Creatives Grab Coffee - #114 TV Doc, RFPs, and AI (ft. Bee Video Productions)

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Brigitte Sachse of Bee Video Productions returns for her third visit to talk shop with Dario and Kyrill. We get into how Bee Video landed a documentary series on TVO ("The Nature of Design"), why animation became their secret weapon, and the recurring theme of the whole episode: diversifying your work, your income, and even your project timelines so you never have all your eggs in one basket. We also dig into whether AI video is actually a threat (spoiler: not yet), the great raw-footage-and-project-files debate, the pain of government RFPs, public pricing, SEO, and a couple of brutal "client didn't pay us" war stories — plus the copyright-strike trick that gets you paid. 🎧 More episodes: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/episodes/ Timestamps 00:00 Catching Up with Brigitte (Bee Video Productions) 01:00 "The Nature of Design": Pitching a Doc Series to TVO 05:20 How Animation Became Their Secret Weapon 07:30 Working with a Broadcaster vs. a Corporate Client 11:10 Making a Passion Project Profitable 14:15 Why a Diversity of Timelines Prevents Burnout 19:35 Why Is Everyone So Busy Despite the Economy? 21:45 Is AI Video a Real Threat? 29:45 Raw Footage, Project Files & the "Costco Hot Dog" of Post 41:45 Government RFPs: The 50-Page Slot Machine 55:00 What's Next: Personalized Video & a Shared Studio 01:03:30 The Real ROI of a Podcast + SEO 01:06:15 Should You Make Your Pricing Public? 01:14:40 Getting Stiffed & the Copyright-Strike Fix 01:25:35 Wrap-Up🎧 Hosts:Dario Nouri & Kyrill Lazarov — Lapse Productions, Torontohttps://www.lapseproductions.com🎙️ About Creatives Grab Coffee:Creatives Grab Coffee explores the business of video production, featuring candid conversations with studio owners and filmmakers around the world on scaling, creativity, and industry evolution.👇 Follow & Subscribe:Website – https://creativesgrabcoffee.comInstagram – https://instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffeeLinkedIn – https://linkedin.com/company/lapseproductions#CreativesGrabCoffee #videographyhacks #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #videomarketing #videoproductioncompany #videoproductionservices

All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Creators Grab Coffee. Today we have friend of the show, Bridget from Bee Video Productions, who's already been on one or once or twice, I think. Yeah, it's my second time. Second time, third time alum. Yeah. Anyways, Bridget, I don't know what we're going to talk about today, but I guess it'll be a little catch-up episode and seeing what you've been up to. Bridget, for those that don't know, is a production owner here in Toronto. And, yeah, maybe for new listeners, just give them a little, I don't know, a little intro about yourself.

Sure, yeah. So be video product, Bridgett's not the most creative name in the world. Any video production kind of explains itself. We're a video production company based in Toronto. And, yeah, I go back with you guys, like quite a few years. like we might have started around the same time, if I'm not mistaken, roughly. And I love that we're both, we're all still here and busy from the sounds of it. But yeah, we do similar things to LAPS, but I think perhaps the difference is during COVID, we pivoted towards animation. And now that's

probably, gosh, like 75% of our work at this point, depending on the day. So we do a lot of But we focus on corporate, and you guys may or may not know, but we did deliver a documentary series to TVO last year, and that was cool. And we might, I think, knock wood, like, we could be in development on, it's not really season two, but a very similar series also for TVO. We'll find out at the end of July about that. So I think that's kind of us in a nutshell. Yeah. I feel like I remember you talking about that as if that it was in the works at the last time we did the podcast recording. So yeah, now a year or two later it's out and already pitching for season two.

Yeah, yeah. It's called The Nature of Design. I love it. Nice. Yeah. Well, congrats. Is it free to watch online or do you need? Yeah, it's there.

You can go on TVO and then just look on their website and just search for the nature of design. and you'd find it. And it's a series about design. Well, I won't get too much into it, but it's like environmentally sustainable architecture. So we go to Singapore, we go to Seattle, all these cool places that have built buildings that kind of can run themselves using like natural resources.

It's pretty cool. Nice. I guess maybe I don't know, if we talked about it last time, what was like the process like for you to even get that product? Like did you pitch it or was it something that was like they wanted someone to shoot it and you kind of just applied for it? Well, it's in a way, it's, it was kind of the dream in the sense that when I started B video like eight years ago now, I guess, I thought it would be easier because I thought that, you know, I was looking at Red Bull and brands like that that, that

were commissioning, like, bigger content, like, content that was, so this project was the only project we've ever really gotten off the ground using that model. So it did start with a brand. Like, we partnered with a coffee company, if you can believe it, because it doesn't seem like those two things would align. But they, they were, yeah, so it was a corporate client that just had vision for bigger storytelling than, then we're used to doing, I'm sure, you know, the usual, when I say the usual branded content. It's, it's very branded and it's very literal. And there's not a lot of like, play in between. Yeah. But that one, yeah, so it evolved from that. And then we did, at a certain point, we asked them, could we pitch to TVO? Because this seemed like a really

cool project for broadcast. And they said yes, and with their blessing, we brought it to TVO, but they didn't participate on the TV series. They just, they got their piece, which was on something called biophilic design. And then they were happy to just let us run with it. So we kept the copyright and pitched it to TVO and they liked it. And like, it's been like this great project that seems to never end, yeah. Interesting.

I'm curious about, because you mentioned, you know, especially for newer listeners, you focus a lot on animation type content in the corporate space, whereas this is a very different type of content compared to what you normally do. So was that something that you were comfortable kind of like diving into, or was there any other kind of resources or prep that you needed to take care of before we were able to pursue something in this type of creative realm? Well, actually, I think that our strength in animation really helped this project because you and I both know, like, when we say animation, we don't necessarily mean like

character animation. Like we don't mean necessarily, it could be motion design. It could be, you know, just anything that's not a live shoot. And so this series incorporates like a lot of science types. stuff. And so we were able to kind of reanimate and like basically put an explainer video, which is what we normally do for clients, but into the, into the TV series. And I think they really liked that part of it. And this second go-round is going to have even more of that, which is like sort of animated explanations of some of the science of what we're talking about. So,

yeah, I think it became part of our strength when we pitched it. There's a lot of documentaries that have really gone into that kind of realm I've noticed, like especially the, they call it sometimes like the classic Netflix doc. It's either like highly, like with a lot of visuals and in-person storytelling, or it's mostly animated or like motion graphic type explainer type documentary series or episode.

So it's interesting seeing how that area has evolved. And you've kind of found a way that you can incorporate your corporate. side into that world as well. Yeah, yeah, I think, and also the way the world's kind of work together is we have such a tight team, like we have a group of people that have been working together for years and on the corporate stuff. It keeps us sharp, keeps us adaptable, and that's pretty unusual, right? Like usually TV series, it's a group of people that come together for the series and then disband.

But we're, it's the same team. Like we use the same team pretty much that we do for the corporate stuff for the doc. Yeah. Dealing with the TVO, like with a TV network, was that different than dealing with like your typical like corporate client? Time, big time. Yeah. It was different. I think it's, to be honest, it's actually way easier to deal with corporate clients.

I think it's because broadcasters get pitched so much. Like I imagine they get pitched multiple times a day. And so it's really hard to get through to them, to have them listen, to have them respond. And, yeah. So, yeah, it's actually, yeah, it's really hard to work with. And then they give you a. million notes. Corporate clients give you some notes, but not as much as a broadcaster who really wants to put their stamp on it. So I don't have a dream of ever pivoting away from corporate and

just doing broadcast. I actually really like the diversity that we have now. So we can have these projects in development. And if they don't go, they don't go. If they do go great, because the budgets are bigger. So you like that part. But if they don't. don't go, it's not your bread and butter, you can just keep shifting to your bread and butter. You sort of live in development hell, and it's easier to do that. If you were just a production company of documentaries, I think the Justid docs or TV series, I think, yeah, if you had a family to feed, you'd just have a lot of stress. This is a nice way to diversify. Yeah.

So then how did you maneuver your way around like, you know, again, dealing with someone that gets pitched on the daily and also like giving them giving you like a ton of notes? Like did you have to go through it or did you like, were able to like fight back and say like, no, I think it'll be better this way or? Like when they give you notes, you just pretty much have to do them. Like they. Yeah. Yeah, you can't. They, I guess they respect. Yeah.

Yeah. Like they respect if you have a strong opinion about something. Yeah, just like corporate clients. It's a bit of, like we just call it like armchair psychologist that you have to play. Like, are they going to listen if you push back or are they going to be insulted or like, who is this person? Will they appreciate that you know a little bit more in this particular area than they might? So, yeah, but usually when they give you a note, you just have to do it. Yeah.

Interesting. I figured because it's like TV and it's part of. like film and TV you could kind of like try to get your your way in sometimes like because it's more of a creative realm whereas like we're corporate it's like I mean it's their video at the end of I guess it's the same thing now that I think about it but I just always assume like I know I know I just because you know you you read stories about like directors fighting with the studio you're like I guess maybe it's a little different over there I don't know but I guess not I mean yeah there's a Canada America thing, I think. Like, in Canada, they don't step back as much for the creative

genius. I think in the States, like, if, you know, if you're a notable filmmaker, then everybody steps back and you just make the thing you want to make. I think when we're dealing with, it's no shade on TVO or CBC or anything like that. That's just kind of not how it goes. They know what they want and they know what works for their audience. So they're just going to tell you. Yeah. One thing I was curious about with that project is like what were the economics of it in terms of like, for example, figuring out a proper budget for something so big and especially with the amount of revisions that will probably happen from based on what you're saying and what ended up being kind of like the earnings at the end of the day. Like was it financially worth it for the business or was it more of a creative fulfillment? Yeah, that's a great question. And it's something that I thought about a lot because we all take those projects that we know will be nice on our portfolio, like where we can stretch creatively a little bit. So we'll take it.

And even if it doesn't make us too much money, it's a portfolio. I don't know if you guys think that way, but sometimes I do. Like, this is a portfolio thing. But you can't do a portfolio piece that's going to last two years. you know like you have to be able to pull some income from it and I had pretty serious talks with like my co-producer and director about this because you know yeah we want to make it look really nice and yeah we want to go to Singapore and all this stuff um but I was I had a pretty hard line like this is not a hobby like we're this is not like we have to constantly look at our cash flow and pull a profit from the And to be, yeah, and we did. We did. Not a lot, but it was enough.

It was enough that we wanted to do it again. It makes sense. And I think in the long run, the bigger ones, you'll probably make a lot of money. That's the hope. So was it more like, like you pulled a profit, but it was where you're able to actually like pay for a lot of the time and effort and everything. Like you mean by like all those expenses were covered, like crew working hours, post-production hours. post-production hours and stuff like that. That was all covered and you made a little bit, right?

Correct. Yeah. So like another nice thing, Carol, is like if you have, like I have, I have employees. Like I have in-house motion designers and editors and stuff. So I kind of need to keep them. And so the other good thing about a TV series is it's so long. And there isn't this, you know, we all fight these crazy deadlines all the time. right? I'm sure you do too.

Yeah. So this has one deadline way down the road. So we can have like our pipeline conversations about what we're working on. And if it's slow, well, let's work on nature of design for a while, you know? So it's also a diversity for that. And the people working on it, it's a nice creative project for them. Like it's much more, they can flex their creative muscle a little more than maybe the average explainer video. So those reasons, those diversity reasons are also important too.

Right. You know, hearing what you're talking about, you know, having the flexibility with that type of project to kind of fill in with when there's other work. That's actually one thing I noticed over the last year that those are the kind of projects you want to also find where they pay decently. but there's no strict, not that there's no strict deadline, but there's a very flexible deadline on when the work is going to be delivered. So it's not like you're competing with your other projects. You know, that way you can kind of like fill in the time a bit more strategically for when it's quiet. Because we've had a few of those projects over the last six months where we've had some flexibility on delivery.

So if like say an emergency video project came in where it's like, oh, this needs to, to be done in a week. We got to shoot it, edit it in a few days. We can put this one to the side for temporarily, focus on getting that done. But then we can go back to that other one rather than, you know, everything needs to be done all at once, right? Because that's when you earn the least money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's lots of metaphors. Like, maybe there's the farming metaphor of like, you don't just want one crop, right? Or maybe it's the money metaphor. You want like mutual funds and bonds and like diversity is good. Yeah, whatever, maybe.

You don't want that one, no. I think you want like a diversity of projects too, long term, short term, highly creative, kind of boring. Not boring, but like ones that you can not, they're not, yeah, they just kind of pass the time. Yeah. And diversity of timeline deadlines. You know, that's one thing not a lot of people talk about, right?

Diversity of timeline deadlines. key. Yeah, exactly. So we don't burn out and yeah, exactly. I don't know if you guys addressed us. I got kicked out earlier because of my. No, we didn't. We kept it going. One thing I wanted to ask is we had a guest on, I think last year where they do do like television series and reality shows in addition to the corporate, but he was he was mentioning that like those projects are so time consuming that he didn't have enough. time to take care of like the corporate work that he was getting so the clients would like drop them um i was wondering if i don't know how how extensive that uh tv doc series was but did you run into the

same issue or were you able to juggle both yeah another good question like we could we we we we might have i think it's possible that we lost customers like it's possible that are at any given week or month we were too focused on the TV stuff and not enough focused on our corporate clients like it is a tricky balance to make it's possible that's true I don't know that anybody would have told us so like oh we're we're not coming back because you guys are stretched too thin but um looking back what made you think that because uh like Dario mentioned like for him It was probably just like the time constraint was like that's all he can do like shooting and only focusing on that. Was it like you weren't able to make certain shooting schedules for these clients that made you think they might do that?

Or you just couldn't take calls? Because that's what would happen probably, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, I mean, when you lose a customer, I mean, I wish I always knew why. But even after all this time, I don't necessarily know why. but what I can tell you, I guess, is that, and I also don't really, like, measure turnover. I don't have, like, a dashboard that says, like, I'm at 53 and whatever. But I do find that we don't, it just doesn't feel like as high of turnover of clients as I used to have.

And I don't, and either that's because we're getting better at what we're doing or maybe we were too focused on the other stuff. Like, I'm not sure. I don't have a good answer for that. You probably didn't. It's just a matter of, you know, maybe the clients weren't needing as much content at the time. Whereas in the case of that one guest that we had, they probably had a more retainer type client that needed a lot of attention and focus on a, not daily, but it wasn't that. It wasn't that? I remember he, no, well, I remember he told us like those projects would take like weeks or months.

at a time. So like if you have a corporate client that needs like their web, their quarterly webinar and you're not available. Yeah, we didn't like that. And also you said reality show. Like that sounds way more demanding. Like ours was just like a slow and steady doc series that. Yeah, you had flexibility like picking up and putting down quite regularly. Yes. So you were fine. Yeah, Bridger, you were definitely fine. Yeah. So maybe my turnover was for another reason. Yeah. But yeah, it's like do you guys, I, before we got started on this podcast, we were talking about being both being busy. Like, do you have any theories about why right now? It seems like despite what people are saying about the economy, like we're quite busy. Like, do you know why you're so busy right now? It's not that we're so, so busy. Like we've, we've always just, been consistently okay every month, I think. Like, we get lucky every year. We'll get a client that'll like boost our numbers up and whatever. But I have been hearing through the grapevine that

it's a little hard out there. We haven't experienced too much of it, luckily. Knock on wood. But I don't know. We've always, we've had stuff come in, like just randomly. But we've also pivoted too, right? Like we've, like we've, you know, slimmed down our costs. We've, we've networked during like, you know, slow moments or whatever. And then that kind of came in, uh, either a couple months, a couple years later to kind of boost our numbers again. Um, yeah, I forgot what you were asking. What were you? I kind of zoned up for a sec. Like, well, I guess I was leaving. Yeah, like, I have a theory. have a theory about it. I just don't know if it's true. My theory is that corporate clients going back,

like maybe a year or two, got the idea that video was easier than it really is and brought it in-house. And then I feel like they're starting to see that their in-house teams are either too slow or, like, taking too long, or the stuff they're producing isn't that good or or it's just the resource thing of like we're doing one and then they're sitting around and that they and that all those companies that brought video in house are starting to see that that wasn't such a good idea and are starting to outsource it's just a theory I have well I think actually that that happened a couple of years ago I would say like at least two three years ago like people started I will client start noticing what you just said I don't think it's a recent thing though because I remember during the pandemic like they were using external vendors

and they might have thought to bring on their own in-house then they realize the limitations of in-house and well but also AI like I think a AI coming out is like a year and a half maybe or so like since it's really hit like the big time and that's where I'm thinking like that that business owners thinking, oh, well, we could just do videos using text to video. Like, we don't need to outsource this stuff anymore. I'll just get my marketing coordinator to make a video using AI. And as I think, wouldn't you agree, like, it's like AI video is not really a threat. It's still extremely difficult to create a video using just AI.

It's not there, yeah. Yeah, it's not there. and the thing people don't realize is that the time has to come from somewhere and from someone. If it's not a video professional and you want to get one of your people to be working on something, say theoretically, their marketing person to work on the AI content,

they're losing their time focusing on that rather than their actual job. So the business is going to suffer in other areas too. And to your point also about when they had internal people, a lot of companies hired those people thinking that they can do the job of a production company. But you can't have one person doing the job of three, four people, right? It's like even within a production company, it's hard to do a little

bit of everything, right? Like, your time gets pulled everywhere constantly, right? Like, over the last year and a half, two years, like, I've been doing a lot of the post production now, right? And because I've been doing that, because we've been trying to stay a little bit leaner, because this year has been really unpredictable, so we wanted to try to minimize our costs. I've been doing more of that. But, you know, most of my time now has been going into that versus other things, right? So now we're starting to kind of see, all right, what is like a good work, life balance for this role in the business versus that role. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Like I was even, I'll even call them out because Land Rover, I saw a TV commercial today for Land Rover. And,

They didn't even take out, like, the copyright bug that was at the bottom of, like, they, like, it's not formatted properly. It must have been sent to them. Like, the footage must have been sent to one from Europe because it's, like, in, you can see, like, the bars at the top and the bottom. And you can see where it says, like, copyright 2017. They didn't even. Yes. Yeah, if you look it up. And I said to my husband, like, they are, like, a little.

luxury brand and they can't splurge a few thousand dollars on a production company to fix up their stock footage like that's cheap like um so somebody's probably going to call them out on that and that's what i'm talking about is people are starting to see like okay video is actually still pretty hard to do and let's just leave that to the professionals um you know and uh and let's focus let's stay in our lane and I think more and more companies are starting to do that. I've been seeing some ads on Reddit because they've been doing more video ads on it and I could tell quite a few of them were like AI generated ads and oh my God it looks so bad but you know what like if I have some I was just thinking to myself too like if I have a client that asks us about doing it

I would just straight up tell them. It's like, unless your target audience is geriatrics, I would probably avoid it. Because the only people that really can't tell the difference are like, like my parents are in their late 60s, like, I know they would get fooled by that stuff and think it's real. So again, unless you're selling, I don't know, diapers are like one of those like safety buttons because you felt like I would probably avoid it. It would look so bad. Yeah, totally. Yes. Yes.

I saw another one like it was for a rental company. And if you pause it, they had a kitchen. And the cupboards were like, if you pause it, like, it was a full hallucination on the, like, on the photograph of the kitchen. The sink's tap went like right onto the, almost like it would have shot water onto the floor. Like the cupboards were super short, like impossibly short. And I imagine not many people are freezing the commercial to look at it. But again, the world is becoming quite aware of the limitations of this stuff and people are getting embarrassed or, you know, called out. And yeah, hopefully that's going to be the ripple for production.

I was actually thinking also that when it does get to be really good, it'll be just as expensive as hiring a production company because we're starting to see now with like the oil crisis and the energy crisis that it's crazy. expensive to keep this stuff running like every time people use these AI platforms that business is losing a ton of money like they're not they don't generate any profit it's costing them so much to generate these stupid videos so when it actually does get to be you very usable like those API credits or whatever the hell these people use like it's gonna it's gonna get expensive to use right I mean look look now with the shortage we have with like chips and like hard drives like that's gonna Like, energy is expensive.

That's just the bottom line. Generating video is really, like, SORA is out of business, right? I kind of, I'm kind of happy about that, right? Open AI closed it because they were losing millions daily, millions of dollars daily just to try to keep it open. And, like, yeah, as Dario mentioned, like, there's a chip shortage. So what people don't realize is that hard drives have exploded. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, that as well, but like just on the most base.

The money's running is the hard drives. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so I still feel pretty good about having a video production company. I think one thing that is exploding also is video. Like people don't want to read stuff anymore. Like the use cases for video are going up and up and up. And so, yeah, I think there's still lots of room for local production companies to

help people tell their stories. Yeah. Yeah. No, there's a lot of opportunity. I think it's just it's it always comes down to like pricing too. Like a lot of businesses need video content. I'm actually fine when they have their own in-house people to be honest to you because like we don't need to do all of a businesses video like they won't be able to afford it either. It'll just like suck them dry too because it's it's expensive to bring us in. but I think it's good for them to constantly be doing video and then when they want to do something a lot nicer and polished, then that's where we would fit in to that solution. So, yeah, I'm not against them like using like a little bit of AI, like their own in-house people and then just bringing us in when they need the bigger stuff done. Because even for us, like we won't be able to do a business's entire like video catalog if they wanted to do like consistent stuff because then it's like at that point we would have to just become like in-house for them, right?

Yeah, yeah. Like, do you ever, will you ever just do the shoot and hand them the raw footage? Or do you always want a production solution? No, I don't care what they want. If they want us just for raw footage, we just go and do raw footage. If they want us to do the full stuff, we'll do the full stuff. For us, it's not really a big deal. Do you do that too?

We do, but again, most of the time, the shoot day is kind of the last. leader like I would rather do the shoot in the post because that's we'll recover some of our costs like our shoot day when all is said and done is not that expensive like so um what did you mean by loss leader like you're losing money on the shoes it's like the Costco it's like the Costco hot dog kirole they use it to lure you in oh like i would like yeah Costco hot dog or the cheap milk at at shopper's drug mart, like you go in there to get the milk and then you end up buying all the expensive things that go along with it. For us, like, yes, we'll shoot, but that the price of the shoot is, it's priced out so that

we recover some of that cost by doing the post. Because we're fast and good at post, so we, so, yeah, so people will, you know, like we, a shoot day is a shoot day, but I think a good editor, why they're good is because they can do something faster. They do it just as good as somebody else, but they do it in half the time. And so that's how we can cover some costs, right? Because they don't, they'll still see the value of the post-production, but they just don't need to know that it took us half the time. Yeah.

If that makes sense. But I'm just curious though, if, like, because I agree, like a lot of the time production, there's like set rates that everyone is charging for and it's not like you're you're not making a lot of money on it but you're not exactly losing losing yeah we don't shoots right okay okay that that's what I wanted to clarify I think she meant in comparison to like in comparison yeah the margins are a lot higher on post I agree yeah like we we got hired by a company it was a really good day they were smart because what they did is they hired us for the full day and they had the most packed call sheet you've ever seen but they like you're like you're Like that's, and so they had their execs filing in and doing the holiday greeting and then doing the International Women's Day greeting. And then there was a go team Canada thing. And so they just wanted, they were just recording corporate greetings and this and that interviews. And then they were, and then they had a giant hard drive and we transferred it right there before we left. And that's their footage basically for the year. And that's pretty smart if you ask me, but it's not it's not the.

most profitable thing for us, but it's smart on their side. Yeah. You have to edit each of those videos. That's part of the thing you've got to pitch, right? That's my point. Yeah, like had we been able to edit each of those things, that would have been like some gravy for us. Yeah. But that's the funny type of content. You know, it's just like a little greeting because it's not really much editing. You're really doing. You're just taking that little package and then they probably just post it as like a quick snippet on their email or I don't know, something like that. Yeah. So, yeah.

Wouldn't have made a lot either. Do you charge for raw footage? Because I was chatting with a photographer, a friend of ours yesterday, and I was telling him for this project we have coming up next week. I was like, they might want the raw footage. And he's like, oh, do you charge for it? And I was like, for us, we don't because I was never able to figure out the right pricing for it. Yeah.

Because, like, for example, like, sometimes they hire us just for raw footage capture. I don't charge them for like what they could potentially create out of that. I just charge them for the day rate of us plus the sum pre and then like our project management fee, right? And I know some people don't like to give out the raw footage even if they're doing the full farm to table approach. For us, I really don't care. I'm like, sure, you want the raw footage here it is. Just make sure you download it. Don't ask me two years down the line if it's still on our Dropbox.

Yes. Yeah. So yeah, that's a tricky question. I agree. And there's different people with different opinions about it. Same with project files. Like clients will ask us for the project files, like how we built the video. And yes, I get.

That's the one thing we don't give out is the project. That's different. No, no, no, no, no. Raw footage, sure, take it, but project files. You'll even for frightening. It's our, it's our work, right? And they, like, we've done a lot of the legwork. with it. Like if they want the raw footage to create more content, they can do it. But to take the

project files, it's literally, it's then cutting us out of like the work that we've already done, right? Like we've had clients come to us years later where they said like, hey, can we update this video and change some things, you know, since you worked on it and then we can do that. But if they had the, our working files, then it's, then they, they can do it without us. Carol, what's the, you know, like companies like Facebook, they have like, like their core programming stuff, what's that thing called? Oh, the code. Yeah. But yeah, but they have a specific name for anyways if someone out there knows.

Yeah. Essentially like for an app. Like your specific code that is like the backbone for that whole app. Yeah. Like that's creative work. Yeah. Yeah, that's copyrightable. Like you can you can copyright that.

stuff so yeah yeah yeah um yeah i've heard i know it it it's it feels um uncomfortable like to share it but yeah we i never actually thought of it we share them yeah we put them in a folder and we'll we'll share it along with everything else when we deliver but um yeah you're kind of making me think about it. Maybe we shouldn't be so readily sharing. I think we share it and nobody uses it. Like, I bet you they say they want it and they don't know how to read it. But it's a very specific, unless they were asking for it, that's why they probably

won't use it. But if they start asking, we want the project file that you do so that we can do, it's like, okay, so you're basically saying you want us to give up like our creative work. Like, it's different. Yeah. So, but let's put it this way. Like, if that's in a brief. like if that's part of the brief and they say like deliverables you know three by five whatever like all and one of the deliverables is final project files are you telling me that you'd say like um not doing this project i'd rather die on that hill than do the project i would charge a little bit more if they want the project well yeah yeah it's not just something we're going to throw in at that point like the the raw footage we throw in because it's like okay we get it there's specific needs sometimes they need to archive content

you know, for future stuff. Like, I mean, I guess then you can make that argument. Also because I know our, we shoot in like 10 bit 4K. So I know those project, those video files are big. And I know what kind of laptops most of these people use. Whoa. So there's no way. They're going to be able to edit them on their like, you know,

what are those Lenovo track pad laptops from like, you know, 10 years ago? Good luck. Go for it. Wow. It's also like giving up all the Lutz. that we use are particular, like, not proprietary necessarily, but it's like, well, yeah, in a way, proprietary, because that's like our style of how we do things. It's like, you can't take our style and create your own content from that, right? But then I guess people can also make

the argument with that with raw footage as well, but then I don't know. With raw footage, it's hard to tell what you're charging for if you want to do that, whereas if they ask for the project files, it's like, okay, you want to basically, it's an interesting. interesting one, yeah. The project file thing is just because it's like, no, like I do want to funnel them into another project. That's really the reason. Where raw footage, the thing that broke my reasoning on it was that for not giving it out

was because, again, like, what if they just hire us for raw footage capture? Like, how do I justify the other way where it's like I charge them? Like, I just couldn't make it work logically. Yeah. It's very, it's a very tricky question. And people will argue like, hey, they're paying you. You should, they own everything. Like, you should, you are obliged to give them everything.

On the other hand, if you talk to like a wedding photographer, they'd say, like, no, I have packages. I'm not going to give you every single photo I shot so that you can manipulate. Like, you know, I sell a package and you get the 300 photos or you get the 600 photos or you get the 600 photos. or you get the 1,200 photos or whatever, but I'm just going to upload everything I shot. That's not a thing. The difference, I think, with wedding photographers is that image is everything.

And when people see other people's photos, they're like, oh, who shot that, who did that? If a wedding photographer provides their raw photos and then someone takes that and butchers the hell out of that edit, and then they'll be like, oh, that photo doesn't look great, who shot it, they'll say who it was, but it wasn't the way that they edited in their style. Whereas with corporate, a lot of the time,

you're shooting B-roll of facilities. It's not something so crazy different sometimes where they're going to be like, which company did this, blah, blah, blah, or they didn't edit it. Like that's not a conversation that happens really among corporate. They're like, oh, do we have... It's true, but you could argue,

you could argue, like if you did a series of three videos, and then they wanted your project files and your raw footage, and they were going to try and do the fourth. And the fourth one was ugly and looked terrible and was not made properly. You could argue that's a reflection on the production company. Assuming like it's all like publicized heavily, right? Like usually it's not. A lot of the time it's internal content.

So you're also kind of like. Yeah, who cares? I'm making an argument for it, but I give them everything. I give them the footage, the project files. I think if it's a pub. public facing piece of content that especially if they're putting money behind to promote it, that's probably where you should be a little bit stricter just for those reasons. And then you can make that argument.

It's like, hey, if you do anything else with it, it's not a representation of who we are. We have to protect our image. There's that aspect too, right? And I guess on your side, you do a lot of animation work. Yes. So if they get the project files, they can be like, what the hell do I do with this? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Yeah, because even if they give that to like another animation studio, they probably want to redo it anyways. So yeah, I don't even think they would use it that much. Yeah, yeah. Essentially the message is figure out what works for you and your business. That's essentially, you choose your own policies and die on that day as you called it. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And also like what the, like your knowledge of your particular client and what they're going to

to, like, if you know it's really going to irritate them or, like, you're going to lose them as a client if you don't do it, then I guess you have to do it. You know, but, yeah, it's a tricky one for sure. Yeah. Let's talk about that RFP we both applied to. We coincidentally saw that we both did. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my God, RFPs.

So there was this, for context, there's this website called Merks here in Canada and like government agencies just put our FPs out on it. And it's the first time we saw something for, I mean, we just started it up recently. And then I saw there was a video production one. And then I went to download the files and then lo and behold, I saw video production there as well, along with like 50 other companies from across Canada. So I guess just our experience doing this stuff for us on our end, it was our first time. And it was confusing as hell reading their documents. They had like a 50 page like...

Fifty pages. It was so dumb. Like I ended up going on... I just fed it to Gemini and I was like, I don't understand what it's asking me. Like, please tell me what I need to do for this. The grading criteria made me feel like I was back in school. Yeah, right. You're going to be evaluated.

Like the amount of detail you put into your company profile is worth 20% of your grade. And I'm like, what? Yeah, I know. I know you can really lose, like you have to, like, we, so I kind of go through these phases of I'll apply to a bunch of RFPs and then I'll sort of lose my mojo and like not want to do it anymore. Yeah. Because the ratio of getting them is really low. Yeah. But then it's sort of like a slot machine, I guess, in a way, like because every once in a while you do get one and you're like, oh my God. Like I remember I got a call from Health Canada, or was it an email?

It must have been an email. And I actually got the RFP. And that's what I felt like a slot machine. I was like, oh my God, this. It works. I'm a stranger. They don't know me. And they gave, like I always figure these RFPs are a little inside.

Like they're just putting them out so that they can, this is what we were talking about, that they put them out. But they really know already who they want to hire. Yeah. And you know how I know that guys is because. I'll keep everything anonymous, but I did have a client that hired me, hired me, and then afterwards said, oh, by the way, this is actually out as an RFP. Can you just, like, I'll flip it to you. Can you just do the basics and I'll just accept yours?

Such a shame that it was. I was like, oh, is that how it works? Okay. That's how hires were. like that. That's how getting hired sometimes works. Yeah. Like there's so many companies out there that post positions, but we all know that they

have an internal person there, but legally they have to put it out there and look for people, but they have everyone's like it. So it's the same thing with RFPs. That's why there's also a lot of potentially corrupt things that happen amongst a lot of these RFPs that are out there. Potentially or guaranteed. Listen, I'm being a neutral on the podcast. We all know what really happens behind the scenes.

Yeah. So, but I still, I hope springs eternal and all that. Like, as you know, like I put that in for FCC, but I, and then I don't think about it again. And I think, yeah, if they actually reach out, I'll be super surprised and I'll feel really good. Sometimes I have gotten a few. I got one from City of Toronto once. That was good. Nice. Yeah. A couple of City of Vaughn. I got from. about an RFP. But they also... Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I was just going to say, the good thing about doing these RFPs is that it gives you a little insight into what companies are looking for. Not necessarily every company, but every time we do one of these RFPs where they have certain requests, it's like, oh, they were asking for this.

This is actually not a bad thing to have in all of our standard briefs and our standard proposals. Because I feel like with proposals, you come up with a great... template or setup that you're going to be pitching for for months and then you just kind of don't think of it for a while right and then after a while like okay maybe we need to kind of refresh it a little bit like what else should we include do we get you get tunnel vision too because you're like this is what i this is what i think they will want to look for uh whereas like maybe they're looking for something else so after we did that FCC one we uh like the way we had to structure it for for their grading system like was I mean, it was excessive and like not practical, but we looked at it and there were like a lot of like pages that we were like, that were like, oh, you know what? This would be great to incorporate into our current proposal that we actually send out to like corporate clients and whatnot. So we did end up refreshing our, our main proposal because of that. So it was it was helpful, I think. Like even if we don't get it, I think because it forced us to rethink how we do our proposals, like it's pretty valuable in that sense, right? differently and to do it differently than you normally do just to kind of break that tunnel vision as you were saying, Dario, because yeah, you sometimes don't like once you have, every time you make a template, you think, yes, this is the one. This is it. And then six months later, you're like, no, this is not the one. This is garbage. How do we change it? But it's hard to do that once you feel like you've got

it there and it's been working for a little while. And then RFPs are a good kind of refresh to just be like, oh, I didn't think of maybe including something like this in our information or adding a little more details about who we are or whatever, right? Because yeah. And RFPs get easier the more you do them because they have the same recurring questions. Like your company bio and your team and all this stuff, all the stuff that you have to kind of statements that you have to create. Then you just kind of have them and it's easier. And I also just think in general, like I'm a big believer in just momentum. Like if just you got what's your plan B?

Like how what is the other thing that you'd that's better to be doing with your time for business development? If things are slow, then like, then it's worth doing because it keeps you busy, right? So, yeah, yeah, RFPs though. Not like, I would not. You sound like you're in that part where you were like, you've already done a bunch now. You just don't want to touch them for what to do. Exactly. Like, I would not build my whole business around getting responses to RFPs like that.

Some people, there's some people we know that do that. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how they're still around. I mean, like, yeah. The thing that in case people don't know, RFPs, the reason people do them is not just because they're good projects. It's just their massive budget. budgets a lot of the time.

And that's why it's like a lottery. You're not spending. Yeah. The other one was the one we pitched to was like two years. So imagine now you got a client for two years, guaranteed income. This is the diversity conversation again. Yeah. Like then you've got a long one that you could, that you don't have to hustle all the time.

You've got one. But yeah, the other thing is, and we've talked about this before, which is insurance. Like a lot of these RFPs, especially like the government ones, the levels of insurance. they ask for, like, if I was ever to land the RFP, I'd have to up my insurance by a lot. Right. Really? Yeah. Like, they have crazy kind of liability levels. And they ask for insurance that you, in some cases, you don't need. Like, I literally had my insurance agent call the client and say, this is not appropriate insurance for this project. Like, you don't, you, you've

misunderstood like this you know what they probably did they probably copied the RFP from another project yeah they did like I'm sure that's what they did some national defense project they just copied it over for their yeah yeah it was for architecture

it was a type of E&O that was for like building stuff and anyways so you got to weigh out all that stuff when you do RFPs yeah we might have not read that part we might have not read that part in lettatoes we might have not read that

part of that 50 page RFP. It's probably hidden in someone on page 33. Well, Daria, there was a whole section where it was like all the people on your team need to be cleared for like, like, I don't know, some, you know, maybe it was that security clearance type thing, you know, like everyone needs to be vetted on your team. And I was thinking, like, okay, let's just put you and I as the main people and then we have some contractors. But then they need that too.

So I'm like, so you're going to be. basically make every production company do some kind of clearance or I don't know vetting like an external vetting process like I don't even know how that would go I think Carol like thinking about it now is just a way to vet out certain types of production companies it's like we only want production companies of like this size applying to it yeah yeah yeah yeah because like those are the only ones I would have like for example for post like they wanted like a team member for each step each part like each potential part of the post it was like okay editor one guy like color

correction one guy like vFX one guy and i'm like sometimes these rules intermix like it's not going to be just one guys sometimes it's sometimes it's just one guy yeah sometimes it's like that meme of uh i forgot oh yeah tom cruise and pulling out the face the fake face from uh mission impossible sometimes it's just one guy doing all those yeah exactly are those or those short films where it's like the producer John Doe, director, John Doe, cinematographer, John Doe, assistant director, John Doe.

I know, but when all of a sudden done, that would be a fun project. Like when all of a sudden done, that was worth the 50-page RFP because, yeah, it would be really fun. The funny thing with that RFP was that they didn't have a specific project we were pitching for.

They were just being like, we just need to know who you are and what you're pricing and all this stuff. The pricing, you know what was interesting about that? So for production and post, it was, sorry, for like, free and pro production and then post, it was different pricing. But for production and pre, they didn't want to know what the exact numbers were. They just wanted to know the percentage mark up, which was so weird to see because I'm like, wait, so you want to know my margins on? Yeah, this might be not exciting for your viewers because we're talking about an RFP that they haven't read.

But that's what made me think that's not a real RFP. Because they're not even asking for real faults. They're just like, what's your markup? Like, that's not going to be helpful at all to anybody. I thought it was, I'm like, this sounds scammy almost. But then I looked into it. And apparently that's common with governments. Like they want to know, it's not common.

Usually you've got to do line by line. This is how much it caught. Like, I've never seen that. And I do a lot of RFPs. And that's why AI is. not accurate because that was that was a common thing like they want to know your margins maybe they have well I mean maybe they do want they obviously want to know the margins either way but they want to know the specific numbers but maybe they already had their live action people but they really

needed post people that's why they were very specific about the exact numbers oh you won't oh you might be right now that you mention it maybe they were looking specifically for post and or and I think we're definitely not getting that because we didn't pitch for post do pitch for production Well, it's because it's like they wanted to know each team members. Like, you don't need to know the specifics of our VFX person, who they are. What's their whole. They were asking for resumes for each person in post. That's why I said, we don't have time for this.

And we got to keep everything to like under 30 pages. I'm like, how are you going to do this? Like if you need like a resume for like each person, unless it's like you do this in like the normal 8 by 11 letterhead. And it's like, okay, I just squeeze in everything like font six. Fond five Do you have something? Sorry, some audio just Are we okay with audio?

Can you still hear me? Yeah, yeah, we're good, we're good, we're good. Something just cut out there, sorry. But yeah, with these government RFPs, like, I would just like to know, listen, who do I hand this envelope to? And it definitely doesn't have some money. It's Canada, come on, we know.

We know that's how things work here. Dario, someone got to them already. That's why the RFP was like that. I think they're at Young and Shepherd. We should have just gone to the office. Like, listen, I think someone dropped this envelope. Just remember, it was Daria from Laps that sent it. That found it.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. So, Bridget, what's on the horizon for you over the next few months? Like, what's any specific new, I mean, season two of the doc series or another big project that you're excited for? or what do you have planned to kind of weather the next year? So one thing that I've been noodling around a bit is personalized video and customized video,

like using, yeah, like a little bit of coding. You've probably heard of, you know, personalized video before. So I did come up with something and I don't see a ton of demand for it right now, but I think that's in the future, personalized video. That's one thought that I have. And then, yeah, maybe we'll get the doc. And, like, I like the ratio of live action to animation that we do. I think, I feel like the few, you know what?

Like, I had an office, as you guys know, and then I moved back home about maybe eight months ago or something, like over the winter. And it was, and now that it's springtime, I've rented an office two to. days a week. And so for the future, like, I think I would like to keep that up. Like, I was just trying it out. I've been going just for the past three weeks. And I think, like, a lot of people, the healthy balance is like some stuff from home, but also the ability to collaborate at an office. So if I can make the dollars and cents work, I would like to keep up that office that I've got because I think there's something about, yeah, something about mixing in person that is just different than being online.

And so a 50-50 balance would be good for me. That's kind of my whole, yeah. Is it like a rental desk, like desk rentals out of these like co-working spaces or is it like an actual office you're renting out? I'm sharing an office with another producer. And so like this type of collaboration, I love this stuff. Like you learn from other people. I never see people as competitors, but just kind of like we're all in this together.

And so I'm just, yeah, sharing a space. It's already her space. So she's renting me like space within her space. That's what I like. And it's actually at a studio. So we're around like lots of other creative type of businesses, which is also just, I don't know, just, I feel like things can come from that.

I don't know what it'll be, but yeah. What do you mean by personalized the videos? I know he also said coding. Like, what are you coding? Yeah, I was there. Yeah, so personalized or customized video is the idea of basically, well, we all know it from newsletters.

Like you can use your CRM, like your customer database, to personalize a newsletter, right? Like my letter to you says, hi, Kirill, and my letter to you says, hi, Dario. Well, you can do the same thing with video. It's, you can.

So you make a video that, like, and I'm talking not live action. I'm talking animation here, but you can, yes. So let's say, let's say one of your clients is a mortgage company and they've got a database of people that have mortgages.

So you could, theoretically, just through that basically the same technique, a mail merge, so to speak, you could send personalized videos that say, you know, hi, Dario, I hear your mortgage is up in April. Your rate is 1.3. If you renew now, we'll get it to you for 1.2. Of course, I'm making all this up. And then the one that goes out to Kirol says, you know, hi, Carol, your mortgage is due in June. And it just, just certain. key points of the video are slightly personalized. Okay.

So it's like a templated, like a templated video that you can customize for people. Yeah. So we kind of came up with, I wouldn't say coding. It's like a workflow. Like we've come up with a workflow. So we've cobbled together other people's software in a workflow where we can, we could do this. We don't have a customer yet.

We might have one customer that wants to do it. But I see that in the future. I'd like to, I want to see it where that goes. Do you want us to be a guinea pig? Yes, I would love that. Definitely. Yeah. You have a shoot coming up.

Get ready. Get all your gear ready. You have a webinar coming up next quarter. Yeah, exactly. Nice. Well, yeah, let us know how that goes. Hopefully it works well for you guys and is a good margin generator or profit generator. margin generator.

No, I don't know. Good margins for good profit. Yes, yes, yes. What are you guys up to? What do you think? More of the same? Or what do you think for the next love quarters? I don't know.

Like this year, I don't know. Carol, you go first. I haven't really thought about it. Well, this year I want us to kind of keep going with our consistency. at baseline, I want our consistency to keep going with laps. One of the things that we've talked about, and we're exploring a little bit more of is to try to find more outbound kind of in-person ways to, like, make new connections and stuff like that. I definitely want to make new relationships over the next year.

And that's on the lap side. This is also our second year now with our wedding video business that we've started. And that is something that's kind of filling in the cracks quite a bit when it comes to like, you know, like some of the slower times. So just also kind of getting used to that workflow between the two businesses and seeing kind of how they work side by side. And I think once we have this year where we're pretty much at capacity, it can help us start planning out things for the next year and then the year after.

Like where do we want to put a little more focus on? Do we need to hire more people for one business versus the other to kind of take care of things, you know, depending on on stuff? So the benefit is that we have the two that where it's like if it gets a little quieter with one, we have the other one to kind of support the other. Diversity. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing. Keeping the diversity going is one thing a lot of people in our industry needs to explore.

You can't have all your eggs in one basket. You can't win that one RFP and build your entire company around it because if that company is a thing. That's our theme. That's our theme for this podcast. Like diversity is good, right? Like in everything. Diversity of work. Diversity of income and diversity of timelines. All the stuff. Yes. Yeah. It's good. For me, I think this year finish updating the website, which is pretty much almost there. I just got to finish updating the blog posts. Because we did a complete overhaul of like all the main pages, which was, uh, long overdue.

So that's been done now just updating the blog. I would like to make more connections with other partners because I like being able to feed each other work. We have that going on with a couple of other partners, so I want to keep that going with different ones. Like there's an AV company. We collaborate with graphic design agency and photography studio, so increased the amount of connections we have at those places.

I think that's it. We've got to market. What's that, Carol? We also have other video partners across Canada that's... Oh, video partners too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's probably one of the biggest, not the biggest revenue stream,

but it's like one of the, surprisingly, one of the biggest external things that is feeding us work, aside from like our own SEO, our own word of mouth or anything like that, is when other production companies need production, support in the city. So that's what we're trying to continue to expand. Yeah, this podcast has definitely helped a lot with that. Like people, I've had people say like, oh, why do you, why do you do it? Like,

the numbers aren't great. I'm like, well, you know, we made a lot of money from it. Not through, like, subscribers or viewership numbers, but like indirectly, like the connections we've made, got a lot of money out of that. Like, this thing's paid for itself many multiples over because of Yeah, no doubt. And it helps with SEO, no. Does it? This, I think it does a little bit. Like, RSEO is so weird. Like, I think earlier this year we took a hit and then now we're bouncing back.

And then I think in 2020 through we took another hit. Like, I don't understand how it works. Like, it's random. Does the podcast, I don't know. I don't know because if it. I don't know. Because if it did, why did we take those hits those two years, right? Like, I don't know how Google does its whole ranking thing.

I know on Maps, we do really well. But on the main page, we, like, I think late last year, we were on the top, we were on page one. And then mid to late January, we dropped to, like, page. It was crazy, Bridget. So we went from, like, yeah, we got to the finally at the bottom of page one, which I was like, fuck, finally, after all these years, right? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah.

And then we dropped like a crazy amount. I don't know what happened. We went to like page like 12. I'm like, oh shit, they did an algorithm update. Yeah, they did some update, right? And then it took a while. Actually, that prompted me to start revamping the website again because I was like, okay, we got to, I've been putting it off for a while.

Now I've got to finally like, you know, do it. Roll up my sleeves and edit this website. So did that. And then we slowly started crawling back. And I think now we're, I think you and I, we're pretty much like ranking around the same. Like, yeah, wherever that is, either like page three or page two, I don't know, one of those two. But we're slowly going back up. It's weird because like, I don't know how it works.

It's just random sometimes, right? Yeah. Like, do you remember I called you because I was on chat GPT and I was trying to figure out pricing on something? And so I asked chat GPT about video production company pricing and your pricing came up at lap. production like it said as a little tag. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I feel like I called you just to say like this is super public. Like do you care and you didn't care?

Yeah. So I don't know how it got out there. I guess it must be public. I guess you're, I don't know, your pricing must be public or something. I have it on a page there and I guess it ranked because not a lot of people were doing it at the time. Yeah. I'm cool with making a public.

Kiro's the one that's like, oh no, for this we should hide. I'm like, all right, all right. For the wedding company, we did publicize it. For which for our laps pricing? Yeah, like I wanted to actually make it more out there for something. But I'm like, maybe it doesn't work that well because everything needs to for corporate needs to be like so customized. Yeah, it varies a little too much.

I do have it there just so people can get a small sense of it. It's a baseline. So for the like that's all you can do. It says a starting point like in the corporate space. It's like videos will probably start. I put three tiers and I'm like, look, you got entry. If it's just basic like this, it'll be this. If it's whatever.

And then, yeah, I do put the disclaimer. It's starting at that price. But I know for weddings, we did make it public finally because we were chatting with this planner. She was giving us some tips on our company and whatever. And she was mentioning how like Gen Z or whatever that gen is called. New Gen Z. new gen the young ins she mentioned how they want to know

they don't like hunting for pricing so if they can't find they'll just like go to the next company and I was like okay let's try it out and I actually even opened up a new page called packages and it's on the header so then they can just click through it and then see right away what the pricing is and I actually did have people reach out directly from that page because I have a contact form

right beneath that so I'm like okay I guess it's working And if it's not, I guess it's betting out the people I can't afford it. But for weddings, it's easier because it's all productized almost. So you can, like, it's basically going to be like that pricing or whatever. Exactly. Yeah. Also, I remember last year, a photographer friend of ours, we were talking about having pricing public on the website. And he's like, he has a public on his website.

He's a wedding photographer. And I was like, but why do you do that? He's like, look, if Rolex publicizes their pricing, who am I to say I'm more expensive than Rolex that I don't have to put it on my website? I'm like, okay, that's a good point, right? That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think the filtering out of people that can't afford it is, it's hard to measure the cost of like your time being wasted and like having proposals. And then somebody just like, you know, like how do you measure that? So it is better just to filter out maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Especially with a product-sized service, like you want the sales process to be as smooth and quick and least time-consuming as possible because it's like this is our process. This is the way there are people who don't want to do it or hum and hoff for too long.

It's like those aren't those aren't people you want to focus on. You still have to fill up your schedule. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. Yeah, pricing's tricky. I just took a look on Google because I just took a look on Google because I. I don't use Google Chrome too much on my computer right now. And, Bridget, you're right now on page three for video production Toronto.

Yeah, but are you are using a clean browser, Carol? Yeah, it's a clean one. I'm not signed in or anything like that or anything like that. Did you use it? Did you use it before? For this, no. Okay. Are you an incognito?

I use Microsoft Edge. Do it now. But I said it so that every time I close it, it wipes the whole thing. That's like the only way to like really check. Doing it now like this, Dario, you and I, LAPS production actually is at the bottom of page two right now. And B, you're on the middle of page three right now. But Key West went down. Yeah, that's our competition too, Key West.

Yeah. But Key West must do some magic because they're always on the first. first page. I think they've just been there for a long time. Yeah, there's something to be said for that. Backlinks. But yeah, SEO is another thing that I, like, I get interested and get competitive and I want to get on the first page. And then I lose Steam. And I think, oh, I'm never going to figure this out. And then I just leave it. But I need to get back. I definitely need to. Like, but do you think SEO matters anymore with all the different AI platforms? Like does search, is search relevant? Yeah. People are still looking for reliable production companies.

And a lot of, especially corporate, where else are they going to go? Like, corporate clients are not searching things on Instagram for clients, right? They're checking Google. They're looking at companies and they're trying to make a list of good options

that they could reach out for. So, I mean, like, Daria, like, I think most of our leads have come in through Google and SEO, right, at this point? Yeah, that's where we get the majority. I don't think we get like we get like under 5% referrals. The majority is is SEO. SEO, but like, because like I've had more than one customer when I asked them like, how did you find us?

And they say, well, I went on chat GPT and said, what's a good production company in Toronto? And chat GPT. They get it from Google. right? They get it from Google. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

They're analyzing the internet and the leads. So chat chitpd also uses Google's. Okay, okay. Yeah, I got to up my game then. Yeah. It's okay. It's not something you need to do like every single day, but come back to it every now and then. Yeah.

Yeah, page three. I should at least. Okay, now my new goal is to get ahead of you guys. You are. I'm seeing you, okay, so I'm using Microsoft to Edge, incognito, and you are bottom of page two, and we are page three, middle of page three. Here you go. Oh, so I guess it's in reverse.

So maybe we got to get into the unit. God knows how it works. Okay, the competition is odd. The competition is kicking in now, yeah. Yeah. Who cares about this stuff? long as we're both working. Yeah, I think if you do good work, probably the algorithm is smart enough just to just, that's

sort of what I think is. If you do good work, a lot of people are clicking and staying on your page because like they're looking at nice videos that you've done and they like them. And like, you can't game the system too much. Like, then if you're doing good work and people are checking you out, like the algorithm is smart enough just to favor those companies, uh, somehow, you know, and I don't know, except I think it changed. all the time and there's things of course that you can do. I do certain things, I do certain things just for the backlink. Like, I've actually taught a course just because I knew I'd get a backlink.

Yeah, because I wanted that. Dot,edu. Like, I told them, like, I would do it as long as they linked in my bio, my website. And so I'm still sitting on a university bio. That's really good. Yeah, so that, because that's a pretty valuable backlink, but I do certain things to get a backlink, but. Yes, I know. Good reviews.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And apparently, you don't need perfect reviews. You need good reviews. Like, I don't know if anybody's ever given you like a mediocre review or not, but. No, we've gotten five stars. I don't know if they heard that knock on wood. We did have one guy recently.

I think it was a crazy, I think for sure was a crazy person. They gave us a one star. Yeah. But we had never worked with them. We never worked with them. It was just a stranger on the internet. He said something, oh, this ad sucks. And I'm like, who is this guy?

So I think it was, but I checked out their profile. They're crazy because they did that to a bunch of different businesses in different cities. So I reported it. I had Carol report a bunch of our friends reported it. And it was gone. It was gone, eh? So my story is, like, I have a perfect five-star review except for, you'll, if you go on to my reviews, what you'll see is you'll see somebody gave me one star and that I wrote underneath.

Oh, yeah, I see it here. Thank you. It was a pleasure working with you. Don't say the person's name. Is there a real person? Do you know them? Yeah, it's a real client. So what happened was, this is a true story.

I did a video for them. They loved it. They gave me five stars. Then I stupidly didn't invoice them until later. sent them the invoice. They didn't pay it, didn't pay it, didn't pay it, months go by. I started to, I say,

I'm going to send a collection agency, like I don't know what else to do here, called the owner of the company, and then they then went in and gave me a one star. And then claimed that they didn't want to pay because the service was bad, blah, blah, blah. But it was months later. And so, and then they never paid me

and they went bankrupt. And so I became a creditor. on a giant, like, because when you're a creditor, you get to see who else they owe money to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I saw the creditor list, which they were ripping people off, like, for half a million dollars. Like, I was way at the bottom of a giant list. Yeah, you weren't the biggest thorn at their side at that point. No, but that's bad, right?

They're, and they called me at one point. The owner of the company called me an appellate. It was a woman-owned business, if you can believe it. And she called me and she said she was sorry that she didn't pay me. She felt bad. And I said, well, I mean, I said to her, do you also, like, go into restaurants, have meals walk out without paying and then call the restaurant and apologize? And she said, well, you can write it off. And I said, writing it off doesn't mean I don't, like, it doesn't help me at all.

I'm not running a charity here. Yeah. And writing it off. means nothing. I still didn't get paid. And number two, you gave me a bad review. And she goes, oh, that was blah, blah, blah, a person's name. You'll still see his name on the review. Some random employee. No, that was the, she was the owner. And this was the person I worked with. And so she said, I can't make him take it off. And I said, this is worse than not paying me, because this one star is going to follow me for years. And now I officially don't have five stars.

So if nothing else, if you're not going to pay me at least reverse the bad review. And she said, oh, I can't make them do anything. You know what you could do? I think if you replied to it, it might not work. But I mean, if they're probably not even using that email anymore, why don't you just report it? Say, like I think when we were reporting that one, he said stupid in the thing. So I just put harassment as the reason. Yeah.

But I think, honestly, I don't even think Google has real people anymore. So even if you put like, just put like it has sexual content or harassment, it might automatically like remove it. I didn't even double check this stuff. At the time I made a complaint. But like they're real customers. They're entitled to their opinion. He would have an equal argument saying I got bad service. So I'm never going to get.

He removed. He removed his description because it says edited here. It just says one star, so it doesn't even explain anything. Yeah, he removed his description, because the description used to say, great, like, excellent, like, whatever. Bridget, just reported. Just say, like, there's harassment. They won't take it down.

Try, try now. Maybe. Because everything, you can't even get, yeah, you can't even get through to a real person on Google anymore. They're probably not even checking it. Just put, like, choose one of the bad reasons, like harassment or sexual violence. Like something like that, they'll immediately. just remove it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I should. Because yeah, but if you get a couple of your friends to also do it, because if they see one, they might not do anything. But if they see like multiple people for the same reason reported it, they might remove it. Yeah. So I would like to get my five-star review back because I do think the algorithm favors like the

highest review status, right? So if they just favored the amount of reviews from what I understood. So the amount of reviews doesn't matter if you have some negative ones. I think because they look at the average too. Right. And then the amount. Yeah. Like realistically, you're fine.

But yeah, like everyone on your team or even like friends and family to just report it. And if they get enough people reporting this, they're going to be like, okay. So something must be up with this review then. Yeah. Yeah. That's my only client that didn't pay me. I've had other people that took a long time to pay me. But I've never had anybody fully.

default except for those people. That's great. We've never had, I mean, we've had a lot of knocking on woods this episode. Yeah. We haven't, we haven't had that. I called me. Like, she called me to apologize for not paying me, and that's what I told her. I was like, and I said, like, how do you not see this as stealing? Like, you had me do a video,

you're using it. I can't stop you because I delivered it. And you think you can just call me and apologize? Did they use it on YouTube? No, no. It was actually. on their website it was um yeah it's on their website and you have to click a button to get to it it was it was a sales thing but uh anyway had one dmca removed from google we had one client like like 10 11 years ago like back when we were just starting out where we created this whole like uh it was like a it was like a discussion video panel discussion between people and the client was uh

wasting months not paying us and then telling us yeah checks in the mail it was done through an agent it was done through an agency so yeah company and event they uh they didn't uh it's funny like it won't say what what they did but anyways one of the guys at the panel that day he had like these like gold cubes a bunch of them right and i remember at the time gold was worth a lot less back then people right so i remember he told us the price of each cube and I remember telling Carol I'm like hey six of those would pay for this shoot they would giggled about that anyways we finished the video deliver it and we don't get paid and months go by and then we're talking to the guy that hired us and he's like oh because he started ghosting us so we got in touch with the financial

department and then they're like oh because so much time has passed we can't pay you. They said six months have passed so we so we don't have to pay you now. It's like we don't have to pay you. I'm like what fuck you talking about? So I got in touch with the client directly and I said, hey, this video is public on not your YouTube. I was like, you guys got to pay us.

So, or I'll just do the, I'll just report it saying we haven't been paid for this video. It's a copyright strike for their YouTube. Copy that. Yeah, we can do copy. Oh, good for. for you. I thought you were going to say you got paid in gold. I wish. Hey, if we did, that would have been worth, oh my God. So much now. By now, that would have been like, we would have made, that would have been better than stock market returns. Yeah. But that's why I was asking if, if that client posted it on YouTube, because then you could have just done the same thing, filed a copyright claim and then they would be scrambling to get it taken care of. Yeah, yeah. But that client that was supposed to pay us, if I said the name, you guys would go, like, there's no way. The big, really big.

Off-crising how they drop the ball. Off-screen will tell you. Off-the-screen? Yeah, when this podcast ends, we'll tell you. Mine, too. Mine was, I'll tell you off-screen, but it was a finance company. Like, downtown, they had beautiful offices on Bay Street. Yeah, same with ours. They went bankrupt, right?

You said they went bankrupt? Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. And so vindictive to, like, not only steal your project, but also the gall to give you a bad review for it to give you a bad review, just because you wanted to. get paid. Like, that's a level of petty I've never seen in this industry. Oh, I wouldn't have let that pass. I would have, to this day, I would have done something. Oh, yeah. I mean, I was mad.

I thought about going to their office. The only thing I did that I kind of regret is they did another video that we did for them that they did pay for because I had worked with them a number of times. It was about- And you worked with them already. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And it was about International Women's Day because again the owner of the firm was a female and so he posted it on LinkedIn saying like

we support I would I would have commented Wow I did so that one I couldn't take so I commented saying like you're this is hard to take given that you've ripped off a female run business wow

it's that you would use the video we made when you've done this and I kind of put it right on his on his LinkedIn post which was dumb like that was impulsive and I shouldn't have done it and of course he just deleted the post and then blocked me so no I don't even so but that's the only thing I did that was kind of my god yeah you should have just kept like making me angry on your behalf like I know like I want to go I want to go to help you with this let's get back at these guys it's been 10 years but but but The money's money, you know, we don't forget.

Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. It's not even about the money, it's the principle. It's like the fact that the thought process went in their head is shocking where it's like, oh, you want me to pay you? No, I'm going to give you a bad, I'm going to change the five. That's the other thing. Change the five star review I gave you into a one star review. That's just incredible.

I heard a story once where some guy got a one star review and it was because the client thought that one star made. I'm like, wow. Like in school and you get like a star. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, my God. Maybe it's a loading screen, you know, I start with one, then two.

One and then slowly move it up. No, it's like, you know those like bakeries? Like they give you like the little ticket and they stamp it. It's like after five videos, they'll get the fifth star. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's funny. That's so funny. Yeah.

All right, guys. Let's, let's end it off here. Yeah. You know, today's a fried. of a long weekend and then after the long weekend's over I'm off on holidays so you guys this is like my finish line of a really long yeah so I'm so happy to wrap it up this way yeah I got to shoot tomorrow that's the problem with weddings their weekends yeah but you know the good thing is I always joke with my girlfriend I save a lot of money when I shoot a wedding because I'm not out with

her spending money yeah I think they get to eat their food too it's funny it's funny Like when wedding season ends and I start taking her out on Saturdays and whatnot, I'm like, wow, I forgot how much this costs. What are you guys doing? That's so expensive, Dario, Jesus. Dude, you go eat. You go eat and it's like two people. It's already like 40, 60 bucks. You're like, God damn.

Like, I barely ate anything. I'm still hungry. Can't you, like, can't you fool her into thinking you're taking her out to dinner and just bring her like one of the wedding meals or something? Like, how it's like. You know, there was a period, I think a year or two ago, like. Because I would eat as soon as they had the antipastate bar open, right? Because you haven't eaten all day. You're like, fuck, I'm hungry.

You get full and then you're not in have space for the mains that come out later on, right? So occasionally I would just like if I did if I had a lot, I would just put it in a little box and bring it home for her, right? Yeah. I don't know what happened. Like some DJ saw me doing that one time. He told the guy I was shooting for. And then the guy told me not to do it. I'm like, oh, okay.

Like, apparently that's bad. apparently like wasting food is a lot better. I don't know. Make that work. Life is expensive, hey? Yeah. Triple-in stay gone. Anyways, I'm really glad to wrap up my week with you guys.

Thank you very much for having me. It's always so nice to touch base and the fact that it's being recorded on a podcast is an extra, I guess. But yeah, it's always a pleasure to catch up with you guys. Always a pleasure. Learn from you. And you as well. Learn from us. We're learning from us.

you, Bridgett. Oh, well, we'll have to go do ramen again. We did that. Oh, yeah, yeah, I forgot about that. It's been a while. All right, let's end it off here. So, guys, if you want to check out Bridget's website, it's B, as in like the insect B, B, B, B, video production.

Production or Productions, oh my God. Productions, plural. Productions.com. And then I'm guessing social, same thing. Or do you have a different handle? Yes, Instagram. Don't go on my Facebook. I don't, it's a mess.

Do people still use Facebook or? I don't know. I hate Facebook, but Instagrams. I think it's the same people that fall for AI videos that use Facebook nowadays. But LinkedIn I love, so you can catch me on LinkedIn for sure. Yeah. Find her on page two or three of Google. Right.

Google. Under video production Toronto. I'll see you on page one. All right. See you at the top. Okay. Take care. All right.

Thanks for just. 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.

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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.ca. 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 going to have a real good time. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.