you know? Like, you're not just any other company that says, we're like a family.

No, you are a family. That's right. That's right. You know, I was just thinking like, I don't know why I just pictured this in my head, though, because like you said your dad was in the Navy, and I'm just picturing him like the drill sergeant from full metal jacket, talking to all your videographers, let me see your video face. Yeah. No, it's really, yeah, it's not.

that at all. I mean, he's, he's been retired, he's been retired from the Navy for, uh, he retired at 98, so whatever that math is, you know, and, uh, basically he's, you know, and then he went in a corporate world for like 15 years. And, uh, I think in that corporate world, he really had to, uh, uh, reluctantly or begrudgingly, however you want to say it, had to, had to get more kind of non-military in terms of just how to deal, how to deal with people. I mean, because again, he's processed. You want to get something done. He's going to get it done. But a lot of times in these big corporations now there isn't really i mean they have an org chart but there isn't really it's not really a lot of authority i mean it's everybody is slow yeah everybody's so

we're all on the same team and let's let's meet about what we're going to meet about and then meet again so we can talk about what we met about you know and you know and that's wasting time and that drives him absolutely nuts and and as soon as they got to the point where they were going to put all the managers and all the the workers out in the same bullpen and in low wall cubes he was like yeah I'm out I'm out he was like this is this is crazy or whatever so he bailed the cubicle broke a military man well it's funny because he actually had a cube but all of like the upper management didn't they had offices and then as soon as they made the the upper management basically joined gen pop you know he was like yeah this is not going to work and so he was like

yeah I'm gone so he retired he liked he liked the cubicles because it was part of the structure right he that made sense to him but yeah I mean I mean the office Yeah, he's like executives need to be able to operate and make decisions without everybody else being in the no 100% of the time. You know, he was like, that's not going to work. You know, and again, he's very military. He goes, and the way he's used to doing it, lives are at stake, right? I mean, if you take two seconds longer to make a decision, someone can die, you know. Products are at stake here.

Yeah, right? Shareholder values at stake. Yeah. So he's, yeah, so he was like, you know what, I'm ready to go. And he had his military retirement. He had a retirement from the corporate stuff. And then, you know, we had a need in our business. And, you know, and he and I have always been really good friends.

So it was cool for him to come and help us out. And again, I was thinking, I don't know how long this is going to be. Might be short term. Might be whatever. But it's turned out to be a pretty good thing. And, I mean, you know, and he manages that part of the company very well. And, you know, it just kind of, I always like to say I'm like the center of the wheel, right? And I've got all these spokes.

And, you know, and I'm just kind of more in like a consultative role in all of these spokes versus being the guy that like has to drive everything all the time and and that really has been a great move for our business and I mean at some point he'll be ready to like for real retire I mean he's about to he'll turn 71 this year and you know and so I mean at some point it'll make sense for him to to move on and so we're kind of thinking about okay well what does that succession plan look like in terms of bringing somebody else in to do that currently is the granddaughter I say there currently isn't a there currently isn't another family member who's qualified for that yet but maybe that'll change in another five years who knows that's awesome

family succession one thing i definitely want to bring up because we we spoke about this in the pre-interview that i never really gave much thought to but let's talk a little bit about margins because after that call i did go through all of our invoices for the year and and calculated all that stuff so tell us a little bit about that what was it well it was so you're talking about margins that no i mean i mean what was your what was your calculation like in terms of margin we were actually we actually do pretty well on the margins there were some projects that our margins were really low on variance but for the most part the numbers were good i was surprised i thought that i thought the numbers would be pretty bad and i did do like two calculations for the margin so i did one

where i just calculated the expenses as like the freelancer cost and then another one where I included like our time in it as another cost, right? So just to see like what the difference would be and whatnot. But surprisingly, like the numbers are pretty good. I thought they were going to be like, okay, but no, that's, that's good to know. Well, and I think, and that's cool because it opens up obviously a bigger conversation that it can even go back to like when we're talking about setting rates for freelancers and that kind of stuff. I mean, at all, you know, I always talk about, I tell our team all the time and even people that

I've coached over the years, I'm like, look, the spreadsheet makes the decision. right like like I mean if you if you make decisions outside of the spreadsheet then you're just you're purely making decisions on emotion and more often than not that's not going to work out in the long term right doesn't mean that it can't it doesn't mean that you can't insert a little bit of emotion but it just means that you just you have to be smart about how you run your company so yeah the margins I mean for me it's just been it's always about you know you know we negotiate rates with our clients right and we have kind of I don't want to say set rates because they are negotiable. I mean, we have guides, right? Leway, what we try to follow, at least as a

starting point. But really, a new type of pricing strategy that I created a few years back, because it was just, it was just taken too long to come up with quotes. And a lot of times it was like, I mean, I would look at the price and I'm like, I don't even know where the hell I got that from, because it just doesn't feel right for what this job is. I might have quoted way more than I think I should have or way less. And I just, I don't, like, what, I need to streamline this, right? So I could devise a little strategy where I basically, my spreadsheet is anytime we're doing a new job or we're getting, you know, we obviously have the discovery call so we understand the scope and all those kind of things. Well, the first thing we do is we build a cost budget that says,

okay, here's what it's going to cost us to make this video or to do this project. And then we just add our margin on top of that. And I mean, and so and that becomes what we charge, you know, and I even have the spreadsheet built where it's like, okay, if I want to do a 50% margin, this is what we charged the client, 60 and 70, right? And some jobs, especially the lower end, the lower budget jobs, you can have a higher margin on because there's still, you know, if it's a $3,500 job, even if it's only going to cost me $1,000 to have it produced, like, that's a pretty healthy margin, but I'm not going to charge less because there are kind of floors and ceilings, too, of what

you should expect to pay as a client in some of these worlds. So the bigger projects, obviously the margins tend to be smaller, but we still try really hard to make sure that it's no lower than 50%. Now, the caveat is if it's a $100,000 project and I'm going to make, and I'm going to clear $40,000, I'm okay with that. You know what I mean? I'd rather do 50, but if the way it works out, because sometimes it might be, there might be like an enormous talent cost, right, that goes into it. And I don't, and I've just, for whatever reason, it's always kind of rubbed me wrong to like, mark up talent significantly, you know, and I don't know why, but it just, it just feels weird, right? Because I'm like, the client could literally hire that talent and maybe they pay a little bit more, 15% more than we would get because we know how to negotiate with them or we're an eight,

they're giving us kind of an agency rate. And I was like, but they're not going to pay 50% more. You know what I mean? Or 100% more. So I've always kind of like, you know, and sometimes when we have real heavy talent costs or real heavy location costs, that'll skew those numbers a little bit, but we'll kind of carve that out though and say, okay, but keep them. mind if we take those costs out the margin is still rock solid yeah like i like how you price uh your new pricing strategy guide is pretty good because yeah like how we go about it is that the the part we always have trouble with is figuring out the pre-production cost and that's always like our point where we can change the budget to kind of like change the estimate it's our leeway

yeah that's our leeway point so okay well and that's what so what we started doing so like for your own time, how much you're spending in pre-pro or whatever, assign a cost to that. Now, you might elect to donate that time if you think it's going to make you more competitive to get the job, right? And even though, yes, it is costing you, but it's not costing you, you know. And so what I started doing is saying, you know what, let's put time in there for creative director, creative direction or whatever. It may be assign a $50 an hour cost to that. Because remember, at the end of the spreadsheet, I'm marking it up to give us the margin that we need. So it would still correlate to like a hundred an hour or 150 an hour or whatever.

But I'm not putting $150 an hour as my cost because I wouldn't pay anybody 150 an hour to do that task, right? Because I wouldn't make any money if I did that. So I'm looking at if I was hiring another creative director to do this role, what would I offer them per hour, you know, or what could I offer them in order for all of these numbers? to make sense and it might be less than you would traditionally hire a freelance creative director for but in this case i'm i'm the i'm that guy you know yeah yeah like we had i had to kind of like guesstimate when i was calculating our margins but i think going forward one thing i'm going to

try to get us to do is just actually calculate how much time we do spend in like pre-production and like helping out with the post just to like get some more accurate numbers and then assigning the cost of that is pretty easy is basically what we pay ourselves a year just figure out the hourly for that and then just get well and you can even and you could even tweak the margin too like in that case you could say okay well instead of doing 50% margin maybe I'm going to look at 60 and and I know that my time's covered in that you know and right and so and again it's just really it's all personal preference right and at the end of the day what's going to make you competitive and that's one cool thing about Mandy and I and sometimes I get frustrated a lot of times I've been frustrated over

the years by this but because I'll send her the budget and she'll immediately shoot it down She's like, that's too much. That's more than they're going to pay. And I'm like, how do you know that? She's like, I just, I know these people. I've been dealing with them. Like I understand. And I know, I just, I feel like that's going to be too much.

And so, so I did a little experiment. I'm like, well, send it anyway. And then sure enough, they're like, oh, it's too much. And then they'll come back and they'll say, you know, this is what we want it to be. And then she just kind of does the wife thing and rolls her eyes at me because it's basically exactly what she said. And so I'm just kind of like, you know, I'm like, okay. You know, here we go.

So it's, you know, what we tend to do is, is if we're super busy, I mean, like, it's going to be hard to take on another project, you know, we're quoting at that kind of 60% margin, right? Just supply and demand. But if we're like, if we've got time in the schedule, things aren't crazy busy, we close a lot more kind of at that 50% margin than we do, you know, for the higher margin. So it's really just kind of a balancing act on that. There's some jobs that we'll think we're only going to have a 50% margin. but it'll end up being an 82% margin because for some reason during the planning process we figured out a more efficient way to do something or more whatever. You know, maybe we figured out that, hey, we don't necessarily need that extra crew member because it just doesn't make sense anymore

based on how this has come together. And the way that we design our proposals is that we're not, unless a client specifically asked for it, we're not giving them a line by line price that says, hey, this person costs this much and this piece of equipment costs this much. It's basically, hey, you got our crew for a day. Here's what's included in that, and this is your price.

But even what's included in that is still, it's not micro every little piece of thing. It's audio recording package. What the hell does that mean, right? It's cinematic lighting package. Well, what does that mean. So we know what that means. And that just means that, hey, we're going to bring what we need to make this look good and make it sound good.

And we'll make sure we have enough bodies on the ground. to do the work but it might be four people it might be three it might be one you know sometimes if it's a super simple interview and we've got a very talented DP we don't have to hire an audio guy and a PA or any of that stuff if there's only like one in one or two interviews that thing right yeah because I think I'm going to start implementing that in our I like that and then we also sorry I was just saying we one thing we also add is like we started doing this in recent years where it's like oh if there's a whole lot of logistics that are going to be happening on the shoot day you've got to pay for a field producer like we've got to add a field

producer to the package so that they can help manage all that because you can't we can't expect our crew member our dp to manage all of those producer functions as well and still be able to get us the product that we need in the in the footage yeah that's that's that's a key thing like we we usually try to have a producer on set for most of the projects and usually that is like the the baseline must because they've been in communication with the client, they know what is needed. And then that helps the DP focus on their job and allows the producer to kind of like handle and manage everything, especially when you have multiple crew people trying the logistics of getting everyone together, especially if you're dealing with one of those, one of those buildings

where there's a lot of red tape about how you enter, you know, that's the producer's job. You know, the DP has enough stuff to deal with in terms of unloading gear, prepping gear and all that stuff. It's like that's another thing to keep into account. But yeah, I like what you said in terms of like how you keep it like a like a rough range because like we had a project recently where I sent out an estimate where it was pretty much line by line item in terms of like the crew that is going to be there. But he said like, hey, that's fine. But can we do the budget for this much? And then I realized, oh, in this situation, we don't really need this crew member on the set. So I just removed them. But that can kind of be like simplified a little.

little bit more with your how do you so how do you put it so like for audio operator you just put audio package what about for like videography you just put video package is that how you word it i mean we typically would say like you know two camera two 4k cameras you know uh cinematic lighting package audio recording package um and personnel right and and so it's like we just put and personal oh i see okay that's clever i like that yeah and again if it's if it's like another If it's like, you know, you guys would probably need more detail just because you know what all, how we do what we do, right? I mean, you might be like, hey, but I want to know. And I'm the same way even with the crews that we hire.

I'm like, okay, cool, but how many people are on the ground? Because a lot of times we need their names, blah, blah, whatever. But that's usually a last minute piece of knowledge, not a front end while we're making the sale piece of knowledge. Right. And so I think, and so more often than not, what we find clients don't care. I mean, they trust that you're going to, you know, do what you do. maybe one out of 10 contracts we'll have a client callback and it's usually some in-house video guy who's mad that he didn't get asked to do the project right and and they're like

well what do you mean audio recording package and i'm like well i mean we'll have you know a shock typically we bring a shotgun mic and a wireless law but that's really about what it is unless it's multi-people and and if we get into that then we're typically talking about having a dedicated like audio tech and but this isn't really what that is and he's like oh okay you know And I'm just like, you know, trust us to do what we know how to do. And, you know, but if you ask more detail, we'll give you more. It's just most of the time we don't have to and nobody cares. Yeah.

Especially it's like they don't really need to know if there's going to be one or two PA's on set necessarily. And what the cost per like PA is going to be. Well, in a lot of it, it's like anything in business, it's kind of like, you know, it's one thing to know what you are, but it's, but it's even more valuable to know what you're not, right? And to me, it's like, if I get an agency or a production company that wants a crew, and if they're like, we need this many people, and it's totally over, like, just way too many people, any fish in, and they're like, oh, and it has to be the Sony T8, 7-9er,

you know, Venice, whatever, you know, and it has to be that exact model. And oh, by the way, we have to have five of them, right? And I'm like, dude, no, A, no rental house. is going to have five and and b no no like i'm just sorry you know i mean i understand cool and somebody will gladly do that for you but what makes our model work is that all of our crews have what they have and and you know and and that's why another reason why we're able to get the pricing that we do is because we're not asking them to use something they don't own right and now they may not get hired because they don't own a certain package if it's requested but but but if it gets too crazy. I mean, some of these clients are like literally day of or day before. They're like,

oh, well, now our DP who's being flown in from LA, right, who doesn't even carry his own tripod, you know, is like, you know, oh, well, he decided that he wants this T1-9 or particular gimbal. And I'm like, okay, great, but no, you know, like, sorry, you know, we can't do it that last minute, you know, or whatever. And so we were getting really stressed by having, because we want people, we want to do good work for people, right? So, but what we learned is that sometimes really more often, more often than you would like to think, the best way to serve people is to tell them no, you know, it's telling them that you can't, you know. And then at that point, they might be reasonably frustrated at the moment, but when they get on set, they're going to be like, oh, yeah, this is fine, you know. I mean, it really wasn't a big deal.

And I think a lot of times people are inserting their importance, right, by having feedback along the way. It's kind of like the executive producer doesn't say anything until the day he shows up on the shoot. and then he starts asking questions like well I thought we were going to have a 12 by 12 reflective panel over here and I thought we were going to do it and I'm like who the hell said that you know like what I mean where did that come in you know and I used to get offended by that and kind of like feeling like that I wasn't doing a good job and then I was like you know what I'm not going to worry about that you know you just have to know when to roll with it and I think everybody has to kind of raise their hand and have their input you know just so that they feel like they're justifying their paycheck I guess but you know I love you I love what you said. It's like, yeah, and then you have so-and-so DP flying in who doesn't even carry his own tripod. Like, oh, that's so comical the way he phrased it. I'm like, you need an AC for what? Well, I mean, our DP, you know, likes to be hands off.

I'm like, cool. And I was like, so he doesn't touch the camera when he's shooting. Like, oh, no, no, no, no. He just doesn't want to like, you know, carry anything. And I'm like, okay. And I was like, so a PA. I was like a PA would work for that. And they're like, well, but he might.

I'm like, all right, whatever, you know. He doesn't want to do this. you know yeah well what's hilarious like i actually for this same client we were running short on crew members because they kept adding so i eventually was like you know what i'll knock off the dust and i was the audio guy for like a week at this big you know automotive shoot yeah and i'm like it's not rocket science i know how to do it i don't like doing it but i'll do it you know so i'm like what's hilarious is i'm i'm producer director right but by nature by experience but i'm running an audio and I'm just watching this DP worked and I'm just like I mean literally we'd set a

shot up he would get a take and be like all right cool let's move on and I'm like dude that was only one take I was like even if it was perfect and that's the one you're going to use I was like what if something's wrong with that file like at least do a safety just something I didn't say it because I wasn't the one in charge but I'm like and I'm like and this is the guy that's creating all of these logistical challenges for us as a crew and I'm like and you're literally getting one shot and moving on every time and I'm like oh my god you know so it's like by the time you know the the ACs hell hell on everything in setting it up getting everything in focus framing it the way that he wants it and then and then it like took more time to set that up than for him to hit record

and go all right that's cool he stops the record and then he starts walking to the next location and everybody's looking around like what what just happened like what is what is going on here that was it that was it at least at least review it yeah at least review it if it's just the one take yeah and i'm like hey must be nice man must be nice what wonder what kind of experience that dp has where it's like it's like it's probably comes down to like a lot of these like crazy film sets where you know you have like such a little time and you have to get so much different well even even then they still do multiple well and i don't know how it is yeah that's what i mean like and i don't know how it is in canada but in

In America, especially with these big kind of blue states or blue cities, you know, democratic cities, the unions are really big. So it's like, you know, you have like in Detroit, Detroit, a lot of automotive production goes on. But the union situation makes it so complicated to do work up there because it's like you got to hire somebody to hold the camera. Somebody has to be hired to turn the camera on. Somebody has to be hired. And it's like, I've got 30 people on a set and I only need three, you know. And it's like, but you can't because you have to have. You know, there's got to be a different person has to be the one that actually drives the van that brings the production crew and equipment to the site.

And I'm like, and I'm being a little bit overdramatic, but it's, but it's very like, it's like that, you know, or, oh, something happened to the breaker. We can't just go look at it and see what's going on. Like, no, you got to hire this union guy who's not even on site who's going to be here in three hours, you know, to check the breaker. Meanwhile, we just, we just don't have power for three hours, you know. And so it's like, that's why I try to shot. don't do a lot of hard marketing and advertising in some of those more union driven cities because they're just they're really complicated to work in we we haven't had it I mean we can't do any union-based projects so I think we would have to also be unionized is that how it's yeah it's no no

no no no no no no so I guess we don't have to be because I know thing was telling me he's done some union-based projects it's just the crew needs to be right so I think here it would be tied to basically if the actor you're getting is unionized, then everyone else needs to be unionized, which is total bullshit because now it's like, I mean, it just balloons the cost of the project up. So I mean, for nothing. For a lot of companies like ours or like in the corporate space, they're not, they're not going to use unionized people because it's just, I can't imagine how much the cost is going

to go up by, right? Well, and that's any time that we're looking for a crew member or a talent or whatever. I mean, we're very adamant about non-union. Like, we're just, we're not, I'm just not going to mess with it, you know. And, and we're able to, a lot of times, we can skirt the issue of, we can go into a very unionized city and still work non-union, but we just have to be creative and how we get around that kind of stuff. And I mean, and again, it's not, we're not doing anything illegal, but it's just kind of like. How is that enforced? That's the other thing I've always wondered.

So wait, in the states, in the city, like the whole city, like any project needs to be, every project needs to be unionized? No, I mean. It's not quite like that, but it could be like if it's in, if it's a big building in Manhattan, you know, and if it's like, oh, well, every service in the building is union driven, right? Then like a big convention center or something, then the buildings would be like, well, any vendor that's in here has to be part of whatever union. Right. We almost ran into a situation like that shooting for another production company at a venue downtown. Like, they almost didn't let us shoot.

because they're like, oh, no, like, this was supposed to be communicated to you guys. And the clients, like, no one told us about this. Yeah. So then, like, the, the, the CMO got involved. And he's like, he got in their face and then they finally let us shoot. But it got to a point where almost like they wouldn't let us shoot. And that was like the first time I've encountered that, which is strange. It's funny because that building, I think it's, was it the MTCC?

It's right across Beanfield or across Hotel. You know Hotel X is here? It's like literally east of Hotel X and south of Beanfield. Yeah. So there's like a special area in Toronto, which is like they call it the C&E grounds, which are all, everything in that area is union based. But it's funny because there's always videographers in these event halls that are not unionized. So it's like are you basically just deciding that like because,

it was hired by the client like for this bigger-ish event than it has to be like it's there's so much gray area when it comes to this stuff and that's why it's that's why we try to avoid it as much as possible because it's it's not worth the headache well and for me i i prefer to keep it gray in those situations because because then it's plausible deniability right like i can walk in and say i didn't know this was going to be a problem and then i just keep working you know and unless they can physically arrest me or physically detain me, I'm going to keep working. You guys can deal with that outside. You know, I mean, you know, hey, I get it, man. I understand, but I've been hired to do a job and that's my client over there. You can go speak to them, but, but in the meantime, I got to keep

doing my job, you know, and more often not, it's just people that are, you know, again, I don't want to like give any advice that somebody uses and goes out and gets arrested or hurt or whatever. So, I mean, definitely know the rules, right, or try to. But a lot of times, I'll ask the client or even part of the pre-pro with the client, hey, are there any union issues we're going to have to deal with? And they'll typically be like, oh, you know, I don't know. We'll check into that. And we'll say, cool, we're going to operate like there's not.

And then, but if there is, we're going to rely on you to make sure that we understand so that we can help, we can get, we can navigate what we need to do to do the job. I'd rather not even bring that up because the situation that helped us that day was the fact that they had, they didn't communicate to the client that we would have had to be unionized. That's right. So if the client had asked, that's technically on them. It was.

And that's why they led us, but it was like, that was the only time I ran into that situation. It was so strange. Because we shot all around that building in different venues around, even across that building. No problems ever. It was just that one time. So weird. And I think it's footprint too, right? Like if you roll in with a small crew and you don't have, and it's not a, in the production isn't a big production, right?

In terms of you're not having a wheel in massive dollies and doing stuff that's going to make somebody go, wait a minute. You know, I mean, anytime in those situations. where we're feeling like that maybe there could be some of those kind of issues we always tell our people we're like look pack small stay small think small you know i mean if you can do it with with one dsler camera and a small gimbal or something like do that like don't don't draw unnecessary attention just for the hell of it you know and like if you're going to go into a state park or a national park and film some stuff just just be small like and and be like if you if there's 20 people between crew and client you guys don't all need to be standing in the same space you guys don't all need to be standing in the same space at the same time like like spread out you know me just just anything that's not going to make it obvious that that's what's happening and again even then nine out of ten times it's fine you're just going to get that one person that's got an issue with it that'll come over who's trying to do their job but honestly we've gotten so good at kind of somebody on the team just pulls them to the side and just keeps them busy until we get what we get and then we say you know what we're so sorry we'll make sure that

we follow you know we'll check in on this next time have a nice day and then And then we walk away and, you know, and they've done their job, right? And we've done ours and everybody's happy, you know? Yeah, you know what it is? I think the, it becomes more of a problem when they start to see a lot of equipment that one of their guys can probably operate. You know, if they see like someone with a small DSLR and a gimbal, they're like, okay, that guy's doing his own thing.

But the second they see someone on a big tripod, filming the whole space, like two or three cameras from all different angles. Oh, if, like you said, if there's a crane, they're like, damn, that's four union jobs that we could have had right there that's when they get yeah that's when they get really mad you know but it's like like you put it if it's something small your own camera equipment that you're dealing with then yeah usually it's not an issue well and and honestly it's like anything in life i mean more often than not a a civil conversation can solve the problem you know and and it's like and again i try to go back to what i said earlier i try to put myself in that person's

choose, okay, they're, they're, even if they're being an asshole, you know, they're still, they think they're, I'm at least going to choose to believe they think they're doing their job. They think they're doing what they should be doing. And I can work with that. Hey, man, tell me, what's going on? Well, you're supposed to have this, supposed to have that. Man, I'm so sorry. I didn't know that. I've, I've shot here before or this is the first time I've shot here. And I just, I didn't realize that was a thing. And I'll be like, so, so walk me through. Like, what is the process? Meanwhile, the team still, still getting still shooting right and and and i'm separating the person so they can't interrupt the production and and i'm just like man so tell me like what's the what's the process and and all this time i'm like okay cool it's like i tell you what next time we'll absolutely make sure that we that we you know look into that um because i know this is put you in a tough spot it's put me in a tough spot you know and and so then basically and then a lot of times you kind of talk them off the ledge and then everything's good we live the fight another day you know and then next time 20 and that's it i mean i mean i haven't slipped them 20 i've slipped plenty of uh landscapers 20s

over the years to get them to turn off the the lawnmowers but um you know it's it's i don't know that i want to slip like a uh a federal employee you know a 20 that's probably not good business but um you know so anyway so i mean it's there there's always problems right but but they rarely are problems that are going to keep you from from doing your work and i think just like anything in life more often than not it's just how do you how do you approach the problem how do you handle the problem and I think if you do it with a cool head more after than not you're going to be fine every now and then you're going to have that you know I don't know if you guys call them that up there but Cairns you

know that are going to step in and have a problem we got those we got those try to yeah try to create issues or whatever but it's really just if we you know and I train all my people I'm like look don't get bad stay calm you know and just work through it and I was like and that's and that's how we can get through 99% of these issues and and we've been fortunate so far even in some very heavy unionized situations you know it's like you know if somebody's really pushing back like in a convention center in new york city or whatever you know you just keep asking questions that eventually kind of gets them into a corner and i'm like okay so where do we go from here because

this is what i need you're not telling me a solution and the solution can't be that we just pack up and go home so like where are we and then they'll be like ah you know what this time it's fine just do it you know just next time whatever and i'm like cool i'll probably never be in this building again ever you know so but yeah no problem you know and and again if we have a client that says hey we're going to do a shoot in that same building two or three years down the road I will say you know what last time we had a little bit of this issue potentially I don't think it'll be a problem but just want to let you know so if it does come up because what I don't want our clients to think too and a lot of times clients will think this because they don't know any better they'll think that we should

have known as the production company like we should have known so I try to spread that risk out a little bit or that responsibility out to say, hey, look, we typically operate non-union. We know some of these places can have some union requirements. Are you guys aware of anything? And most of the time, I'm like, no. And I'm like, all right, cool. We're going to operate as if it's not an issue. But if it comes up, just no, we'll deal with it the best we can. And if somebody from your team is there can help deal with it so that we don't have to stop progress on the production, even better. And usually they're like, hey, that's cool, high five, let's go. And this is one of those situations where having a producer at the shoot is a big plus because like you said the producer will be the

one handling this problem and the crew can still work and shoot because if you have a cinematographer there and then the more time that they're talking with this person they can't do their job as well so this is like one of those situations where it's important but like i like you said as long as you're very cordial uh respectful and you're listening most of the time things will just kind of go way like I think a lot of the time people just want to be heard by someone yeah in these kind of situations like you said they just want to do their job and say something yeah I don't think they're actually going to push you out in well and I don't know if you guys have experiences but what I've also figured out too a lot of times is most of people that have problems don't really have the

authority to do anything about it and so yeah yeah kind of like you know I'm like cool well who are you like oh well I'm so and so all right cool so where do we go from here like oh well I just you know you just need to know that I'm like all right so what's going to happen if I can continue doing this. I'm like, well, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, all right, cool. Yeah, we're going to keep going. You know, thank you. Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Sorry. You know, go deal with it. Like, go talk to someone. Well, which is crazy too. And again, this is silly to say, but, you know, I'm also, I'm, I'm six foot five. You know, I'm a big dude. So when I'm, you know, typically people aren't going to physically try to do anything to me unless I'm like for real breaking the law, which I try

not to make a habit of. But, you know, it's a, it's a, you know, it's a, you know, it's a, you know, And again, I think it's, I think a lot of people in our industry, I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty and there's a lot of, there's a lot of risk, right? You've got to try things. And in order to be successful, you have to try things. You have to be willing to fail. Sometimes you have to be willing to fail like, and, and I think a lot of these little roadblocks are what people will do will, we'll sort of feed that negativity in their mind to be like, oh, well, I can't go do that because they might have a problem. Or remember last time when that park ranger had an issue with us shooting out here, but gosh, I'm not even going to try to, I'm not even going to bid on that because I don't want to deal with that potential again, you know, and, and I think it's like, we've just got to get past that and be like, look, I mean, unless you just for real break the law, right? I mean, there's not really, you can't do much for that. But even, even that, I mean, think about how many people are breaking laws and don't ever get held accountable for it. So, so even that, it's like, all right, if you're, if you're trying in good faith to do a good job and do things above board, just about everything that

you run across is going to work out. I mean, it's not going to be a big deal. And again, like if the park ranger comes up and has an issue, if I'm immediately firing back or whatever and it becomes emotional and all that, yeah, that's not going to go anywhere. Even if I'm pissed off, I don't need to act pissed off. I need to just be like, hey, man, no, hey, step over here. Talk to me. What are we dealing? You know, what's the deal? You know, what's going on? You know, well, this, that, and the other, okay, cool. So how can we, how can we make you happy, but still get what we need? You know, and a lot of times the concession is nothing. I mean, it's like, oh, well, if you guys can just only be here for another 15 minutes hey no problem man where can we can we should we go

ahead and move it to somewhere else because it might take us a little bit longer than that and they might be like you know what it's fine it's fine nobody it's like they just need to be heard right they just need they just need somebody to acknowledge that they are there and they have an issue with it all right cool no problem you tell me what can we do to make this work and if they're like well we need you to leave okay well that that can't be an option right now so what can we do to kind of get closer to the middle and then that's usually like well can you just be here another 30 minutes. Yeah, I think we can make that work. You know, and then and then you do your best to try to honor that, you know, I mean, if that's if that's what the agreement is to try to,

hey, tell everybody, hey, guys, we got to speed this up or I'll say, hey, okay, cool. But is there another place we can go that you'll be okay with as long as we can get kind of similar scenery and all that? And they're like, you know what? There's this little back area. Nobody's really back there. It looks good. It'll be quiet. And that'll keep my bosses off of my back. If you guys can just go do that. Hey, you know what? Problem solved. Let's go. You know. Cool. Yeah. All right. I think we can probably end on on that note. So Chris, the don't follow the rules note, I love it. But be nice about it. That's the key thing. That's right. That's right.

Nice. Okay. Well, Chris, where can people find you? Our website is six strongmedia.com. That's the number six strongmedia.com. And we're on, you know, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, kind of all under that same company name. name. Yeah. So, I mean, that's pretty much where we are in the online space. And then, of course, we're our HQs in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but we do work all over the country. And, you know, we certainly work with global companies as well that are, that are looking to do work in the United States. Nice. And how did you come up with the name, six strong media? You're never going to believe this, but there's six in my family. So, oh, okay. That makes a lot of sense now.

That's right. It really is a family business, you know, at this point. Even the name is related to it. Well, and that's a, you know, and that's a whole other story, but I can give it to you in like 30 seconds. You know, I had this other company from 2000 to 2010 and really was just super, I'm going to grow this thing to be a $50 million company. So it was just everything was business, business, business. I worked around the clock. Like, I made it a point to be at all my kids stuff, but mentally I wasn't there because I was just constantly just trying to grow this business and on the phone solving problems and all these things. And then I had a partner with that business.

Well, when we decided to shut that one down, I started this company literally 24 hours later just because my lawyer said, dude, give me a 24 hour break between the old company and the new company just so that I can not have to deal with any of crossover stuff. Like, all right, cool. But at that point, I was like, how do I make sure, because I am a family man. And I'm like, how do I truly do that in a way? And I was like, you know what? What's really most important in all of this situation is that my six are strong.

you know and that we're that we're good my kids are taking care of my wife is taking care of i'm taken care of and so it just it just was kind of a cool vibe it's like man we're six strong and i'm like hmm six strong media let's do this and and and so that's what it's been and uh you know i love it and i think even even now as we're doing all these really impressive big things mandy and i are always very just like okay but how is this next decision going to impact the six right and of course the six is now about 12 in terms of of of of of of of of of of of significant others and kids and all that kind of stuff. But it's like, you know, how is it going to impact that?

But I think the six signifies everybody in the family, right? And not just our family, but our employees and our employees' families and our freelancers' families and all these kinds of things. And so it's just really with it being on the letterhead and it being at the top of every contract and everything, it's just every decision we make is a, is this going to help us continue our values in terms of the type of culture that we are? And is this going to move our family forward? And if the answer is no, we don't.

do it, you know, period. And there's been a lot of deals that probably could have been really significant deals for us financially that we've bailed on because it just wasn't going to make sense for our culture and for our family. Cool. I like that. That's great. That's awesome. All right. Well, Chris, it was great to chat with you. And, yeah, I'll probably bring you back on at some point because, yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, you have a lot of good tidbits. All kinds of topics. I've been, I've been at it a long time. So, yeah, I'll be happy to, man. This is great. And we appreciate you joining us. Great.

Thanks for the invite. Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Please make sure to follow and engage with us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your favorite podcast app. Creatives Grab Coffee is created by LAPS Productions, a video production company based in Toronto, Canada. Creators Grab Coffee is also sponsored by... My name is Maran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes.

Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages or lighting and group band packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. We're more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativesgrapcoffee.com. Thank you. Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, fully. We service equipment. We do all your

audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered. Come on down, audio process.com. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you, I'll be waiting for you, and we're all gonna have a real good time. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.