Creatives Grab Coffee - #117 Winning on Trust in a Crowded Market (ft. Offbeat Creative)

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Gabe Nazario, founder of Offbeat Creative in Jersey City, joins Dario and Kyrill for a candid, tactical conversation about the business of video in the New York metro. He built Offbeat on the side of producer and editor roles at Fox, Disney, and JP Morgan, then went full time once the profit matched his salary. In this episode: growing slowly and hiring deliberately, why a lean 1099 crew sometimes scares clients, treating AI consulting as an SEO play, the tools that speed up the work, chasing simple-deliverable retainers, and why in a market where everyone makes good videos, you win on trust and follow-up.Guest: Gabe Nazario, Offbeat Creative (https://www.offbeatcreative.co/)Chapters: 0:00 Intro 1:19 Meet Gabe Nazario and Offbeat Creative 2:07 From Fox, Disney, and JP Morgan to going solo 5:09 Making the leap from a corporate job 8:51 A lean core team plus 1099 crew 10:26 Why a small team spooks some clients 12:29 AI consulting as an SEO play 16:39 The AI tools Offbeat actually uses 28:32 Social media: phone-tier content and volume 33:08 Corporate and commercial: the bread and butter 35:00 Chasing retainers for a monthly pillow 42:30 Google reviews, SEO, and the 70/30 split 45:31 Take the one-off 46:59 Jersey City vs New York 49:41 Competition and winning on trust 53:14 The sale is closed on the hello again 1:01:42 The story behind the name OffbeatCreatives Grab Coffee is a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov and produced by Lapse Productions (https://www.lapseproductions.com/).

Hello, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Creators Grab Coffee. Today we have Gabe Nazario from Offbeat Creative, and he's based out of Jersey City, New Jersey. So, Gabe, welcome to the show. Yeah, thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. Yeah, and again, we've had New Yorkers. Now we have people from New Jersey coming on.

We're slowly expanding across the New York State. But I guess just let's just start off with a quick history lesson. and tell us about you and how you got into the industry and a little bit about your company. Sure. I'll try to make this as quick as I could. It's a long story. You can make it long. We're doing a podcast. So you can dive deeper into it if you want. All those secret details. We need to know them. I won't give you all of them. But no, I, you know, I, like a lot of us did, I started in school, right? I went to school in Rutgers, Newark, not too far. from Jersey City for film and video production, right, was there. And that was what I wanted to do. I had a passion for it. And thankfully, I was part of a generation that, you know, was, we were still somewhat special. We were still very, very kind of like, not a lot of people knew a ton about video.

There wasn't AI. And so when I left college, people needed video producers. They needed editors. It was extremely rare, right? And so I jumped right into New York, and I got into New York, and I was able to land really awesome roles. I was a producer-editor at Fox for four years. I left and I started a full team, essentially, at J.P. Morgan. J.P. Morgan had a brand-new content studio that I was essentially part of. It was almost like this, like, startup experience, but in a really, really well, you know,

a managed bank, which was so strange. but I was there for two years running a video team. And then since then, I've bounced to like two or three other places, mostly startup based. And within that whole journey, I was building offbeat. The offbeat was always on the side. It was always a freelance thing. I was picking up clients left and right,

doing smaller projects that turned to larger projects. And I eventually hit a crossroads where I was actually working for a large company at a corporation. and I was able to kind of make that decision, right, where a job came to me and it was massive and I was extremely excited about it, but it would essentially mean that I would have to fully leave my corporate job. And at that moment, it was like the crossroads of, okay, do I do this? And thankfully, I did it. And, you know, five years later now, I've been, you know, running offbeat growing slowly but surely every year. And like you said, we're in Jersey City. A lot of our content

and our clients are mainly in the East Coast, but we travel all over the place, depending on the project and the need. So it's been a fun journey. Nice. Before we continue, what year was it that you graduated school and then moved into the space?

So I went to school 2012 to 2016. So 2016 is when I graduated. So not too long ago, but with AI and everything that's happened, it feels like it's been like three decades, even though it's been one, you know? I mean, a decade is still a decade. Like, it's crazy how much. Yeah.

It's like phases, you know, I feel like, because we graduated from school around 2016 as well. We started lapsing like 2014. 2014. 2014 is when we started the business, but 2016 is when we graduated school. So I always see it in like phases, you know, it was like 2016 to 2019 was, you know, the early years. then the 2020 to the 2023 was like the COVID years and then 2020 to now is like the AI years you know it's like different three year stints almost at this point right it's kind of crazy so true who knows what's going to come next I'm sure it's going to be something we're not expecting for sure

hopefully hopefully something not bad something good you know let's have some more good come out something that doesn't replace us yeah we'll be good so when you were making that transition the corporate to your own company. Like, that's a big step. And it's very difficult for a lot of people to make that leap, you know, from leaving a safe, you know, safe job to, you know, running your own thing. And like, of course, you said it was that one particular job that kind of pushed you through.

Was there any other factors like a runway? Did you see in terms of work that was coming in that made you confident? Like, I'm assuming that's kind of what it was. Yeah. Yeah, there was one, you know, big moment. but there was years of runway that happened, especially in those probably like two years, you know, 24 months-ish, like prior to that job.

It was writing on the wall. I ended up hiring somebody as like a part-time producer while I had a job just to help run the things that I couldn't run because of the other job. And it was just like, again, it was a safety net. I was like I just, I liked the paycheck. I liked the health insurance. And it's like I liked all of those things.

And I was like, I still want offbeat to run properly. And there became a point where it was, it would have been a risk. And so instead of leaving, I just, I hired somebody else to help run it with me. And she's still here with me today. So, so yeah, it was definitely, there was a, there was a good runway before I made the jump. That's interesting. I've never heard of someone running their, their production company while working full time at another one, you know, almost like the full time business is also on the side in a little. in a way a bit.

Totally. Yeah, it was fun and an interesting time. Tell us a little bit about, like, growing the company, right? You started off yourself, left your full time, now you're running the thing. How did you grow it to what it is today? Yeah, I mean, for me, it was little by little, right? And by design, again, like I just explained to you how I hired somebody. still having a job. Like I could have went full blown. Let's just do this. I'm going to hire you and I'm

going to quit my job and I'm going to solely focus on offbeat. But I don't know, whether call it like how I was raised or just like my risk tolerance, whatever it may be, I did it slow and steady to a point where I was able to essentially match what I was making at a corporate job with what I had at offbeat, solely off of like profit and that felt right to me to say okay i'm going to move on even though there's still a lot of risks but but there was this slow and steady nature to it like i said in the intro i always had a side job no matter what i was doing whether it was at fox jp morgan i didn't mention this in the beginning but i worked at disney i was always doing something else like no matter what so like every day after i logged out at 5 p.m i opened that same computer

and I had a side job. It didn't matter what day. And so I was very busy and that took a lot, right? It took a lot of effort. It took a lot of like mental just focused to say like I am going to do the best I could at this specific corporate job. But then I also need to make sure I have enough in the can for when I have to go and do, you know, go edit for three and a half hours tonight for a separate job that I was,

thankfully making money on. But yeah, it was, it was a. a hustle, a slow and steady hustle. So how big is your team now, like, or even the company itself? You mentioned you had someone that has been with you from the very beginning, and now that you're in it. Like, how, what is the structure of your business in that regard? Yep.

Yeah. So it's quite small still. And again, by design, truthfully for myself. So right now it's myself who I very much am in the weeds, right? I'm managing the company. I'm going to shoots. I'm making sure things are running properly at shoots. I'm directing sometimes.

And then I have my producer who essentially is with us full time. She is managing all kinds of things. She's working on budgets. She's emailing people. She's sometimes running her own shoots. She's a very interesting flex person who is essentially like a production manager producer type. And then I have a full time editor. And that's it.

Those are the three. everybody else falls in the 1099 world right and um you guys know everybody else who probably listens to this knows like that is that is how it runs like i i have i go to shoots every other week and there's a different shooter there because it's just based off of availability but also based off of what the shoot entails right there's a shoot that i have next week that's strictly you know shooting on a phone that person is different than the person who's going to go shoot a commercial with me in three weeks. So it just kind of depends on the ask. But yeah, a lot of 1099s, a lot of contractors that have been with me for five plus years. You know, I lost the pitch recently because

I told the lead that how like, you know, it's usually very small team and then we scale up and down based on the project. And they got so like worried about that. They're like, oh my God. It was like a red flag on on their end right and I was like well like no one's going to hire a full-time makeup artist a full-time audio operator for the shoots right that's not how that works that's so funny I had to explain it but I already knew the the sale was lost at that moment I could just sense it oh my god it's a waste of time now but I was shocked too that's the first time in like over 10 years that I actually got an objection to that they're like oh what do you mean we're about liability.

They're like, what if you don't pay them they can come after us? I'm like, well, we've been in business for over 10 years. So what is that?

That's such a bizarre concern. If we were, if we don't pay them? If we were that kind of business, it would have already come up by now. Like what? Yeah. Interesting.

I don't know. Yeah, that feels strange to me. I guess they just don't, don't fully know the world. I mean, that's how a lot of even big agencies work too. Like,

yeah, there's amazing agencies in New York. But 70% of their workforce is, is either contract their contractors or their permalancers. Like they have zero equity in that company. They are just walking in, checking in, checking out. It's the same exact thing. I think the issue was we had the word.

I think the issue was we had the word because this was right after we had done this government RFP. So some of the slides I had copied over had the wording that the government wanted to see. So I had subcontractor as the title. So I think that's what kind of threw them off. So after that, I was like, well, I'm getting rid of that. I'm never going to use that word again, you know, and just keep it kind of like, you know. Just put team.

We just put team. Team. This is the team for your project. This is the team for your project. They don't need to know under the hood too much. Yeah. Nope. Nope.

I agree. That's funny. I'm checking out your website. And under services, I see two things that I want to kind of go into. Social media being the first and AI consulting. Maybe let's start with AI consulting. like tell me a little bit about how you're offering that to your clients or leads yeah i mean it's it's something that it kind of falls in this line of of of consulting and then also kind of twisting

it back to us helping them with you know whatever that creative content ask is and so just explaining to them you know for instance again social is an amazing space to utilize ai in a specific way, in a creative way, right? Being able to go out, shoot a specific call, let's call it a podcast, right? You're shooting a podcast. It's an hour-ish long. You can, of course, have an editor cut this up into 10 pieces of content. You could also have AI do that, right? And that is, I don't want to call it mindless, but it's extremely simplistic for an AI to give you a, hey, here's 10 ideas for a video of a 60-minute podcast. We're using AI.

We're telling them about it. We're explaining how we're going to use it. But we're also making sure that, like, the human element is a part of that. And so that's typically what we're doing when we're talking about that. And is it, okay, interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So it's less about, like, hey, you pay us to consult you to use AI properly.

It's more about, hey, we can. can we can use AI in a specific way for your content need is usually how I how I spin it. So it's more so like a tool that you incorporate when you're providing content to clients in that regard more so? Yeah. Yeah. And truthfully, deep, deep down, what you're seeing there is just SEO play. So. Okay. Okay. It's throwing AI, throwing consulting, throwing kind of the combination of those things on a website is just based off of making sure people can see us and understand, oh, okay, like, these guys are new and up-to-date and fresh, and they're not, you know, this, like, older production company who doesn't mess around with AI.

That makes sense. Hey, if it works for the S&P 500, why wouldn't it work for you, right? Just throw AI in there. Stock goes up. Exactly. It's not a bad idea because, I mean, yeah, like, I mean, I feel a lot of people, a lot of companies in our industry is incorporating AI in some way, shape, or form into their workflows to not only make the process easier, but also to provide more value to their clients. You just found a good way

to kind of package it and then just kind of put it at the forefront for people to kind of see. Because I was wondering, like, oh, you're essentially using it as a tool for your clients to deliver the same kind of content, but with that as an aid. But with the SEO play, yeah, that's smart. And have you found that a lot of people inquire about that since you started using that? Or is it kind of like something that you bring up to them when you talk to them? There's there's been a, it's probably 50-50. I think a lot of people ask how and if we use AI in our workflow. That's, we've gotten that a lot.

We've gotten a lot of random requests to consult in a way through, through specific kind of websites that just essentially, actually ask us to talk about the AIs that we use. And that's like consulting in a way, being able to say, hey, like, what AIs do you use? Or do you use, what do you use, what do you use, what do you use? Like, there's an AI called Munch that helps, like, kind of cut up social media videos. Like, there's like, there's people who are out there, whether they're using that data to create their own AI or whether they're actually interested in, like, what AI's video production companies are using.

we've gotten that like as an ask too um to like jump on an hour call and strictly consult about what we use and then uh who knows what they use that for but yeah we've done a few of those as well interesting uh which uh i programs are using right now for your business it's we're we're kind of in the standard um you know we have we have chat chpt we have claude um i mentioned munch we use gamma. Gamma. Gamma is a really, really interesting AI, which a lot of people have been using lately I've seen. We've been using it for a while. It's like a deck creator. That's probably my favorite AI, honestly. It's like, it's absolutely unreal. And it gets better every year. We've been using it probably for like two and a half years. So typically what we'll do, I literally did it this morning before this call. We'll run through kind of a chat chagipi exercise of massage of massage. a bid or a proposal, you know, so talking through like a pretty hefty, like five to eight minute voice memo to chat CBT, asking it to structure it this way or that way, add budget, add this, at production, add the deliverables, and organize it in a way that gamma reads. And so, like,

what it'll do is it'll spit out this, this, you know, hefty kind of like structure and it knows, oh, it remembers that gamma likes it this way or that way. And we'll massage that and then we'll take that essential document and put it into gamma and then gamma creates a full-blown beautiful bid and then we'll go in there and adjust it but wow and it does it with powerpoint like the is it only with powerpoint or does it also do it with like google sheets or something like that or not sheets so slides like google slides so there's you could you could put PowerPoint into google drive and it'll convert it to slides right it's it's the same though it's the same same same exact system is what you just said, Dario.

It's essentially, it gives you a presentation. You could adjust it within Gamma, and then you could export a PDF, a Google slides, a PowerPoint, et cetera. You just have to pick. The caveat to that, which usually is the case is you export that and structure and, like, formatting kind of gets funky.

So, like, you might have to drop that into Google slides and then adjust again. But honestly, Gamma, like, dropping it in, adjusting there, I've presented through Gamma directly. I've also just exported a PDF, which is like clean you know did you find it's better than like what you could create with the clod I I don't think there's a haven't fully tested it really is the answer I don't know if it's neither here nor there like it's it's pick your poison right it's like hey if clod

is what you use and like you like clod like use clod like if you figured out this structure and it's worked for you and you've won jobs with it like don't don't fix it you know like keep going yeah and so until um it gets to a point where like claude has something like revolutionary or something else pops up that's revolutionary we'll probably just keep flowing with what we've done because it works for us at least yeah makes sense once uh cloud design is out of the beta i guess right Yeah, no, Claude is definitely, I mean, as you guys know, I know you guys use it a little bit too. I think Claude is really making a name for itself in the past, like, even six months, right? I think Chats Chb-T blew up and everybody loved it.

And now we're getting to this point where it's like, whoa, Claude's coming up and chat's like kind of like going down here. And now you're like, what? And so it's interesting. And I've heard a lot of things. I don't know if they're, you know, real rumors, like, who knows? Like, but it's just, it's interesting how the whole AI world works. And so I will be very curious of the next even six months, right, of like what, what else comes up? Or if Claude just kind of starts to take over and we'll probably have to make that full switch from chat to Claude.

It reminds me kind of like the crypto space back in like the early 2020s or it's like, oh, this coin is now the hot item. And then six months later, now this coin is a hot item. and then it kept switching. But yeah, we jumped on the Claude Bandwagon like two weeks ago. Oh, okay. Man, it's been blowing my mind. Like, I love, like, basically, I'm not too, like, creative at creating documents or, like, web pages or whatever.

So I had, I struggled with that, but this thing just understands it and just helps you with it, and it's smooth as better, really. Like, I've been using it to create a bunch of different templates. Yeah. Like even even the the release form I sent you for this. Yeah. I just I created it on that. Like I've been redoing the website with it and it's been.

Right. It's so easy. Like it's crazy. Like now I'll just have like I just have like a random idea like in the shower. I'm like, oh, it'd be cool to add like this thing to the website. And then when I come out, I just like quickly type it in. It's like, hey, create the code for this section of the website. Address.

Oh, there it is. Copy paste it. It's good. It works. It's crazy how good it polishes everything. It's it's taken our websites to like this kind of next level in terms of its design that's because we're not designers.

We're not web developers or anything like that. And it's hard to kind of learn things like that. And that's like the one benefit of a lot of these softwares have kind of come in. And we're finding new and new things to kind of help make our lives easier that we never would have realized. And I'm actually curious now that you've been using AI so much with all your work.

What is like maybe one thing that you hope can be made to make your life a little bit more easier? Like what do you think is missing? Or I don't know if you've even thought about that. I feel like some of the time with this stuff, none of us thinks of it until it comes out. It's like, oh, shoot, yeah, this is very useful. Yeah. With AI, right?

Is your question? I mean, yeah, there's lots of things, right? And I think it's funny. Sometimes they're not like on the top of your head. sometimes it's similar to what Dario mentioned of like, oh, you're in the shower. You're like, oh, that would be nuts if I could do that. One thing that I have dabbled in, which I don't remember the name of the AI, but I know there's a few out there, is this concept of dropping in a full video.

So less of what I was explaining before where it's like, hey, here's a 60-minute podcast, just cut it up into pieces. but more so a hey let me drop this this 60 minute or these these four 30 minute interviews into this AI and maybe maybe you guys are about to tell me that clock could do this but and you could send it in there and you explain the story that you want right so not just like hey cut this up but say hey I want this story to do this I want you to say I want you to focus on this theme within these interviews cut me something up and then give me a actual file that I could open up in Premiere where it's already cut. So somebody told me recently that that exists and we tried it out and it was extremely slow, but it did it. It did it. It took a while and that my editor, Kayla, was essentially saying

like, yeah, like it's worth it if like you have, if you're making like a documentary or if you're making a roundtable and you're also just extremely busy and you don't want to hire another editor. Like, sure, let that AI kind of ramp that on the side. But in terms of how long it took to upload the footage and have the AI run and then export it out. And then like it doesn't export the footage out, but it exports a actual Premiere file for you to open. Right. It just took a long time is what she said. And so that would be killer for our like kind of meat tier to like documentary roundtable

style projects. I can see that being cool. I can totally see that happening too because all it would take is maybe like a collaboration between Claude and Adobe, right? And then again, you create, you have the transcripts and with the timestamps and time stamps and everything. You figure that out in your conversation. Yeah. And then it kind of connects to Premiere and it finds the files and then it just kind of does its own thing. And it does it. And that can, yeah, that could totally happen. It's, it's funny because it's like everything up until that point you could already do, right? Like, you could drop a transcript in Claude, chat, and give them a theme and say, cut this up, give me time codes, yada, yada,

sure. We've been able to do that for a while. It still requires the editor to go in, time coded out, which we all know, like, takes time and, like, time is money. And so it's like, hey, can we be able to just do that? You do it for me. I open up a premiere, and now I'm, like, halfway through my edit already. Like, that'd be, that'd be great. It could totally happen because, like, for this podcast, I've been slowly working my way down the episodes, like, with the ones that are posted on our blog and I've been redoing them, right?

So I was asking it, I was like, do you want me to, like, feed you all the transcripts? And then you create, like, a blog post per episode? Or do you want, like, I connected my Google Drive to it? So I was like, or do you want to just go into the Google Drive folder and find the transcript? and the old blog post documents and then going to recreate it. He's like, oh, I'll just go in your Google Drive and do it. So it already has the capability of going into like different programs and reading and writing

and creating stuff. Yeah. So it just, Adobe just needs to collaborate with them. Just do it. That's it. That's it. Yeah. No, I'll find out the name of the AI that I found that did it.

And I'll send it to you guys and you guys could noodle around with it because I'm sure it's like going to get better. But it was just like definitely like on its like version one. yeah like from what you're describing like the the thing that would make the most that would be the most effective is not necessarily having a final rough cut product and necessarily but at least having a general story cut uh that is kind of like a group together along with a lot of other good sound bites and even going through all your b roll and cleaning it up and having that set up like that's something that takes the longest time sometimes i mean one benefit i found though of of actually

going through all that stuff sometimes is that it gives you a sense of like what you're putting together especially if it's like a lot like and it's a big project and there's a lot of footage to go through there is the benefit of where you get to see everything you get a sense of like what the story is what the people are which is one thing that could be something that you lose by getting all this stuff done but in terms of time saving getting all your soundbites especially if you have a project that has a lot of them a lot of interviews they have to have a lot of different especially if you need to fit 10 people into like a three to four minute promo video that a client wants because that's happened before and oh man the amount of times it takes for me to just sit down put some sound bites together see kind of how the flow if the message also works you know there's a lot of trial and error in that right so at least getting everything up until the point where you start doing that and with having like a bit of a baseline skeleton can really really totally Totally.

Really elevate your game at that point, right? Yeah. I mean, that saves you. Yeah, what you just said essentially saves people, depending on your speed, like two days of editing, right? Like, I mean, if you're fast, you could get it done, but, like, it might save more people like three days of editing, like of just organizing, structuring, sinking,

B-roll string outs, like all that. If they could do that in a few hours versus a two-day span, like, that's killer. Yeah. That's the dream. Yeah. Soon. I think it's going to happen soon.

Yeah. In Adobe for sure. What about your social media services? Like, what do you do for that? Yeah, that kind of ranges. And social media is such a funny term. It's just interesting, right? You put social media on an offering and it's like, so what does that mean?

Like, what do you do? Do you, you know, run a social media? account? Do you create social media? Do you have advice? Is the social media on this phone? Is it on a computer? Or is it on a larger like cinema camera? It just kind of depends. What we typically do when it comes to the social media aspect of our business is it's a combo of kind of like that like very small, just like right above a phone quality that we we typically run. So someone, you know, we'll have a camera operator to come out with just an FX3. Like, No bells and whistles.

Like, I know some camera operators are like, oh, what about like my, like, these lights and this audio, like this, my screen? It's like, no. Like, just like, just the FX3. We flip it this way and we just run. And it's just like a phone. You just pull it out and like that's all the budget allots for essentially, right? It's just like this next level of a little nicer than your iPhone. And you're getting this like nicer quality image from, you know, that type of camera.

those are typically run it depends on like the the client but those are run as like these like nicer kind of like whether they're paid ads or they're just like these like kind of like vignette style pieces that they want to just look a little nicer that's probably like 60% of the social stuff the other 40% is all on the phone and so very much like straight up a phone a gimbal maybe a small tube light and we're running organic requests um for clients you know like on a monthly basis so it just kind of depends on on the client but that's typically where it kind of splits so on the shooting packaging the video in terms of the kind of deliverable right yeah yeah and sometimes those two kind of collide together right like sometimes there's a shoot that requires hey we need 10 videos on

a phone and we need this one particular video that feels like it calls for a little bit of a nicer camera and we'll do that but it just kind of depends on the ask But it's a tricky world because it's a different world than corporate. It's a different world than commercial. Like it's people are asking, clients are asking people like us for 40 videos a month or for 50 videos a month. And if you're out here trying to actually think about that world the same as you do with a corporate environment, like you'll never win the job. You know, it's a different entity. Like if a corporate company said, hey, I need 10 videos for this.

You're like, got it. How many days of editing? That's going to be like this much. But the 40 to 50 people, like, they're asking for rough, simple videos that could just run, you know, just be added to an account. They're looking at, you know, I don't know, like, it's a range, but like probably like $100 a video or like even less. Like sometimes, like if you're trying to charge anything more than that, you're going to lose the job to the creator who just got an account. college. But I guess you're going to make the money back on the on the volume. By the way, Kirill, try not to hit the mic. I think I'm hearing. Did I think? Oh, okay.

So just to confirm then on the social media side, you're not actually like marketing the content for them. You're just creating social media videos for them essentially, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a creative development process too of, of, you know, offering your kind of skill set and knowledge of like, hey, we know the trends. And like, we know. And like, we'll work with you like creatively prior to showing up. But then a lot of that, it's more so, it's more so pre-production. We edit obviously and then we send the videos to them.

Like that's kind of it. You know, we're not, we're not posting. We're not managing people's socials or anything like that. We're not offering descriptions. We're usually handed that off to the client. Okay. So I'm curious with the AI content, social media content, and the corporate and commercial,

what would you say is the bulk of, the work that comes in for you? Is it a little bit more of the corporate and commercial? And then these are just things on the side. Like, how does that work? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's pretty much a bulk of it is, is that corporate commercial work, especially being close to New York.

It's a pretty hefty amount of, you know, financial firms, private equity firms. There's some larger companies in New York that are headquartered here that will need to go do, you know, training videos for or, you know, an anniversary video, like, things like that. We get a lot of calls for, a lot of interviews, a lot of, like, kind of that talking head style, which, like, all of us kind of get tired of, but, like, it just, like, never dies. Like, everybody needs an interview. So that's, like, bread and butter, right? We go in there with a group of, anywhere from, like, five to 12 crew, depending on the ask

in the budget and and we typically capture, you know, all of that in a one to four day span and then we'll come back and we'll do our post-production. So that's probably the bulk of the work. And then it kind of falls below that into like these other tiers of, you know, the AI stuff, social media stuff. And then every once in a while we'll get a like a really awesome like large job, right, like a big kind of like shark type of job, which, which are great. But it's not like we're, we're like running our business off of those. Right. That makes sense.

Yeah. Because yeah, the corporate world is the one that really kind of fills in the calendar. Like you said, it's our bread and butter. But we're always trying to find other types of ways to kind of like package things like you did essentially, right, which is great. I'm also curious like with how things have been. You said now you've been five years fully invested in offbeat. So like what do you see is like kind of like coming up. you know, with your offerings now, what you're trying to do, is there any particular types of projects you want to do or anything like that?

Yeah, I mean, I always have dreams, right? Always would love to, you know, we've done some stuff for Palaton. We've done some stuff for like a small group at Nike out here. So like love the sport content, like that would be fun. Like just like in terms of like, oh, like what would I would want to, to like work on would be like more of that like sport fitness world um because it's just fun entertaining engaging like interesting content to to capture and there's a lot of creative freedom there um but in terms of like a business like like projection i mean i would love to i love the mid tier stuff we're

going to continue to do that until it doesn't show up anymore basically but we're we're trying to figure out how to scale that smaller stuff to have this like kind of pillow if you would will, like this run rate of like, hey, no, if everything else stops, this still happens. And it's mainly retainer work, which is like everybody's like, you know, challenge in terms of what we do to get. But we've gotten a few of those. And so that's really our, like, our goal in the next, you know, three years or so is to, hey, to crank up that retainer work, even if it does mean lower rates, but to like guarantee a certain

amount of money that's that's that's coming in monthly then you could have this like kind of like operation that is always breathing and then all of these other mid-tier or larger-scale jobs are essentially gravy within what you have going on. It's interesting that you mentioned retainer because we've talked about this many times on the podcast and it doesn't always work for everyone in our industry, you know, depending on what kind of offerings they do. So it's cool that you say you're, you already have a few. So walk us through that process.

Is it mostly like with like the social media type content where I can kind of see that being more easy, much easier to sell retainer work? Or do you, did you find retainer success even in the corporate world? No. Yeah. Retainers are tricky, right?

All of us know that. I think it's, it's much simpler when the deliverables are simpler. And so I'll, that's what I'll probably start with is like the more. the more complicated the job gets, the more complicated the request is, the like less likely a retainer's going to work. And so I think this idea of, hey, I want, like I said, 30 to 50 videos a month. You know, just being able to structure it where it's like, hey, 50's the cap. We might not get to 50.

We might get to 30, but they're all going to be shot on a phone. We're going to shoot twice a month. And this is always going to happen. that is a flow that just like by default is not simple but it's just like yep that could work let's just keep doing that um it's another it's different when you're jumping into hey we're going to go do this corporate shoot monthly it doesn't make sense for even the businesses to do that right and so like that typically never works what we have found works other than social media is the editing portion of that and so what we have done with some people is we've just guaranteed like one edit per month or two edits per month for a certain rate, not knowing what they are,

like roughly having parameters, but assuming that they're going to give us footage, whether it's from an event that they have or, you know, something that they've done separately from us and they'll just send us a certain amount of things and we edit that. I mean, that has, again, that has some risks too because some people could try to take advantage of that. But what we've done is we've created structures around that, right? So it's like you got to have your parameters of this doesn't go past two minutes. You know, there's like no motion graphics involved. Like just like little things like that, that kind of guarantee you're not shooting yourself in the foot.

So you mentioned editing where so like say is that like a client provides you content that they made themselves specifically and then you just produce the edits? Yep. Yeah. A lot of it is whether they like, yeah, whether they just kind of shoot it separately or. or they work at, you know, a lot of, we work with a lot of event companies. And so like a lot of event companies, typically what happens is you go to an event,

there's, you know, whoever runs the event, let's call it Nike, has people shooting the event. And then you're working with this agency that helped with this booth and they're going to give you the assets or the footage from Nike because they figured that out.

And then we could just edit our own version for this agency. And that's happened a few times. Yeah. And then there's also like the collaboration too of like, hey, we do go shoot stuff. That's just a separate fee, right? We're just going to go and shoot for an event.

That's our production fee. And then, oh, yeah, we're going to use our retainer this month for the stuff you shot. Sounds good. Don't I have to talk about editing. We already know that process. We're ready to know the budget. And so it makes it easier in that way, too. Interesting.

Yeah, so you're kind of using the retainer pool for other stuff as well if you need to. That makes sense. Yeah, that only works with specific. I would assume that feels like that only works with clients that you've kind of already been working with, someone you have a connection with, someone who you know needs editing, like often, that you just kind of pitch them a hey, like you need editing three times a year, four times a year, how about we just do this? And then we never talk about editing again, and you just kind of always run it that way.

So, you know, it's worked. But I think the social media aspect of things is really where a lot of companies find success with retainer work. That and like consulting, which we haven't really dipped our toe into, but that also feels like something like people will gain like a, you know, a quick like two to three thousand dollars for just jumping on three meetings and just spitting ideas out to people. That would be fun actually. I wouldn't, I wouldn't mind those types of retainers. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Doing all the pre-production without the actual production and post is not too bad. Yeah, there's a lot of those.

I noticed you have testimonials on your website. I've actually had that, I have that on my list of to do things for the year. Do you find the help at all? I don't know. I mean, it's kind of like a box to check, right? I think what I did feel like helped a little bit was adding our, we went into a deep, like, SEO rabbit hole like two years ago and we made our like Google business program. and like asking for a lot of reviews on our Google profile. I saw, I saw like instant traffic

from that. Nothing that came into like, you know, there was nothing that was like an amazing job that came out of that. But in terms of like people emailing us from our website, that type of thing, that happened more when we started to do things like that. So like it wasn't necessarily testimonials that we added to our website, even though I did grab those from some of those reviews, but it was more like the Google reviews felt like they helped us rank a little higher. Yeah. No, definitely when you do that, it helps put your visibility out there. Because once we did that, most of our, I'd say now, like most of the new business that we get all comes from Google at that point from people reaching out to us.

So I'm actually curious also for you. Like, would you say that most of your work comes from referrals or from people you've worked with in the past? or have you been seeing, well, I guess you said now you've been seeing a little bit more coming in from the website, but like what is like the distribution between that? Yeah. I mean, I would give it like a 70, 70 30 in terms of like ratio. So like 70% is probably word of mouth. People who I've used to, before we've worked with, they've left to another company.

They know us. Like they jump back in. Like the people who, you know, they left like the company, but. the other company still likes us so we continue to work with them and so a lot of that um and then yeah like we'll get like some random random emails from people a lot of those are are simple um jobs is the thing so i i would love um to see if you guys have a strategy i'd love to hear that i mean uh we've we've gotten like hey like events like one-off events or um some you know random things that like we've we've estimated out for people but we've never gotten like a corporate

gig from an email before. I'm actually surprised because, I mean, if you're on this podcast, I found you via SEO, right? And it also means I didn't go through page nine to be able to find you. You should stick to the first three pages or the map pack. So I'm actually surprised you're saying that it's only 30% coming from. Maybe they're, maybe they're Dario.

They don't use it as much like through Google. I don't know because like, no, that doesn't make. I mean, he's in a... No, I get that. He's in a busy place. Like, there's a lot of people living there. That's why I'm surprised. That's why I'm surprised too.

It's odd that that's not the case because a lot of the time gave with us, it's, we get clients to reach out for one-offs, like you said. But because we do those one-offs and we build a rapport and build a relationship with the client. Then it becomes more consistent. Yeah, exactly. Like, I once, I was like to mention this example because we, I was on a shoot like a little while back. And when we were traveling from one location to the next, I got a call from a lead, you know, just a cold call that was asking about, you know, if we do corporate video and stuff like that.

And then I talked to them for like five minutes and I scheduled a follow-up call with them like a few days later. And then for a few months, spoke with them. And then finally booked in, you know, just for webinars. And now that client is one of our most consistent clients over the last, what, four years now, Dario? You know, it's- retainer client technically.

Like, we do three webinars. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but we call it the EGM every year. Yeah, but we call it the pre-booked client, you know, like I call these pre-bookings, not not retainer clients, you know? Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's awesome. I mean, that's great.

And yeah, there's a lesson there, right? Of saying, hey, take the one, right? Take the simple request. Go take the random headshot request or the, the, hey, I have three hours that I need someone to go film something. And a lot of people would be like, ah, that's not worth my time. But it's like, hey, go do it. And then all of a sudden, who knows, it could be your top, top client, like three or four years later.

You never know. Yeah. Like, it's just a matter of, like, getting that first win to show that you're reliable, you're good to work with. And it's always good to do that on a smaller project than a bigger one on the first go. Because sometimes when it's a bigger one on the first go, clients don't necessarily know the whole process. They don't know how you work. You don't know how they work. You don't know how they have to.

do the revision process with their clients because a lot of the time you have to show a video to a client and then they have to show it to their higher ups who have to show it to their higher ups but you never know what the behind the scenes are right yeah so i've seen like we have seen it many times where we've had a client basically give us like a smaller project we've seen kind of how it worked then they were really happy with how it turned out and then bigger projects come because then they're like oh since we were able to do this what if we tried to do this you know and yeah You just never know. And like just, yeah, start off with the one-offs.

That's the best advice, I guess, for anyone. Yeah, for sure. I love that. I guess another thing I'm interested in learning about is that, okay, so you're based in Jersey City, but you do a lot of stuff inside New York City. To me, I look at them on the map. They're both right next to each other. They're probably the same.

But do you find that maybe some clients want you to be more actually in? the island type of thing? Does that happen at all with you or no? Not not really. It's very much like Jersey City is like it's almost it's like a borough. So like I could get to Manhattan before somebody in Brooklyn. Like that's how close I am. So like if people are like, oh, we're based in Brooklyn. Oh, we're in New York. It's like I, my team will literally get there at the same time. faster than some of them. So like it just yeah it doesn't really shake us. It also help. I mean it's it's there's there's there's benefits to it too. I think just generally like we get a lot of a lot of Jersey jobs obviously as well. And then just so much more space to to film out here like if you could get

the clients which a lot of people understand at this point like in Manhattan to like go film at a studio in Newark, New Jersey or Montclair, New Jersey, compared to like Manhattan, like East Village. Like it's just, it's like a triple the size studio and it's half the price. And like, it's easier to get into, you know. When you go into New York, I'm sure it's similar in Toronto. It's a, you're budgeting like two hours to just get up into a building because that is how long it takes sometimes for us to go. Like, we will go.

We've heard. We'll load in. We'll load in, you know, a few hampers of gear, you know, some hefty carts and whatnot. And that takes, that takes a while just to get up into the 40th floor of a building instead of, hey, like, you're going to drive over to Jersey, some like random office building, walk right in. It'll take you 30 minutes. Like, that does not happen in New York. In Toronto, it also takes two hours, but not to get inside the building, just to get to the location. Oh yeah, no, please. I haven't even talked about that. But the time we get there, it'll be four hours in.

We always like to say Toronto is always an hour away from Toronto. But what it sounds like, Dario, it's like basically Mississauga in Toronto with Jersey and Manhattan, right? It's like they're like right next to each other. They're connected. Same amount of traffic as always, you know, but. Yeah, yeah. But same kind of deal. What about in terms of like competition?

Like, there's a lot of, I'm sure there's a lot of production companies, you know, all competing for similar clients and everything. And again, you're in one of the biggest cities in the world. I'm just wondering, what's the competition? Like, how do you handle that type of competition? At least for you. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's tough, right?

I would assume, I don't, I don't know. I don't have data. I don't have numbers. But I would assume there's probably more production companies. companies like per square foot out here than a lot of other spots. Like there's a lot of people who want to do this and they want to do this full time. So yeah, it's all the time. I mean, you never fully know, right?

Like I think a lot of times we create bids. We go through proposals. We compete for jobs. And there's plenty of losses. And that is probably an assumption or it's related to the amount of production companies that are out here, but what is also related to that is the amount of bids that you create, right? So like I'd rather have more swings

and live here than live elsewhere and be waiting for a swing and hope I get that. And then maybe you don't, right? And then you wait another month or so for someone to reach out. So I think there's like the constant hustle and bustle, the amount of companies that are out here already. Like it just by default offers a lot of work. And so there's plenty of work.

There's plenty of people to do that. the work so it works out well um no pun intended but that's that's essentially how how it how it kind of shakes out um it's also just based on trust too which is you know we talked about that a little bit but i i i would again don't have a lot of data on this but i would not i would bet something really expensive on the statement of saying that like that all the production companies out here i would almost guarantee that they get the work they get because they know someone there or they've worked with them before, it's all trust-based. You know, no one's out there just throwing out bids to five different companies

to try to win the work this year. They know, you know, Dario, they know Gabe, they know whoever it is, and they talk to them first, then they ask them to bid. So it's a lot of referral-based and relationship-building type. I guess that explains the 70-30 split you have then. Yeah, yeah. It's all trust. It's all trust-based.

It's all like, half, it's like sales, right? It's like half of the sale happens throughout the year. Like the gift you get somebody, the offer through email or text to go grab a drink or to go to the Yankee game. Like, that's how you're getting the sale. And that's how you're getting the next sale because then they're going to say, oh, like this guy that I know just got the head of marketing job at, XYZ company, you know, you should talk to, you should talk to Gabe, because Gabe is the man.

And not because Gabe makes great videos. Like, everybody makes great videos, like now. Like, like, of course, like, everybody makes good videos. It's not, I'm not, it's not necessarily hard. It's just a skill that people have figured out. And so it's like understanding, like, how are you going to differentiate yourself? It's going to be who you are as a person. You're going to have to connect with somebody and actually make them like you. Versus, you know, just like your work. So what have you done to kind of build relationships like this over time? You know, aside from working on projects with people, is there any kind of, I wouldn't say necessarily strategy, but things you do, like you said, like you, like tips, you know,

like yeah, that's a good way to put it, Dario, like tips on how to kind of maintain relationships, build relationships or even like follow up with people that you've worked with in the past, even a while that could potentially lead to something? What would you suggest some tips? Yeah, it's a good question. Let's see. I think I have a lot in terms of like that flow because my dad is in sales. And so he's always been a sales guy like through and through.

He like runs a sales team now at the agency that he's at. So they, he's like always in sales mode, which is a bad tip, but maybe I'll start there. The bad tip is essentially always be in sales mode, even though it kind of is a little annoying in terms of like your personal relationships because you're always like oh like why can't we just like sit down and have a good dinner but if you're sitting down and having a dinner at a restaurant that you really like and for some reason the manager comes and for some reason you bring up what you do at that point the door is open right at that point like you shouldn't be like oh i'm off the clock i'm not going to say like i am reping offbeat regardless of if i have a hat on like it's like

it's always there it's always an opportunity to to mention to something like this is what we do um we can help you like we can literally help anybody um the small business to the jp morgans we can help you with creative content so like almost always beyond is it is a bad tip but that's that's that's probably a a tricky one for a lot of people to do um always be closing always be closing always be closing right yeah yeah think is the way to keep it and make it the trick is to make it more natural and not yeah not too salesy like i i i I know what you mean. Totally.

It's kind of like making that connection that can potentially lead to a sale rather than actually selling necessarily. Totally. Yeah. And I mean, this isn't necessarily a tip, but two things that I've been told, which I do fully agree with. One is the sale is never, the sale's never closed on the hello. It's closed on the hello again. So you're not going to send one email and it's not going to come back. Hey, you got the job.

No. It's going to be hello again. Hey, checking in on this. Hey, you know, want to grab a coffee? It's then after the three or four times of saying hello, they're going to be like, you know what? I'll give you the job. That's one thing.

And then the other thing was someone mentioned to me about us, about offbeat with that we never feel too eager to like to win. And so we're never, we're hungry. We're always hungry. But we're never like overly hungry. hungry on a call to win the business because then it starts to feel desperate. And so to your point, right, like the sales pitch, it's like, it's less about that. It's more about like, if you want to work with us, we'll crush it. You don't have to. Just know that we're really good. And we will, like,

help your business, but you call me. It's the no pressure sales tactic. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good It might set to have. Yeah. So, yeah, I guess those are some tips and thoughts on that world, but that's definitely a learned skill for myself. I remember during our pre-interview, you mentioned that you do reach out to past clients, you know, take them out to lunch and everything, try to relate to them and whatnot. And I remember mentioning, like, I can see that working if they're in, like, your age bracket,

right? Because it's like, okay, you got common things that are happening. but what about like a lot of our clients or I would say there's like at least a 10 year age gap between us? Like how do you recommend or suggest you do it in that type of situation? Yeah, I mean, that's like a challenge in itself, right? Trying to figure out common ground, right? So whatever that may be, I mean, 10 year age gap or not, when you're a Knicks fan, you're a Knicks fan, right? And you could be 70 and I could be 32 and like I got something to tell you every week about the Nix.

And so like finding that that commonality and then like kind of like honing in on that in a very tasteful way could probably be smart. You know, that's a good one. I mean, gifting is always tricky because a lot of companies don't love gifts, but being able to like creatively think of like something that you could give. I mean like Christmas gifts are key for us. We send a lot of Christmas gifts to clients that we, we haven't got work from for two years, but we still send it. What do you send? It kind of depends. Every year, like, it's, it's, like, custom.

We like to, like, kind of create, like, custom things. So, like, last year we sent, like, I forgot what the website was, but it was really cool. Very, I get a bunch of emails now for it, but it ships out, depending on where you're at, like, a bunch of, like, food. So like we sent like steaks from like Peter Lugar to like people like kind of like raw stakes like kind of packaged. And we sent those out to like specific clients. We sent like Levine cookies, which is like again a common like a really popular cookie spot here in New York. And so we've sent those out to people the year before that we did like gift cards but in like an offbeat box with like handwritten letters. So things like that. Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. So you know it is it is definitely tricky and just finding like something that we're like something that we're like. works for you, right? That's that's the, that's the trick. Yeah. And I mean, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're not, I'm not sending 70 Peter Lugar stakes out. I was going to say, like, how many stakes did you say? No, no, no, no. I'm sending like,

two stakes only. I'm sending like four, yeah, like, it's like, yeah, I'm not, I'm sending four stakes and like six cookie boxes. Like, I'm not sending 60 or 70 of these. And so, like, I can't do 70 handwritten notes. I mean, I could. but like I'm not, we're not about that. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's in that, like, nice size where we're sending them to specific folks, but. Otherwise, you're gonna have to do the Amazon packaging for all those 70, you know, it's like, here's a raw steak in, like,

one of those classic Amazon plastic bags. Yeah, like, the classic, like, you know, like wine bottle or like the fruit basket. It's like, ah, you sent this to like 400 people, didn't you? Like, it's like, that doesn't mean much, even though I know it kind of checks a box, but yeah. Stakes would be, like, if I got a steak from a vendor, that would be like, amazing.

I would definitely send you some more work for sure. Yeah, what meat costs? Yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, you fed my family literally for dinner that night, you know? So, I mean, that is something that that does stick out, or like little delicacies, you know, like you said, like cookies or chocolates and things like that. Yeah, it might not be just something that's like a,

you know what it is? you have to give a client a new experience, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. A new experience. Yeah. If you're getting a gift basket, everyone gets that.

Like, this isn't new. Like, I've gotten gift baskets all the time, you know? It's like, what if I got a, like a cookie that was like, like a giant cookie? Like, that's all you got for me. Yeah. Something wild. Yeah. No, the other thing that was cool that, I mean, gift cards are slept on, but like figuring

out this, like, the, the gift card that people really care about, like, like a Delta like $250 gift card like if they fly Delta right or a lot of people fly Delta out here in New York so it's like or whatever that airline is like like basically paying for a flight for them because that's interesting because they're not going to throw that out because that's like somewhat valuable and then they're not going to use it immediately and so what's cool about that is like they'll use it like four months later and they'll go like oh yeah like game got me this like oh I have a job for it or whatever it's like oh let me reach out and so like it's just like this like, hey, here's this.

Think about us like next time you use it, you know, type of thing. So like figuring out what that is, maybe it's an Uber gift card. Delta is a good one I thought was a fun one that we got. So yeah. Interesting. All right, well, we're at the one hour mark. So we should probably tie off loose ends right now. Let's, before we end off, though, how did you come up with the name for offbeat?

Oh, oh gosh. No, not a fun story at all. I mean, the original name was literally my name, Benjamin Gabriel Films, as a lot of us start with. And it came, it became the time of saying like, hey, we should switch this. It was like that five-year mark where I left. And I was like, okay, this is V-Real Company. And I literally just wrote a bunch of names like in a notepad and asked people to pick which one they liked best. And most people liked Offbeat.

And that was it. It was very simple. Like I just, I liked it because it felt, you know, offbeat is off the beaten path. It's different. It's trying different things. And, you know, it's not like it's this revolutionary. Oh, wow, that's so genius. But it's, that's what the word means.

And I like that as a term and a theme of what we do is to try to be offbeat, try to be different than the thousand other production companies that are right, you know, next door. So. It's funny. It's funny. You said, oh, it's time to turn this into a serious thing. but the other two companies you worked with, it's people's names, right? Disney, J.P. Morgan.

They just put their last name over there. Yeah, you forget that those massive corporations are technically someone's last name. Someone's last name. A hundred. A hundred percent. No, yeah, that's so true. Yeah, we work with another company called Warbur Pinkas. Two separate names of the founders.

That's it. That's it. So the next one for you is Nazario. Just that. Yeah. That is the company. Maybe in 10 years when we rebrand, I'll just kind of, yeah,

I'll just drop a new name as Nizario Films, boom. And then in 50 years, it turns into a big corporation, and it swallows up all the other smaller production companies in Jersey City. Right. I love it. So funny. All right. Well, Gabe, thank you for coming on the show.

Really appreciate it. So, guys, if you want to find Gabe, go to offbeatcreative.c.com. How come dot CO? They didn't have dot-COM or? Yeah, dot-com was taken, so we went with dot-seo. I didn't know you could get just dot-CO even. I've seen dot-CO, yeah, in the past I've seen it. Yeah, it's rare.

No, someone recently was like, hey, dot-com is available, and I was like, oh, I should probably go buy that, but I haven't really haven't gone around to it yet. It's fine. Most people find this. Nice. But yeah, anyways, offbeatcreative.com, and then your socials are, same thing, at off-becreative.

dot CO. Dot CO. You got to include the dot CO at the end. Dot MPEG. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, thanks for having me, guys. This has been really fun. Hopefully people gain some value from it,

and I know we'll talk soon. So thanks again. Sure. We appreciate it. Thanks, Gabe. 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.

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