Creatives Grab Coffee - BUILDING Relationships & MANAGING Budgets | Creatives Grab Coffee 41

Episode Date: April 12, 2023

JOIN OUR PATREON FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT: https://www.patreon.com/CreativesGrabCoffeeProduced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comThis week we welcome Thomas Ackels from Offbeat Films, a full-service video production company in Seattle, Washington specializing in the authentic human voice. There is so much to unpack in this episode. We talk about: -Finding fulfilment with your projects -Getting paid for your passion projects -Losing pitches and re-evaluating for the future -Putting in safeguards to protect your business’s cash flowWelcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions.SUBSCRIBE 🎧✅ and FOLLOW 📲 for more episodes! https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

we're live guys hello we're alive so kind of continuing into our uh into our journey into the u.s today we have offbeat seattle which is a seattle-based video production company that focuses on what was it authentic human voice on the authentic human voice welcome thomas thank you yeah i'm excited to be here. I'm curious, am I the first American interview that you have? Second. Second. Second. You're the second. That's why we said we're continuing the journey. We're slowly making our way through the US right now. See, if you didn't cancel your original recording date, then you would have been the first. Ah, dang it. Dang it. So I got to fill the shoes of whoever went first.

I was actually curious about that little description on your company. I'm like, what does it mean by specializing in the authentic human voice? Let us know for our listeners. Yeah, I think it's funny because we're actually going through kind of a brand revamp at the moment, trying to better communicate to people who visit our website, or really anybody, what it is that we do and kind of the type of work that we do. But I would say that's just kind of the type of work that we are passionate about. And so what we, the type of projects that we love to do, specialize in bringing out the human voice, usually has like one character, one person that's a real person out in

the wild that we tell their story. And we pride ourselves on being able to get to know that person and tell their authentic story rather than just kind of showing up on shoot day, you know, getting whatever we get and then leaving and never seeing them again. Um, you know, we try to build a relationship and get to know them and so that we can justify their story with, with the products that we make. So this is something that you kind of, uh, do, uh, with like your corporate clients, or is this something kind of like more so in like the documentary realm or in more creative type projects? Yeah. I mean, I think a little bit of all the above. I think there's obviously like all production companies out there. There's kind of a lot of the work that you do that's not as maybe glamorous or we call it cutting the grass. You know, maybe you have to do internal corporate

work or stuff like that that helps pay the bills. But that's the type of work we try to pursue, I would say. And the projects, whether it's a corporate client or a nonprofit or even narrative work, that's the type of stuff we pursue to do. But it's not the only work we do. I think there's still kind of other stuff. We just don't put that stuff on our website as much. Right. I love all these different analogies that companies from different parts of the world have, like yours was cutting the grass type work that's a new one for us right it's just the mundane stuff that you're not you know you got to do it you know you got to get the grass cut but maybe it's not your favorite thing to do i like on your website you have a section called the voices and that's where

you're really putting a good chunk of the, what do you call that, documentary style of video, right? Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, I think I appreciate you saying that because we actually get a lot of feedback on that with people who find us just on Google or not meeting us first, just finding us randomly. They talk about that voices page, which I think is a really strong page for us to share a little bit about who we are and a little bit about what we care about. So I think that that we created that because of what I've been saying, like we're passionate about telling those types of stories and being authentic with the type of work that we do.

So that's why we created this page and we're like, Hey, let's, let's talk about the voices and how we value everybody's voice, but also the different ways a voice can impact a life, you know, like singing, um, or maybe they're, uh, telling a joke or, um, you know, you know, talking about a trauma, traumatic past that they have, it can be powerful and impactful in so many different ways. And it's just one person's voice. So that's kind of why we created that page. And we want to keep that theme going in this new revamp. Hopefully, in the next couple months, we'll be relaunching our website with even more of that type of stuff. You know, what I also like about that page is that each one is sponsored by

different companies. So you did the genius thing of doing like a passion project, but also getting paid for doing it, which I totally that's, that's a goal, right? Like, how did you pull that off? Absolutely the goal. I think that's, that continues to be the goal, uh, as much as we can. It's funny because a lot, you know, a lot of, uh, the, the first projects we get now we've been in existence for about six years, 2017 was when we, we started. Um, so back then it wasn't like we were getting bigger corporate clients. So we would do smaller nonprofit work or small businesses. And budgets were embarrassingly low. But part of our strategy back then was, hey, let's take on all the work that we can and create the

type of work that we want, especially because if it's a low budget thing, you might have a little bit more creative say with the client. So we kind of started there. And then it was because we made those that corporate clients would see the work and say, you know, Alaska Airlines, as an example, they're a big airlines here that is headquartered in Seattle. And they saw a project that we did for a nonprofit called Assistance League. We probably did that project for $1,000. You know, it wasn't much. Maybe it paid for all of the things that we needed to get the job done. But they saw that, and they actually literally said, we saw that project, and that's why we want to choose you. Because you have the ability of telling an emotional story.

And then we got to partner with them and do this great, you know, kind of campaign of multiple videos and multiple cities across the country. So it's funny, you know, the work that you can put in for even if it's little to no pay can can pay off on the back end if people see it and like it. I love the strategy that you had in mind with these smaller projects from the very get-go. Because a lot of companies and a lot of people that kind of jump into this industry, they take on whatever work they can. And they're also kind of also trying to figure out what, what they want to do as they go. At least like for us, that's kind of like how it was when we began with the smaller projects,

we see what the asks are. Yeah, we were able to be a bit more creative in certain aspects, but you guys were already thinking from a strategy perspective at that point. Was there, like, did you guys have a lot of experience going into it as you started the production company or was it kind of like you started the production company as you're getting into the industry? Yeah. I mean, that's a good question because I think we were really young. We started probably two or three years after graduating from college. We went to school here in the state of Washington at Gonzaga University. I don't know if you're familiar with that. The basketball team is kind of what they're known for. But we spent about two and a half, three years in the industry separately. My business

partner and I, who I'm talking about, Danny is his name. Separately, I was in Dallas, Texas. He was in St. Louis, Missouri. And we worked for production companies in those places and kind of got to take things in and learn. But when we started, we were pretty young. So I wouldn't even say we had, even honestly, hindsight being 2020, looking back, I kind of wish we spent more time in the industry before we started to learn more because we've learned so much over these last couple of years that I wish we knew. But that's kind of life in general. But I do think when we were starting out, we did understand that, you know, our strategy needs to be to create as much as we can in the type of things that we want to get hired for. We were also young enough to not have too much responsibility. So I think that's important too.

Like we didn't have families or a mortgage or anything like that. So it's like, it's okay to, you know, scrape by for now. Obviously we don't want that to be the forever, but if the next year or two is like that, then that's okay. As long as it, again, it kind of works out in the end. So, so far so good. But I would also say, you know, you throw in a global pandemic and that kind of shake things up at least a little in terms of having to adjust. But, you know, everyone out there relates to that. Yeah. It's not like it was a unique situation to everyone. Everyone had to kind of figure out how to move past it. And now that we're kind of like past that point, it's almost like, what have we learned over the last few years? How can we change? How can we adapt? How can we rebrand? And as you mentioned, you guys are doing the same thing now with your kind of like voices idea at the forefront of it.

Right. Yeah. And I think you're, you're totally right. Like it's a matter of, it's always going to be adaption and change and, and, and, um, thankfully humans are really good at that. But yeah, I'm curious to hear from y'all, you know, when you started, uh, laps, did you have any sort of similar strategy or did you go in with a lot of experience as well? Or was it similarly like, we don't really know what we're doing, but we're going to do it either way? That last part. Exactly what you just said there. Yeah. I mean, when we first started, it was really just us kind of like freelancing. To be honest, like we've talked about this on the podcast before, where up until the pandemic, it was almost as if we were just two freelancers working together on a lot of things. We were still kind of learning

the industry, kind of like, as you said, you know how you said you wish you were in the industry a little bit longer before you started the company. We had the company name, but it was like we were freelancing and being in the industry within that timeframe, at least for about six years. Because we started it while we were still in university, not really knowing that this was even a potential to actually be making money, right? Because we started the company in 2014. That wasn't really like a lot of independent production companies were not, it wasn't a thing back then. I've often wondered what would have happened if we, like you were saying, Thomas, what if we spent the first couple of years just maybe working more so as freelancers instead of

starting the company? And I've often wondered if that would have been a better course of action for us. And I don't think it would have helped in anything aside from maybe just improving your technical skills when you're filming because it won't teach you about the business side of things unless you go work for someone else so if you went and worked like under another video production company then you would have learned how they operate and everything but you would have had to work on the back end not so much the on the front end or like the shooting side right so completely agree yeah agree. Yeah, I know. Oh, go ahead. I was just going to say, I never thought of it like that, where if we ended up doing that,

Dario, that we wouldn't have really learned too much, the business skills side of things, or at least it would have come in a different form, but definitely not in the perspective of trying to keep that mindset of like starting something yourself. Right. Yeah. Maybe if we did go that route, maybe we never would have actually started a production company or even this podcast. Yeah. I think there's, there's certainly aspects that you grow from when your backs are against the wall, right? Like when you're trying to figure things out and you don't have an instruction manual in front of you, there's an incredible growth that happens and lessons that are learned that you might not get if you're working as an employee or if you're working, you know, um, and not to say that as an employee,

that that's a failure or anything like that. It's, it's just different. And I think that the lessons you learn, I remember I was trying to decide, should I go to business school and get, you know, an MBA, uh, before we start this company. Um, and someone gave me the advice of, you know, what you're going to learn in the first year of owning a company is so much more than what you would learn getting an MBA. Now, obviously having a degree is nice if you want to go work for a company and have the MBA to, to help you get promotions and stuff. But if your actual goal is to just own a company, he was like, go start a company and learn as you go

because you're going to have the lessons and you're not going to have to pay for a degree. So anyway, I did obviously take that route and I agree with that. You learn a lot of the business as you go along and you just figure it out. A trial and error, right? What they teach you in school is the experiences of a lot of bigger companies or larger experiences,

older experiences for companies that are of the size and magnitude that would not even apply to you. Maybe there are some small business lessons here and there, but you won't really understand it until you actually apply it to yourself and to your own business that's why it's all trial and error not for just to see if these principles work in general but if they work for you and your business specifically because what might work for one company does not necessarily always work for another company right totally like totally you want to know a good analogy for that is basically school is teaching you is trying to teach you about how

to treat an elephant by teaching you how mammoths lived because like half the time everything is so out of date like right at the time it gets to you it's like that was like yesterday's news even my professors were saying like yeah probably what i what we're learning in this class today is going to be outdated within three to four years and i I'm like, thank you. You know what I always found funny is that our school had an entrepreneurship program. And I always thought that was the silliest thing because you can't teach it. You either have it or you don't. And if you have it, you shouldn't be in that class. And it's like the only person that should be teaching that class should be someone that is like an ex-business owner. But if you're an ex-business owner, I hope you sold it at a good price and not you kind of like abandoned it.

Well, the thing about, I think there are ways you can hone certain skills, but I think you're right. It is natural. It has to be live within you because that's the only way that that heart beats is, is, and keeps you moving forward is the passion and the spirit that you have. There are certainly ways that you can like hone skill sets or understand better, you know, business strategies, but I agree that it's, it's not really a teachable in nature. It's just more of like a teachable, like certain little skill sets that are teachable. I'm curious to hear too, from you guys, like one of our strategies that we started doing during the pandemic and have actually continued to do is we have our company, we have Offbeat Films, that we, you know, preferences that we're getting hired by companies directly with us to create the project from start to finish. create the project from start to finish. You know, we want to be involved in the pre-production. We want to be involved in the post-production. You know, we do sometimes get hired to just do

production or just do editing, and those are great too. But, you know, Offbeat wants to try to get clientele. However, in order to kind of address the issue that we're talking about in terms of experience before we started our company, another thing that we do is we take on jobs as individuals outside of Offbeat. So I take on jobs. So you're still freelancing then? We freelance, right. So I take on jobs as a producer, whether that's a line producer or producer or a production manager, whatever it might be. Danny takes on jobs either as a cinematographer or a camera operator. He also does steadicam. So he does steadicam operation jobs. And what we have found, we started doing that during the pandemic, mostly because of we needed more income as individuals. So we found

that you meet a lot of people, you make a lot of connections with other crew members in town. So that helps us. You learn a lot. You know, you can see sets that maybe you wouldn't have had an opportunity to be on. You know, I've been able to be on 60-person sets for commercials or for TV shows or whatever it might be because of that. So we're both able to bring that experience back to Offbeat. And it helps, we believe it also helps our company move forward. There's obviously a time management, you know, or deal with that and figuring out how do you commit to something else if you're also wanting to commit to your company. So there's always that tension. But I would advise that for folks. I don't know if y'all have done that before, but it works. I was wondering about the time management, because you're going to take away from one

or the other, right? So how do you manage that? What is your process for that? Yeah, that's obviously inevitable. If you're giving your time to one thing, you're inevitably taking away time from something else. Well, it comes with really the main thought of kind of ROI in a way. You know, is it worth our time to take time away from Offbeat and gain whatever it is that we're gaining to bring it back? So we've kind of set the standard of if all we're getting hired to do is a money making gig that doesn't teach us anything, we've now gotten to the point where we don't do that anymore. We did during the pandemic, again, because of income needs, we needed to just survive. But now we're like, if it's just like a three-day shoot and you're sitting pressing record and it's an interview, like, Danny, you're not taking that job. Or with

me, if it's like a little shoot that's not going to teach you anything, we need you to be focused offbeat. However, if it's an opportunity that is going to teach you something or give you more connections or resources, learn about things, we find that to be advantageous for offbeat. We're like, that is a worthwhile investment of our time with the one rule of being, you know, you got to get your offbeat shit done first. Like that still comes a priority. That means staying up late after set to answer emails or whatever. You know, you got to get that done. You got to get your shit together for offbeat as a priority. But if that makes sense, like if it's going to bring benefits to the company, then it is worth the investment of that time. But it's, you know, at this point, it's not every single project that is worth that time. So it

just depends. How often do you do that then? Is it pretty often or just every blue moon? I would say it's, you know, it depends as everything does. But I would say, you know, I just did in January, I actually did two projects. I produced a Pokemon commercial and a Microsoft commercial both in the same month, which was great because Offbeat didn't have major projects going on in January. But with that said, I probably hadn't done something like that in six months. So like it can come out of nowhere and happen fast, but also it's not like necessarily like, Oh, yep. Every month we're doing something. And I would say Danny's probably more often than I am just because his, um, what he brings to the table is, is easier to hire, you know, it's easier to hire like a camera op or a steady cam op than it is to get

a producer. Obviously a producer takes more time or it just depends on the project, but yeah, I would say it's common enough, but it's not necessarily all the time. Yeah. I mean, to answer your question, that's basically what Daria and I did for so many years where we were just mostly freelancing and then occasionally we would do projects under the LAPS name for a few years. And then after the pandemic, where we started to focus more on the businesses itself, we have that same philosophy, very similar, where we'll take on other projects depending on what they might be,

how much time commitment they are, and go ahead and do it as long as you're able to get the other work that's necessary done to kind of keep everything consistent and moving forward. It's decreased a lot, though. We don't really do that too much, like especially now, considering we're getting like a. I mean, we're salaried at this point, so it's like we owe our allegiance to one.

And that's the goal, right? Like that's the goal that you I think that we have, too, is to get to that point. It's like you're doing this to gain experience and to gain, you know, credibility in your city and things like that. But eventually you just want to be under lapse productions, or you just want to be under offbeat films and everyone's coming to you because they know you and they trust you and all that. So that, that, I would say that like, that is the goal. But for folks out there who are kind of starting out or earlier side, I would say, I would advise doing that because there are benefits to it. As long as you're able to manage the time, there are a lot of benefits to it. I mean, for sure, especially like you were saying,

you were on a set with like 60 people. It's going to be a while before Carol and I get one of those projects under our belt, like through a lab. So it's like it's good if you have that experience going into it because you will learn a lot of invaluable skills. Like going back to when we were freelancing, there were definitely quite a few jobs where it was like, whoa, OK, this is this is cool. I wouldn't have gotten this on my own just yet. Right. But you do learn a lot freelancing. But again, it's always from like the technical and again, depending where you go in. But it's always on the production side. And again, depending where you go in, but it's always on the production side.

It's always the post and the pre that are like, I mean, now we're really curious about what really happens in those stages because we're going through it ourselves. And like every project you get, you're learning one little thing here, one little thing there. But it'd be great if we're also able to get into those parts of the production process. But you can't,'t obviously because you'd have to be a part of that company to your point also is that because you're freelancing and working with all these other production companies and all these other different type of even small scale projects because we also do so many of those or like because we did so many of those we got very comfortable with that kind of scale of project as well and understanding what is needed to go into

it. It's like, okay, say you did a lot of corporate promotional videos where it was like a crew of three to five people. And you did like say 10 freelance gigs that year. You have 10 gigs of experience that you can bring to the table when you have your own project and say something like that comes through the door. It's like, oh, I know exactly what's going to go into this. This is probably how big of a crew. But again, as Dario mentioned, that's more so on the production side. There's still other elements on the pre-production and the post that need to be determined as well. But as you mentioned, the more and more you put yourself out there in the beginning, the more experience you will get and apply it later. I think it also depends on what you want to, you know, I, you can be

a video production company where your, what you are selling is simply the production, right? Like that is, that can be your business model and that can work great. You know, we are a company that supplies, you know, crew members and gear to, to execute your X's and O's of your project. And you go to agencies and, you know, you try to get clients execute your X's and O's of your project. And you go to agencies and, you know, you try to get clients that way and they hopefully come to you. They're doing all the creative work and you're just kind of executing the logistics, you know, and that's a great business model. And I think, you know, we do that from time to time. But I would also say what we do is we try to kind of be that agency at times too.

Like we want to be a part of the creative. We want to have those discussions and come up with, you know, a script or, you know, the storyboard or things like that just because that's what we're interested in. And that's kind of where we're headed. But that doesn't mean you have to do that. But I'd be curious, you know, for LAPS, what do you feel like you get more of do you get more of like through and through client is working with you from start to finish or more hey we need you to go shoot this project and someone else will edit it and someone else will do the creative and you know what do you guys deal with more often i think it's about 75 to 75% where we handle all the way from farm to table. So from ideation all the way to the final product.

And then 25% where we're hired just to do the production. Yeah, it varies. But the one good thing about doing everything from start to finish, from pre-production to post, there's more longevity to the business when you go that route because then you're not, you're basically working with the client directly and you're developing personal business relationships at that point. I find that if you go with the direction of just simply supplying production, you get into a completely different business model

than compared to the other one. Because in that point, you're just selling production, which is a lot of the time is just simply crew, equipment, like pretty, in a way, standardized things, right? And sometimes it's just a matter of price matching even with other, not price matching. I don't know if that's the right word, but it's all about price at that point as well. It's kind of different because that 25% I mentioned, it's literally like other production companies most of the time now that get in touch with us.

So it's like a whole different ballpark. And that, you can say, Kiril, that's still a relationship that you'll develop with that production company. So it'll still be there. As long as you do good work, you'll still be the go-to, right? That's true. It's a different type of relationship building that you're essentially doing, right? Because like working with another production company, it's basically one point of contact, but you're dealing with maybe a lot of different types of brands and companies. Whereas when you're dealing with clients directly, it's individual relationships with individual brands and companies. So I feel

like with any business or whatever direction you take, like you have to figure out what, what works for you. How is the time management aspect going to be for you as a company and for you personally? What type of work do you prefer working? How many relationships do you want to be juggling at the same time? Because sometimes that's a big issue. If you're dealing with 10 calls a day from 10 different people, it could be easier for someone to just be dealing with maybe two or three calls a day from someone. So it's a unique situation for everyone. Well, relationships are, I mean, everything, right? I mean, that's kind of,

yes, you're selling video production or you're selling these services, but really at the end of the day, what you're really selling is yourself. And do people like working with you? Because we have to be honest too, there's a lot of people who can get this job done, right? There's a lot of people who can get the job done well and make it look pretty or make it look a certain way or feel a certain way. But really, you know, the secret sauce is, you know, does your client like do you guys like working together or even your crew members that we really care a lot about treating our crew members well, but also having a relationship there because sometimes you run into crew members that are just grumpy or jaded or whatever it might be, and that's fine. I get it.

I get why there's complaints or issues with this particular industry, especially in a city that doesn't get a lot of fulfilling work. It gets a lot of corporate work, and corporate work can be fulfilling, but you know get a lot of like fulfilling work it gets a lot of corporate work um and corporate work can be fulfilling but you know what i mean like narrative work i'll take all the corporate work i can get yeah it can totally be fulfilling that's not that it can't be but i'm just saying you know we we choose our crew members based on those relationships as well and like are they going to be coming to set with a good attitude? You know, are they going to represent our company well in front of the client, things like that. But relationships

are so important in any business. And also, I was also going to comment on, you're talking about time management with clients. That's something I'm realizing now is I've built this relationship with so many clients in the past that are super meaningful. And, you know, I care a lot about because we've done projects with them. But they're also like nonprofits or small businesses or, you know, they don't have the same budgets that we're trying to move forward getting. So now it's this time management of like, OK, I'm trying to create new relationships with new people that potentially can bring us bigger budgets or bigger projects, but also caring about and maintaining relationships with some other clients. But then

you start getting time sucked away doing other smaller jobs with some of your past clients. So it's this interesting kind of moral dilemma. Obviously, you know, what we want to do is be there for people. We don't want to just be like, oh, we're too big for that now or anything like that. So we do continue to stick with these people. But I do find myself seeing like, oh man, I'm spending a lot of time working for this client that doesn't have as much resources

as we would prefer. Have you thought about recommending them to another company? Well, what I usually do is, so we're expanding, so we have more people on our team that I just get them involved. So it's like, hey, let's try to have this seamless transition of, you're still with Offbeat, I'm still going to be here,

I'm still going to be in these meetings, but they're going to spearhead the project. They're going to produce what you're trying to make. And we've just started doing that, I would say in the last six months to a year of trying to do that. It used to be me producing everything that we make. But now it's like, okay, we're busy enough. We have enough clientele to where I don't have the time to do that, which is good. But you know, you want to have the right person handling it that still respects that relationship and things

like that. So that's kind of the way we're approaching it now and hopefully can continue to approach it that way as we scale. The good thing that you're doing is that you're finding an alternative value to that relationship, which I think is really great because it's very difficult to be able to do something like that with past relationships. Because one thing we've learned is that it's okay to sometimes outgrow past clients because that happens with every business. You know, that's just how it is. Sometimes values change, budgets change, resources change, time change, personnel changes, time management changes, you know, like things change constantly.

And I can completely understand where it's like, you know, like somebody you've known for like half a decade you know they call every once in a while sure they may not have as like as much budget as the types of projects you do now but um if you have the time maybe you can find an alternative like you have done which is great helping teach other people within your team how to do it the way that you do it so that you can get them ready for the bigger projects down the road. So it's every situation is unique. And I just think it's really great what you've done there. Oh, I was going to say that I think it also is important to keep in mind like fulfillment. And, you know, because because I really I do think obviously running a business

and a big reason to run a business is to make a living, right? Like that's, that's a huge part of it. But I do find fulfillment to be incredibly important because we work in a business that you can actually have a lot of that. Like you can do things that you really care about. And again, I don't think everything you do is going to, it's not possible to always be like, this is so fulfilling everything I do. But I do think whether it's creatively fulfilling or, you know, on a personal relationship level, it's like, yeah, this isn't going to pay the bills like we want it to, but it's for a really good cause, or it's going to help a lot of people. Um, I absolutely take that into account too, because

it helps you feel proud of what you're doing and feel good about what you're doing. Um, and we have a, a, a industry that we can, you know, we're, we're creatives, right? Like this isn't life or death. Uh, this isn't being a doctor or anything like that. It's like, we, we get to like make cool things and have fun while we do it. And that's important to remember too, I think. Yeah. And tell stories. Uh, I was gonna, one thing I was going to mention is that every client, there's like a natural life cycle for a client I've noticed. Like we sat down last week and we listed out all the clients we've had since we started. And then, you know, time we, we started working with them and then time where it kind of just

fizzled out. And it was pretty interesting to see that our current roster of clients are all from just before the pandemic, but not before like 2019. So it's like everyone we've had is like 2019 to 2023. 2019 at the earliest, and that's just a handful. They normally don't last. But again, also it's also because we were growing. So back then we weren't charging a lot,

so we quickly outgrew them. And now we're dealing with bigger clients. And we've noticed that the relationships that we're developing right now, we can see them being more longer in term than the ones earlier on. But if I look back at those earlier on clients, like we just wouldn't be able to even take them on unless we take a hit. So I always try to look at the dollar amount because when you're running a business, everything has a dollar amount attached to it. Like you sending out an email,

that costs a certain amount of money because you're spending time crafting it. So if you spend 15 minutes writing it out and then finalizing it, 30 minutes, well, what's your hourly? Well, it's half of that hourly, right? So I think you just have to sometimes take a look at what the cost of keeping that client is versus finding someone else and compare it to what they're even bringing in and then just make a decision based on that. But it's good to do it like for you. You're looking for that fulfillment aspect as well. So I think in that sense, it works because you're like, OK, I'm getting some content that makes me feel good that I can showcase in my portfolio. That I think is fine because that's what we're doing as well with certain clients. Like there's some projects we take on even now where we'll do them at a little

less than what we quoted just so we get the client on because maybe there's like a cool product that's being showcased in that video. And I tell Carol, hey, we need more product videos. So we got to take this one on. You know, there's like a purpose to see what we're why we're doing it. Totally. Oh, yeah. I think it's really important to always keep the there's there's so much more that can come out of it than simply a bottom line. You know, if it's, hey, this might not be high paying for this project, but is this potential lead going to lead to a lot more work down the line? You know, that's something to consider. Or is this particular project that we're getting hired to do, can we put, like you said, put that on our portfolio and get hired at

other bigger companies to do that same thing? You know, I think that's always really, really important to consider, you know, when you're taking on jobs, even as a freelancer. I would say even if you're not a business owner, I think I keep that in mind as a freelancer. It's like, hey, is this just a one-off gig that it's not going to bring much to me? Okay, maybe I don't need to do it. But hey, is this a relationship that I could potentially have with Microsoft or with whomever it might be that can bring more work in the future, that's just an important thing to consider. And maybe it's okay to get paid a little less upfront if it hopefully means a relationship moving forward.

This pretty much only works, I think, when you're early in the business development process. I consider us early. I think you're in the same boat as us. So the business is more flexible to be trying out new things and testing out new methods, right? Versus like, I think when you're a bigger, more established business, like you're just not that flexible. You have to really do think about it in terms of what the cost is, right? So, and then, because by that point, you already have a portfolio anyways. You've done everything, I'm assuming, by that point to get to that stage. So you're like, OK, well, it has to make sense on a dollar amount. Also, because the bigger your business grows, the more management you have to get yourself

involved in anyway. So you'll be probably more detached from the creative and the shooting and more so just running off beat Seattle, right? The thing is, the second you start bringing in, once you start hiring people and being responsible for other people, that's when you start to have a bigger focus on the dollar amount. And Dario and I haven't hired anyone full time other than ourselves. Putting us on salary forced us to even look at the dollar amount even more so. That's a big step. Yeah. That's a really big step. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Once you start putting other people's livelihoods in your hands, it's like,

okay, now we really do. Not that, you know, our livelihoods don't matter, but it's like, yeah, you really have to pay attention to those numbers to make sure you can supply them. Because you're responsible for other people at that point. And you want to do good by them. It's terrifying because we're the same. We have an intern that we pay hourly. And then in the past, we've hired a friend of ours who she didn't work on a salary. She worked basically here in the States,

we call it 1099, like a contract worker, but was here pretty much full time. So we've never hired a salaried position yet to this, to this day. And that's because it's one, we haven't been ready for it, but two, it's, it's terrifying. It's like, oh my gosh, once, once that happens, it's, it's real. It's an, it's hopefully this, the next step we take, but it is, um, it, it does bring some, some fears for sure. Uh, that'll probably keep me up at night. Maybe when you're not no longer terrified about it, then maybe that's when you're actually ready to bring on people.

Cause when you realize, Hey, uh, we have this amount of work coming in and we need someone to help us, uh, work through these, through these projects, at least for a year, then you feel, then that might be the point where, where you might be ready. Like Daria and I are right now looking for that moment where it's like, okay,

when, when is that going to be? Not yet. Okay. Let's see what happens in the next few months. Who knows? Right. We're playing it very safe.

I don't want to like rush into it. I feel like the first one is going to be the hardest one to figure out. And then after that, it'll be easier. And that personality matters too of who that person is. And you've both built trust within each other and you can operate as a business. Danny and I are the same. We trust each other. We understand how we operate. But once you bring a third full-time member into that, it's like, okay, how are, how are they going to respond? And we're bosses, you know, that's a little bit different than a, like a 50, 50 relationship. It's like, no, technically we, we have the say, but we want to value your opinion. You know, it's kind of, there's a lot that goes into it. That, that we're, I have a question for you, although, and this might be a little bit of a

vulnerable question, but what would you say is like your as a company your biggest weakness or area that you need help in that you want to be able to hire someone to support oh that's a good one hmm that's a good yeah because i mean right now whenever you know what maybe animation would be something that would be good to kind of think about down the road, but animator, like getting into the animation world is, is tricky. And, um, it's, it's a little bit of a niche compared to regular editing. You know, it's a lot easier to, to hire out, um, editors for like live action type projects than say, animation and like we have we've worked

with some great animators uh on on a few projects but again it's only a small portion of our business and i don't think that's a good i don't know yeah like i'm i don't know if we would really it's hard as an animator well no because animators you're there what if they look for a different style you're still gonna have to find someone else that can do it. Yeah, it's too specialized of a job to be able to hire someone that's more general. I'm going to tell you what really eats up a lot of my time, at least, is all the communication stuff. Like even just writing up the contract and getting it signed, writing up the invoice.

Yeah, I've noticed that too lately. It does eat up a good chunk of my day. I got to say. I've noticed that sometimes we start a week out with like a list of tasks to do. A lot of it is just like bullshit stuff. No, no, no. A lot of the bullshit, a lot of the bullshit comes up and that's the issue, right? Where it's like, sometimes you're, you have to like, say, get some pieces of marketing content created, get it out there, start promoting or start working on some creative for a few different projects then a client calls it's like hey there's this happening um are we able to do something here

or if another one is like hey like uh we're good to go on this project uh what are the details like there's so many things that could just pop up out of nowhere that it could eat your time throughout that day and all those other tasks no longer. You can like you have to push it. Right. And I think honestly, if I had a secretary, I would be way more productive. Well, I'm super impressed because you guys got in about five minutes what took us like six months to figure out which was we were trying you know when we were we've been talking about like okay who's our first hire gonna be what what skill sets are they gonna bring what do we really need and you know we were like creative director or producer or you know we kind of thought of all these different kind of almost

onset or project by project positions that we were like could bring us an edge or bring us an advantage. And we kind of realized we're like, really what we need is like a business ops person, like someone that can help keep things organized within our business and with external communication. Um, you know, all of that, just cleaning all that up because when we're wearing so many hats, it's hard. You know, here's one of the biggest scenarios that I have a hard time with. If we have a shoot, like last week we had a travel shoot. We went to the other side of the state for a commercial and we were gone for four straight days. Um, how do I respond to all of our other projects that are going on? It's like, I have to at night after set,

get on my email and respond to clients. And if it's decide whether or not it's urgent or if I can let it wait till after I get back, you know, things like that. And that happens all the time. You know, if you have shoots constantly, what happens in those moments? So we've talked about like,

how do we keep the ship sailing while we're off on a shoot? So yeah, I think I agree with Dario at least. And then maybe that's selfish because we probably do similar jobs, but I was like someone that can help keep the business going, I think would just be such a help and it can just focus on the business while we can focus on like projects and clients and things like that. It's, I think that the more and more you go into your business and you work on it, you start to figure out these other gaps as you continue to operate, continue to operate that can help you down the road. Like other than that, the only other position we thought of that could potentially be

like a full-time hire is either a junior editor and a senior editor, you know, cause that's like the most, uh, like the absolute necessity position for any production company. Right. And at least, at least one editor, you know, but like with Dari and I have talked about how eventually we want to get one senior and one junior as like a starting point and then see where it goes from there. But yeah, business development and management is good. And I was going to say, editing takes up so much time too. That's why it's nice to have someone fill those shoes because even just importing a project, getting it organized,

or if you're doing an interview B-roll type project, cutting up the interview or getting sound bites, all that take is labor intensive. And if it's taking away, normally Danny's doing that work. If it's taking away his time there, then again, back to what we were saying earlier, that means he's not spending time doing other things.

So I would agree that I think editing is another great place that you can always use support. The only con to it is that for us, editing is such a big profit maker. Because if you're doing that, if you're doing the editing, you're just taking in the profit. Whereas if it's production, you know, you're hiring people, you're paying for gear, whatever it is that you need to get the production done. But the post-production, sure, sometimes on projects you might hire a colorist or whatever you might need if it's that level. But if it's not that level, it's just pure profit. It's, you know, taking away time, but it's pure profit. So that's always been our argument against it.

If we're paying someone to do the editing, that's taking away our biggest profit margin area. You're probably not charging enough for the editing then. We should. Or even sometimes in the pre-production, maybe you're not charging enough at that point. If there's a lot of planning that goes into it at that point um at least this is if you're more so talking directly with clients because we found right the more and more it depends you know what carol it depends

how big his deliverables are yeah that's that is true too yeah because he deals with a lot of like long-form content i think so that's why his oh yeah yeah i guess yeah you're you're probably not charging enough for for posts though if that's that's the case or yeah yeah i guess yeah you're you're probably not charging enough for for post though if that's that's the case or just all the above but i would just say you know i agree with pre-production too because that is sometimes depending on the client some clients get it they know how much things cost they know why it costs that way but not all clients do so i think it depends on that but like if you're trying to convince someone, hey, this is going to take a month of pre-production just to get ready for this shoot. And that's going to take meetings and scheduling and planning. And, you know, you have to kind of convince them like this is why pre-production costs as much. But I agree that would be an area I want to charge more in because that's also an area that I spend more of my time in is getting all that prepped and ready. We had a lot of trouble with pre-production and what we started doing lately was, and I've actually started to see some success in the lead calls, is that we've done a complete breakdown of

what we're doing in the pre-production process along with a cost breakdown. Okay. And you share that with clients? I share that with them. Well, yeah. And you share that with clients? I share that with them. Or potential clients? Well, yeah, because I share that with potential clients or whatever, right? Because I put the total amount anyway, so I just give them the breakdown.

And I even break it down to pre-production meeting one, pre-production meeting two, pre-production meeting three. We broke it down into like a 10 step itemization process. And it's been really helpful for us because then they can see it and now they understand, right?

And it probably helps you estimate too on the front end if they're asking you for a quote, your line items of being able to explain that is probably better. I unfortunately on most of my quotes, I just, your line items of being able to explain that is probably better. I, I, unfortunately on most of my quotes, I just put one line I'm for, for pre-production, but I should probably put multiple. It's like, Hey, you know, the meetings are this, or communication is this, and you know, stuff like that. Do you, do you normally do like hourly charge estimate or do you do like flat rate? There are some things that are

listed as hourly for the pre-production we noticed lately that we were having a ton of back and forth meetings right for pre-production and and it got to a point where i was like carol we're wasting so much time like and we're not billing for this right so we're like you know what now we're just going to include like, like I said, three meetings, one hour each. You can't go to the next stage in the pre-production process until you go through that meeting. And everything after that one hour meeting is done via email communication if it's related to that first meeting. So if it's like if it's like the scripting or the story development meeting, right. Anything related to story development is just done via email after that.

Just because we were thinking about it and we're like, hey, if we start to scale up, how are we going to even handle this? We would just get like, we would just have a backlog at that point. So we decided, we actually did a breakdown of what our process is and how much time we need to dedicate to it,

what the cost of each time segment would be and then we just added it up and we're like oh wait a minute we're way under charging for pre-production so we like up the amounts we're like what's going on here like because we broke it down again we got down to like the atoms of it you know like what what is this what are we doing with it how much time are we spending on it again going back to how if you want to run a business you got to figure out what the hourly amount of everything is right the dollar amount that's what we did for pre-production it helped us like figure it out and develop like a funnel strategy where we can we can get through the

process quickly and efficiently and that's what i communicate to them in my sales call i tell them basically this is the most like say like like efficient way for us to go to the next stage. Especially when you're dealing with very specific parts of the process that take certain amounts of time. We used to lump... I think this is what a lot of production companies make the mistake of doing, is trying to lump the whole pre-production process into one thing. Putting everything into one brief. This is the direction. This is're like, this is the, this is

the, the direction. This is the story. This is the script. This is the, uh, storyboard. And then all this kind of stuff. So when we, we started realizing that this kind of fell apart when we would do all that and then we would have a meeting about it. And then they were like, oh, we need to make some changes to the script you know now that you've made those changes to the script that completely changes all that other creative that you did so what we realized was let's take uh like all the information that we have on what we have to do for the project figure out at least uh the first step which is like um the story and uh the outline of what needs to be done for the video. What is the, how long will the video be?

What is the tone? What is the message? You know, get the parameters, you know, almost like the box you have to kind of work within. Then if they're good with that, then move on to the script. Once they're good with the script, then you can move into storyboard. Oh, there's a voiceover that needs to be done.

Okay, we're not hiring any voiceover artists until the script is decided the storyboard is decided and like and all those other parts of the process are or the song is decided especially right like once you start checking off all these elements it becomes efficient and that's how we were able to break it down the way dario mentioned where you should only take this many steps if we do it in this order some people get a little bit too excited and try to do like one part of the process later first and then maybe add some other elements in there as well. Basically, like we copied the sales funnel method and we just applied it to pre-production. So same thing, just how you would do a sales funnel, same thing for pre-production.

You're just leading them down your funnel. You can't get to the next stage until they pass the first stage and it's not like it's not creative and like like we don't want people to think that it's like yeah it's a sales approach but this is a way to kind of give structure to creative development because if there is no room for that to make time for it then it's gonna fall apart fall apart later especially if like say oh maybe we need to go back and change something because maybe it doesn't work now it's going to fall apart later, especially if like, say, oh, maybe we need to go back and change something because maybe it doesn't work now. It's like, oh, then all that creative work that you did is gone. Then you have to go back to square one. Well, yeah. And I feel like it does a couple of things like it. One, it protects your company. It protects your time and

it values that, which is important. But two, bringing that type of structure, I think, values that, which is important. But two, bringing that type of structure, I think, helps them understand what the process is going to look like and be like to get the job done. And I think that's, I really love what y'all are saying. And I want to try to integrate that because it's something I feel like I've lacked is like communicating expectations on the front end, especially with a client that might not understand the process as well. Again, for those who understand it, this isn't as big of an issue, but for those who don't, you know, it's like, Hey, these are the steps that we're going to take. Here's kind of an outline of what it's going to look like leading up to production. Then after production, it's going to look, you

know, kind of setting that expectation. Cause it also can help them realize like, oh, we're really paying for this wholesome service rather than like, oh, a 30 second video that takes 30 seconds to make, right? Like sometimes you just run into that type of thought process and you're like, no, like sometimes 30 second commercials take longer than two minute videos to make. So that's really great way of doing it. And you find that clients respond well to it too. Yeah, we've been testing it out lately and they've been pretty receptive to it. I've actually had... Actually, one thing I noticed is that showing them the prices right from the beginning, it's like they're getting used to seeing the numbers. So by the

time you get to the grand total at the bottom... It's not a surprise. They've been desensitized to it because i noticed a lot of people were getting like that shock reactions like oh hmm like that type of response do y'all do like uh do y'all do like an we call it an eye test but when we're bidding you usually this will be for bigger projects not for like small uh being like not for like ten thousand dollar projects but like for like $50,000 projects or something, or even bigger, we try to do an eye test where it's like, Hey, let's look at what it is. We're actually saying we're going to deliver to them at the end of the day. Once we've kind of estimated everything, let's look at what we're actually delivering to them and, and think like,

would I pay that much money to get that product made? And if, and check your gut, like if the answer is yes, then you're like, sweet, this is good. But we've had it where we're, we like did this whole thing and it was like a $55,000, um, uh, budget quote. And then we were like, that's too much. This needs to be more like 35. Like we just need to find a way to make it lower because they're not going to go for it. It's just too much money for what they're asking always i don't know if y'all do that always i have i have a gut instinct when it comes to stuff like that yeah yeah again i don't know what it is i always know how they're going to react to certain numbers because carol's always like it should be that much i'm like trust me let's bring it down we each other on it. We try to figure out like what this would be if done properly.

And then sometimes we figure out, okay, but like, especially with whoever's been talking with the client, gets a feeling of like, okay, this is probably what they can actually go for. This is what they can afford. Is there a way for us to work within these parameters? And if we can figure out a way to do that, great, everyone's happy. But if if we can figure out a way to do that, great, everyone's happy. But if we can't figure out a way to do that, then we're just honest with the lead and let them know what the situation is. And then if they want to move forward, great. If not, then no worries, because you're not digging yourself a hole

trying to do a project for a budget that is not doable at the same time. Right. I mean, and you have hard costs and then you have soft costs. The hard ones being, you know, you got to get the equipment, you got to hire the crew, you got to pay for these things that's coming out of your company's budget. And then you got to lower this project down, how much of that are we going to cut hard costs? How much of that is just going to be like, hey, we'll just make a little bit less or whatever. I think that all goes into the decision of how you quote. But yeah, you lose quotes all the time too. It's like we bid for a project with the Special Olympics about a month ago, maybe two months ago. This great project that would have taken us all over the world, seven different countries.

And we put together, we felt like a strong quote and a strong bid. And we spent, you know, probably a week and a half, two weeks leading up to that bid. We didn't get it. And that kind of sucks. And it's like, damn, we just spent so much time. So you also have to take that into account.

It's like, man, the ones we win, we want to make sure they pay for the ones we lose, you know, like the time that we spent doing the bid and the time that we spent creating this bid and all of that. One thing on the flip side, though, is like those jobs that you don't win with those RFPs. The one biggest advantage is that you can figure out what works and what didn't work. And we realize this when like a lot of people we've talked to say like RFPs are a waste of time because you rarely win any of them. But Daria and I realized that it's actually a good chance to kind of pitch for different types of projects that may not come through the front door as often. And I remember we once did this one FedEx RFP where we thought we were going to get, we thought we were going to be very close to

getting it. And finally, at the end of the day, it didn't, it didn't work out. We didn't get the gig, but one great thing that Dario did was he reached out to them and asked like, Hey, I know we didn't win. We just wanted to know like, was this at least somewhere along the right track of kind of what you were looking for? And they actually told him that it was between us and one other company. And it just so happened to be like, it was just like maybe like a minor thing that tipped the favor into the other company's favor. But that was valuable information for Dario and I to realize, oh, I think we're onto something at least with this RFP. At least we know that there's something here that works and why it probably worked. Yeah. That's really valuable feedback.

Cause you don't always get that all the time. We've, we've gotten that a few times, but I, it is always that balance of like, do, do I ask? And I have asked as well.

I also, sometimes I don't, it just depends on how I feel about that relationship. And their answer can be different. That that's something else we realized, like with that special Olympics RFP, we, they did say,

and they told us, um, price was like their number one reason that they went with someone else. And we were like, Oh, that, I mean, that makes sense.

We were, we, you know, we're like, Oh, we, we had, we were within the range they said they wanted to be,

but a different company had just had a lower price. And we're like, that's, that's, we respect that. That's fine. Cause everyone's going to value something different for one company. It might be that price. Like, Hey, we really just have a lower price. And we're like, that's, that's, we respect that. That's fine. Cause everyone's going to value something different for one company. It might be that price. Like, Hey, we really just have a tight budget and needs to be as cheap as possible. But for other people,

we also think like they might see something else in your bid and sure, maybe you're more expensive, but they value whatever else you might be bringing to the table. I also personally believe this. I don't know, maybe not everyone operates this way, but I think if they're interested in you and price is an issue, um, they might try to negotiate or they might say, Hey, we really like your bid, but you know, your price is higher than, than others. Um, can we negotiate? Um, you know, maybe with that particular one, they didn't feel that way. But I do think it's okay to like, give your honest price. And if someone has issue with it, you know, you'd hope that they would come to you and say, you know, let's negotiate or we like you, we like this aspect about it. But we can't afford that much or whatever it might be. Honestly, I think it just comes down to you,

when you don't win a project, a pitch or whatever, I think it does come down to when you don't win a pitch or whatever. I think it does come down, especially if it's like a proposal type of thing, RFP type of situation where you don't do your sales meeting with them. I think it just comes down to your brief just wasn't good enough. You know, because of that FedEx thing. I don't know why we thought we were going to get it. Because we were very happy with the brief that's what it was you know what it is you we were so dumb because we looked at the numbers and we got like oh my god like if we get this this is gonna pay for like so much

stuff right we got into that mindset and I don't know why we let it get to that point if it gets to that it's done it's done that's what i've learned you lost you get to the point thinking oh my god if we get this gig we're gonna have this much work that you've already lost it at that point because looking back you know just thinking back on it that that wasn't a good pitch carol like there was stuff that like compared to what we have now compared to now yeah we learned a lot back then because you learned from it yeah yeah no but we learned we then learned from it from that because you learned from it yeah yeah no but we learned we then learned from it from that experience we learned from it from a future experience but it's because like the the it's not that it stunk it just it wasn't there i think even the

one we have now you know what's funny carol was talking about how um he's like daria should we even give out the uh our brief to like leads that we think uh where we're we think they're not going to hire us anyways and i was like yes and i'll tell you why because yeah three months from now we're gonna look back at that brief and we're gonna think geez that was hot garbage it's so true it's so true like like we that's what i was like what doesn't matter so even if they pass it on to someone else like a competitor right knock yourself out that because that's going to be outdated by next week because we're constantly fixing it up like we're showing it to our mentors going like what do you think and they're like why do you have that like and

we're like wait why do i have that in there i also kind of take on the personal um thought of a high tide raises all boats and like a lot lot of people, I think, especially like here in Seattle, as an example, they protect their, they protect things like their, their clients or their contacts or their resources, not everybody, but a lot of folks do that. And I understand why, especially if there's scarcity, you know, in this city, there's scarcity in a lot of ways. But if you have that scarcity mindset, you do that. But I kind of think, you know, in this city, there's scarcity in a lot of ways. Um, but if you have that scarcity mindset, you do that. But I, I kind of think, you know, similar to what y'all are doing here, you know, we're, we're maybe revealing business strategies or revealing things that make us offbeat or, or lapse. But I think that that helps. I think it helps everybody. I think,

like I said, high tide raises all boats. Um, and it can help bring, you know, everybody success. And I just like that type of mindset a little bit better, too, to your point, because you're also going to change, too. Like the things we're saying now, it's going to be different. Yeah. You know, our business strategy is going to change once we hire that first employee or once we do that. You know, everything kind of kind of changes. But I was going to ask you, you know, you said that mindset of, you know, if we get this job, it'll do this and do that. That's not a good mindset to have. What would you say is a good mindset to have going into like a-

Nothing. Don't think about it. No expectations. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Yeah. Like, cause you get it to, it's like the fantasy. It's like, it's like thinking to yourself, like what will happen if I win the lottery? And you just waste 10 minutes there thinking to yourself, the, what you might buy, what you're going to do. And then after 10 minutes, he realized,

yeah, I didn't even buy a ticket. Like I'm not going to win the lottery. I didn't even buy a ticket. Like what's the, what's the point? They call that, they call that mental masturbation and it's no purpose.

Yes. Purpose. Yes. Don't get stuck in that. I was going to say, maybe I'm just a helpless romantic but sometimes it's fun to go off into those oh no no it's not it's not good because it hurts when you come back to reality yeah it does i'd rather get a huh okay yeah no no with business too like

you really can't have any emotions attached to it yeah because think about how many rejections we have to face if you got if you got like emotionally you could like uh if you got emotional about every rejection you had to face you'd never get through the day we had i can tell you right now we had what like since the start of the month probably like i don't know 20 leads come in how many of those do you think we closed probably like two or three right but that's all we need at the start of the month, probably like, I don't know, 20 leads come in. How many of those do you think we closed? Probably like two or three. Right. But that's all we need at the end of the day. Right. That'll help save like whatever we need. But like, it just goes to show if I got like sad about each one of them, I'd be depressed by the third of the month. Right. Right. No, that's true. You definitely, you definitely like naturally learn to have a thicker skin and, yeah. And, you know, to your point,

like not even getting emotionally attached to certain things. We, we, we have had projects where I'm like, Oh, I really want that thing that you don't get. And that does suck. And I maybe need to learn better about that, but there's also plenty, you know, even honestly, special Olympics one, it was like, yep, that wasn't meant to be, you know, we'll move on, you know, would have been a fun project to do to travel, but you know, we don't, we're not broken because of it. You gotta, you gotta have to kind of have that skin and move on. So some projects you will naturally be thinking to yourself more so like, Oh, I would really want to get this one in particular because it might be good for other reasons, but just doing it for just the mindset of like, Oh, how much money we're

going to get. That's where it's going to sting even more because you're also doing it for just the mindset of like oh how much money we're gonna get that's where it's gonna sting even more because you're also doing it for the wrong reasons like of course we're in business we're doing this to make money which is great but i've noticed it was just a pattern that darren i noticed the second we think to ourselves that we might have a job it never happened until until it is signed we don't consider anything absolute because they're honestly until we get that first deposit that that's when i'm like i'm still nervous until the money comes into the account yeah i get you i feel like the contract is when i'm nervous until the contract is signed but yeah because it's like all right once they sign it like they have to pay it right um i know what

you're talking about because we have the same issue. We actually started doing a new thing now where we have a pay-to-play model. So it's like we broke down the production process as three steps, right? So three different invoices and basically proof needs to be made before we start one of them. Payment needs to be in the account before the production date, stuff like that like we've kind of timed it out where it's like we get all the money at before we have to worry about it because again i don't want to be like on the hook for paying crew because then it comes out of my pocket because i pay them i pay them the next day right so i don't i don't ever want to be in a position because it'll eventually happen statistically it's bound to happen to us one day, Kiril, where a client won't pay.

And I don't want to be in that position at all. We noticed that when it was early on and as a young company, like where a company tried to take advantage and not pay us for the work that we did, even though it was like back then it was like we were maybe on the hook for maybe one crew member at the time. But it took eventually six months for us to get them to finally pay us. And it wasn't a lot of money now looking, I mean, at the time to us, it was a lot. It was four Gs, Kirill. It was still a lot. Even today, I'd be like very bitter about that. Yeah.

And if that happens often and you're strapped for cash and cash flow is an issue, that can destroy a company over time. Absolutely. So you have to put in safeguards because if a company and why Dario and I are implementing this kind of approach is where this is how we do business. Would you respect us in how we do our business? And if they do, then great. That actually, that is like actions speak louder than words, right? Like if you respect us, we'll respect you. If there's no mutual respect, then I don't think that's the right relationship. is signed by them, right? So invoice one covers the project management fee and pre-production.

So that has to be paid. Proof of payment needs to be made before we start pre-production. And then we need to get the money for that. I think I put 72 hours before the production date. But the key thing there is the proof of payment. As long as they do the proof of payment, whatever. For the production, though, proof of payment needs to be made right away.

But the production date is not locked in until the payment is made. So then that way, at least, we're safe knowing that the crew is paid. That's my main thing with that. Forget my rate. As long as the crew is paid. That's my main thing with that. Forget my rate, as long as the crew is paid. That's the thing I'm most worried about, right? Because we're booking people. We're booking people. We're taking them away from other potential jobs as well, right?

And it's not us, right? Like technically speaking, it's technically the client. We're just facilitating it, right? And if like, because there have been situations where a shoot day has been set and then um something happens where like it has to be moved like obviously if it's like extraneous circumstances early on early on not not last minute we haven't dealt with one of those last minute yeah in a while nothing last minute but and then the post production one is issued at the same time and And then proof of payment needs to be made by the

production date. But the money needs to be in our account before we show the rough cut. Okay. So is that it? Is that all your three invoices? That's the three invoices. So you get 100% by the time post-production? By the time they get the rough cut, i've already gotten 100 so the benefit of that is that i don't have to wait till the very end of the project to get the remaining amount i've gotten everything all the crew members have been paid the company has been paid right like if anyone else out there wants to copy that formula great go for it because it'll standardize things

yeah across the board yeah and i won't have questions but but like you know what i was actually speaking to a lead and he's in in um yeah he's part of an engineering firm and he told us that he was perfectly cool with it he's like that's actually how they do business i'm like oh okay so it makes sense then so other people do business like that and you know it makes sense too because you're if you don't do it like that you're left on the hook at some point because we i I figured this out because I was running the numbers and I'm like, wait, we were doing 50-50, right? And I'm like, Kiril, by the time we finish shooting, we're 70% in the hole. Yeah, that's true. Because that 50% goes to the crew. Yeah. So I was like, what the hell? We're 70% in the hole. Why are we doing 50%?

That doesn't make sense. So I figured let's break it down three invoices. They tend to be smaller amounts anyways because it's broken up, right? So average amount, it'll be probably like two and a half for pre 5,000 for crew and then whatever, three to 3,500 for the post. So it's broken down into smaller amounts rather than like a full thing of like 10,000 all

at once, right? Or half, half, like it's better that way. I agree. I like that. We do it similar, but slightly different, but for the purposes of sharing it, you know, the way we approach it is when you take on the project, when you sign the contract, you have 50% down, sometimes 40% if it's depending on what the number is. That's due right away? They have to pay, when they sign the contract, it's 40 to 50% of the total cost as a down payment to basically reserve our company's services. Then our second invoice comes after production. So we have all the pre-production. Let's say that takes a month to do pre-production, and then you finally shoot maybe even a month and a half depending whatever it is.

So then that second invoice comes, which is another 25% after production, which I like what you do, which is like your money's already in the bank. It has like proof of payment rather than afterwards. But we do that also to just like have 75% in before we do the post. But then we don't do our final invoice until after completion of the project. So the last 25%. See, the problem with that is you might wait.

You might wait a long time. Yeah, that's the biggest issue with that. Did you get that from The Future and Chris Stowe? Because I've heard that. No, no, I'm asking Thomas. Because I've heard of that breakdown, I think either on those YouTube channels or in some other Yeah. Cause I've heard of that breakdown, I think either on that, on those YouTube channels or in some other ones. Cause I've heard that one.

No, I don't, I don't know where I got that. I, my, my dad is a lawyer. Um, so I know he helps a lot with our business related questions. So he probably advised us to do something along those lines. Um, but I don't remember exactly. We've been doing it like that for for a while and most people are fine with it but i agree with you dario like it also puts it on you to track like the worst thing is tracking down these invoices and that's that's the thing i hate is like because i know they're good for it and i know it's just a matter of they got lost in their cracks yeah like i hate that it's no one's fault you know what's no one's fault. You know what's really helped us is when I say, okay, so let's get this in so I can lock in that. So like, okay, so let's get the money in so I can lock in the production date.

As soon as they hear that, it means that the production day is not locked in. So they immediately get me that stuff. The other thing that I think it's important to keep in mind for folks is, it depends on the company. If it's a nonprofit, this might not be true, but they probably care less about paying you the money than you care about receiving it. Meaning if you're dealing with a company or a corporation

or whatever it might be, they just have their budget that that company's paying. It's not their personal money the way it's our personal money. So when we're like, hey, we need this money, like, oh, come on, you know, to them, they're like, oh, yeah, like, I just, you know, I'm Microsoft. I need to send you the check. Like, Microsoft is handling it. You know what I mean?

Like, it's not their personal money. That's why you got to protect yourself. So again, like, if using the new one that we're testing out like you don't you can't move to the next stage unless the money's in there right so it's like i don't have to worry about it's less stress for me you know less stress for me means a better product for you at the end of the day yeah and at the end of the day like talking about money and budgets it shouldn't be as stressful or complicated as complicated as probably a lot of people make it out to be. It's just one part of the whole process that lets things kind of move forward, right? It's almost like going to get materials if you need to, like, say, build a fence for

a house, right? It costs money to buy the materials. I think why people are so sensitive sometimes to talk about money is because we're dealing with creative services and uh services no it's because no it's because people have emotions attached to especially money yeah that goes back to like you got to disconnect from that yeah it's just a number at the end of the day disconnect from the money hp points in a game you know like yeah you just need it i need it for this but again like i can't, if I want that power armor, I need to upgrade. You need health points.

It's like that. Yeah. That's how you got to look at it. Like you got to disconnect. You got to disconnect from it. It's funny. I play no games. No, I do agree with what you're saying too, of like how it's, you know, money can be your

livelihood. So you have those emotions attached, but also to your point of the creative, I think there is in general that you can run into a, like a lack of respect for what we do. It depends again on the client. Some people totally get it, but some people, again, if their experience of video content, whatever that might be is a 30, you know, reels on Instagram or on Tik TOK, and they don't understand what quality production actually takes. Um, you kind of deal with that too, where they don't, it's harder for them to connect the dots of like, Oh wow, this costs much more than I would have ever imagined. Why does it

cost so much? It's only a 32nd thing. Like that doesn't make sense. So it's part of it, I think, is also dealing with that and, and certain clients that are, that are potentially like that, that don't understand the amount of work it takes, um, to get a job done and to get it done well. At that point, you're getting into the process of like figuring out how to filter out maybe leads and people that you're getting in contact with who don't understand it. Obviously some clients don't understand it as much, but then there's a certain threshold where, you know, there's only so much time you have with but then there's a certain threshold where, you know, there's only so much time you have with every lead to talk to, where if you only have five minutes with each lead, how much can you really explain to them? You know, like, I'm not going to spend

half hour educating someone about how the video production process works if they can't even afford it at all at the end of the day. Right. So, I mean, but that's, that's another topic for another day as it is. Yeah. There's also one terminology that we try to steer ourselves clear from, which is videographer. Yeah. I hate that one too. I think that if you are out there and you consider yourself that, I think within the industry, there's respect there. But it's more of just the way we project ourselves to others because a videographer like entails to someone, all of these different departments, all of these different skill

sets into one person. And like, that's not what we're selling. We're selling a collaborative effort where we have our cinematographer and we have our production designer. And we're, you know, ideally we're trying to sell this collaborative service that is video production, but it's not just a videographer. So we never tell, you know, I never say I'm a video, I'm a producer. Like that's my job. I produce things, you know, he's a cinematographer, um, or you have an editor. Now maybe we play, we wear different hats. Um, but that's just a terminology we try to steer clear from whenever anyone's like looking for a videographer or, you know, like, Oh, that's not what we do. You know, we're a video production

company. Um, but my friend, you know, Jimmy can do that for you or whatever, you know, like, oh, that's not what we do. You know, we're a video production company. But my friend, you know, Jimmy can do that for you or whatever, you know, whatever it might be. But and that means no disrespect to any videographers out there. It's again, within the industry, there's respect there. I think it's more of just the way you project yourself to people outside of it. People who present themselves as videographers usually are early on in their careers with it right because right uh i feel like that that term got coined when uh not always carol there's maybe not yeah not always i haven't had anyone though like present themselves as a videographer to me that wasn't with only three years of experience maybe right well yeah no it's actually now yeah

i've never no i think it's a pet peeve in the industry as a whole being referred to as a video. That's what I mean. Unless you're a beginner, you won't present yourself. You know what? I know where it started from. It 100% started with clients going like, I have a photographer.

I need a video guy? Videographer. Videographer. Videographer. That's what it is. I need a videographer. I remember very early on when I went to London for a shoot and I, and I went up to the customs agent and he looked at my, uh, my form and he said, you're a videographer.

And I, and I look and I, and I'm just like, uh, yeah. He's like, oh, okay. Enjoy London. And I'm like like, yeah. He's like, oh, okay. Enjoy London. And I'm like, all right. But the way he said it, it just sounded very wrong. Videographer. I'm like, yeah, that's such an odd term. Well, I guess we found out who refers to himself as a videographer.

That was in 2014. This was one year in. Sure it was. It was one year in. Exactly. I agree because I feel like when I was young, I feel like I said that too. 2014, this was one year in. Sure it was. It was one year in. Exactly. I agree because I feel like when I was young, I feel like I said that too,

but now we're like, oh no, we don't want to be referred to as that. The second you're a company, you're like, no, no, no, no. I'm the producer or the cinematographer or the director. Videographer, what is that role when you think about it? As you said, you do everything. It's someone who does everything. It's a one-man show.

It's a one-man show. It's the handyman of the video production world sometimes people need that if that's the budget they have um you know but i think when you want you know proper services it's not it's beyond just one person i got it takes a collaborative i got the ultimate metaphor you know how when you're hiring a band, you're getting the guitarist, the drummer, the singer. You're hiring Weird Al. Well, hold on. I have something even better.

Instead of you're hiring the band, you're hiring those buskers that have a drum on their back. The one-man band. The accordion, and then they have the harmonica at the same time. And they're playing five instruments just by tapping their foot. Which is impressive, by the way. It is impressive.

Don't get us wrong. Yeah, that's exactly what it's like. But yeah, that's funny. That's hilarious. Every videographer is going to hate us after this one. Yeah, I know. We love you guys. They've stopped listening.

If they heard correctly, it's an impressive skill to have. It is. It is. It is. You're holding all those hats at once. You know, it's funny. A lot of them are actually just cinematographers, but they get grouped in with that. That's what I mean.

The second they realize that they're actually DPs, they stop saying videographer. And that's and that's the that's why i'm saying nobody refers to themselves as a videographer unless they just got into the industry for like the first few years honestly it's a it's strictly a term for clients that's how i see it yeah exactly they who don't understand it but also something that's like so overlooked in our industry is audio oh yeah like like the value of having like a sound operator or even a sound operator and a mixer you know if you have that budget it's so valuable to have clean sound versus just like whoever's dealing with the camera is also dealing with micing people up and also you know it's like it just makes a huge difference

we've made it we've made it standard this year where it's like it just makes a huge difference we've made it we've made it standard this year where it's like if we're recording interviews we bring audio but but but if it's like a brief 30 minute thing i'm not gonna tack on the thousand dollar expense for the client like it's one of those like look we'llDP. You know how to do audio, right? You can add a lab. I think subconsciously, if you're watching, if you're consuming any sort of video product, if the audio is bad, you immediately discredit it.

Like, subconsciously, you're like, this is low quality. Even if it looks beautiful. If it's like crackly or whatever, audio is so important, but people don't always think of it because when they think of video, they think of the visuals. But it's like, man, professional audio, you really shouldn't notice it. If you don't notice the audio, that means it was a job well done. If you're like, oh man, this sounds weird or like it's just going to discredit people's, you know, they're going to be like, oh, this isn't a good video because it doesn't sound good what are you doing it's like it's literally like a small part

of the shoot date you're gonna need an audio guy for like let's say it's like i said like maybe just one small interview what do you do in that situation i i feel like we haven't had that experience in a while however um because we like to also have like wild sound for b-roll so if we're doing like interview interview b-, we are usually an audio guys there, but, um, we'll just operate it on our own. Like if it, if it's in the past, that's what we've done. I, we haven't done that in a while, but like, I'll throw on the boom or like, you know, if it's an interview, as an example, you could either mount it on the camera or you can put

it on a C stand. Like there's a lot of ways you can do it where you don't even need an operator. Um, but yeah, just, you don't need the person. I think the person is valuable if it's the right project, but if it's not needed, then you can do it yourself pretty easily. I feel like we could dedicate an entire episode to just this whole debate and discussion. And like, I will say this, like we've already hit the hour 20 mark. And I know you mentioned you have to run in like literally four minutes. It's all good. So I figured this would be a good point to kind of like cut it off.

But honestly, Thomas, like, thank you for joining us on the show. Like this has been such a great discussion. And, you know, I look forward to our shoot with you in Seattle next week as well. You know, that's the one little benefit, you know, like we get to know you a little bit through the podcast before we even work together. Yeah, no, I appreciate you guys asking, asking me to join. And, and, uh, one little plug I wanted to throw out there is I'm launching my own podcast called Seattle speaks. Um, it's going to be hyper like local for the city of Seattle, people who, um, live here, but I've already interviewed like a Seattle Mariner, who's a baseball player and a CEO, the CEO of T-Mobile and some musicians. So I have some good

names in there. I haven't launched yet, but I'll be launching hopefully by the time that this episode airs. So that just want to throw that, that plug out there and anyone else who's listening, if you're in Seattle, you know, give us a hooter or a holler and we'll happy to chat. Nice. That's awesome. Unfortunately, since we're in Toronto, I guess we don't make the cut. No, you're welcome to. And we're also really excited, you know, for Monday when y'all come to town. And how long are you going to stay, by the way? We should try to like show you a good time. I'll be there on Sunday. Hey, listen, he two beers and he's done. I'm just letting you know right now Two beers is his limit

He's got a perfect brewery to go to Hopefully we have good weather, I don't know, it's hit or miss this time of year But if we get some sunshine, it'll be a nice time Sounds good, yeah And honestly, best of luck also with the podcast We look forward to seeing it And let us know on LinkedIn, we'll share it as well Awesome, well, y'all.