Creatives Grab Coffee - #121 Salaries, Slicing Pie, and Quarterly Profit Sharing (ft. Minivan Productions)

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

Kyler Beal of Minivan Productions on moving a production company from Virginia to San Diego with a city scoring system, a partner who fired himself from the day-to-day, slicing pie equity, quarterly profit sharing in four buckets, moving owners onto salary, why Minivan avoids retainers, and the grant funding behind its documentary work.Chapters:0:00 Intro0:31 Meet Kyler Beal and Minivan Productions1:47 Why Minivan moved from Virginia to San Diego3:20 From a bedroom office to a team of three5:35 A scoring system for picking a city6:38 Travel days and documentary work7:42 Team size and the San Diego studio8:52 The partner who fired himself11:48 Replacing a partner's many roles17:02 From creative to company leader19:17 Slicing pie equity after a partner steps back24:16 How Minivan sets its profit sharing24:56 Four buckets of quarterly profit sharing27:10 Why quarterly beats annual30:08 Moving the owners onto salary33:05 The fear of guaranteed payroll34:27 Salary and a lower tax bill37:28 Why Minivan avoids retainers41:01 The first retainer, by exception43:54 Retainers at agencies vs production companies46:50 What is next for Lapse48:37 Seventy percent commercial, thirty percent docs50:33 A grant-funded documentary series52:05 More funding than people think54:00 Business brain or creative brain?56:55 Do grant funders check the final film?59:07 Is most work out there mediocre?1:01:59 Gambling ads and AI content1:04:33 Filtering for client fit1:07:24 Lessons from non-creative industries1:11:30 The story behind the Minivan name1:15:20 Where to find Kyler and MinivanCreatives Grab Coffee is produced by Lapse Productions, a Toronto video production company.

Hello and welcome to episode 121 of Creative Subscribe of Coffee. Today we have a guest, another guest from San Diego. But again, before we get into it, please remember to like the show, subscribe, rate us on any podcast platform because that always helps us out. But yeah, let's get into today's episode. We have Kyler from Minivan Productions based out of San Diego. So Kyler, welcome to the show. Glad to be here.

Thanks for having me. And again, let's just start off with the history lesson. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, Mayvan Productions. We started on the East Coast, and at the time, I had been freelancing and needed to kind of bring some concrete nature to the work as well as I wanted to bring on subcontractors and the work was growing. So it needed both the protection and starting to feel the need for a larger brand. Got myself? And I was looking around at other cool production companies or marketing agencies that I was aspiring to be similar to and thought I had to have some cool like vector marketing, something like really professional.

But all of my favorite companies were like duct tape and beer films or rabbit hole or like they were telling their own stories. Like, hey, we're going to be based in storytelling. What is our story? And like what is my background? And I had been like the minivan guy since I was 16 and did a couple cross-country road fit. that had a lot of notoriety and some corporate sponsors. So when it came time to become something, Minivan actually made a whole lot of sense.

So it started on the East Coast and then moved out to San Diego because so many of our clients were out West, so we brought our team with us and established HQ here in Southern California. Why did you make the switch from the East Coast to the West Coast? What was the reason behind that? It was definitely professional and personal. So many of our clients were out West, not necessarily San Diego, but Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, even like Dallas, Phoenix, Salt Lake, like a ton of stuff that was out this way. So we were losing a ton of time traveling to and from like rural Virginia and flying out of small regional airports and having to connect through D.C. and Charlotte and to come out this way often. We were doing a lot of like outdoor gear and apparel and fly fishing and hunting and like action sports, which are just obviously not as common on the East Coast.

And then personally wanting to be in a place that we could thrive to my wife's from Bakersfield, which is like four hours north of where we are now. She'd be a little bit closer to her family. My husband is in Michigan, so we were never going to make both happy. And everyone's really excited, as you can probably understand, to move to San Diego. So it all came together. And then I guess, oh, well, I guess you said you already had the clients here. So that kind of helped you, like, establish the base, right?

because it's not like you just moved there and you have to start from scratch. But I guess, like, tell us a little bit about how you got to, like, where the company was before you moved over to the West Coast. Like how you began it basically. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of like skipped over all that stuff. That's the new stuff. Had a company and moved to the West Coast.

That was it. So easy. Yeah, I started it solo. And it really was just like I mentioned kind of like folding. freelance into an LLC. But then we started to build some traction and brought on a partner on the motion inside of things because my background was all in live action, kind of DP moving camera stuff, had done some feature stuff,

feature work that brought up doing all moving cameras, so tracks and gimbles and managing drone operators and stuff like that. But I knew nothing about motion design. And so as we started to grow and at first it was like just graphic, and titles they weren't so templatized and then quickly became like hey can you also do this for us i was like no i have no idea how to do that and i'm not about to learn after effects to that level so we're going to bring someone in um so i was able to bring on one of my best friends who had been working at fox sports as a motion designer and so we partnered up as he was kind of running the animation and

motion science out of things and i was leading kind of our larger project scopes as well as like specifically the live action things. And it was great. It was super fun. Had a couple of larger clients that sustained us as we kind of figure ourselves out. And grew, so we had three of us over there eventually on the team. Started like in my bedroom and then moved into an apartment where we had like an extra bedroom. And our office became the second bedroom, which my wife was an incredible supporter.

I can't say she was super fond of. that every day we had people coming over to our place and taking over. But it was a blast and it was like our version of the garage build out for sure in that space. Like our bedroom didn't even have a door on it. So it really was just like everybody was at our house. That's how that functioned. Yeah. And then we started to notice like the need for a larger market and kind of like we literally

went through a process of like identifying which cities we could do well in from like a personal and professional standpoint and how close things are, what's walkable, built a whole scoring system, including like airport quality and how many direct flights we could get to and from places. Interesting. And landed on, I think we had like four cities that kind of met all the criteria, like Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, maybe Grand Rapids mission was a fourth. And then I think we let our personal desires push us down to Southern California.

know, we could surf every day and enjoy the sunshine. Enjoy the sun, yeah, I was going to say. What was the city that you guys came over from? It's Forest, Virginia. It's like kind of middle of nowhere, in between, kind of by Charlottesville. Right. Okay. It's funny, though, because I think you're one of the, not maybe the only one,

but one of the few guests that basically looked at a lot of the cities in the U.S. and was trying to figure out where they would want to base their business and work out of. Everyone just kind of starts working out of wherever they just happen to be, right? But you had like a whole scoring system, even with the airport. It's like, where can we travel from? That's convenient. So that's a first for us. Yeah, we do a ton of like dock work.

Sometimes like true doc series and feature docs and sometimes just like doc style, mini doc kind of branded content. And so honestly we were traveling even more when we were out east. But it was like really prevalent. Like we were traveling, I don't know, six to 12 days a month. And that adds up that pretty fast when you're grabbing an extra leg to go somewhere or just the cost of travel. And whether or not we were booking that through client or having it be like reimbursable.

It's still just like was adding up and eating a bunch of project costs. So in time. Yeah. So I think things should have chosen in the middle then because you would have been in between. That's true. It's true. we work out at New York and Boston still but now there's direct flights because we're in a big airport so five-hour direct flight is still better than like it probably would take us just as long to get

there from rural Virginia to get to New York or Boston as it does from here in San Diego which is kind of nuts but yeah became reality for us interesting um what's what's like the team size like do you have any business partners yeah so my partner uh who's motion design um has transitioned out of the business and is working full-time for young life out here in San Diego. He literally just left the office, so he's still around, but no longer in day-to-day operations. And then our team, there's five of us on salary, and then a couple long-term contractors that are like either on a specific project or we have a desire to bring them on salary, but need to like do six months of figuring out of that I fit or things like that.

So yeah, so our whole team is based in Southern California now. Both of our contractors are not here in San Diego. But yeah, so we got a studio here like 1,400 square foot space that we mostly used to host. Like we, for clients and contractors and we do a lot of events here. I think we've maybe shot one thing, like one tabletop pickup that we shot here. But for the most part, we're on location. So it's really just like an editing day and meeting space. So I remember when we were talking in the pre-interview,

you mentioned you had a business partner that came on after you started it, but now he's also looking to leave. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because we don't often hear that. That's kind of rare. Yeah. Yeah, Chris. Like I said, he was at Fox,

and it made a ton of sense for him to like, I don't know, this is the right phrasing, but kind of spread his wings and do like a broader work. So he was really enjoying motion design and we were getting some 3D stuff that was really fascinating and fun for him. And he was super talented. He's like meticulous. And so the world of key framing and a million layers that makes sense for him where I can't look at that screen for too long.

I get dizzy. I'm the same. Yep. Yeah. Regular timelines can get dizzy even. Right. Yeah. So made a ton of sense and grew our business and some huge ways.

And then I don't know the exact timing, but. a couple years into that, he was like, hey, I don't actually know if I love motion design. Like, I enjoy it and I'm good at it. I recognize it as a skill set. But I want to explore, like, what else there kind of is out there. And so he started continuing the motion design and kind of leading motion designers on our team, but then also producing and kind of getting his hands in operations and system buildouts and kind of became like essentially a head of production where he was managing most things on the back end from project management to producing,

like field producing. And then probably like a year after that, he's like, hey, it's great. I don't know that there's like a lot of need for me. Like we've built the systems that this company needs and I'm kind of like working myself out of a job. And I recognize that. And I don't really want to do more of like the creative fulfillment,

like motion design, like where my skill set is. So I think it's time that we're like, like he refers to you as like everyone should fire themselves every couple years and see if the company that they're working on can can exist without them and do well and that's what he did so probably now it's been like a year and a half uh since he did that and like walked through uh hey hear all the systems like bill we had this whole checklist of things that he was working on we wanted to finish prior to stepping away because there was a ton of things from including like HR like he is our point of contact really across every back-end admin type thing he was running and managing

our accounting. So it took like six months probably for us to hand everything off to the right people. Some of that came back onto my plate. Some of that came into finding new vendors to help us in spaces. Luckily it was like, I guess not luckily. It was like he did a really good job making this procedural. But he had like spent a lot of time removing himself one by one from all these different processes. So about the time that he actually like officially stepped away, there was very little

for him to have to clean up. It's actually been great. Was it difficult to find someone to replace, or at least like to find the right people to kind of replace that huge gap? Because that's like a huge piece of the business that had a very specific skill set that that you guys had. And to for, I mean, obviously like you mentioned, like he was able to slowly integrate himself out of it. But finding good motion graphics people that are that have the tick all the boxes, you know, they're not only just good at doing it, but also work well under pressure, work well with clients, work well with team members. It's not easy to find.

So like what was your process of doing that? Yeah. The motion side has probably been the cleanest transition. It's hard to find really talented people that are also great people to work with for sure. But it was like the cleanest job title. to everything else that he was handling and managing, you kind of like, it's like Pandora's box. You're like, oh, cool. You like do our bookkeeping. We have, I don't know, 60 to 100 transactions a month. Like, how do we hand that off? But then you get into that. And you're like,

oh, it's also like tax prep. And it's also figuring out how to manage three different vendors and have these different connections. And we have multiple bank accounts to have high interest savings accounts. And there's like way more to it where the motion signs had is like, hey, we need to find like a really capable one person that like fits the side of things. And so we hired all of our roles through, I think, most of our roles we've hired through LinkedIn. And just been incredibly blessed with like such talented people applying for the roles. And then landing on on the people we have. So our go name Jenna is our lead motion designer and has been like such a smooth transition from Chris's skill set.

And they're very different. But within that, like, skill set, they had a ton of crossover. And in some ways, she immediately had the ability that Chris didn't, which was cool to see. Like, she was much more of a natural designer, where Chris is much more, like, he's a keyframe magician. And, like, building out the processes to stay clean as, like, so to his world. And I think on the rest of, like, the producing side and figuring out, like, as we grew, what else we needed that he naturally would have filled or like plugged a hole for six months as we figured out like what the role was like that one's been much harder so we've had like

account producer roles where they're like doing a little bit of account management that Chris was familiar with as well as producing an actual project we've had um more like contracted field producer roles or things that are just Christmas like projects um and then we just like a month and a half ago took on a full-time producer for the first time and he's been crushing it. So Jaime came on. And now I think genuinely for the first time since Chris stepped away, we actually have all of the holes plugged, so to speak,

with people that are even more capable and actually interested in growing those skill sets, which I think was Chris's tricky part was like, hey, I might be good at this or I think I am good at this, but I don't really want to continue to develop this skill set. So it's hard for me to like stay focused and want this, which is super valid. I was like, do you're 27 years old? Like, you don't have to have your life in your career trajectory, figured out, like, go try some things. Yeah, that's kind of a long-witted answer.

But I think that it took us probably a year and a half to, like, figure out all the right people, take some swings and misses on vendors and figuring out, like, what can we really hand off to other people versus which things are, like, unique to the way that we operate and need to be in-house positions. That's kind of our biggest question all the time. It's like as we grow, which of these things are really,

necessary to bring in house either for financial reasons or for like culture and preservation of like exactly how we want to do something. The contractors can be committed to but typically like never really fully integrate in that way. So yeah. He he's very wise for a 27 year old because back then I was like how do we get to the end of the month? Where's the work coming from? I would not have guessed that he was 27. Yeah. Like I, I, I, I, thought he was at least like late 30s 40s because like he's right like I was just thinking when you first told me I was like oh my god that'd be brutal but like like hearing what you guys went through to kind of get to where you are right now it's like it it almost helped you make the business

way more well-rounded and self-sufficient in a way because like he left voluntarily but let's say something happened like the previous the company we had on blue barn had their their partner that unfortunately you know very sad passed away and that kind of left like a very big gap but at least you guys had like a method in place to transition to filling all these roles that one person was essentially doing right um do you uh are has that also changed how you see your role within the business yeah i think um i think that a lot of it was in motion i think like a lot of people who maybe start a creative company similar to how I did. It was like moving freelance into a company and a brand, get really surprised with like

how little of the creative work they keep doing or at least like how much more gets added on the admin side. But I think I had been maybe by year two, X were in year seven now. I think by year two, I was like, hey, I think my actual like gifting and my real value ad actually has nothing to do with the creative. It's like being able to understand creative in order to manage and run it, recruit, rally people, cast a vision for clients. And I think that really shifted in that year like two, three, four.

To the point where now I'm, like, I haven't been in DaVinci Resolve or Premier Pro or After Effects hands on in like truly years. And I still would like lead creative strategy and sit over people's shoulders and we edit together. But recognizing that like I don't need to come. cut a sequence together. Like, it's not where I actually am adding value. Someone's better than that, better than me at that. And my real gifting is, like, managing and leading client relationships and

understanding how to, like, build culture with a team. And so I think that just became more prominent as Chris stepped away. Because it was, like, tied together with the same timing that we were starting to grow and need more of that. So, yeah, I definitely shifted it. But I don't know that it created the void that I've stepped into as much as it was, like, hey for sure that's where we're going to need more of my time is like leading a company that happens to be creative essentially as opposed to like being a creative that is it is fulfilling the work we're doing

and that's been like the coolest handoff ever because now we have significantly more talented people than me fulfilling our work so our clients are getting a better product our creatives are having more fun because they don't have to do all the admin and financing and figuring out like what it looks like to lead relationships and accompany at the same time, they just get to work on work they want to do and allows them to have more brain space and margin to be creative in that space. Nice. And one thing I'm curious about when you say Chris left, did you guys dissolve your partnership? Did you buy him out? Like, what was that process like? Because that's part of the the unglomerous side of the business, so, you know, in terms of like what happens on the back end.

you guys. You don't need to get into the nitty gritty details or whatever we are comfortable talking about. Yeah. Yeah. No, welcome to the nitty gritty if you guys are here for it. We used a methodology for our equity sharing called slicing pie. And it's like fairly unique. But I think it's an awesome system when you're like bootstrapping a company that is risk based equity. So like I'll try and give a 30,000 foot of you. Let's say like your time is worth $100.00. an hour, but you're doing it for free, or maybe you're doing it for $50 now, like, discounted. That, whatever that delta is, like that gap, you're essentially risking. Like, what I'm doing is worth $100 an hour. I'm making zero. I'm risking $100 an hour by being a part of this.

That gets put, like, pooled into a pie, like it becomes slices in a pie, that then you have a portion of, like, the full company's risk, essentially. That's how you earn the equity. And you also could contribute capital. And that gets at a multiplier because cash is like the riskiest thing to put into a business because it's you already used a skill to earn it. It's already post tax. That's way more risky than your time as an example. But things like equipment, ideas, relationships, like that can all get different multipliers within the slicing pie methodology.

But it's all based on risk. And then at some point, you freeze the pie when no one is risking anything. So like in this case, if you're all getting paid something competitive market. salary and are no longer contributing financial capital and you don't need, like, if you're buying equipment, it's coming out of company accounts. Then you freeze the pie. So we froze our pie like five years ago whenever we like no longer needed any of that financial support. And then that equity is like not based on how much work you do for the company. It's not based on, like, what's actively going on. It's just based on like when risk happened. So Chris has

no longer paid by minivan day to day. He doesn't, he's not on salary with us anymore. But I am, but neither of us are risking anything. So our equity share is not changing. So he's still as an equity holder. He's a partner at the company still, even though he's not like in it day to day. So we didn't dissolve our partnership still exists. We're an LLC, a multi-member LLC taxed as an S-Corp.

He's still a part of that every year around. it's his K-1 from the company. Yeah. So we've talked about him being bought out. We've talked about people from our team who are interested in becoming partners that would buy him out. It hasn't happened yet and may not. But yeah, that's where we're at with our current partnership.

So he left dated operations, but still as a partner and equity holder because of the time he spent risking, essentially, back when we first formed. So he's just not getting paid essentially. But on paper, he's still part of the business, but because he's not working in the business anymore, he's just not getting paid anything like that. And then you guys just file taxes as if, you know, still partners, right? Yeah. And he is getting paid distributions.

Like, because he still owns 24.6% of the company. So yeah, maybe a little bit unusual for creatives like in our space, but like I'm paid like a W2 salary even as an owner of the company. But then distributions come like beyond that as a part of profit sharing and things like that that that we do with our whole team. Okay. So the distribution, I don't know how that works. We're not at that stage yet. We're still paying each other dividends. but essentially like at the end of the year you guys decide how much leftover profit you guys

divy that up depending on whatever is allocated to each person that's how you guys do it yeah yeah and we like because of how we wrote our operating agreement we keep a lot of the of the funds like within the company like it stays in the company account the company pays the taxes and it stays in there but we actually do quarterly profit sharing with our whole team so any quarter that we are making profit, our employees are included in our profit sharing model. So, like, Chris gets paid out from that as well when there's profit. Because even though a portion of it is for employees, he's no longer an employee. And then a portion of that is for ownership.

He still gets paid out his portion of that. How did you guys figure out the amounts for the profit sharing? A lot of guess and check. Because we're switching to salary. from January. So it's just, it's got me thinking now. I'm curious also, though, like, because of the type of business that we're in, it's not always guaranteed. It's like, wouldn't it be better to also have some savings set aside for, like a runway, unless you guys already have that already in place, I'm guessing.

I think they do probably like a small percentage, right, Keryl? Because you're not going to go through all the leftovers. That's what I'm asking. It's like how they gone about it. Yeah, we have, we have four buckets and our, profit sharing model. The first one is tithing and giving. So our whole company is a part of like giving 10% of our profit and they get to choose like their their portion of that. They kind of get, I don't know what you call it. It's not a blank check. They get a fixed amount based on that percentage, but they get to choose the organization that they support. So that's one bucket. The second bucket is like company

retained earnings. The third bucket is employees and that goes like the profit sharing that actually is distributed to the team. And then ownership is the last bucket. And it's, this is going to sound more complicated than it is, but we use like a similar to like a tax structure where it's like, hey, if we make X amount,

this is the percentage of what that breakdown looks like. And so if we make very little profit in a quarter, more of it gets retained by the company because we need to be able to like insulate for what often can be like losses in a month or a quarter or a year. but if we make more profit, like it becomes more and more advantageous for the employees. We're retaining less and less of that, like, upper tier for the company's retained earnings

and being able to distribute more of it that way, not to employees. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, I get it. That's interesting. I'm going to feed the transcript from this podcast to Claude and have it give me some pointers from what we should do because no one's really brought that up.

Yeah, yeah. We've got a one-pager because it became like something we think is really cool and we believe in and want to value like our team's active effort in the company. But also it becomes like moderately complicated. And so we have built a couple of different versions of like a one-pageer that explains it probably more clearly than I should have just read it as what I should have done. I was going to say I'm still a little a little confused, especially when you said like, oh, yeah, we have a few buckets that we pull. I'm like, oh, there's more to this. No, it makes sense. But, no, I do like the quarterly profit sharing thing.

I didn't even think about that. I was thinking, like, at the end of the year, but quarterly sounds a lot more delicious than waiting until December. It's riskier for the company. But I think it is like, we went back and forth because annual is pretty common. But it can be a bummer. Like, let's say you work super hard for the next three months. I mean, now it's kind of close to the year.

Let's say like January, February, March are like really heavy. Everybody's working super hard. Maybe you have late nights. Maybe you have traveling a bunch. Like for some of our, like, we shot a doc series where we were on the road for like 65 days. We came back in between. But that season was like really heavy for everybody. And everybody had to like give a ton of energy, which is cool.

But then you don't want to have to wait to be financially rewarded for that like nine more months. Or even if you like wait until you close taxes in April. That could be like a year that you're waiting. And it feels hard to then be like, hey, this was for this thing we did a long time ago. So quarterly for us lets us kind of gauge. Like, hey, like, we just did all this work. And then we want to like value that and give everybody a portion of what we earned during that really hard season. Or just successful.

Like sometimes it's tons of extra tons of effort and time and work. And sometimes it's like, hey, our process was so efficient over the last three months. Like we were so seamless that we were able to. create more profit and we all get to share that. Makes sense with a bigger team too, especially when you want to make sure that everyone in your team feels valued. That is definitely a good way to do it. Like Dario and I are just the only two employees of our businesses. Not yet. Not yet from January. Well, technically we'll be salaried employees in January. We're just dividend employees right now. But it's just

us. Like we have hammer contractors that we work with all the time and freelancers. So it's a little different in that sense. You know, they have their own commitments and everything. Whereas you guys actually have committed people on your team that you want to make sure feel valued. And that definitely is a good way to do it. Whereas like, you know, as business owners, you feel like you can sacrifice a little bit of those luxuries every now and then to make sure, you know, the business is also doing good. But yeah, it really varies. Clearly, it's just a numbers calculation, right? So as long as you have all your numbers, you can kind of figure out.

Like for the January switch, I had, well, I did all of our account, like I mentioned this in the other episodes, but I had Claude go through all of our accounting and create, like, exactly the type of document that my accountant would create. And from that, I had it kind of like playtest different salary numbers and let us know, like, which one would be, like, the safest for the business. I'm pretty sure, like, once you have all that data is just like a numbers thing where you could go like, okay, well, if we do like quarterly profit sharing, right? Is that what it was called? Quarterly profit sharing, then how much realistically could we get from that type of thing, right? Yeah, how did you guys land on, maybe I'm prying, but how do you guys land on salaries?

Were you guys looking to have like benefits or what's the benefit? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. you're getting on salary. Yeah, yeah. So it was a couple of things. Mainly, I do want to get a mortgage in the future at some point, so they do check that stuff. But the other main thing was that you do get more benefits paying yourself a salary.

Like here, like you would be contributing to the Canadian pension plan. And there were some other stuff too. Like you can contribute to your RRSP, which is, I don't know what the equivalent of that is in the States. Like a Roth IRA or a 401K. Yeah, I think I guess. Basically, like, you put the money in there and then when, usually when you're retired, you start to pull it out because it'll be taxed at a lower rate.

I guess that's the Roth. Is that what that one is? Yeah, but 401K and Roth IRAs are like the two main styles of retirement accounts that you can basically pay into if you're employed. There's other ways around it, but essentially, yeah, that's the same. Those are the main ones. The other big one too is that I do want us to get disability insurance as well and we got rejected for it because they're like, oh, you guys pay yourselves in dividends. So technically it's not a salary.

So we're not going to offer it to you. I was like, okay, it's stupid, but it's like a consistent dividend. You can kind of see the numbers. I'm like, oh, no, it's got to be on salary. I'm like, all right, fine, whatever. Yeah, that's fun. It was a big shift for us. We weren't salary initially.

We became salary when we brought on our first employee. which was 20, 21, I want to say, like maybe a year two-ish of us operating. But prior to that, we were just doing distributions. And then once we brought an employee, you're like, hey, this actually makes a lot of sense for all of us to be salary. Now that we're like going through the process

of figuring out anyway. But it was a big shift for us. But it's been super clean. And most people I talk to, at least stateside, that are in creative and production agencies, aren't typically on salary but it does bring like a lot of clarity and ease of

sustainability. It's like easier to forecast easier to understand like yeah your personal ability to use the value out of the company. Especially when you have more people too. Yeah.

Yeah, the only thing I'm curious about is that I haven't looked 100% into it but it was saying that once you start it you got a you can't like like let's say you can't do six months of the year salary and then switch to dividend like there's some weird rules like it's considered like a promise to pay a certain amount so I don't know how that part works I'll figure that out later on but yeah did you were you nervous when you switched over

yeah it's the first time we had like guaranteed money going out like even though we had gotten to a point where like probably similar to you guys like we had consistent consistent agreed upon distributions like we knew what we were going to get and I I don't even even think that we, I think we didn't have to change it for a year or something. Like we were pretty sustainable and knowing what was coming. But salaries, I mean, it adds costs for, at least for us because we're adding benefits into that, like medical, dental vision. We're like matching some of our teams for our retirement.

So all of a sudden, you're like guaranteeing this money and missing like a distribution when it's just you guys and when it was just us, like relatively no big. deal depending on what's going on your personal life that month or that every biweekly or however you pay yourselves and you can kind of see it coming at least we were able to which was nice to be like hey July like a month from now don't plan on getting a distribution because we're like we're not making any money or now we don't have that now it's like no everyone's getting paid it has to happen so like where's the money coming from so that was that was freaky to like solidify a really big expense like payroll is

still are easily our largest expense every month. So that's kind of nary to have that like locked in indefinitely. Yeah. Oh, I forgot another benefit was another benefit was to our account confirms us that our taxes would go down too. Like the taxes that the business pays would go down, which I was surprised, but apparently that was the thing. It just goes on to us then in that sense.

On the business side, there's less taxes, but then it comes on to us a little bit, right? No, when you get the salary, the tax is already removed. That's how I understood it. Yeah, but it's being loved in with it that you're paying. The business pays the taxes. No, no, but it said that we, like, compared to the taxes we're paying now, paying each other dividends. Like, once we switch the salary, the total amount of taxes we pay will actually go down.

But you meant the personal, because you said the business taxes. No, on the personal, no, the personal is still separate. Technically, what we get is already, the tax is already removed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. They remember when we were at the bank and you were getting your money? Like, the tax was already removed. Yeah, yeah, I remember.

The bank was paying it directly for you. Yeah, no, I was just saying that I thought you were referring to the business pays less taxes in general afterwards. No, it said, I mean, Claude told me, and then also I checked with the account, it said it looks like we'll be paying less taxes than. with the with the dividends so i don't know seems like a good switch and we got them we got the money to to make it happen so it's because we're expenses now we're expenses that technically that's why yeah we're no longer making money we're for the expenses in this sense our effective tax rate went down for sure so like i don't know if it's the same for you guys but we we do pay less in overall taxes, including, like, we pay employee tax.

But even counting all of that, like, we pay less in overall taxes than we did prior to salary. So maybe it's the same for you guys. I don't know anything about Canadian tax law, but. Same. And apparently neither does the CRA. It's a little joke for the Canadians listening in. Yeah, that one went out of me. Yeah, yeah, no, no, because there was this recent report where the CRA is equivalent of the IRS,

and there was a report that said 85% of the time they give out bad information. So the tax department of Canada is only, the tax department of Canada is only right 15% of the time. So you could call them 10 times and only one and a half, two and one and a half times you get the right information. I hate that. Yeah. That doesn't sound fun. Yeah.

What's a talk about? Sorry, go ahead. Go for it. No, I was going to, because before we start recording, you're talking about how you, we were talking a little bit about retainers, actually. We should bring that up because I thought that was a fun conversation, how you said you actually turn them away. And a lot of people have had trouble, even just getting.

offered retainers. So, tell us what the, yeah, which, tell us. Yeah, I don't want to make it all I want to make it all sound like sunshine and rainbows, but the concept of retainers, we've been really hesitant on. And the main reason, well, two reasons. One, for us, we like find it really hard to find like win-win value in retainers, especially like use it or lose it style retainers where you're like, cool, pay you five grand a month, they'll pay you $10 a month, pay you $100,000 a month like whatever. And like it doesn't, nothing rolls over and it's like it is loosely tied to some objectives,

but you don't really know what the work's going to be every month. Maybe you do for the first three months or something. Otherwise they probably wouldn't be bringing you on. But then it's things start to get like loose and in my experience observing this can get messy. Like one way, the agency feels like they're getting taken advantage of because they are having a hard time establishing boundaries or the client feels like they're getting taken advantage of

because they're like, we're paying all this money. We either we don't have any work for them to do, but we're locked them to this agreement, or they're like, man, it's a lot of work to make sure we're up to date and, like,

giving them enough work to fulfill their retainer hours or however you structure your thing. So I think we saw it as a really hard thing to prove our own value. And then on the other side, we had a couple clients come to us early on that had been burned by retainers. And so they were like,

exhausted by the idea. And they're like, can we please just do something project-based? And we're like, yeah, that's the only way we operate. Let's do it. So I think we saw a lot of value in not leading, like being able to prove value, lead with value, before getting into long-term agreements, that our clients really appreciated it.

So it was like a little bit of us wanting to say, hey, like, we'll continue to prove the value. We're also not getting locked into a long-term agreement with a client. We don't love working with. Like, let's flesh this out a little bit. So yeah, we've kind of found that line to be both helpful for us and helpful for our clients, even though it comes with more, I don't know, paperwork or like scoping out more projects as opposed to like, hey, just run this through the retainer.

So I don't have like a definitive way that it's saved us, but it does feel like we have really healthy relationship with our clients, and I see a lot of unhealthy relationships with clients locked into retainers. So, yeah, do you guys do retainers or what's your experience at them? No, like we mostly, we mostly do project-based as well. And like, yeah, we have some clients that essentially pre-book us every year for like certain projects that they know they're going to have like quarterly webinars or usually, the biggest one is usually events, like big events and conferences that happen for our clients

throughout the year. So those are the pre-bookings that we get. usually when you have a policy that's very specific like that, you know, it usually comes from experience, right? So was there any particular experiences you had with past clients where you did go into a retainer that just made you realize this was not the right move?

Or, or was it something you guys already decided without needing to do that? I think if I remember correctly, we never had one that went poorly. We never, we never had one. We actually, as I'm saying this, we just signed a retainer like two months ago for the first time.

I think I think for some. So it's not a policy. So it's not a policy. It's not a policy. It's a concept. It's more of a guideline than rule. It's with a client we've been working with for years and they kind of have like unique circumstances where they have like two of their team members on the creative fulfillment side.

that we usually work with, are headed out on maternity and paternity leave respectively for the next six months. And so we sign an agreement for six months to basically, like, fill those two roles. So they don't have to like hire someone new into that space. Like it helps them a lot for us to be on retainer because they can just treat us as an in-house extension. And I mean, it does obviously like a retainer is really helpful for like understanding your reoccurring revenue for us too. I'm very hesitant. Can't lie of like what this means.

because I think it's going to go really well for them. Like, I think they're going to really enjoy having us on their team. And then come January, we'll have to, like, decide whether or not we want to re-up if they, like, their team members will be back. But my assumption is that they're going to love the experience and that they're going to want to continue that agreement. So we'll see. This is kind of the guinea pig.

The difference there is that it's because it's with a client that you've already worked with, that you've already have a relationship with. So in those types of situations, very specific circumstance where they're going away for maternity and then coming back. Yeah. That makes the most sense. Like the biggest risk is, like you said, like if you're bringing in someone you've never worked with before and trying to lock down

a six month to a year contract or something like that. Yeah. When you think about it, it's like, imagine like it's like if you're going to find someone. It's like, I'm going to marry you for the next year. And then we're going to see if this works or not.

I will say the other the other guests we've had on that do have retainers that have worked out well as it's always been with clients that they've already been established with, right? So I've never heard of anyone saying retainer just with like, you know, random new client, right? But that's the fantasy, Dario. The fantasy is to get the new clients, you know, and next month let's sign three clients. and lock them in for the next year. I gotta say that's a very, whoever's thinking that is being very naive

because, right? I mean, every time we sign on a client, I'm always like, let's see how this project goes. If I hate them, I never wanna work with them again, right? I can't imagine locking yourself in for like three to six months with someone that is gonna be a nightmare from day one, right? I feel like maybe it's just because we operate

in different circles, but I think that is fairly normal. Like a lot of the agencies, and especially agencies of record, are signing like six to 12 months, month agreements. Yeah, at least that's my experience. Are they like ad agencies or are they like video production companies? Even creative, I'd say like more video agencies than production houses or production

companies, which is probably like semantics of what they call themselves. But I think agencies typically are a little more results oriented or have like some back in ability to like showcase performance. But some of them are just like, we have a bunch of word coming. I know one in Atlanta actually that has been working this out and we've been talking through like should they do in a retainer? Should they try and like outline every deliverable they're going to do for a year? Because their client wants this level of work. And yeah, I don't think it's super unusual.

Sometimes it's for like a low amount like three grand a month because they know that they want to make three social videos and two cut downs or whatever. But I do think that a lot of agencies are. leading with a retainer offer, if that makes sense. I mean, it makes sense because, but I see it making sense only if you're doing like marketing or ad agency stuff because you got to show the results, right? How are you going to show results per one asset deliverable? You need to like have like the space to go like, see, we tried it out for three months and these are the results like month to month.

So it makes sense in that's how I feel. Yeah. And more deliverables, not just video, right? Like photo. They're doing photo. they're doing campaigns. Like, yeah. Yeah, yeah, some.

I really think that maybe it's Southern California thing. Maybe, I don't know, maybe it's a West Coast thing. But they're definitely like videographers, solo videographers on retainer agreements. Because either the client thinks that they're getting

like a higher quality character as opposed to hiring someone in house or they feel like even though it's a retainer and it's relatively indefinite, like we can have, we can stop this in six months where we don't want to have to fire someone because we aren't making like the financial return we thought we were or something like that. But anyway, I think it's also industry based and the type of work you do. If you're dealing with a lot of e-commerce or product related or like social content that needs to promote like something on a monthly basis, then the retainer model will work. But if you're like in corporate, for example, that's not usually a space where you need to go into that kind of, that kind of model. At least that's what I think for now, like depending on the type of work you do.

I think it is very industry and content type based. Yeah. Yeah. I know you guys have done a variety of work and are finding your niche here now. What do you think is next for you all? Like what type of work is really exciting for you all? I would say to keep growing and finding more. clients of the corporate work that we do.

Like we work in a lot of like finance, uh, software and tech spaces. Uh, so that's what a lot of our client work is based on. And also like a variety of like some event and manufacturing type clients. So, um, it is nice to see if we could find more work like that and, you know,

continue to expand. That's kind of where we're right now pushing. Um, I want to do more events. More, more events for me would be great because, is again, the consistency. The guarantee.

Yeah. Every year they're going to need that again. And then from there, maybe branching out. But I do like the generalist approach that we have because we get to experience a lot of different things. We haven't really niched down into anything, to be honest with you. Like, it's still, we're still very, like, we'll say yes to anyone as long as, you know, the budget is good and client is nice. So, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I haven't, I haven't thought too deeply about, like, which direction to go in. I think this year's just been a process of like cleaning up everything that we have. So maybe towards the end of the year we can start planning out different things. Yeah. We typically do slow, slow changes. We don't do. It's not like next month.

All right, we're completely changing our business models. Lately, we have been doing pretty big changes. On the back end of things, maybe. Well, thanks to Mr. Claude. But what about you, Tyler? Just let me co-work and go to work. Yeah. We do like 70% of our work in like commercial spaces and 30% of it and like doc,

branded docs or longer form like series style content. Like is it like doc doc? Like it's just like you're going to sell it to us like a like what do you call it? I was going to say station, not even people don't sell the stations anymore. Like studio like a platform or a distribution channel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, we've never done something that wasn't already funded. Like, we've never done original content that didn't have a client or a backer behind it.

But we've done three, like, long-form multi-year projects, and we're starting two in the spring. One is, like, an eight-part doc series. That's truly, like, documentary in the sense that's, like, discovery. It doesn't necessarily have an existing angle, but it's all around like hope-filled media and to find characters that are like able to show that. And then that will go to streaming. And the other one is more of like a content series

for an organization that has a need for like an eight episode content series. So there's like aspects of it that are docky where we'll be like on discovery trying to find like the right characters or the experiences to put our characters into. and then there's part of it that'll be like totally scripted where they like are trying to communicate a specific prospect of the topic um so yeah you guys already got fund you guys already got so and you guys got funding before you started it their brand is not yeah he was saying no he was saying they're no he was saying some of them aren't the new ones aren't yeah one of them is through one of them uh

is the one of the content series is like for a client like they're paying us to create long-form content And then the doc piece is funded by a grant. So there's an organization that funds, like you are submitting applications that can be like pretty extensive. And then going through, like we got a provisional grant to help us get like fund market research to like flesh thrust the idea. So in that sense, I guess we like are pitching it and it and winning the work. But we didn't necessarily go and shoot it and then try and sell it. I've heard that and seen people do that where they go and shoot a really cool doc and then they go try and sell it to some platform or streamer or whatever.

In this case, it's pre-funded, but it will go to streaming. But a little bit different model. We'll do like a festival circuit with it for six months. And then it'll be like either Netflix or Hulu. We'll pick it up at that point. Yeah, a friend of mine was just telling me about this this weekend. He did the same thing. but he told me he was already halfway through it or nearly done it,

and then he was able to get the grant for it. And that's pretty interesting. He was telling me to, yeah, I think it started as like a passion project for him, but he was able to get the funding after the fact, which actually helped because he was able to showcase a lot of it, and that I think helped expedite it. But yeah, he was telling me, he's like, yeah, everyone should go do it because it's like the way he was telling me about it,

It's like, it's better if more people do it because then the grants will get higher. So we'll see how it goes. And more of them come. There definitely is more funding than people think, like in the space. I think everyone's like, you should have to find the right avenue. Like, yeah, finding like a random person or a random organization to fund your passion project is going to be super hard. But if you're like, hey, there's things about sustainable farming. And like, there are tons of organizations that are looking for ways to bring awareness to that space.

And some of them are, you know, nonprofits that might have limited budgets but important budgets. Some of them are like large company, like Patagonia is funding films around sustainability in the U.S. specifically around like rivers and like getting in touch with them. And they like often will fund that kind of thing. It can be like a battle to like get through all the different doors you need to. But there really is funding for like passion projects if they are, especially if they're tied to like. corporate social responsibility, CSR components. There's definitely more out there than people think,

but it's definitely an arduous, like, long process to get in touch with the right people. Yeah, there's actually a previous guest, Bridget from B-Video, said she got funding to do her. I forget what those things are called, Carol, where they have, like, plants on the walls. She did like a whole doc series on it. It was pretty interesting. Like green spaces and office

buildings. Terrarium? Yes, yes. Green spaces. No, not terrariums. No, like, you know, like, office buildings now have like a wall of like plants. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She did like a whole series on it. And like our funding through the system and everything. Yeah, yeah. So I, I was looking it up, the other day. I haven't done a deep dive onto it. But yeah, it's cool to check out. You guys, people listening would be a cool idea to see what people create. kind of a flip but where do you guys feel you fit in like the creative business space like do you guys love the creative and you want to work in execution do you love like building something and it happens to be creative like you love to run a business both like what's your all's

backgrounds as far as what you were what got you here and then also like what part of the business do you want to run five years from that I love I'll go first I love the business side of it Um, with the creative side, I like it, but I don't like to be in the, in the depths of it, you know, like, uh, in the weeds. In the weeds. Like, uh, I don't, I don't like being in the dungeon editing for hours. I like Carol, take care of that. I can't, I can't do that. I'll just like break down and give up. You can tell by these setups. Carol's definitely a little, a little editing, editing dungeon. It's nicer, but it's also like I can tell it's dark. Yeah, no, no, I love, I love like, like, I'll tell Carol, like, hey, I think like this is what we should do. And then I let him, I let him be. I let him go free and, and come back with the results, the creative results. I mean, I'll have my input, obviously.

I'd be like, I don't know, like, oh, maybe we should do it like this instead. Like, there's a lot of collaboration between Dara and I. That's always been our relationship in the business. And we have like the different, it took a little bit of time for us to to kind of like figure out, what each other's strengths and weaknesses are to kind of like help tackle on certain roles. But yeah, like as Dario mentioned, he handles a lot of like the, the nitty gritty business aspects of the businesses. And I handle most of the creative.

Like obviously we overlap a lot, you know, to help help each other, you know, depending on what's happening and things like that. But, but yeah. And like one thing I would also like to see is like what other kind of creative avenues we could explored down the road like branded docs and stuff like that but it's a very different world from like where our businesses are right now um but definitely something to explore especially if there are grants out there that can help that can help kind of guide things forward a little bit that would that would be great yeah we definitely just transparently we've had way more success with

clients directly like finding like businesses that want to produce something uh the grant space is newer to us, but it's like, for us, is like ever growing, because I just like didn't know so much of this stuff existed. And I'm kind of blown away with like literal billions of dollars that are being put into grants around content creation and of all kinds. Some of that's videos. Some of that's photojournalism. I'm like, whatever.

But there's so much more money out there in that space than I never would have thought. Yeah, my buddy, when he was explaining it to me, he was telling me, also like they don't care about the final product they just want to say that it's done by the end and I was like are you sure he's like yeah and I was like this sounds ripe for being taken advantage of not that I would but I'm like how do they not like wouldn't you want to know what the quality is and everything um there's actually see a video not say like it got done was it good maybe he told me that they just want to see like the paperwork that it was done so not even that it was like done done like the final product.

They don't care about that. I was like, that's so strange. Like, why wouldn't they want to know? But, you know, that reminds me of this guy I was freelancing for like pre-pandemic. Kept talking about how he's a movie producer, movie producer, this, that, all this stuff. But he had, anyways, he had, because he still had, like, corporate clients. So I was helping him out on those shoots. And then one day, like me and the other guys on the crew were, like, looking.

him up and we're like man there's got there's like nothing online about the movies he's talking about he made and thinking back to it like after i spoke with my buddy i'm like you know that guy was probably just taking the grant money making something i guess but like not like that's it just done here's the like here's the final receipts thank you and then i think that's what he was doing he was just hustling like the grant system because i didn't see broadcasting that he's a movie producer that's made all these movies like it sounded like he's proud of them from what you're yeah and i'm like so i'm like let me go check him out you know let me see these movies right not even like a trailer like nothing i'm like what the hell and then thinking back on it now after thing told me that they don't even check

i'm like oh this cat was just hustling the system like this guy's making he must be making a career out of it because like there's nothing online where are these films and he was hiring you and he was hiring me but that was through the corporate side so the corporate client is paying him How do you also committed fraud with him is what I'm hearing No no that was through the corporate I'm kidding That's on him hey I was just the labor that day

He was just the guy holding a camera It's just holding a camera Literally do you all find That when you're interacting with new creatives Whether you're like on set together or like You made the cough shock or whatever Do you find that you're consistently Underwhelmed or impressed with the quality of work

that's out there in the world. Like with freelancers? Yeah. Like that's something like, oh, you thought he probably was pretty good or whatever. And then you find out at a minimum. It's like, oh, this didn't really go anywhere. None of the work he did was super impressive if he did the work. But I find myself like just consistently finding mediocre work out in the world.

And it's like people are doing it. People are getting hired for it. which I think excites me because you understand where the bar is at and that people are paying for this content and it's producing value otherwise they wouldn't keep paying for it. But do you guys find yourself consistently impressed when you're finding freelancers or other production companies or do you feel like, oh, we're actually better than we think we are because we can do the same things that are doing? You know what?

I'm trying to think of where I see a lot of the stuff and I usually see it on. the Creators Grab Coffee Instagram because I follow everyone there. So I do get impressed because I see what our guests are producing and I wouldn't have brought them on if they weren't pumping out good stuff. I actually watch and I'm like,

damn, we gotta really like get her shit together a little bit. You see the good people. Everyone's like doing this and doing that. I haven't, but I haven't done like a deep market analysis on like, I don't know, like Toronto scene or anything like that. I mean, there's always, it depends, right?

Like, I mean, in any market, like, most is going to be bad. And then 10% what's that thing? Like, 10% is always that ratio. You know, it's like 10% of people are carrying the other 90, right? So. Type of things. That sounds right. I feel like for every really cool commercial I see, there's like 20.

Then I'm like, what? Like someone paid for that? And some of them are like big name brands. Toyota is like a huge sponsor of San Diego sports. and they consistently put out like highly mediocre content and every time our team pulls it up they're like man someone's paying like a lot of money for this someone as in Toyota in that case and it's still like I don't know how much of that do you think though is that the client is like interfering and not wanting yeah that's like half the time too right yeah how many times that we had it where we had

to like kind of like downgrade our quality because it needs to fit someone else's vision. Yeah. And they're paying the bills. So you got to pay the bills. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. You know, your question though about like what's out in the market. And like I also watch, I watch a lot of sports.

And one of the biggest things I've seen is the amount of ads that go into that space, but specifically in the gambling ads, those things are everywhere now. So I see that constantly. And I'm like I'm watching some of these and I'm like, how is this like, is this even good? Like, you know, because a lot of it just, it's weird. A lot of the gambling content out there is just so weird and it's designed to hook people obviously, right? But I've gotten such fatigue from that.

And I feel like that's an entirely different market from like I, like I feel like there's regular commercial corporate video production space here. And then there's like the gambling content space. It's like it's, I've seen it's like two different spaces. And, you know, I'm actually curious to if we could find Dario a guest that works specifically in the gambling ad world because then like it would be interesting to see what their stories are like too. I was like a brand new industry has like a financial boom, like tech and SaaS was huge like 10 years ago. And they were the ones making like the otherworldly type of stuff, good, bad, indifferent, everything in between. and just like flood at the market.

Yeah. That's got me thinking now. Like we should be targeting these gambling companies because they got the budgets. Right? Like it makes me not want to use their platform. Yeah. How are you making so much money. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Well, I mean, they're paying you with your money basically. Yeah. But a lot of it is also AI. Like I've noticed some of like like I think like 30, 40% of them is all AI. based now as well. You're right. Oh my God. Yeah. I've seen them on TikTok and I was like, wait, is this an AI ad they're doing? They're all pretty bad. I was like, this is strange. Yeah.

They're not there yet. They're not even trying. That's the thing. Yeah. Yeah. It look. You know what, Kyler, now that you mention it, I have seen low quality stuff and it was from the gambling ones because they were using AI, but like not even like properly produced AI content. Just like, terrible. Like for the Facebook market. But I guess now, now we know who they're targeting, right? It's probably like the older people. Exactly. They're looking for the vulnerable people, the lonely people who want to be doing that, which is, it's not exactly a great space to be in, you know, because of that.

But it's everywhere now. It's crazy to see. Yes. Yeah. How do you guys identify, like, good fits for your clients? Really, you said, like, we kind of do all styles of work. Do you feel like you have a need even to, like, filter, are we the right fit? like to be want to work with this style company,

whether it's their industry. Sometimes there's just relationships and you might not know that until you get into a project. We probably won't do this again because Mark from X company is like, it's kind of a jerk. But do you guys find yourself like filtering styles of company or industries you work with based on fit? Filter good people, you know?

We start with that. It's like are we working with good people, like people who are pleasant to be around, pleasant to work with, you know, also have money obviously. you know, that's an important aspect of what we do. Like, does this company have a budget?

Pay to play, right? Exactly. And usually if the people you're working with are good, are good people, then a lot of the time, that's enough of a filter that everything else just kind of works itself out. Like, I can't, I wouldn't say that there's any clients in the last like five years that I would say, like, oh, I wish we never worked with them or anything like that. Because each new industry or each new type of client that we've worked.

worked with always kind of like helps expand our thinking a little bit. It helps us try new things. Like imagine if you just niche down into just doing food content and that's like the only stuff you do. Yeah, you'll become really good in it. Right. But some but then you're kind of like stuck in that world. Right. Whereas some people like that. Some people like that. Yeah. Like I'm just saying in terms of us like we like to work with different types of industries and clients because sometimes you come up with ideas for those industries or those types of projects that that work really well. you learn from that and then you can bring it to the other work that you also do. So, you know, at the end of the day, I just, I like working with great people. That's, that's the biggest thing.

I've always, I, for me, I like, I like the, the generalism that we do just because we get to experience different things. It's almost like, uh, you get to like playtest different jobs you could have done. You know what I mean? Because like, it's like, how often are you going to be at like the factory floor of a company that does garage doors. And then the next day you're at like this private equity company. And you just kind of like see how they work. And you're like, ooh,

I would have never made it in this industry. Good thing. I didn't go down that path. But at least I got to try it like try it out for a day and see how it was. And I like that, that aspect of it. It's like we're in, we're pretty,

uh, um, we're in a lucky space because how, how many jobs are there where you get to like see all that stuff, right? It's usually, if you're in finance, you're in finance. You don't get to experience like what a mining company does, right? You're just there, right?

Yeah. Yeah, the exposure is rad. I feel like we often come back from set, like figuring out whatever their company's problem is. Like, oh, you know, so and so in finance. Like, if they could just figure out this, we're like, we're experts. Like, we could solve this. Like, they're just not even paying attention to the whole of the company. Or this company in manufacturing. Like, their supply chain is really not that hard to figure out. I don't know why they worry about all you have to do is like X, XYZ and I'd be fine as if we like actually know what we're talking about but I do find that way more inspiration from non creative companies which may be a hot take I'm not sure but I find that like similar companies that are further along on us that like can definitely be like North Star

aspirational type of of other agencies are often doing something so similar to us just better which is super cool and it's like it's motivating but it's really hard to kind of think outside the box like bring something new so I find that we find get a lot more like whether it's process or even creative experiences um that benefit us or more from other industries like we're all our whole team's reading a book right now called unreasonable hospitality that's all about the restaurant industry and like there's no creative tips and tricks or insights at all and you know Yeah, like we're growing more from that than we do from reading something about a company really similar to ours. So I don't know what to make of that.

Maybe it's because we work into diverse spaces as well and that like we can see the benefits and the downfalls of how they're operating. But I love it. Like pulling inspiration from non-creative spaces from as far as running a business. There's probably more in common between a restaurant and a video production company, though, because you guys are cooking up the ingredients, putting it all together, serving it to the customer. There was actually a guest we had from Seattle a year or two ago. He came from restaurants and he was talking about how they're very similar in a way because it's like same thing. Prepping the food and all this stuff.

It's like getting your shots, putting it all together. And to your point, like if you look at other industries, like see, you're also inadvertently looking at other industries and seeing. how you could learn new techniques or new, just new ideas, really, not techniques, like more so new ideas and approaches to how you can run your business with the main people you typically work with, right? If you're always looking at the same type of company at the same type of projects over and over and over again, yeah, you might get some technical improvements over time, but maybe the thinking doesn't change as easily or as often, right?

Like sometimes you, like I feel like we all have to figure out new ways to stimulate ideas, especially if you start doing the same thing over and over. Like every now and then you might get into like a space where like for like a few months you're doing the same type of work. It's like, oh, you know, we got to try something different. Like how do we how do we do we do that? Like do we look elsewhere? Do we look here? Do we look here?

And yeah. And it sounds like you're also kind of doing that as well. That's funny. There's so much out there now. It's making me think I should probably bring on more diverse guests outside the video industry. I guess the longer about the purposes. The business of business. Business of business.

It'd be interesting to bring on for, like, even within like, creatives grab coffee, still kind of fits the niche, just like branding agency or a design firm or like getting to see like the people who are kind of adjacent to us. So working with similar clientele, probably moderately similar experiences and scopes, but delivering a different product. That'd be really interesting to me. I have no idea what that workflow or process looks like. There are a new podcast, business of business.

Just call it Bob. Bob podcast. Bob. Bob's podcast. The Bob. Neither of us are called Bob. One thing I'm also curious about, though, like with the whole minivan thing, you said you kind of lived out of it for a little

while is that how you came up with the name for the business or like it was there a bigger story to that yeah um we i guess lived lived out of it as far as road tripping and we were in college and like hey let's go um out to the west coast for spring break like practice plan or sophomore year like sweet let's like fly there stay go to the green cany and do all things you like oh that's like super expensive so we can't afford to do that and then it's like well what if we drive And it was like, oh, cool, like that saves a lot of money. But gas is still expensive and, like, to pay for housing and food. Like, it's still going to add up.

And we couldn't, like, justify. We're all broke college students. And then we're like, well, what if we, like, get someone else to pay for it? And so we built a whole brand called Van Without a Plan at the time. And we had, like, a blog and a blog and stickers and shirts. And got, I think our first year, we had 16 corporate sponsors all the way up. to like North Face and Otterbox. We're like sending us gear and paying for gas.

And so it paid for like our whole trip essentially. And then we ran it back next year and did like a similar thing. I already kind of had some of those relationship established. And then a couple years later when it came to like formalizing the company, looked back on that experience as like the first. I had been freelancing for a while. I lived in Guatemala as like a multimedia journalist. And then also I was doing like a lot of corporate video.

through high school and college. But my first, like, cool, interesting project that had a lot of traction was this road trip in the minivan. Because we were, like, four-by-fouring in a minivan with a six-inch lift on it. Like, we were out in the boonies. So it was super fun. Like, everyone wanted to attach to it, and it became really accessible. And then over the years, we really had modeled our posture toward a minivan, like a literal minivan. being curious and approachable and purpose-driven and genuity.

You can do so many things with it and fit so many different to other people. We're bringing our clients along on this road trip with us. Everybody can fit in a van. It's like not some hot, sexy sports car. It's like a practical functional vehicle. So, yeah, at the time it was more of like a cool moniker that we could attach to, but it has really become like a posture for how our company is and what people can expect working with us.

Love that story. That's awesome. Sounded like a lot. When, when was there were these road trips happening? Like, what years were they? Would have been like 2016, 2017. Okay. Okay. Nice.

Like travel vlog was, we're big. That was popular than that. Yeah. A bunch of YouTubers, Sam Colder. Maddie Hapoya. We're like blowing up at that time. So is it still online? We didn't get that big.

But the video definitely is we didn't ever have, we didn't like have a YouTube channel. It was like Vimeo and a blog that we like hosted everything within. But yeah, I think our first one was called Shake the Dust, like the video. And the next one was called Comeback Kids round two. That's great. I'm sure. I'm sure we want to see it.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, music and everything too. You got to send them to us. I'm very curious to see like the early days of minivan. And I forgot to ask this earlier, but when did you start the company? What year was it?

It was founded in 2019. Oh, okay. I think you mentioned it. Okay, cool, cool. Yeah, I think we're your timeline. Year seven. Year seven, yeah, that's right. Nice.

I need my third espresso of the day, so I think it's probably a good place to. I'm starting to feel zapped out a little bit. Let's end it off here. So to our listeners, Kyler is from San Diego. So if you got shoots over there, reach out to him or questions about salaries and V2s and profit margins. Or minivan.

His website is minivanproductions.com. So s at the end. And are you active on social? I should be more active. But I think my ads are like at Kyler Beale. easy to find. Yeah, I recently had a daughter. And so I've started taking more photos and stuff. So you might not find more video content, but you can fall on a family, family occasions. Nice. I'm expecting my first in seven days. So let's go. How are you feeling, dad?

Honestly, it's any day now at this point. So it's just kind of like a waiting game. So Carol, Kyler told me something really interesting during the pre-interview. He said that the day after his baby came he went right back to work so i just wanted to listen to what other people i knew that was coming and his wife was calling him from the hospital said i need help he's like no i have to help out at the company so just the thought for you okay so september 17 just remember started talking i knew that was i can't let that information get out there like that that's false he will show this episode to his wife up until like a minute, like an hour and 15.

Right, right, right. Yeah. Anyways, uh, listen, give him a follow on Instagram. He promises he'll post more often if you do at minivan productions on Instagram. I don't know if you're doing TikTok too, but, uh, but yeah, all right. LinkedIn is probably the most popular of our channel. Okay, give him a follow over there too. It's probably, uh, Kyler.

Come on over. Kyleer Beale and minivan productions. I think I'm following you over there. That's good. All right. Awesome. Guys, I think that's a good spot to end this. Awesome.

Thank you all. This is fun. I appreciate you. Thanks for coming on. 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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We got you covered. Come on down. Audioprocess.com. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you. And we're all going to have a real good time. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.