Creatives Grab Coffee - Evolving Your Production (ft. Viva Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 8

Episode Date: November 11, 2020

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kyrill Lazarov & Dario Nouri. CGC is a platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas and experiences.Matt is a creative producer and director who does business under Viva Media; a Toronto based video production & animation company crafting smart ads and messaging for businesses/brands.Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1518863773 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffeeFacebook: @CreativesGrabCoffeeProduced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS - www.lapseproductions.com

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kirill Lazarev and Dario Nuri. CGC is a platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas, and experiences. Today we welcome our guest, Matthew Watts. Matt is a creative producer and director who does business under Viva Media, a Toronto-based video production and animation company crafting smart ads and messaging for businesses and brands. We hope you enjoy our discussion. So let us start. Well, we have ideas. We have ideas. We're gonna be like seated and like proper chairs because these stools Oh my god, man after like an hour your back starts to hurt like crazy, right? But yeah, we're gonna have like a

Uh, like a shelf right in the middle. It's gonna have like shoes for me and then carol's hats also you're a shoe guy he's the hat guy yeah exactly yeah gotcha gotcha i like it how's your week been good pretty pretty to be honest pretty uneventful it's it's just been like doing edit stuff um i don't even think there was any shoots this week it was just it was just editing all editing animation stuff and editing is that is that mostly what you've been doing lately just a lot of uh just animation and just editing post-production type work a lot a lot of post production there's been like there's been sporadic stuff here and there that's been uh it's just kind of like as it comes but uh yeah, if it's not out shooting,

it's in the bay editing or sitting down and hammering out an animation. So have you found that there's been like a bit of kind of like a small boom in work in over like the past few weeks? Because this is something we've noticed that even during times of epidemics and crisis, you know, September is still

always the month of the year where everyone is trying to get content done. Yes. Do you know what it is? I know exactly why it is. So every, what we've, what we have found is every year around this time, this is where people sit down and they start going, okay, Q4, they have budgets that they have to spend. And if they don't spend it if they don't spend it they don't get it next year so they go okay we have a bunch of money let's make a video so then they start planning in like september october and then you actually end up shooting maybe like a month or two later because it has to go through all these approval processes right um but yeah we find that there's usually a big boom and then the end of the year is like the final kind of whittling down of those budgets.

Yeah. I remember like many years back, uh, I was told that like a lot of companies, their fiscal years end around October specifically. So September is the time where they really ramp up and they want to at least get those budgets out there and spent, you know, cause they want to still play with the same amount of marketing dollars for the following year. Right. Why not put it into a video, right?

Well, they're expensive compared to a lot of other things. But yeah, it's definitely a good way to spend your budget. You know, you just mentioned the approval process. Like how lengthy is it usually on your end? That's a good question. It really depends. If it's like a small little um startup it could be like instant like if it's going for like a through like a small team of like maybe five ten maybe even like 20 or

30 pretty quick um if it's like if we're talking like a uh like a fortune 500 large company multiple levels of people it can take like sometimes a month it can take sometimes a month and a half just to get like an approval on a on like a a quote or like an idea well getting approvals on ideas is even longer but um yeah getting getting approvals on stuff and it translates through through to like feedback rounds too like i i'm'm always like, okay, 48 hours. Like that's what we like to work with. But sometimes these large corporations are like, no, we need a week to gather feedback or we need, I don't know, for like a one minute video. But, and that's, if you're lucky, I found at times too, if you could get it in a week, that's, that's actually pretty fast depending

on the, on the company. Right. How do you deal with, well, obviously when you're dealing with bigger clients and there tends to be a lot more cooks in the kitchen. So how do you usually, how do you deal with that process? Oh, that's a really, that's a really, really, really good question. I think it's mostly, so I usually I'll approach people and talk from experience and go, Hey, we've worked with projects where there's like a ton of project stakeholders, it isn't smooth. So what I always like to say is nominate somebody who's in your stakeholder group to be the communicator, right? And they will be the project lead.

And then we'll have one person on our side, talk with that one person and translate anything that's needed. If it goes through one person, they can filter what's essential, what's not, and kind of translate. They kind of act like a translator in a way too for everything that kind of exchanges between the two parties or two vendors. Yeah. Yeah. We kind of ran into that early on where we had a couple of projects where there were too many people involved and they were all sending us like separate notes on things and there were sometimes conflicts where it's like no we didn't we weren't supposed to make that change because again that person was below a higher up so we got to a point

where like okay it needs to flow just through one person and then that person gets all the feedback and we just communicate with that guy the worst though i found is when they CC you in their group discussions in email chains at times. And I, a lot of those times I'm like, Oh no, I like I'm getting emails every, every hour from someone within their team trying to give feedback. And like, this was like many years ago, we noticed this. So, uh, luckily for us, we've just kind of kept it simple now to the point, as you said, one person is the go-to person for us to communicate with. And that's, and that's pretty much it. And consolidated feedback. It's got to be consolidated. Otherwise you get those conflicting, those conflicting things, but, and I guess kind

of not necessarily limiting feedback, but putting feedback on a timeline helps a lot as well. So being like, Hey, for us to progress at the rate we're progressing, we need feedback by this date and it needs to be all consolidated so we can progress. Otherwise it delays stuff on our, on our end, as I'm sure, you know, as well. Well, that's pretty good. Cause we actually don't do that. Um, when we send off the project to the client, we're just like, okay, let us know what you guys think. Well, we've never actually given them, given them like a deadline to say like, okay, let us know within 48 to 72 hours, what your thoughts, what your thoughts are. That's good. Yeah.

But how does that make a difference? Every project we take on, we're like, we're like, Hey, we usually allocate on client side, like 48 hours for feedback. If you think you need more, let us know. But we've built out timelines based on expecting feedback in about 48 hours. And then they know if they go beyond that, like let's say they have a project launch date. If they go beyond that 48 hours, we know it's kind of out of our hands and we can say, Hey,

you can't like, you kind of missed that window. So it's going to delay when we're able to start the edit up again. Right. Oh yeah. That's actually really, really good. I think that solves a lot of problems for a lot of people because there are times where we would give uh feedback is this is mostly an issue when it's projects that don't exactly have a necessary deadline you know typically if there's a deadline where they

need to get a project done by it's a little bit easier because they will get back to you for that but if it's a project that's a little bit more open like up in the air they they just kind of go okay we give them the video and uh we sometimes wait even weeks before we even hear any feedback. Yeah, like a month, two months at times. Like there was one client got back to us. Six months. Yeah, after six months. One was six months they got back to us.

Yeah. Even though we billed them and sent them the invoices so that at least we can pay our crew and pay our team. They still were taking long with getting the changes over to us. Yeah, we got paid for the project already. were kind of like oh okay we thought this was like locked in already but yeah wow that's and you know what yeah that's i mean that definitely has happened that has happened before and like we'll usually just close it out move it to an archive be like hey um just so you know we're we're we're invoicing for the project. It's done. It's locked. We're going to move your project over to an archive.

If you need it changed at all in the future, let us know and we can reactivate it. But we tell them, hey, we're deactivating it now. It's getting put on an archive. So that's how we've combated that. But it's always a tricky process. How many revisions do you normally go through? Yeah.

Because if you have those timed moments where it's always a tricky process how many revisions do you normally go through yeah because if you have those like timed uh you know if you have those timed moments where it's like okay within 48 hours get back to me like how many more 48 hour sessions you have after that good question so the honestly almost every project we do has a preset timeline like like saying, Hey, we'll have an edit for you on this date. We expect feedback by this. Um, uh, we'll have a new edit to you by this date, 48 hour window, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. We usually allocate, usually plan for two and you might, some people will go, well, Hey, we want to do unlimited revisions and we'll go, well, do you have a timeline? Do you have a timeline that you're trying to launch things with it? Because unlimited revisions and we'll go well do you have a timeline do you have a timeline that you're trying to launch things with it because unlimited revisions aren't good for timelines um but if you 90 i'd say 90 of projects 99 no 95 of projects there is some sort of timeline even if they say

they don't have a timeline there is a timeline like they'd like to get it launched like if they say they don't have a timeline they should be comfortable with launching it in a year in two years but if you say yeah a year they'd say no no it's more like uh and then they usually say what the timeline is so we usually go with two because it allows us to execute on a project faster but even beyond that i find that um beyond two you really get nitpicky and to be 100% honest, if you're executing on like a preset plan, depending on how much you plan your projects out, it should be a direct representation of what you did in, or at least as close of a representation as you had when you did like pre-production,

whether you storyboard or planned or even just talked about it right um it should be a pretty direct representation so then when they get that first draft um you usually get all the big large sweeping technical changes out of the way right because they're like i wasn't expecting this can we swap it out with this or anything big usually gone in the first round right and by the time you make those changes and you bring it to the second round you've hit hit all the big, big, big parts, right? And you're just kind of tweaking, refining. There may have been like one or two other small things or larger, larger things that get through to the second round.

And then by the time you get to like a third, so I mean, technically, I guess we do three then. So first, second, and then like a delivery slash finish. Right. So I'd say, technically, I guess we do three then. So first, second, and then like a delivery slash finish, right? So I'd say, yeah, I'd say we say two like major rounds, because you usually tackle everything within those first two, right? Like, how many, how many times do you let things slip through two rounds of revisions? Probably not often. So you mentioned like you do about two or three different drafts. And usually, as you said, you can get most of the bulk of the work done within the first two. And then the third one is to finalize. But I always found even the last draft, there's always one last thing where

it's like, Oh, can you just move this one little thing off to the side, there's always that extra draft that goes in that we all end up doing. But, you know, we've learned to live with it, right? Totally. And that's the one that always gets named like final, final, final, final, final, final, final 10. You said, you said something that's very important, I think. And that's that the pre-production having proper pre-production done does eliminate a lot of the issues in post, right? But don't you often find that when you sit down to edit the project, you kind of look at it completely

different from when you were planning it out in pre you're like pending, but some of the times you're like, okay, now that we've shot it. And now that I'm looking at it, you're like, it's gonna be a little different, but still gonna be good, right? Absolutely. And I wouldn't say that I wouldn't say that our, like, we're not doing like Hollywood things over here. I wouldn't say our pre-production is prescriptive. I'd say it's a nice framework and a guide enough to give a reference of what to expect, but not prescriptive to a point where we don't have that flexibility. How do you usually like put it down on paper so that it's easily explainable to the client?

Because again, it's, we're not dealing with film industry types. We're dealing with people that are in business and that kind of don't know the world. So how do you usually like throw it down on there for them to understand? So it depends on the, it depends on the project. It also depends on the budget as well. Cause some budgets just simply don't allow for like a ton of pre, but I always think I always find a call definitely helps always just kind of like chatting them through the process. If they've never done it before helps a lot. But even something as simple as, Ooh, a really good call sheet. That could be a great idea of, of even just like loose pre-production, but it makes a big

difference because it lets them know what to expect throughout the day, what you're doing at what times, who's going to be there, what their job is. Even if it's just a small, like two person crew, right. It's, it makes a big difference. And you can even have like little shots. Like we're going to be, even if you just said, we're going to be outside, we're going to be inside. We're going to be filming people at this time. That makes a big difference for some of, for some people. And you can also go as intense as having a script or laying out interview questions and what you expect the response to be.

It doesn't have to be prescriptive to the exact response, but what you expect you're going to hear. And then all the way through to like an actual storyboard thing or like a previs or an animatic or stuff like that. So it really depends on the project, but it's just being, I guess, as detailed as you can with whatever the project calls for. Yeah, that's what we found usually works as well. Just being even something as simple as showing the client like images of what it's going to look like or something someone that's going to look like.

What do you find is the most challenging part of the pre-production phase? finding an idea that the client really likes that resonates with them, definitely revising that idea, or even just like getting the scripting right, where it's like a balance of what you know, or what you think will work versus what they want to achieve. In the pre-production phase, when you have an idea, I find that usually the clients like to go with those ideas when they see how much you like the ideas, at least in my experience, that's what I've found. Do you find it's similar with with you guys and Viva? Totally. So if yeah, if you're really, if you're really passionate, and you really push for an idea. And to be honest, I think clients love contrary to what most people think. I think clients love pushback, like they, when they go, Hey, we really want to make a five minute video

to put on social and you just being like five minutes, isn't going to work. Like five minutes is way too long these days. And like, you might have a bit of a back and forth, but you pushing against them for that little thing, because you have their best interest in mind, I think goes a long way for them. Yeah. I think another interesting thing about pre-production as well is that since we're both video production companies, we're technically not supposed to really be doing the creative stuff that would be left to something, someone like an ad or marketing agency, right? A lot of the time they do the creative. But it's funny that we take that role up upon ourselves, right? Because normally it would just be, you get outsourced for the video work,

just the production, right? Maybe you contribute to just be, you get outsourced for the video work, like just the production, right? Maybe you contribute to the pre somewhat, but it's mainly just a production. But it's almost like we're taking on that aspect as well, where we create the video for them, right? And that's often something that's overlooked, the fact that we are writing out like a script for the project.

Yeah, and I think that's an evolution of companies as well, right? The, it's not, it's not always like you might go to, you might go to an oil change place for, for an oil change, but you might need something, a little something else done or a little something in a different area, but it's, it's, you don't want to go to two different places all the time. Some projects and some things might call for it where you need people to specialize in certain things.

But most of the time, it's a great way to stretch, kind of make budgets go a little bit farther so you don't have to get people who specialize in each individual area. And I don't know, it just adds value to it, I think. It's kind of like one of those things where, as you mentioned, if you're going to one place for one type of service, but you need something done that's extra, that doesn't necessarily need the greatest expert in the world to be handling it. At the very least, you get someone who's really good at it and can help take care of that. You know, a lot of people prefer convenience sometimes over, you know, having everything being 100% perfect, you know, sometimes things, campaigns can go a long way if they're, you know, like, say, maybe 80, 85%, you know,

but it was very convenient, conveniently put together, you know, and it's just interesting to kind of like, see that put into perspective as well. Yeah, yeah, it's funny, we're on the topic of pre production, why don't we actually switch to how you got into the industry oh sure okay so very very interesting story so i'm classically trained as an engineer specifically a laser engineer photonics engineering um that's what i went to school for that's what i studied that's that's everything i know um and while i was in school studying um lasers it was a lot of math it was a lot of physics it was a lot of math. It was a lot of physics. It was a lot of really number crunchy stuff, and I needed something creative to do, so I started teaching myself. Well, I watched a lot of YouTube at the time, and I started kind of getting into that

video space. I was like, video is pretty cool. I like watching other people create videos, and I want to do that, so I'm going to try and learn how it's done, space i was like video is pretty cool like i like watching other people create videos and i like i want to i want to do that so i'm going to try and learn how it's done so in between classes and number crunching and stuff i got myself like did you guys ever remember the flip cameras oh yeah you mean like like the flip phones no flip cameras like uh it was like a little standalone video camera oh and then like the screen would kind of flip out and it's just like you're holding it kind of like this Not even like that. It was like a brand of camera It was they were they were specifically they were like a hundred and thirty bucks

But they were called flip because the USB port flipped out so fancy How long ago was this? 2010 so fancy um how long ago was this 2010 okay okay never heard of these cameras they were popular for like a year and a half maybe okay but they were like the go-to camera so i got this thing and i became obsessed with uh because i i would film things and i'd be like oh it doesn't look as cool as or as good as the stuff that they're shooting with it. So I became obsessed with like learning the ins and outs of video and how to make the image better. And then I started teaching myself video editing, progressing through final cut, da, da, da, da, da. So this was all while I was in school. And eventually that, that little side project became like a total obsession. And I ended up graduating. I ended up getting a job in the

field for six months. And then after working in the field for six months, I was like, don't want to do it. I'm going to go do video. So I quit. I was a fiber optic fusion splicer. I quit that job and I got myself a T2I and I went in my parents bedroom or in my in my bedroom at my parents house and I just started grinding I started looking for I didn't even know how to get into the into the industry so I started looking for jobs I started doing online video editing for just random people all over the internet and slowly but surely honing that yeah honing that in yeah it's funny we started on the T2Is as well no no you started on the 6d i started on the t2i remember that youtube channel that was a t2i no that wasn't

that was another one that was a 60d that you had oh the 60d that's right yeah yeah that was revolute that was like one of the better cameras back then like i i had to settle for the t2i because it was my first year of uni at the time back in 2011. And I knew, okay, I can't afford the 60D. It's like $1,500, but I can, I can squeeze 750 for the T2I. But that thing got me through, you know, it got me into the industry when I was in it, you know, for like half a year making that thing work. I pushed that little thing to the limit. And then I'm like, okay, time to upgrade a little bit now. I forgot about the 60D.

How cool was it finding the limits of that camera and pushing it all the way to and kind of like getting the ins and outs of it? I feel like that's the most fun part of anything. As creators, we always like to see how far we can push the limits of our tools. And I feel like now a lot of people who have just gotten spoiled

with the barriers to entry being so low and cameras being so capable now, you know, people are demanding that the cameras can do everything. Meanwhile, we were just praying to be able to get 60 frames per second at 720p. That was a rare thing back then. Do you know what's even crazier to think too is people people even even back then we thought that we were like roughing it but we would have film people look at us and go they've got the coolest thing they have it's so easy they have digital iso that they can set and so film people said the same thing about us and now we're saying the same thing about people who have like a7s3s that shoot in the dark and all this stuff it's funny that we have kind of the same

background away because you started well just slightly after school whereas we started just as we were ending school well a little differently like he was he already got into his industry and got a job and was working but he got he kind of got into it while he was still in like near the end of his school, right? It was a like a fell into it kind of thing. But like I needed to do it for myself. So how did you make the transition? You know, like you said you were working or you were working in your parents basement trying to do edits for random people on the internet. How did you go from that to Viva Media? Honestly, it's a lot of like lucky connections and like right place, right time and networking and just building, I guess, building a portfolio and having a portfolio as crappy as it was back then. The, yeah, it was just, I would, I would edit for, did you,

do you know Upwork? Do you guys know Upwork, that website? No. It's like Fiverr, I think, right? Oh, similar to Fiverr? It kind of like that that so i would do like a bunch of edit stuff on on a site like that for i did something for like the the city of melbourne in australia and things like that right so that would lead to other people recommending me to other people and i would do stuff for like 50 50 dollars like next to, next to nothing. And it was all just like passing along and, and one recommendation to another until you hit something like really crazy where that connection will be at a, let's say a large company. And they're like, Hey, we have a large, a large budget at the time for, for me to work with. And then of course, when you get a little bit of

a larger budget, you start getting maybe a little bit better of equipment and you start, you start going on like this, this, this ladder kind of climbing up where you, your skill ceiling gets a little higher and you, you get a few more clients in a, in a slightly larger network. And then you upgrade your equipment because then you're limited by it and it's kind of like this never-ending it's like in video games you know you're leveling up yeah you're leveling up and then suddenly now you you have your skill tree you have more skills on that branch and you move up and everything every company we've spoken to seem to have that one moment that kind of launched them from oh my god they might need to quit next month because they just can't make ends meet to, okay, now they're settled in and now they're a company. So what was that one? What

was that moment for you? Oh, geez. I might not have had that moment to be a hundred percent honest. It was a, it was a slower burn. Like I was freelancing everywhere for, for everybody. I was driving from at the time, Oshawa to Toronto to do little tiny jobs. I mean, if I had to peg it down to one thing, I would say I was at an award show, like a gala event that I was invited to as kind of like a, like a plus one to somebody. And, uh, I met somebody that I knew that worked in marketing at a big, big, big company. And I I've known him for, I knew him for, uh, an extended period of time. And he was like, Hey, how is, um, photonics going? Like, did you get a job in your field? And I was like, Hey, how is photonics going? Like, did you get a job

in your field? And I was like, no, I didn't. Or I did. And then I left it. And he was like, what do you do now? And I was like, Oh, I do. I'm doing video. I'm doing freelance video. He's like, you are. And I was like, yeah. And he goes, that's super funny because we are at his company. So it was, it was I probably shouldn't say the company. I probably can't say the company, but he was, he was, um, he was working at this large company. It's a big, big company. You definitely know the name of this company. And, um, he was like, oh, they're, they're looking to do a video. And one of the people that did our video just, just left. And it was just a, just a freelance person that they were using.

our video just, just left. And it was just a, just a freelance person that they were using. And he's like, I'm going to put you in, in touch with them. So he did. And I was like, Hey, I'll do, I'll do my best to, to kind of make your recommendation of me shine. So I remember debriefing on the project, chatting with the client and they go, okay, great. Can you send us a quote? And the project was bigger than I, than I expected. So I didn't know how to quote for it. Always a big challenge. Like when you get that first potential massive project and you don't know how to properly quote, it's like, I don't want to ask for too much, but I also don't want to ask too little, right? It's very, it's very tough early on. That's exactly what happened. So I sent, he's like, send a quote to, to, to my work email. I'll

forward it off to the team. So I sent him a quote and immediately when I sent it, he messaged me back. He's like, that's not enough. And I was like, do you need me to go lower? He's like, no, he's like, you're going to have to put it double or triple for them to take you seriously. And I was like, oh, okay. So I went back and I doubled or tripled it. I was like, I'm not just going to increase the number. So I tried to add like a bunch of values things and I sent it back and he's like, okay, they'll take this much more seriously. So there is such a thing as under quoting where people don't take you seriously, which I didn't realize. Yeah, that makes sense though, because imagine if you are like one of these companies and you do get someone that wants to do the job, but then they're quoting you that little,

you're like, eh, something's off here. Something's not right. Actually, that's, there's actually a direct correlation as to why they don't take you seriously. Think about it like this. If a client has a $50,000 or $100,000 budget that they're putting towards a campaign and they're putting 60,000 of that in the talent, in the location, in the product, in the whole organization of it.

And they have $40,000 set aside for the actual content creators to come in and produce it. If you come in and say you're only going to charge $5,000 for that, then they're going to think to themselves, I don't want to risk all that other money for just for this guy to do it, but not do a good enough job. And then they're on the hook for all the other budget that got wasted because they may have saved 20, like $35,000 on that on the content creation side. But then they're going to lose it in the $60,000 that they're going to have to redo the whole project again.

Well, maybe not even that. Maybe it's because they do need to use up that whole amount, right? Well, that's another story, but I'm just saying this is a very, this is a more direct correlation is they don't want to risk needing to redo the project again. Totally. And yeah, it's, it's both of those things, right? And it's, yeah, it was, it was, it was so wild because I've never seen or heard anything like that in my life. They just say, tack on more, tack on more to seem legitimate. So I did and got the job. And that was the kickstart. It was more money than I'd ever seen ever.

And they were willing to trust me with it. So I was like, I'm going to do my darndest to make this thing shine. I really went overkill on it. my darndest to make this thing shine. I really went overkill on it. But that amount was enough to kickstart the rest of everything that I did. And then it kind of, it accelerated after that. So at what point did you go from a freelancer to a business owner? Officially switched it over to a corporation on 2017. That's a year or two after we started. Yeah. Uh, I guess, uh, you know, like you mentioned you, you, you took some more time to kind of like freelance and just build up your skills. Whereas with us, uh, we were freelancing

for like a certain period and then we decided to open up laps, but you know, at the same time, we still freelance every now and then, uh, within our network what they need but you know it's just been kind of like a mutual growth and it's interesting started roughly at the same time because you started 2013 we started 2014 right well you started 2014 I started 2013 as well okay you know I love I love this little story how you're saying you know like the first big project where you thought was more money that you could even imagine. It's like I remember a month into freelancing, I realized I had this one small student run organization ask me for a project.

And they said, how much can you quote for this? And they gave me a reference with this other guy. They gave him a quote. And I'm like, oh, my God, this is so much. And it was only like $1,500. But like, I'm like, okay okay there's actually potential with this and then started moving on with that and then when dario and i started laps i think the first major project that we had was uh was a project that we did with a bank and the quote that they asked us to give we were like

surprised that we could even charge this much. And we're like, okay, there's a lot of potential of where we can go with this even, right? It's such an interesting feeling, right? Yeah. And it opens your eyes and you immediately see when you see the potential of it, you see all the possibilities and the different avenues that you can go down and the actual longevity of it, I guess. Yeah. So it's crazy.

Yeah. So maybe I did have the one, the one moment. Yeah. I guess that would be the one moment. Did that happen when you were incorporated or, well, it must've happened before that, right? When you were freelancing. That happened 2015 or 2016. Yeah. I do want to touch upon you going from a freelancer to a company. What was that change? Because I know you got that big project that kind of got you going, but there's still, you need a lot of those and there's, you could still get those as a freelancer and remain a freelancer, right? So what made you go from just being a freelancer to saying, okay, let me open up my own company

now? Yeah, honestly, it was the amount of work. It became too much for one person to do. And I really pushed it. Looking back now, I was probably on the cusp of burning out with how much I was working. I was pretty much awake and working or, or asleep and just getting bare minimum sleep to, uh, to wake up the next day and do it again. But it was, it was definitely a point where I had so much work that I physically couldn't do it all myself. And if I tried to it, the work would suffer and I would deliver like subpar stuff and it would actually hurt relationships and hurt um uh future work and things so there was a point where yeah I

went okay I have to look at um number one separating out my living space from my working space and actually like getting an office because I was working out of my condo at the time. And then it also creates a space for me to have somebody else in, because I didn't want them in my space. I'm a very separate space person. I have to be in different spaces to be in different mindsets. So that was the point where I went, okay, I have to, or the accountant was suggesting I have to incorporate, uh, um, and then I got an office and then I got, and to be fair, the office was a closet. It was,

it was a, it was a literal closet. It couldn't have been much bigger than, I don't know, the room you're in right now, eight by eight. Oh, eight by eight. Oh, that's a small one then literally, literally when I say it's a closet, but, but yeah, I went into that and, uh, and then two people fit in there, not very well, but fit in there. And, uh, then it just kept snowballing from there. Cause I was able to offload some things that, um, that I didn't have time for, or that were too mundane when I should be allocating my time to other things. And it just, once again, it kept step laddering and snowballing. And then we'd want to bring somebody else on, then I'd have to get a bigger space and then another person on and

then a bigger space after that. So it's yeah, kind of stair step like that. Yeah, that goes back to scalability, right? And that's something that we're trying to figure out for ourselves right now. So I know, like for us, for example, we're outsourcing a lot of the work to freelancers that we know. I know the next step is to get an office, but we don't really know what the next steps after that will be, right? Whereas, like, so how did you go about it? Because, okay, you got the office, and then how did you decide what the next position

to hire was? Because I know you obviously were using freelancers as well, but how did you go about it? Because, okay, you got the office and then how did you decide what the next position to hire was? Because I know you obviously were using freelancers as well, but how did you decide, okay, I need an employee that's going to be this specific role? Mine was where is taking up the most time and can I find somebody to help fill that spot? So a lot of it, believe it or not for me was the, what would be like assistant editing. So like paring down the footage, picking the good shots,

listening over to an interview and picking out like the good sound bites. That was probably the longest part of the process for me. And that's the very first spot that I got somebody in. But at the same time, I also realized that, cause I also work pretty, or I did work pretty fast. So I needed to find somebody who could keep up with it. And at the time working remotely, wasn't like a thing that was super quick or easy.

So I had to get a physical space where I could have somebody hardwired in i got them a computer and we were both accessing the same files and i could give instant feedback to somebody or they could ask me an instant question and there was enough work to to do that like consistently day in and day out but he was also he was also a bit of a swiss army knife or i like to i like to hire people who are like like Swiss army knives and are good in multiple different areas. So that if there was a little lull in assistant editing, he was cool to come out on set or do something else that,

that wasn't assistant editing. So that was a, yeah, that was, that was the first spot that I, that I hired in. Finding talent like that is is is so difficult in this city that we found you know it's i feel like a lot of a lot of us once we find people that we really enjoy working with that we know are good we we try to nurture those relationships as much as we can especially now because you know with there being so much competition out there you know and people vying for work you know it's it's hard to it's hard to build relationships like that especially like going forward right so definitely finding the swiss army knights when you

find them stick to them because you know there's it's really hard to find others like that yeah like we put a call out for we wanted to increase our roster so we put calls out for different positions and i can't tell you how many people reached out. And out of all the people that reached, let's say for the position of editor, we had 60 people reach out. I think at the end of the day, five looked interesting. It's really surprising sometimes how when you get connected to one person, that's almost like a web of connections

that kind of lead to other things. I can probably pinpoint probably a good 10 people that I've met in my career that can all stem from me making one application on Mandy back in 2014, just a random application that I did. It's like, and these are 10 people that I work with frequently, like very frequently now. And it's, it's like, it's just crazy to think sometimes like that, you know, like people always think, ah, this opportunity, you know, it'll lead to nowhere, you know, but sometimes it's just that one that you need, because you don't know where it's going to spiral, right?

Yeah. And it's, it goes back to like, there's, there's that saying, I don't know the saying, obviously, but it's that thing where, where like good people breed other good people. There's just like a network of, of good people. So when you do find that one thing that like really works and you really click with, it just leads to other people within that kind of realm and that same kind of headspace and, and, and mindset. And yeah, you're totally right. It, all it takes is that one person, but I think people get frustrated when you don't find that one person like right off the bat and you you won't right and it's like it's kind of like it's like dating not every date you're gonna you're gonna go on is

gonna be a hit right it's it's you have to go through some like tough stuff some okay stuff and you you it's it's a numbers game you finally find one that that hits but you got to be persistent they're looking for the one every time that's what it is it's funny how similar uh business actually is to dating in some ways because again like even when you're going out and you're trying to pitch the clients you don't want to seem too needy so it's like on a date you don't want to seem too needy it's like oh you really like this person but you know you got to be like, listen, I got options. I have another client talking to me. You know what? Going back a bit before, though, when you first got into video, what were your goals? Because for us, when we first got into it, it was like, yeah, to kind of grow a company and be able to live off of it.

But I think our at the time, our long term goals were to somehow transition into the film industry. So I wonder what yours were? Oh, honestly, mine's a little mine's a little weird. So my main back at the start, my main goal was just to not go back to fusion splicing. To be totally honest, still fighting it. That was my main thing as I just didn't want to have to go back, move into my parents house and and do fusion splicing again so that was that was my short-term goal but long term uh i think it evolved into i was trying a bunch of different areas um just because i'm not classically trained in things and and it was kind of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticked. I really liked, um, uh, branded stuff. So whether

that be like a commercial or like a doc, like I love learning things. Like I'm a big learner and like a big, huge, huge tech tech guy. Um, but learning, like I love sitting down with people and like hearing their story or hearing like a business's story. And to some people that's, that's really boring, but like, I'll go listen to a CEO talk about finance all day long. Like I, I, I love it. Just absorbing content. So that kind of fell me into like the commercial branded realm of things. And that's where, that's where I've kind of stuck. So you feel like you've kind of like kind of gone into more of like the branded doc area, you know, where there's a story that is very present there,

but it's real. You love hearing how people kind of like have their, almost like people's origin story, right? I feel like a lot of people love to hear how other people got into their businesses. That's also partially why we started this podcast because, you know, we, we felt that, okay, I think we have a pretty interesting story of how we started, but like, do other people have situations where they were very similar?

And just like, even now, like the way we're, we're, we're talking about it, we, there are a lot of parallels in how each of us started together. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's absolutely, absolutely nuts. But the, uh, yeah, the, the, the, I guess the, the big, yeah, the big thing is, is, is it's a, it's a, it's a journey, right? And there's no like set path. There's no, there's no right or wrong way to do it. It's all honestly, a lot of experimentation and just kind of figuring out what, what, what works for you. Okay. So you went from freelancer to business and now you're incorporated. What are some of the current challenges you're facing? Not including challenges that the pandemic kind of instituted upon us. We all have those same challenges.

We're all in the same boat with that regard, right? But I guess maybe before the pandemic started, what were some of the challenges you were facing? One is trying to like clone yourself. So find somebody who's like a direct match of you just to help with scaling and workload and that sort of thing. So definitely like growing or scaling, that's always a challenge and kind of giving up control a little bit. It's probably one of them. I like everything to like have its place and be like a little ecosystem,

but I have been learning to kind of give up part of that creative process or handing over a larger part of an edit, especially if somebody says they want to try it or they want to do it, just allowing for more opportunities, I guess. Another challenge. Ooh, a challenge that I feel like you get when you start to grow and scale is you're able to,

you're financially not able to take on some of the smaller projects or the smaller clients that you might've worked with in the past. So kind of, I guess, letting some things go just because financially you can't. That's definitely a challenge. How do you deal with that? So when you have a client, maybe even a current or was a current client coming to you and saying, okay, like this is still our budget. We really can't do much with this. How do you, how do you handle that situation? Because obviously you don't want to leave them high and dry, but at the same time, you want to make sure you're, you're able to financially be able to take on the project. Right. Totally. Yeah. I think nowadays they come in all sorts of different scales. Like,

like there's like really small, small, small stuff where like, you just can't do anything. And in that case I might say I might provide, instead of being able to provide a service, you can provide advice. So I might just say, Hey, that's, that's, I can't, or we can't financially work within those realms just because we have minimums and different things that we have to meet because your cooperation with, with people and, and overhead and things that you have to maintain, but just being able to provide some advice to people is, is, is big. So let's say somebody has, let's say somebody comes and they're like, hey, I have 500 bucks. Like I want to make a video or do a shoot or something. And I go, it's not a good fit for us.

However, I know so-and-so, they're a student at school who could do a lot with that. And they're really talented, chat with them. And it can be a stepping stool for them even, right? Or like maybe a smaller freelancer who's just getting a start, but again, is also really talented and I can kind of vouch for them and go, hey, they have a lot of potential. They could do something really, really cool with this. On the larger scale of things, like if it's just out of the range of what's possible for us on a normal budget, I might re-approach it from the perspective of, I can't, the scope of work that they want to

achieve might be, at least in our realm, mismatched from what their budget allows. But in that case, I will go and I will say, hey, I can't do what you want within the budget that you have set. But let's see what we can do within the budget that you have set, whether that just be the production side and providing the raw footage over and then maybe a freelancer takes over from there. But yeah, just proposing always having like a solution, even though it might not be a direct service provide on your part. be a direct service provider on your part. So it's basically like as if you may not be able to fulfill exactly what they're coming to you with, but you're offering different solutions. You're basically at that point becoming the consultant at this point, right? Because you're trying to help them achieve whatever goals that they have, even though

you personally may not be able to. There have been times where Dario and I haven't been able to take on a project and we've tried to recommend ideas and solutions for the clients of what they can do. Either connect them, as you said, to other people who might be interested in taking on projects like that versus us being able to take that on. Do you still charge for that consulting bit you do?

And if you don't, I'm guessing it's just a very quick type of consultation, right? Like just, okay, based on what I'm listening to talk about on this call, like, yeah, just go, go do this or that. That's exactly it. Yeah. It's not a, it's not like a big, because once again, you can't do a big time investment, right? It's just usually a quick, it might be a quick email back. It might be a quick phone call just to like guide them through something, but it's, it's, it's never, it's never a big, a big consulting thing, never charged for it. It's just like, Hey, I super appreciate you taking the time to reach out and

even just consider us for, for what you're doing. Like even that is a big thing. At the very least, let me provide you with this quick 15 minute piece of advice or 20 minute piece of advice and give you a direction to go, right? Because the worst thing that person could hear is just a flat out no, because then you're left directionless. You don't really know where to go. It doesn't help you in any capacity, right? The very least I can do is say, no, however, I do know this area. Based on my recommendation, this is the next spot you should look. And that may come back to get you. It's kind of like a karma thing. Maybe they are best friends with a VP at a company where they might be going out for dinner and might be talking about

an upcoming project, right? And they'll go, oh, there was a company that I reached out to and they were really helpful and provided this advice. And they might be, they were a higher end thing, but they might be able to help you and then pass along that information or something, right? So it's not immediate value that you're providing and know you're not able to charge for it. But those kinds of things can come back to be very, very, very valuable in the future. Because you put yourself in a very positive light with that person, whether you were able to work with them or not, you know, you're still putting a good image out there of yourself as a business. And that's very valuable to a lot

of people, especially if you're solving problems for them. Yeah, I think it worked out for us when we kind of explained the situation to them as well. We're like, look, it's, it's below our breakeven cost. Yeah. So like taking on this project costs cost me money. Right. So once we said that they kind of understood it, and they're like, okay, we get it. And then we kind of explain like, again, here's what you could do instead. Totally. And it's crazy, because a lot of people people especially if you're dealing with somebody who's doesn't who who's never done a video before they simply don't know the costs and and the work and the process that goes into making something right so how do you explain that to them the the thing

that i actually just to kind of build on that uh a lot a lot of a lot of clients they typically think that there's only certain things that cost money in video. In their mind, it's usually, okay, so how many days are you going to come for? It's a one-day, two-day shoot. They're thinking those are the costs and maybe some costs for editing. But one thing that I find that a lot of clients get surprised about is when there is budget that needs to be allocated for the pre-production. How do you typically communicate that to them? Because in their mind, it's like, oh, you're just coordinating or planning. It's like, you're not actually showing up to do anything. Why should I pay you for just that aspect? How do you how do you approach that?

Yeah, that's, that's an interesting one, because you're really tangibly not producing anything, right? When you're just sitting down and coming up with an idea or brainstorming or filling out like a storyboard. But the best way that I explain it to people is, hey, I want to set, I want to do well by this project. And for me to do well by this project and actually do build out the framework and the blueprint for this thing, I need to set aside half a day of my time where I'm not looking at anybody else's projects. And I just need to focus on building out the plan for, for yours. And no, it's not, it's not a tangible thing, but it's, it's, I'm setting aside half of half of my day to make sure that I can do justice for the project that, that, that you're paying for. So that's, it's a, it's a weird one, right? It's a weird

one to actually like quantify and charge for. So it's almost like when you're building a house. Yeah. If you don't pay the architect to design it, to design a blueprint, you're going to build a crooked house. Yeah. The construction guys are not going to have it perfectly set up. It kind of goes back to that example we discussed about how if a business is putting all this money into the planning of the project, they want to make sure it's done well enough so it can only be done once. You know,

if there's no, if there's no investment in the pre-production, you know, you're basically gambling with that one or two days that you've scheduled. Will it work? Will it not work? Oh, it didn't work. Now you got to pay more for us to come out again. You know, it's, it's just kind of one of those things, right? Yeah. And that's a good way to put it is, is if, if it doesn't, if you're flying by, if you choose to fly by the seat of your pants, um, know that it could end up costing you more in the, in the long run, because you might not like flying by the seat of the pants. You're just kind of, you're, you're at the mercy of, of whatever that production day or whatever brings, right? You don't really, to do a redo in production costs a lot of money, right?

So you want to put the small amount of time or proportionally the small amount of budget or time allocation into that pre-production because it will make production much more efficient in the long run. So we kind of covered how you explain the pre-production process to them, but what about the entire video production as a whole? Because again, a lot of the times we're dealing with clients that just don't know how it works. They have like some idea of how it is and it's usually unfortunately the wrong one. So how do you sit down with them and explain A to B to C? That's a good question. If people question,

some people don't question it, right? But if some people question and don't understand the process, it's different for everybody in their degree of understanding. It might be as simple as a phone call explanation to walk through things. It could be something where to walk through things. It could be something where maybe we might live stream and screencast from the edit bay and do something live where they can kind of show, okay, it takes a lot of cutting and mixing and kind of testing things out. And it kind of even streamlines their feedback because they understand the process a little bit more. It might be something where we physically get them into the office. But even, even furthermore, we always encourage a client to be on set with us just so they can see the

amount of work that goes into something, have like a, a, a, a contact point or reference things that we can bounce off of be like, Hey, does this look good? Does this not look good because they know what you're working with in post as well. Some people don't like to be on set. Some people just kind of let you like to let you run free. And in those cases, it's just kind of like, okay, we're working with what we're working with. And it's an understanding on their part. Like we take the time to explain that if you're not there to bounce things off of, if you're not there to kind of see the

process and make sure that everything's good, it's kind of understood by you that whatever we get is what we get. So we try to mitigate that by always requesting that somebody, somebody's on set to kind of vouch for us or be like, no, this is what was captured. I saw this or did this on set just because it kind of helps make things smoother especially if they have very specific branding guidelines very specific messages that they need explained like I Dario and I always make it a point like that we need to have a client on set especially when it's for example a certain interview where they want certain messages to be sets in certain ways because then you you know, you can guide the talent through it.

But then, you know, it's like you can call the client over and say, hey, did you like how they delivered that in terms of like is it in line with your brand and your company to make sure that they said it the right way? Because like we can get everything done right. But if something was just said in a way that doesn't work with the organization's goals, you know, the client is going to say, gonna say oh no we can't use that because they said it like this rather than like this yeah because at the end of the day we can learn your industry but we'll never be as knowledgeable as the client will be of their industry because again we're dealing yeah because we're dealing with people in in so many different fields that will never be like experts at it we'll be we'll get cl uh we'll get pretty knowledgeable about it but but not to their extent. Absolutely.

Yeah, 100%. They can't expect you to fully have the deepest understanding of the brand and their messaging and how they work and what their philosophies are doing like a week of pre-production or just being on site for a day. That can't be expected.

Just like we can't expect people that can't be expected. Just like we can't expect people to fully understand the video production process just by, uh, surface level seeing things. Right. So I, I, I understand both sides of it, right. They, they don't understand. We don't understand their brand as deeply as they do, and they don't understand the video production process. So it's, it's, it's a partnership, right? You gotta, you gotta explain everything along the way just to make sure that everybody's on the same page. So I do want to touch back on scalability. Where do you feel you are right now? Because again, you incorporated and you got a team of people, but where are your long term goals? And where are you at right now? That's a good question. I didn't expect to be here

to be to be totally honest to be at the point that I am now. So I don't really have a massive, a huge plan per se. I'm not much of a long-term, super, super, super long-term planner. It's much more like short-term, evolve as I go kind of thing. thing. But where do I see, where do I see things going? I'd love to still like build a bigger and more robust team to maybe free up some of my time and do more, more specific things like focus on certain areas. But at the same time, like I like being little and scrappy and being able to like, pivot on a dime and and have hands in different areas of things. So I don't know, it's a balance. It's like a balance of being still maintaining the boutique, the boutique kind of level of quality, but having the resources of a much bigger based business, right? It's very hard to pinpoint your long-term goals constantly, especially in our industry, because it's constantly changing. I mean, like you said, you didn't expect to be where you are at now.

We didn't expect the pandemic either. We didn't expect the pandemic. Dario and I didn't expect to be where we are right now. You know, we didn't even expect to be on a show like this, filming ourselves you know we're usually the ones behind the camera yeah if you told us we're going to be filming ourselves i would have said you're crazy because we tried it once three years ago several times it was several times it was a disaster each of those times even the first couple of episodes of this i was like i don't know about this but yeah i have a question for you then if i'm allowed to inject the question go for it go it. What was the difference?

What was, what made the difference this time for you guys to go? Okay, no, we'll, we'll, we'll do it. If you've tried it so many times in the past and gone, you know, you know what it was? We weren't looking, we weren't looking directly at the camera. Ah, not looking at Kirill's beautiful eyes and that made a world of a difference. So it was that small little change. I think, I think part of it is because like we're right now still having, you know, a human interaction, right?

You know, we're having a discussion between three people that's not scripted. A lot of the other times where we've tried to be on camera, we're trying to kind of not imitate. No, we tried you and I talking, but we were talking and then looking directly in the middle camera and it didn't work out remember we're doing it oh you mean like for one of the episodes oh yeah we tried it on your

couch that time it didn't work well that's what i'm saying like the the other type of content that we were trying out was content that was kind of like what you see out there already you know people like five tips like five editing tips five editing tips you know how to shoot on like it's it's that kind of stuff that is there's so much of that content out there like talking directly to a camera is so impersonal and it's so difficult especially if you're not an actor right and i think weren't you an actor at one point well no i wasn't trained that much but he was on a tv show uh tv i was on a tv commercial but like it wasn't it wasn't a big deal.

That's why he stopped being an actor. But anyways, um, uh, the, the thing that made it different this time for us was partially during the pandemic, it was, it was hard to find, obviously none of, none of us were working, right? You know, a lot of us were trying to figure out, you know, okay, what's, what's working in our business. What isn't, you know, we had to basically tear down the business, like figuratively, and just kind of restructure our goals

and figure out what we want to do in the long term. And one thing we noticed, okay, we're not doing a lot of work right now. How do we also put ourselves out there? You know, that, you know, we can get in touch with people. People can see our faces. And we thought, you know what? We love podcasts.

Daria and I are huge podcasts forgetting something though we okay here's how it started i'm gonna mention we have different versions of i'll tell you the right one it was uh kiro myself and another friend of ours called alexa and we started this podcast called uh well jens and jens it was mostly like this comedy podcast and you can imagine three savages trying to have like a civilized peachy conversation how that went but that actually got us like comfortable being recorded yeah because even with that it was just us three talking on a zoom call he's he's in scotland so i have to be like zoom between the three of us and it took like four or five episodes before we got comfortable talking in front of the camera.

And mind you, it was just like it was literally like the usual chats we had once a week, except it was recorded. It was recorded. The recording made such a big difference. We're now like uncomfortable to speak, but we got like warmed up with that. And I think after a couple of those, Kirill and I were like, hey, remember that we should do this for our business, too. And then might as well. Yeah. We got comfortable enough to try it out. Yeah.

And like, it's, it's, it's, it's, uh, it's like a lifestyle value thing. You get,

you get like that banter of, of lifestyle content, but you get the value of like the business content. So it's super cool. I subscribed as soon as you announced it. I subscribed. I'm on, I'm on the Spotify subscription. Ah, ah sweet now you're the fourth subscriber yeah

don't worry we'll put a special place for number four okay but you know how youtube sends the buttons we'll send you one of those buttons too exactly i mean it was also a good distraction because you know like i feel like a lot of us during the pandemic were just kind of almost going nuts you know a good distraction because, you know, like I feel like a lot of us during the pandemic, we're just kind of almost going nuts, you know, like we're not working, you know, we're worrying about what's to come in the following months. You know, this was also like a nice distraction, you know, on a weekly basis, Dario and I got together and we're just kind of talking about, you know, our business, you know, our history, our origin story. And then we decide, okay, let's also bring on other people that, you know, can also share their stories. Cause this is also an opportunity for people like yourself to share your experiences and even, you know, put yourself out there as well. Totally. Totally.

What is something that you've done to make yourself stand out from other production companies? stand out from other production companies? You know what, if I had to pick the single, the single thing, it's definitely not taking production too seriously. So not, not taking yourself too seriously, not taking the job too seriously, just being able to have a little bit of fun with it is a world of a difference. Like think about whenever think people think about film production, they think about having to nail things perfectly every time it's very tense. It's very uptight. Everybody has a specific job and they don't go beyond those bounds. And we're like,

we're sitting there like cracking jokes on, on set and like having fun with things. And I, I think that makes the world of a difference. And people have told us that that makes the world of a difference. Right. Like they've worked with people in the past where they were really great and they made really, really great stuff, but it was, it was tough to work with them. Right. And you've probably never heard like you, you've probably never heard, like you, you've probably

never heard somebody go, man, we made, we made a video and it looked, it looked really great. And it looked really awesome. And we're like super stoked with how it looks, but we had like a crappy experience, right? People are more likely to say, Hey, we made a pretty decent project and we had a great time making that thing, right? People are much more happy with that B spot than that a spot. Cause no matter how polished and how awesome something looks, if you had a crappy time making it, you're probably not going to do it again. So I think you don't have to be the best of the best, but you at least have to, you have to have a good time doing what you're doing you have to enjoy what you're doing and you have to make it enjoyable for others so you have to be the most fun yeah that mirrors a lot of our experience with our clients it's almost like

i i see it kind of like a field a field day trip with them yeah it's always like they're out of the office they're out of the cubicle now and it's like fun and this and that it's like a school trip almost right and so you could you literally see it in their eyes they're like oh this is fun and they finally get it too like if it's their first time they finally get oh okay that's why they were asking all the this stuff and they needed all that they can they really they really wrap their heads around the whole process at that point because a lot of people have this idea a lot of clients have this idea of what uh video production is you know like they see the movies you know they see the behind the scenes of film sets, and they think that that's how it

always is. And a lot of a lot of companies that you mentioned, that take themselves too seriously, they're also thinking like that, you know, like, oh, it has to be like this, because this is what clients are expecting. But you know, companies like you and ourselves, we're kind of flipping it a little bit, you know, where it's, you know, it's not always as serious as you think. You know, like, yes, like, you know, we're all there to do a job. We're all trying to create value for the clients. But at the same time, we're trying to put in like a fun experience for them because that's what they're also looking for. They want the fun, the glamour almost sometimes.

You know, they want to be wined and dined almost in a way it is like dating right so many times you break out the clapper board and people are like oh it's a it's a clapper board let me take an instagram photo with it and some people would get offended and somebody would be like no we've got work to do but like let them take the picture with the clapper board yeah no that's it like if a client wants to take a photo with the clapper oh if they want behind the scene photos let them take as many as they want you know it's you know let them have fun it's it's their it's their time to shine they're paying for it why not let them have that time that's what i was gonna say yeah they're the ones who's who are paying you to to to be there and if you can have a good time with it and also deliver a good project, then I'd say that's a win-win in my books.

Yeah, I wanted to ask, how do you balance business with creativity? Because that's something we struggle with a lot. Everyone struggles with it. But I feel like lately we're trying to focus more on the business side of things. So we are kind of bringing on other people to handle the creativity in a way just so we can focus on growing and scaling our business. So how do you deal with that that's tough i honestly i think it it comes down to bringing other opinions in to help to help keep the balance there so a lot of the times if if if i'm the one ultimately in the at the end of the day, I guess I'm calling the shots for, for different things,

but I have to be open to getting feedback for the creative side of things or the business side of things to help balance those out because I can't balance it all myself, I guess. Does that make, does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. So I guess you're getting feedback both from the business end of things as well. And who guess you're getting feedback both from the business end of things as well. And who's giving you that feedback? Could be the team here. Could be people around me.

Could be actual financial people. But like having people on both sides of the fence to help you make decisions and to help you balance both of those things. Because it is a tricky thing to balance. Yeah. And which one do you find yourself leaning more towards or in favor of sometimes?

I'll probably, I think I always start with creativity, but the bounds of creativity are blocked by walls of business. Yeah. That's a good answer. That's a political answer if anything. Yeah. I mean, I feel a good answer. That's a political answer, if anything. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, you know, in a way though, you say you start with creativity, but you know, you technically have to start with business

to get those walls and then you can let the creativity fly, right? But I guess, again, it always depends on every project as you mentioned before. It always depends. And I guess over time too, you start to realize, you start to realize with each different project guess over time too, you start to realize, you start to realize with each different project you take on after you start to realize where those bounds are, you start getting a sense of where to start with your creativity, right? So you get a

sense of like how big those business walls are or how small they are. And you kind of, you're able to guesstimate things a little bit better. Yeah. Well, you have to always estimate with these projects because, you know, you can never know all the details right up front. So you always try to think of ideas within rough walls, what you can do, especially if you don't know the budget. The biggest thing that determines the size of those walls and barriers is budget. So again, like if it's like a certain type of client that comes to you with uh and you can

expect that oh they'll probably have roughly a budget like this this is roughly the realm of creativity that i can kind of yeah go to right do you find like do you think long term you're gonna have to focus strictly on the business side of things because again i know you said you didn't expect to be in the position you're at but don't you want to grow it to a point where it's like a it's a strong company right it's pretty big and to do that you're gonna have to again like you said you you already find yourself now having to give up some of the reins to to your other people right don't you feel like you're eventually going to get to the point where you got to give up most of the reins let's say for creative, the creative stuff to focus on the

business? I hope not, but realistically, probably, yeah, I feel like it would get to that. It could, or it would get to that point, but I think maybe it's, it might even be a matter of, I guess you, when you get to that point, you, maybe you get to be a little bit more selective of which battles you get to you want to fight or you don't have to do be like a creative or a particular lead on every project you might get somebody who has an essence of what you have who can do those things but you get to be a little bit more picky of what your hands on with and what's your what your hands off with because it's interesting. I do also like the business side of things.

I also find it interesting and I also find it super fun. Would I want to do it all the time? No, same, same with creative. I wouldn't want to just be creative and having to like be a creative workhouse or a warehouse or assembly line, just pumping things out daily. I you'd burn out. Right. But if, yeah, if, if I had to, if I got to that point, to that point where it was just business, I don't think I would let it get to that point, to be honest. I think I would probably find somebody who, who helps me up in that,

that area and just allows me to pick the battles that, that, that I want to pick. Do you, do you play a hand in every single project that comes through your business? Like every single client project you are helping in some way, shape or form putting in, putting it together. Cause for example, with Daria and myself, you know, for the longest time, we were always both on every project, you know, making sure that, you know, things longest time we were always both on every project you know making sure that you know things were were going smoothly but we learned over the last year to relinquish you know ourselves to work kind of separately sometimes because that helped us take on more work at times so for example i'm right now probably like handling two specific client projects whereas

dario's handling another two and i can trust him to uh to take care of that entire project aspect. You know, if he has questions or suggestions or wants my input on something and vice versa, you know, we would ask each other. But, you know, we've kind of learned to kind of separate a little bit just so we can take on that work. Do you feel like you still want to maintain that you work on every project or do you want to kind of grow it to the point where you don't have to do that? That's a good, that's a good question. I think like right now, the way

we have it set up right now is instead of everybody having, uh, um, like tandem things where somebody can have a whole portion of, of something and another person can have a whole portion, everybody focuses on a different area within the chain and they manage different things within can have a whole portion of something and another person can have a whole portion. Everybody focuses on a different area within the chain and they manage different things within those areas of the chain. So somebody doesn't have to be super good at, and I think the way the dual purpose or having different people in different verticals, you have to be good, relatively good at every part of the process. Whereas I don't think it's harder to find people like that. Definitely.

But I feel like I have more success in finding people who like specializing at those certain areas and can manage multiple running projects within that particular area. So that's what I found works. So you basically, once the project comes through you, you handle the pre-production phase and then say you have like your two go-to guys

who are helping you shoot the project, they handle that. And then if there's like certain editors that edit certain things, it's almost as if you're bouncing the project. Like once it's done in this phase, you move it to the next person who handles that phase and to the next person that handles that phase. But he's still overseeing it because he's a producer. But that's what I mean. That's what I mean.

He's still overseeing it. But like a lot of the key roles are kind of shifting. Whereas like with you and I, we hire sometimes a lot of the talent to handle those projects and then we manage those ones. So he's streamlined it in a different way, which I think a lot of people actually like to do, especially if they love to be overseeing every project that comes through. Right. Totally. But with you guys, I think that's especially rare to have it. Like it's very, very tough to find. It's very lucky that you guys have it because you have, you guys are like a two headed dragon in that sense, right? You can, you can run something in parallel and both have things covered from start to finish with, with,

with those two different verticals, right? We don't have that per se, right? So it has to go through everybody in the, in, in the process and which is, which is easier to find. But, but, uh, it would be cool to have something that's kind of tandem and you have it like a two headed. It's hard to find it. The only reason I think it works between Dario and myself is because we kind of grew together in the industry and as with our business. Cause you know, like obviously in the beginning, Dario and I, we didn't know the whole process. So we were learning as we went with every single project and only after what, five, six years, only like about a year ago, maybe year and a half

is when we kind of started slowly separating it a little bit here and there. And I gotta say it's helped us kind of free up each other's time to focus on other things as well. Because if we're both doing everything constantly you know we're we're shooting ourselves in the foot sometimes you know where you know like if if there's a project where one of us doesn't need to be there the other person doesn't go because then they could focus on another client's project you know and give that same level of

attention that we're always trying to kind of do right like this morning we had a we had a shoot that we needed to do right last minute it was very last minute we didn't have time to hire out someone else and it was really just a one-person shoot so kiel went out and did that and i spent the morning like having calls with clients for you know so whereas in the past we would go we would both go out to that and it would just be a mess you know we'd have to reschedule stuff and everything so a mess you know we'd have to reschedule stuff and everything so yeah see that's that's lucky i wish i wish yeah do you think it'd be hard for you to find uh a partner going forward because you're eventually going to get to that stage where you either need to bring in investors if you want to keep growing or maybe a marketing arm maybe a marketing arm or maybe what you would do is uh

what do you call merge with another, with another company? Like, do you think it's going to be hard to just find someone that's like a guy that's just been fired from somewhere, just needs a job. And that guy could be your potential partner. What an interesting thought. So there's actually a guy, uh, working upstairs right now. He was just laid off from a marketing job during the pandemic. And he was sitting at, uh, he was sitting at home and he I've known him for quite a long time. Didn't have anything to do. He's like, he's like, he's like, man, can I just, can I just, at first he asked for a job and I was like, I don't really have a spot for a job right now, but he's like, can I

just, can I just come work out of your office with you? He goes, I can do extra little things here and there, but he's like, I need to get out of the house. I need to flex my marketing muscles. And he's like, you don't got to pay me, but, but if you see, if I'm doing something good and, and things, things start looking up, he's like, consider it. And I was like, you know what? That's a very low barrier to entry. Why not? So he's, yeah, he's sitting upstairs right now, chugging away on, why not? So he's, yeah, he's sitting upstairs right now, chugging away on, on something. I had a spare computer up there. So yeah, that, that kind of stuff is, is happening and is definitely like talked about, like I've, I've talked openly about like merging with another company who were like really aligned with, or even bringing on partners where, cause one of

the big things I think is if you want somebody who is in the game as much as you and, and pours kind of like blood, sweat and tears into it and has skin in it, it really got to be a partner where, where they can see the, they can also tangibly feel the success and the growth and that kind of thing, rather than just being just a straight employee where they do their thing, they go home. And for some people, that's perfectly fine. And they love doing that. And they don't want to have skin in the game and that kind of thing. But I think definitely when you talk about larger scaling, partnering, merging, that kind of thing oh definitely on the table but it's it's it's it's scary but necessary yeah and it's definitely something to plan out for because

i mean you're farther along than us these are things that we're trying to figure out now you know yeah um like if we were at your stage i don't know like we'd be like really really thinking about it because again like yeah you're at a point where like you're it looks like you've already had so much growth in the in the time you've been around right like i can't even imagine the next couple of years what they'll look like for you so yeah honestly if the if the pandemic didn't hit it just looked like it was going to keep going um more nuts and more nuts it's definitely like pop not it's pause definitely hasn't died but keep going um more nuts and more nuts it's definitely like pop not it's pause definitely hasn't died but it's leveled off for a second it's been put on

pause um but pending the pandemic if that didn't hit it just would have kept going i'm kind of grateful for the pause because i get to like sit and think and like really take a step back and observe things from a um definitely a higher perspective, top down kind of look. So I've kind of liked the, not that I've liked the pandemic, but I've liked the time it's allowed me. Yeah. So now that it's given you that time to look over things again, from like a bird's eye view, I guess, what, what have you noticed? Just, I think, I think I've kind of noticed different verticals and areas that, that got into for different revenue streams, different areas that I want to fill in terms of people and help and kind of growing and scaling in terms of production. there's been so much like I have such a big list. And sometimes I shoot myself in the foot because I have more ideas than I have time to execute on them. But it's been really nice to actually sit

down, make that list and kind of flesh it out. I think that's definitely what anyone who runs a business like us needs to be doing right now. And I'm really glad that that Dario and I started doing this, especially when it was at the height of the pandemic you know like i knew as it was happening like we got to start figuring things out soon you know or at least looking at the business seeing what's working what isn't and i feel like what the pandemic has kind of done for a lot of businesses and we've noticed this in other industries not just our own industry is that it has kind of accelerated problems that were already there before the pandemic hit. The pandemic didn't exactly just kill off all businesses just because it happened, right? If you didn't have issues in your business going into it,

you probably would have at least not been thriving, but at least been able to kind of keep chugging along a little bit, right? probably would have at least not been thriving, but at least been able to kind of keep chugging along a little bit, right? The pandemic has just kind of highlighted an overarching problem in a lot of businesses. I mean, like, for example, a lot of events-based businesses, their biggest problem is that they need people there. And this pandemic, what did it do? It took out the people.

I think it also made everyone realize how dependent they were on events. Because we didn't realize it at the time, but we're like, oh my God, we actually have a lot of events-based projects in the way. And then they were on events because yeah we didn't realize it at the time but we're like oh my god we actually have a lot of events based a lot of our projects in the way and then they were all gone so we're like time to go into the direction of no event projects at least to focus in yeah totally and even even just filming with people or like uh amounts of people on set like that's that's all changed like you can, you can't have as many people crowding around a monitor to look at things or a ton of people with a very specific job. Like you kind of have to be Swiss army knives now and kind of wear multiple

different hats. Like it's a big advantage now. And people looked at it kind of strangely pre pandemic, but now it's, it's, it's something that's like a little, it's like gold. But yeah, things definitely are changing and, and it's, it's, it's interesting to kind of take a step back and look and see how to adapt. And, and I think technology is playing a big part in that as well. Yeah. I wanted to touch a little bit on the evolution of video production companies because it seems that several of the top uh video production companies are starting to offer marketing services i noticed you're one that is doing that right so what kind of prompted you to start that

mostly just because people are asking for it like people people i think at least kind of in the past people have just production companies have just provided the product and then handed it off. And then the company decides what to do with things in their internal marketing department, or if they don't have an internal marketing department, they hand it to an agency or somebody else and kind of says, Hey, go, go wild. But I think a lot of people are looking for a more integrated approach,

like one-stop shop kind of thing where they don't have to pass it off and they're able to deal with one team who kind of follows that whole journey from start to finish. Because handing it off, you have to re-explain a lot of things and give a lot of background

and kind of go through that reiteration process several different times every time it's handed off. So I think, yeah, just something integrated. You mentioned how you kind of give a lot of people who have, you give the roles of certain specialties within the production process to different people, right? Because you know that they're really good at that process. Because you know that they're really good at that process. Since you're doing marketing, are you handling a lot of that aspect yourself right now? Or is there someone within the company that's kind of helping you kind of give the overarching strategy like for how you can promote the content for your clients? It depends on the project.

It depends on who it's for, how it's going to be used, how complex it is, how simple it is. It could be a thing where you just need people's opinions or input, or it could be something super, super technical where only a few people can give input on it, right? Because they have expertise in that area. So it really depends. It could be just me. It could be more people. It could be even external people. It depends on what the project calls for, for sure. So have you outsourced marketing work to marketing agencies or ad agencies? Not outsourced it. Definitely referred people to other people, but haven't outsourced it in the sense where we get a kickback if we send some work somewhere.

We just have kind of recommendations for people that we know or people that we've networked with over the years and just kind of go, hey, we know these people and kind of let that go from there. Because if we outsource that, we're also responsible for the results of that. And unless we know them really, really, really well, and we're happy to be the responsible for the results, I'd rather just refer them to that person. So you're basically trying to offload also at the same time, not only the liability, the liability. Yeah, you're trying to offload the liability if it doesn't perform well to the people that you recommend, right? Depending on what they do. Yeah. So it, it, it would depend on, it would depend on the project, but sometimes if people have unrealistic expectations or if there's just some sort of, some sort of variable where

there's a disconnect or the potential for it to be misused or not, not misused, but yeah, just a different expectation. I'd much rather refer it to somebody and say hey what can you do with it or because they can also provide their own internal feedback to those people to to to piggyback on what we're saying right um so yeah i i i prefer outsourcing at this point in time unless we get like a really good partner who we're really aligned with and we can go um uh hey let's let's bring them on closer in the chain. But for now, we just kind of refer. So basically, you just, you kind of like recommend them to the marketing agency or the people

that handle that aspect. You basically recommend it to them and they just kind of communicate with them directly and they just handle it. Or do you kind of, both of you sit down together in a room with the client and figure out what those needs are? Is it a mix of that? Or is it more so the other where you just kind of let them handle it and they get the client? Just let them Yeah, let them handle it. That's that's the point that we're that we're at, it could could change in the future. But we're just not, I don't think we're experienced enough or versed enough in the space to sit

down and like have those conversations with people. It would only come with over time with, with small, small bits of experience and small exposure. That's kind of like built on. It could be the guy upstairs coming in, you know, and,

and revolutionizing Viva, right? Well, he gets it, he gets it right. And he's, he's made the whole process very low, low entry. So, you know, it'll be interesting. Yeah, we had a conversation with a with an ad agency on our last episode.

And that's something they brought up because we told them how we want to start offering marketing services to our clients. Right. But we don't know how to go about it exactly. How to integrate it. Yeah, we were thinking of maybe partnering up with a small marketing agency, but we're so unsure of it because again, we're not familiar with the marketing space too much. And one thing they- What to promise.

Right, so one thing they proposed was that we could just outsource it to them. And then over there, there's two options. We can either have them be very integrated into the process so they come to the meetings and everything or um we act as the middle middleman for the whole thing right and that's something we're trying to figure out because that was a really interesting way of looking at it but then hearing you talk about it right now how again like sure there's a bigger reward but then there's also bigger risk

bigger risk because then you're on the hook if it doesn't perform well right so that might cost you more in the long run so I guess right now we're just trying to figure out like what the balance would be because there is like some sort of delicate balance because again like you want to also be very integrated with the process not just alongside the marketing agency but also so the, not just alongside the marketing agency, but also so the client sees you alongside the marketing agency, right? Because one of our new things

is we want to pitch ourselves more so as video consultants and creators. So that would go hand in hand with working with the marketing team on developing the whole campaign, at least on the video content side of things, right? I think it's all a matter of trial and error like you know like we can sit down and talk about like what can't what is possible what is impossible but i think at the end of the day it just is a

matter of what project comes along that allows us to just try this opportunity out it doesn't have to be an opportunity where we're all going to make a hell of a lot of money you know it just goes back to the old days when we first started out. We were charging, what, $50 a project, $100 a project to just kind of figure out the process and learn, right? And I think it's almost as if we got to go back to those kind of roots in terms of figuring out how it would work. We just have to do trial and error. It's just interesting, though, because, again, just on the video side of things, we're working. just on the video side of things we're working it's gonna cost like a break even of let's say it's gonna cost as an average let's say like 5k for a simple

video right but then when you add like marketing for the video that could almost another 5k that might either be just just as much as how much the video cost if not double or triple that amount right so suddenly you're going to the client and saying hey not only is this gonna cost you like 50% more might cost up to 150% more than what you originally planned out for this. So I'm just wondering how that conversation might end up going. That's a good question. And that's honestly, that's why, that's probably why we're, we're not into it as much as could be or should be is it just doesn't, like you said, it's, it's trial and error and it's kind of getting a sense for what feels right. And right now it doesn't feel right. And so that's probably why we're not we're not in it. It just doesn't feel it would feel like we're forcing it.

We're trying to make it fit when we're not at the point where it's like, okay, we need to make this happen. We kind of just want to make it happen. It needs to be that need stage. So how often have you been able to try it? Because okay, you, you're obviously offering it, but not to everyone. And it seems that the people that you're offering it to wanted it, but have you been offering it to clients that didn't think about it? I wouldn't say that we that we off we necessarily offered it, it was just a perfect storm where just like stars aligned. And,, and yeah, I wouldn't say it's something where we're going out of our way. It just happened to be like a tiny little perfect

stars aligned case study. It went really well. I'm like, okay, cool. Learned a lot from that back to what we know. Okay. Okay. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You got to always trust your gut. You know, if you feel like this is definitely an opportunity that, you know, you can handle it, you know, you can manage it, you know, the people that you can talk to to get it done, go for it. But if something in your gut is telling you that you're not sure, like always trust that gut feeling. That's how we do it. You know, we always make sure we know what we can handle. It's like hiring a new employee because you know you need to fill that role or moving to an office because you know you need it. It's like hiring, hiring a new employee because you know, you need to fill that role or moving to an office because you know, you need it. There's, you know, that feeling like

that, that, that kind of gut, like I need to make that happen kind of thing. And it just hasn't come up with, with that side of things. I want to touch on another topic as well. Sales. How heavily do you do sales or has most of your work been referral based? So funny story. I've never done a cold approach in my life. I don't even, I wouldn't even know the first thing about cold approaching. Okay. All referral based. It's all been referral. It's all been one person passed on to another person. It's been learning. It's been learning like marketing. I mean, I don't even carry business cards. I've never carried business cards in my life. I don't like carrying business cards. I will, I will, I'm much more like if I network with somebody, I'm like, here, let me get your email and send

you an intro email rather than giving somebody a business card. Cause I throw away business cards when people give them to me. And I'm sure people do the same when I give them to them. So I'd much rather start a conversation going then and then and there. But I've also taught myself how to like, how to, how to advertise and like build little ads and things. I'm a huge, massive, massive, massive tech, tech nerd. And like building a website that, that, that will rank and like building yeah, small little advertising things, but I've never had, I'm super lucky. I've never had to do cold outreach ever. Do you get a lot of outreach from potential leads based on like your SEO then? Cause it sounds like you've really cracked, not cracked the code, but you've really optimized, for example, your website and your online presence to the point where there's probably a lot of leads

coming from there, right? Like, I mean, like, is that where a lot come from? It's, it's where a good chunk comes from. I think you get, um, it's, it's fantastic for filling gaps of things. Um, but the vast majority of things is like, uh, like word of mouth and referrals and like lifetime, lifetime or long-term customers, right? Cause you know, you know, as well as I do, that there are some clients who come, maybe come every year for one big job or one small job. And then there's other clients where they constantly have a bunch of different video projects. And it's when you get those big ones who constantly have a bunch of video projects, those are usually the ones that we get as referrals or have these existing relationships with but the s yeah the the website question it's great for filling stuff but that's it's it's I wouldn't rely on it fully but it's essential right because if you you brick and mortars are are becoming less

and less right and the website is your online store. That is your store. That is where people find out about you. That's where people, people discover you. Um, so it's essential to have it. I would say those two things are the, are the biggest. So I actually have a question regarding the SEO stuff. Once you get to the front page, did you just like, are you done or do you, what you doing do you how do you how do you keep staying on the front page you got so you have to do a lot of work so i'm 100 100 self-taught and all this stuff it took me two years to learn of straight work to learn how to uh build a build a website and like learn how to properly structure it and learn what metadata is and all of this stuff. So it took me two years of, of really, really grinding and learning how to, to do

everything. But no, it's, it's a website is like a plant. You have to constantly water it, constantly feed it constantly. Well, you don't burp plants. I'm thinking of babies now, but you, you constantly have to nurture this thing to keep it growing because the, if you think of your website like a plant and then the internet, like, like a pot, let's say like the plant pot in this weird universe, the pot is always growing, the internet is constantly getting bigger, there's constantly expansion of it, right. And you have to keep growing your plant to stay proportionate to the size of that pot. This is a really weird analogy. But if you don't do anything, then it will swallow you back up and you'll go back down. So it's a lot of work.

So you basically taught yourself also how to be almost a website designer and coder by by yourself right but he's an engineer so oh well yeah well yeah but i i don't know that side of things engine there are different engineers there there's chemical engineers there's structural engineers you know just because you're one doesn't mean you know the rest i I want to touch on one of the last things, which was retainers. So have you tried them? Have they worked? Why do you think they haven't worked?

Have we tried retainers? I don't think we've like, maybe we would have accidentally done it. I don't think we've like definitely locked in and be like, hey, sign with us. You're locked with us. To be honest, I feel like people are going away from that route with a lot of things. Like I see agencies going like people like choice, people like if something doesn't work out, they don't want to be locked in. If it doesn't work out. I like, it's kind of like a cell phone. Does anybody like cell phone contracts? You might think that you might discover that you don't like tell us and you want to switch over to bell, right? And

like, why would you want to keep somebody in a locked contract? If they don't like what you're doing, you don't like what they're doing. I don't know. So I don't think I've ever done a retainer thing. We just kind of have recurring people who, who come if they see like it's a good fit and might go if they don't feel like it's a good fit. Yeah. It's something that we've been, we've been thinking about it because again, we were trying to figure out a way to get consistent monthly income. Right. And we figured it's hard to do in our industry. It's a little hard to do. Cause again, like you might have certain clients that will be with, need two to three videos a year and that's it.

Right. But then we're trying to figure out a way where we could kind of work with them on creating consistent content. And then at the same time, we'll get consistent income from them for that content. So we figured, OK, I guess the retainer model might be the best. But everyone we've spoken to, like they've tried it and it hasn't worked. And we were wondering if maybe it was the industry that they were targeting maybe the clients they were doing it with maybe like maybe the details of the retainer just didn't work out but the way you just said it right now like it makes it it really makes so much sense right and again we also spoke with uh our last guest is an ad agency and they were telling us about how like back in the day they'd have like these ad agencies would have like 10 year retainers right and now it's gone down to like a year and these

are like huge like ad agencies so they're able to still do that but i can see why it doesn't work if you're a lot smaller than that i mean it's also a very old it's also a very old school kind of mentality with a lot of the ad agencies a lot of companies are moving away from the ad agencies because of the structure that they that they have you know where you know it's very slow and inefficient like they were we we found out that a lot of agencies would sometimes take eight to ten months just to get one project done that's why they also needed the retainer because their their their process was so slow that they needed that income to get that work done. And definitely, I think there's still a place for retainers in our industry, for sure. It's a matter of finding

how you can deliver the value for that retainer. You know, it's not like we want to get a client, have them sign up for a year and then do nothing. Strictly for the retainer. Like there needs to be a purpose to it, right? Because it's like, okay, it does look like you do need that type of consistent content. So like this would be the best way to go about it rather than for every individual project we'll go do it like that.

Because it'll cost more. It'll cost you more at the end of the day, right? And again, it's like, it doesn't make sense. Like we could, it'll just be easier this way. Right. So I guess if we look at it from that point of view. Yeah. I think it's providing people with the flexibility to choose what they want. Right. Cause not everybody will be at that retainer phase, but they might get there at some point. I mean, there's something that we all love and use. At least I think you guys use the Adobe Creative Cloud, right? And they offer their platform in two different flavors. You can do a monthly subscription.

It costs a little bit more per month, sure. Or you can do the yearly commitment, right? But they don't say, hey, you have to pick. Well, if you go with yearly, you commit yearly, of course. But they give you the option. It's not like they're just a yearly subscription model or just a monthly subscription model. There's an option and you can maybe start monthly and you can do three months in and go, Oh, this is a perfect fit for me. I love it. I gel with the creative suite. I'm going to switch over to yearly, right? People who want to go

yearly with you are going to go yearly with you, right? And they're going to stick with you. People who aren't, they're going to maybe do a couple months in. They understand that it's going to cost a little bit more, but they'll find out that it's not a good fit for them or it's not what they were looking for, not what they expected, not because of the problem of the company or could be more on their side, but it just gives them options and flexibility. Nobody likes being locked in right off the bat on your first toe dip in.

So I kind of look at it from the creative suite model and that's a really good analogy as well and i guess the other thing that you can also do is you don't need to lock them in it's like you you are basically locked in for the year or six months or however long but even with adobe you could pull out whenever you want like they'll actually try to give you a better deal for you to stay in if you say you want to leave. So you could apply, I guess, the same thing to the retainer models and say, even if after four months you don't want to do it, that's fine. We're not going to hold you to it. Hold you hostage.

Yeah, at that point, it'll burn the bridge between you and us. And maybe you'll likely bad mouth us to your other people. It's like, sure, okay, if you don't want to continue doing it, then at the end of the day, we want you to be happy, right? Yeah. And if you're not, then okay, let's go back to monthly subscription. And they know it's going to cost, like they know it's going to cost a little bit more.

But yeah, the whole thing about those monthly sub or the yearly subscription, at least I think in terms of like services, is you get to know them a little better and you find those efficiencies and you can execute on things a little quicker because you understand them and you understand their process. And that's where those cost savings come in, I think. And you can, you can develop that on a monthly basis. You can even have something that remains monthly and, and you're just able to over time provide those

efficiencies instead of an upfront one-year commitment. So I think one thing people, a lot of people also forget is that like a lot of people are very transaction focused in their business. You know, it's like, okay, you want this, it's going to cost you this much. Let's get it done, et cetera, et cetera. But I feel like a lot of people don't approach their business from the standpoint where, you know, like we also want to see our clients be successful because, you know, it's almost like as if you see, like you create a, like a feature film and you put it out there, you want to see the people who put the money in the, get a sequel or 10, right? Yeah. Well, there's that, but you want to see the success

there. You want to see your clients succeed because if they succeed, they're going to want to also continue to do more work with you. So because it's like if if your clients do better, you will do better. If your clients don't do well, they're obviously not going to come back. So you're going back down, you know. So it's a matter of us trying to figure out how we can communicate that we're trying to do things not in the best interest for ourselves, but in the best interest for them. And that's why we're going with this new consulting approach because, again, now we're no longer going, okay, you need to make a video and you need us. Okay, so what's the video about?

We're now thinking more strategically. We're going, okay, you need to make a video, that's fine, but what are your long-term plans for your business? Not for this video, but for your business as a whole. And from there, we can kind of get a map of what they want to do and we could kind of help them structure that path a bit better right from from the content side of things right so again if they're trying to increase sales and everything this might have been one video for a conference related to increasing sales but now it's like okay you have this bigger overarching goal. So let's try to figure out how to help you with that.

This will be like a little part of a big puzzle, right? Yeah. You're just able to integrate that much more tightly with their vision, I guess, when you can get in there, consult and understand and like pick things apart and really dissect it. Right. Whereas if you're just, if you're just a technical executor, right. You're just, you're just, if you're just a technical executor, right, you're just, you're just, they're saying, Hey, this is what we want to do. And you're doing it. You don't get that deep dive into things. Yeah. And I guess this goes back to the future of the video production industry as a whole. Like there's this hybridization that's occurring where in the past you would strictly, and this is maybe even before our time, right. In the past,

In the past, you would strictly, and this is maybe even before our time, right? Yeah. In the past, you would be hired out by an ad agency or even the client and you'd be told, okay, we just need to shoot this stuff and you're just handling the production side of things. But now we're also handling the pre-production to a greater degree, not just planning out how the production is going to go, but the overall project as a whole. The creative. Yeah. And again, like we're also starting to offer more of a consulting role like you're offering more of a marketing role as well we're starting to offer so many more things and it's interesting

to see because these are things that other companies like marketing agencies and ad agencies would focus on directly but now we're also merging those things with our businesses. So it's interesting to see where the industry is going to go as a whole. It's because the industry is evolving right now. And it's a natural evolution. Like people are resistant to change as much as, people can be resistant to change as much as they can. But, you know, if you don't evolve with the times,

you know, then you're going to be left. I wonder if it has to do with the fact that a lot of us that started as freelancers we started off freelancing and wearing many hats right that's true because again like the way we started off we were producing the project directing it shooting it being audio ops editing it um being managers for the project you know human resources you name it right so i wonder if because we've been having to wear so many different hats now that we are running our own businesses we're also like well i can also do a bit of marketing and consulting because i technically did that on my own and now i have a business and maybe i can focus on that yeah compared to before whereas in

the past it was like now you're strictly like a shooter. You show up with your like $50,000 Sony cam, break your back after 20 years. And that was it, right? It's yeah, that's definitely the way it's shifting. And do you know what, even, even more so like I even find with us, I would say our work is 90% direct the business 10 agency if that and i think it's more it's definitely more and more um i think what's causing that that the the marketing work to come more on the production side as well is that more and more companies are do you guys watch very gainer gary vaynerchuk oh yeah yeah so you know how he says every company needs to be a media company the more and more companies are having like a larger and more

fleshed out marketing teams in-house where they might be doing like small little uh video projects in-house and they they look to go external for something that's a little more extravagant and a little more wowed, but they don't need that agency middleman, right. To cut things out. They have an internal marketing team to determine what they want. They just want somebody else, i.e. the technical executors to refine that messaging or help them further develop it. And they can go direct to us for that. They don't have to go them agency us. Yeah. And it's again, social media has changed the game in a way, right? And the pandemic as well, because now everyone needs to communicate with their clients, customers online. And at the end of the day, it's not that difficult to do. You just have to be consistent with it. Obviously,

like if you're like a one man band, it's hard. You just have to be consistent with it. Obviously, if you're a one-man band, you do need to get someone that's dedicated to that position. But it's available now. Everyone can do it. Well, the thing that people don't realize is that because we've had to wear all these hats as freelancers, I think that's just kind of shifted our thinking. Like you do.

You have people that are designated to certain positions and roles because they are really good at what they do. But you're guiding them based on the knowledge and experience that you've had from wearing those hats. You know what they're capable of because you've done it yourself. It's harder for a director to promise something to a client when they don't know the editing process, if it's doable within a certain timeframe. If you know it's doable within a certain timeframe, you could be like, yep, we can get it done in a week.

You know, it's gonna cost a little bit more, but I know my editor can get it done because I can guide them through it too. So that's exactly it. Like that's one of the things I've always said is I will never ask somebody to do something that I don't understand or know how to do myself. Like I will never put that on somebody because I can't go to somebody and vouch for something that they're capable of if I don't

know how to do that. Right. So that's one of the things that, yeah, that that's valuable in being a freelancer who has done every single one of those tasks is you yeah you know the limits and you know um you know the process yeah yeah i think at the end maybe you just need to inform yourself a bit more on that as well because yeah you might get to the point where you can't learn everything yeah at the end of the day you can't learn it to the same degree you you might get an understanding of it um so maybe like for example live stream um if we if we were to get a live stream project i know a person that knows live stream really well and whatever he would tell me like i trust this guy enough to go like okay i know what he knows what he's talking about so i

guess in that in that way you you kind of do have to find reliable and trusted people well like you always have to ask questions like you have an idea like as freelancers we've had we've had uh we had ideas of how to do things right but you know obviously when you grow and the quality goes up you know that things are going to be difficult in this area so you have to ask like for example dario and i have never been animators you know that's not exactly an area we wanted to venture into because it's such a whole different ballgame that takes years to learn. And it's such a technically creative kind of mix of like a mindset that you have to have. So we've known that like if someone needs that type of work, there are people that we're going to reach out to.

They're going to let us know what the workflow is going to be like, how long it would take, like what the budget would be. And that's how we reach out to. They're gonna let us know what the workflow is gonna be like, how long it would take, what the budget would be, and that's how we would do it. We always have to ask questions. We don't have all the answers as the business owners. We gotta look to our team. Totally. Yeah, you gotta hire people that are, you can only get yourself to a certain point,

but to Dario's part, you can't learn everything. So you have to hire people. You get to a point where you have to hire somebody who's better at you than what you're capable of doing at that time, of course, right? But yeah, having that baseline, at least fundamental understanding is always valuable in helping steer things, I guess, yeah. Well, I think we covered a lot of ground today. This is, you're officially our longest podcast at this point. Oh, really? Oh, geez. No, no, this is great. You know, like we, we love, we love it when conversations can, we can kind of

get lost in it, you know, like every half hour, honestly, if we didn't have to hit, like stop the podcast to record again on our camera, we could have been going on for hours i think there's just like we all know so much in terms of like our experiences you know you've been around the block for so long and really built yourself and your business to a point where you know like there's stuff to be told you know people have stories to be told and and it's a different perspective too because again we roughly started around the same time very similar we've had different paths so it's just really interesting to hear how you went about things compared to how we did

absolutely different perspectives are everything okay cool yeah but before we wrap up is there anything else you want to plug there's the website for the company but vivamedia.ca but that's about it that's where I live all day, every day.

I might be getting into equipment rentals soon-ish. Okay. But other than that, very baby people in that realm of things. But yeah, hoping to do that in the next little bit. But other than that, just keeping on, keeping on in this pandemic-y world. And how can people find you for the equipment rental? So that is going to launch soon-ish,

but it will be vivamedia.rentals. Okay, cool. Perfect. Well, we look forward to seeing the rental business flourish in the future. And honestly, Matt, thank you so much for joining us on the show and sharing your experiences. No, thank you guys for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us on the show and sharing your experiences. No, thank you guys for having me.

Appreciate it. Yeah, thank you. Take care. Thank you for tuning into the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast. You can find us on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Let us know if there are any topics you would like for us to cover in future episodes. You can reach out to us at creativesgrabcoffee at gmail.com.