Creatives Grab Coffee - From Corporate to Feature Films | Creatives Grab Coffee 55

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

🎥 New Episode Alert! 🚀 Meet our First guest of the year, damian fitzsimmons of BRAVEMAN Media. Join us as we discuss topics like:🎬 Making the leap from corporate videos to feature films.🤝 The crucial role of networking & marketing.📈 Lessons on scaling a creative business.Tune in for this fascinating conversation! 🎧

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Daria Nuri and Kirill Lazarev from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto? Do you need crew or a strong production

partner to help you with your project? Laps Productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. Laps Productions is able to offer you production services,

white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at LAPSProductions.com to learn more. My name is Mehran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages, or lighting and group band packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out.

Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativescraftcoffee.com. Thank you. Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, Foley. We service equipment. We do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered. Come on down. Audioprocess.ca. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things

to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you. And we're all going to have a real good time. And now, let's begin the show. Hey, guys. Welcome back. Today, we have another exciting episode for you.

We have Damien Fitzsimmons from Brave Man Media. So, Damienien welcome to the show thank you thanks for having me guys appreciate it right so i guess we'll just start with the backstory we'll get that out of the way and then we can dive into some more exciting topics because i know everyone always gets annoyed by the backstories but hey we got we got to know who these people are right so the 411 yeah all right i'll try i will try and give you the cliff notes yeah so i'm damien fitzsimmons i'm the creative director and co-owner of braveman media and you might hear that i got an accent i'm originally from liverpool in the north of england

i moved um back here about 15 years ago i used to write for tv i wrote for the bbc and i was was it was cool but i got to a point in my career there where if i wanted to advance i i had to get it onto one of the soap operas and i don't watch soap operas i hate soap operas and i just was like you know i'd rather just come back to the States where I had some roots. So I came back to the States about 15 years ago. I had this super romantic idea. I was going to write, you know,

the next Schindler's List in my apartment and I had a day job in a cafe. Next thing you know, I'm detailing cars at the weekend because I've always broke and I'm like, yeah, I got to do something the weekend because I've always broke and I'm like yeah I got to do something else so I was a very competent writer and knew how to edit and I was a pretty good shooter and so I set up a little company in my bedroom called Brave Man Media. My business partner and head of production, Ian Lacroix, joined me about two years after I kicked it off.

And yeah, that's where we're at today. I'm no longer a starving artist, which is great. It's challenging because my love is still to write and direct. But I feel fortunate that I am in a industry that allows me to be creative every day. And so, yeah, that's where we're at. So I guess that's the backstory. Ian and I are both really keen on film and making films. So we started out of my bedroom.

And it's kind of funny. We would have these crazy, insane deadlines. And we would do double shifts. Ian's a bit of a night owl. So he had a key to my apartment. I would edit till midnight. And then he would let himself in and then edit till five o'clock in the morning. We'd get our edits out.

You know, people like, oh, my God, these guys turn around are insane. They're so good. And we originally, you know, again, this is 15 years ago. Someone would say, hey, we've got two thousand dollars. Can you do a video? We'd be so excited. Oh, my God, we've got two thousand dollars. hey we've got two thousand dollars can you do a video we'd be so excited oh my god we got two thousand dollars and we would like you know we would barely break even and making no profit we

we'd barely make break even but because we put everything into the video it looked like it was a five thousand dollar video so that's how we progressed you know um and for the first three or four years we just everything went back into the everything was into the production into the production so eventually uh we got a studio you know and uh we got some great corporate clients we had some really uh good commercial clients and we're you know regularly doing much larger budget projects. Then we had an opportunity in 2016. We shot our first feature film.

So a client of ours approached us wanting to do sort of a biopic. But it was fun. Him and a couple of buddies opened up a bar in Freeport Long Island in 72 and at the time a bar for young people was a was a new thing so he he wanted to tell that story and he had these great anecdotes and I'm like oh we need to let's package this into a real movie which is what we did we packaged it into a real movie, which is what we did. We packaged it into a real movie script. And again, leaning into my experience as a screenwriter. And yeah, it was a lot of fun. We had a half a million dollar budget.

So, you know, and we made the decision to shoot in South Florida, to set it in South Florida. And that was a budgetary consideration but it was a period piece it was set in 1972 and my best friend from high school is a very successful he's an emmy award winning cinematographer called colin wakinson and if you've seen the Handmaid's Tale, Colin shot the first two seasons of that. Oh, wow, wow. Yeah, he's about to go out to Thailand to shoot Alien. The new Alien movie? They're doing another Alien?

TV series. TV series with... Oh, wow. They're doing an Alien series. With a showrunner from Fargo. Noah. I forget his name. But the showrunner's...

Yeah. That's pretty cool. So, anyway colin's like my best friend we've known each other since we were 12 and we really became close friends around 16 17 and we would like we just dreamed of living in america and you know that's just you know we're these kids from liverpool so just just as an art you know so i said hey call on i'm shooting this movie you know i got a little budget and he's like send me this script and i sent him a script he's like dude i'll come and shoot it for you i'm like bro we couldn't afford to pay for your sandwiches and he's like nah come on i'll take i'll take a few weeks off work i'll tell my agents i want to do something different so and that was an experience of a

lifetime to shoot a feature film with your your high school best friend who's still your you know just um was fabulous the name of the feature called it's called across the rails and it's available on amazon and and itunes um i definitely check it out, check it out. So that was cool. Baptism by Fire. We shot in the middle of the summer in South Florida. It was brutal. And we needed these apartments.

We got a free apartment. We decked it out so it looked like it was from the 70s. But it had no AC. You've no idea. It was just like like maybe but anyway we got it done it was really cool we won a couple of awards and and actually colin that was before he did handmaid's tale so he actually got to play around with some stuff on our movie that eventually um I'm not taking any credit for Colin, but like the same lenses that we shot our movie on, they shot the first two seasons of Pan Made Sail

on these Canon K35, so it's old lenses. Oh, that's really cool. I had a question about the feature. So like you were focusing mostly like on commercials and like corporate prior to that. So what was the like transitioning to now doing a full feature what was that like what were some of like the difficulties you encountered or some of the challenges going

from you know just like because corporate projects are fairly short right in comparison yeah yeah i think um that's a really good question uh so up until that point, we'd just done corporate and commercials. But by that time, we'd worked with larger crews. So I think that's a big one. A lot of times, we still do shoots where it's like two or three of us. And that's great for a lot of corporate stuff. We did a TV commercial yesterday in the studio. There were only five of us.

But, you know, that kind of narrative, we had, I think, 35, 40 crew. And so there's a different level of logistics, you know. And we'd had some experience with that kind of logistics you know and we'd had some experience with that kind of logistics because we'd done a couple of bigger commercials as long as you got the right people then then you're pretty good sometimes it's difficult because if you haven't done it before you don't know who the right people are you know you have people saying they can do it but but we had it by by that time in 2016 we were like five uh five or six years into our you know entity as brave man so we had a really good infrastructure in south florida was just reaching out to everyone we knew and we we we had never we we had never done a real line item budget for something that big so that was a big help was to

get a line producer to help us out and at the time we thought that that was a massive expense but And at the time we thought that that was a massive expense, but I'm glad we did it that one time so we could see where everything went. And I was like, yeah, we'll shoot for five weeks and it'll be fine. And then you look at the line item bro, just like, no, you won't. I was going to say how you went about,

how did you go about funding the feature and then producing it all together? So the great thing was that the executive producer and the co-writer, it was his story. It's a guy called Mark Ford. He's now a good friend of mine. I just saw Mark last night. And he made a lot, a lot of money.

And this was actually his third feature film his wife told him he could make one more feature film um because the other i wish i had that kind of money yeah right yeah by his own admission the first two um i think the first one when he showed it to his kids his kids said never show this to anyone ever i i enjoyed the second one and and he's a great guy and but but he had the money he's like look i'm just gonna put the money up and if we make the money back great if we don't i'll live but my wife won't let me do it fourth one so uh what a fantastic hobby just have so much money in your pocket. You're like, I'm just going to make a feature just for myself. Yeah.

So, you know, and I really, like I say, Mark's a good friend of mine. We've become much closer friends over the years. He's a great guy. So that was awesome. And actually, funnily enough, the original budget was 350K. And when Mark came on to set on the first day, he's like, oh, shit. He's like, okay, this is how you... No, he was just like, he was blown away by the level of professionalism. You know, I think he was expecting like two film students and, you know, three rolls of duct tape, you know.

For 350,000. Yeah, well, you know, so anyway, so we ended up, he saw the potential, so we ended up putting another 150. So most of that went into post or a lot of that went into post. So we had a good run with that, and I'll be eternally grateful for Mark for giving us that opportunity. And what was great about that was then,

it took a long time to get everything. It took us like, so that was 2016. It took us like four years to edit it because we begged, borrowing, stealing. Our editor is now a good friend of mine. That was awesome. We got put in touch with a woman called Julie Monroe. She's Oliver Stone's editor.

So Julie Monroe was a friend of Colin's, just socially, not through the industry. And Colin said, hey, do you have any editors that you would recommend that want to put their teeth on a feature? And she's like, yeah, you should call this guy Rich Molina. So I called this guy Rich Molina. And I'm like, heyina i'm like hey i'm damy fitzsimmons we're doing this movie he's like yeah send me the rushes i sent him the rushes he's like yeah there's a movie here i hope you do that he's like but i'm in calgary right now and i'm like oh cool what are you doing he's like yeah i'm working on this movie called the revenant what i was like what so he rich molina was the first assistant editor on the revenant and um but this is how you do stuff like that you know so you you

people like rich want that top line credit you know so we had a lot of people that wanted to take that next level that were willing to do it for for less money and um what an experience man it was just fabulous and then it really helped us because after the movie came out we were approached by an agency that wanted to do a TV show set in St. Pete, Florida. And they wanted to do sort of eight, 12 to 15 minute short films, but put together it was a feature film. And, you know, there's some good production companies down here, but not a lot of them do long form. And we just, you know, we we did two two tv shows

and in 21 and 22 and called life's rewards and they're on amazon prime and um that was awesome so that you know from starting off in my bedroom, you're just, you know, doing backflips because someone wants to pay me $2,000. We've come a long way, you know. Oh, 100%. And like now kind of like diving into more of the long form narrative content. I can imagine what that must feel like. With that feature film, what was probably one or two big learning experiences that you took away from that that have helped you kind of progress forward with future projects after? Yeah, that's a great question.

So one thing I learned was, you know, when the crew was that big and you've got that many personalities and you want to be friendly and you want to be you know nice and but you don't have to be everyone's friend you know and um you know i i i kind of just that's my go-to is to just i want everyone to be happy you know but like i would bump heads with some of the departments because i had a very clear vision of what i wanted and they had a very clear vision of what they wanted but it's like it's my film not your film so it was a couple of times where i'm like just do it this way you know and and and and deal with that you know, and deal with that, you know, we're probably not going to get drinks ever. Which makes it, and that was a minor thing,

but I think, you know, I just heard someone talking about parenting and saying how you're not there to be your kid's friend. You're there to be their parent. And there are going to be things that you do as a parent that your kid isn't going to like it's just the way it is so I don't want to make that sound like it's a huge thing I mean I think it's really important when you're the director or at any stage really but when you're working with a team you have to be nice you have to be um understanding you have to listen you have to be patient so yeah that was a learning curve for me

was that and that did that issue happen with like some of the like higher up personnel in the production so like no no no it was just there was a i don't want to i'm not going to throw anyone under the bus but just yeah there was a couple of them so not with colin not with mark but like like some of the departments that are idea of what it should look like i'm like that's not what i wanted to look like and then i you know so but it was fine so i think um again i don't want to be negative i think some of the but you got some of the other lessons you're not being negative about it you're you're basically saying that like uh you have a very clear vision about a certain project and you want to make sure you achieve it and sometimes you just have to like there's no point in like

discussing ideas if it's not in line with kind of what you're doing. You're not saying that you're being rude. You're just trying to get the project moving along. I think, actually, so maybe a better way of saying that is, and what I learned from that, and what I'm still, I think the biggest lesson I learned every time I do something is trust your gut, trust your instinct, you know. Go with your instincts. It's because at the end of the day, you know, it's going to work most of the time.

You know, you trust your instincts, you know, something's a little off. There's a million things going on. If you just trust your instinct uh then i i think you get a better product so i i've learned that i've learned to listen so so again so that you know bumping heads with like the other creatives because they have a vision and i have a vision well i have to trust my instinct you know so trust my instinct and then learning to breathe, man,

learning to just, like, you know, it gets really, it gets completely frantic. So now there's 35, 40 people. You've got, you know, heads from each department and they all want your attention and they all want to know what color t-shirt, is that what color socks, you know, how many, you know, how many extras,

blah, blah, blah, go, go, go, go, go. And certainly when I did the first one it would have occasionally just get really overwhelmed and i would i'd like lose the ability to speak just be like be trying to say too many things at the same time you just gotta learn to like okay slow down so what did you learn on like the pre-production side of things specifically for the project? Because a lot of that sounds like part of it is from pre-production, but also things that might happen on set.

And, like, with so many teams, so many decisions that you have to make, how did you learn to streamline or make the pre-production process easier for you moving forward with longer form content well it's it's funny you should ask that because again we we had a line producer just just do as a quick line item budget so we could figure this out and he said based on you know based on your budget you can do i think it was like we had seven weeks of pre-pro we were going to film for 20 i think we had 18 days actual filming and then two days with skeleton crews

for 20 days so based on that we knew we could stretch it to about seven weeks of pre-pro but ian and i also knew that that wasn't enough so we did an extra three weeks where we didn't get paid at the very, very beginning. So, you know, which you can't keep doing, but it was our first feature film. I'm glad we did that. But I think, and I'm sure you guys appreciate this, even on a corporate video, you know,

most of it's about planning. Most of it's logistics. Yeah, most of it's about planning. Most of it's logistics. Yeah. Most of it's logistics. If you've figured out your logistics beforehand, it allows you to be, and figured out your creative beforehand, then when you get on set, it actually allows you to be more creative, you know. actually allows you to be more creative you know and especially when when you're doing stuff when the budget's tight if if you know what you're going to do going into it it's just so much easier when there's a change for whatever reason well you know how to adapt at that point it's much easier to adapt when you've when you've planned it so um you know sort of to paraphrase uh well is it willie wonka said genius is nine oh was it willie wonka or is it fucking someone 99 inspiration such a random

person to quote willie i know i love it that's a first on this podcast so willie wonka said so which is roald dahl you know genius is 99 percent in perspiration one percent inspiration but i think it might have actually been and gene wilder says that is willie wonka and charlie and chocolate factory i think it might be thomas edison that said it first I think it's Thomas Addison yeah yeah 99 yeah 99% perspiration 1% inspiration so filmmaking is sort of 99% um logistics and 1% you know creativity well one of our mantras is that the shoot the production and the shooting should be the easiest part of the entire process because of all the prep work that we have done going into that project because like we were discussing if something unexpected does

happen on the day of which always which happens no matter what whether it's something small or something big because you've done the necessary creative and prep work you know how to adapt you know like we can all adapt to any situation but knowing how to adapt for that specific project is what will make you stand out as a business and stand out with your clients going forward yeah um so yeah i you know just plan plan, plan. And be aware of your environment. I'm in South Florida in the summer times. In the summer time in particular, it's sunny and bright and beautiful in the morning. It rains in the afternoon and then it clears up around dusk.

So we're still to this day we we we in the summer we plan our shoots around knowing that it's going to rain in the afternoon so and plus the light's better in the morning anyway so we will shoot all the exteriors in the morning plan to shoot interiors when it's raining in the afternoon there's one scene in the movie um where i was like i wanted i wanted a scene where the guys were in the rain but you know we didn't have money for a rain machine but i knew it was going to rain one afternoon so we we sort of had this one plan and that we were all on standby and as soon as it rained we'd stop whatever we were doing and we'd shoot this other scene and and we did that we ended up getting that that's nice you know the guys um towards the end oh no don't spoil he's about to spoil the whole movie but but you know what was what was super cool

about that was then when we did the two tv shows, when stuff came up, I took hold of that experience. And we had one issue in the second series of the TV show, Life's Rewards. We're about to shoot a motorcycle scene. And we had, you know, we booked the talent and we had the doubles to ride the motorbikes and the doubles turned up because the actors don't don't ride motorbikes you know so the doubles turned up and there had been a miscommunication and both of the doubles were like oh i thought i was riding on the back of the motorbike i don't know how to ride a motorbike so so how did you adapt that

well well i i don't know what i would have done in the feature film um exactly but i just knew that i was just like i said everyone stop let me Let me grab a coffee. Let me sit down. Just let me think about it. So it's like, just give me 10 minutes. So I just sat down and then just started playing all the scenarios around in my head. So the guy that's supposed to be riding it is an African-American, really talented actor called Jared Wofford. So Jared doesn't ride a motorbike you know and then uh the woman that was going to be no he was riding pillion that that was kind of

the joke that his friend is this sort of 70 year old woman who's kind of a rebel she's supposed to be riding the motorbike and jared's supposed to be on the bike and you know we only it it was we figured it out so the guy that delivered the motorbike um his name is aaron and he's like this he looks nothing like the the old woman but we're like you know and he's got a big beard put a wig on him just a big buff old lady oh my god bro he's got a beard too how did you get rid of the beard yes we shave it shoot from the back so well fortunately so uh the the old lady was wearing a full face visor um and but but jared was wearing like him it was sort of a i keep tipping my hat to easy rider and that's that stars and stripes helmet but so it's an open

face and jared's black you know what i mean so it's like whoever sits on the back like is and and it turned out that one of our other extras um was like um had a motorbike license was comfortable to be on the back of the bike and and we made sure that you know insurance everything else is covered before you throw anyone on a motorbike yeah aaron who delivered the motorbike to us was obviously you know so we had aaron and what we did is how did we it was just it was just crazy so we borrowed someone else's leather jacket to throw on aaron so it looked like the leather jacket from the old lady he's now got a full visor we just shot everything wide or from behind and then low angle and then low angle and then we used an african-american double so that we could you

know from from the wide he's got an open face visor. So you, so you see that the guy is, is African American, you know, and then, but like, just like figuring out like shoes and it was, it was, there were, there was probably about 10 variables and I just knew if I sat down and had quiet for 10 minutes, I would figure it out. And I figured it out. I hope you put that in the commentary. In the bonus DVD disc. So when we do the larger projects, when you're, you know, you're going to, you guys know,

we don't think anything of shooting 14 hours a day, know or at least working 14 hours a day we really we we have really tried not to shoot longer than 12 hours i just don't think it it works you know but we're all used to very long days but when you do long phone it's it's you know it's a cumulative you're doing that for weeks and weeks and weeks on end so i always have somewhere written on a post-it note on my laptop or on the wall someone says remember to breathe you know just remember to just every once in a while we got this i can't imagine that that's wild like just doing, I mean, like Dario and I have had numerous shoot days in a row, but usually there have been separate projects, you know, maybe one day. Not five weeks in a row.

No, I think that was the longest. I think the longest we did was maybe like nine days in a row, ten days in a row. Yeah, because it was like, it was corporate based. Oh, wait, no, oh wait no no no well in a row but we had we strategically chose the weekends off so we can have a break but doing like we did monday to friday monday to friday for two and a half weeks so it was like about 10 11 it was actually 13 shoot days, practically one after the other. Otherwise, if we didn't have those weekends, I think we would have lost our minds. Yeah, I know.

I know. I totally feel that. And, you know, yeah, we always at least had, I don't know when we did the TV show, actually, I think we worked longer hours on the TV show than the, than the movie. I know it was for longer,

but, uh, you know, you make sure have at least one day off every seven days. We were doing like one and a half days off every you know so we'd shoot for five days and generally we'd spend saturday we do a half day pre-pro for the next week you know we'd already done most of our pre-pro right and then on sunday we would have a we'd have a production meeting at like 6 o'clock.

So the whole of Sunday, most of Saturday afternoon, Sunday, try and take off, recharge. How did you handle the fact that you were going to be away for five weeks? And how did you handle the fact that you had, I'm assuming you had other corporate clients as well, right? So how were you juggling both the movie and your regular corporate load it's like see you guys you know it's a really good question for any business especially for what we did you know um if you have the opportunity to do something creative

maybe the budget isn't quite as big but it's it it feeds your passion you know you might want to take that but when that's over you better have stuff in the pipeline or so um ian my my head of production on on the movie he lived off Red Bull. How many a day? Dude, I would turn up at 7 a.m., 6.30 a.m. on set, and Ian's already on his second monster. How much of the project's budget went to his red bull addiction

a lot five grand so we we're always we're always looking at how we manage that and actually this is a really this is a this is a good cautionary tale for you guys. So the movie, we kind of, we managed to just kind of navigate that. We had a couple of big corporate clients. We were still doing corporate work the whole time through the movie. And Ian, God love him, was, you know, finishing, you know, finishing up and then doing two hours working with our offshore teams

to make sure that we had stuff going on. When we did the two TV shows, we didn't do as good a job, and so it's a cautionary tale here. We finished the last TV show in... Everything sent off, I think that would be June 2022. And it was awesome. We've done...

So COVID was 2020. We did just all corporate. We do 2D animations. So we had an amazing year in 2020 because we had a lot of clients that the only thing that they could do was animation. So we just like rolling it out. So we had bizarrely had this amazing year in 2020.

The end of 2020, we got the TV show. We went straight into the TV show and creatively it was you know it's just just what what i got into the business for us is kind of do this stuff you know um then we finished that we had a bunch of corporate clients we we we did that for a couple of weeks and then a couple of months then we went straight into pre-production on the next tv show so you got all this money coming in you you're you're really busy you know you're being super creative and i made the mistake of thinking that there's this concept of the flywheel i don't know if you you guys are familiar with the concept of flywheel. Okay, well, a flywheel, you know what a flywheel is?

A flywheel is you spin a flywheel, and at a certain stage, it has so much momentum that it pretty much keeps going. Imagine this heavy wheel that's on an axle, and you try to spin it, and it's kind of slow because it's heavy but the faster it gets the easier it is to spin right yeah and so at some stage it just needs the lightest of touches and the flywheel spins so business is uh you can think of your business on one level as as this flywheel and the flywheel in in in this aspect is your sales your marketing your networking and keeping an eye on on you know your cash flow all of these things keep this this this

sort of allegorical flywheel running so but it's not a real flywheel, you know what I mean? So, in the second season of the TV show, we've got all this money coming in, we're working really hard. So, it feels like the flywheel is spinning, and actually it wasn't. The flywheel was slowing down. Oh, I see. And we finished up in summer 2022. And, you know, Ian and I finally had, you know, like, oh, okay, cool.

We took a little, you know, we took a couple of days off. And it's like, okay, cool. Let's see what's going on. Let's look at our pipeline. And there was nothing in the pipeline. Like, I mean, nothing. Like, we had nothing in the pipeline. And one of our big corporate clients

this is another thing that that happens often one of our biggest corporate clients like literally that was May and in June they laid off 2,000 people and they're a multinational company laid off 2,000 people and took all outside content creation reported inside. So they were 25% of our revenue. We lost them overnight. There's nothing in the pipeline. And even if there was anything in the pipeline, I don't know what it is for you guys, but if we've been talking to a client

that are interested in doing a corporate video, we might need to follow up with them. We consider that pipeline, you know. So they might be in the pipeline for two or three months before they want to propose law for us. You know, they're going to say, hey, we want a job, but we don't need it. So it could be two or three months before that job becomes a real job you know right so um so if your pipeline is is empty then you've basically got no work in our case you got no work for the next two or three months so that actually brings me that actually brings me to a question where because you were doing all these long form pieces of content you were basically unavailable for such a long period of time.

Did your pipeline diminish because maybe some of your current clients needed work during that time, but you had to turn them away? And because of that, they went somewhere else and maybe they just kind of went that way. Did you find that you lost some clients for that? kind of went that way did you find that you lost some clients for that so more so more so i think i had stopped networking right we had covid so i'm i'm i am just naturally sociable precarious love like meeting my, love catching up with them, grabbing a coffee, see what they're up to.

And I just used to do that organically. I used to do it because I like my clients that I work for and I want to see what's going on. But then, you know, COVID, that didn't happen. But then, you know, COVID, that didn't happen. I go into these TV shows and I just stopped doing it. But I had never thought that what I was doing was part of my business, you know. And it was in May 22 or June 2022, we sort of stepped back and said, okay, why is Pipeline empty? You know, what is it?

and said okay why why is pipeline empty you know what is it and and and it was pipeline was empty because i hadn't been doing my networking so and i hadn't been reaching out to past clients the past clients seeing that we're doing these tv shows don't know that we still do commercials and corporate yeah um we um had got to a point where i think um and we talked about it we we knew we were at the point where we needed um strategic sales and marketing you know we'd grown to a point where we've grown organically and at some stage you have to kind of pivot and and but we'd been so busy we just kind of like ignored sort of sales and marketing because you know we're on this tv show it's great with all this money coming in you know we had a couple of corporate clients and that just stuff just keeps coming in so you know um and yeah that's it that's

the stuff is super important and and we talk about it a lot and anyway we're doing great but it it took i would say the flywheel still isn't where it should be but it's taking a lot less effort to keep that flywheel going but but but i went from just like sort of organically networking to deliberately networking and and there's a process and you know i have a goal to reach out to X number of people every week, make sure that I am meeting in person at least two to three people a week, and also change my strategy. I no longer go and have a coffee with a client thinking I'm going to get a job. I'm more like, hey, is there anything I can do for you?

What's going on? How's it going? how's it going and i think it's it's it's a much healthier way to go about stuff so now you're organic when you network like that because you're not going in there searching for work from a me perspective you're there to kind of like you know like you're paying attention to your clients you're seeing how they're doing what you can potentially do to help them doesn't necessarily have to be like i always try to tell my clients as well like you know let me know if there's something i can do to help you um i'm actually curious as to how you how that networking has yielded because you're clearly putting a lot of time and effort to meet with people i'm assuming in person right so so i i but to go back a second it's it's it's organic and it's that's an organic way to generate sales

right that's organic but it's not organic in that it's not like oh hey maybe i'll grab a no i have a process okay you know i'm i have a you know set number of people i'm going to reach out to every week out of the set number of people that i reach out to in an email or a text i'm going to have a coffee or maybe dinner with with one or two people a week you know that's a process you know that's that's not organic. That's not like, that's in my calendar, you know? So in that respect, it's not organic. And now I forgot the second part of your question. What was I asking?

It was basically like, how is that yielded in terms of results like going forward? Because you're putting a lot of time and effort to do that, right? So versus inbound. Yeah, okay. So, I mean, and again, I think 2023, the end of 2022, 2023 was tough for a lot of us. Although, I mean, most of the work that we do is corporate or it's like lower end commercials

so the actors strike isn't physically affecting our shoots but it has such a knock on effect and the writers strike it had such a knock on effect so I think everyone

so okay so if um if the the people that would regularly do and larger commercials with sag actors or larger tv shows with with you know and wga writers are not doing that work anymore you know these are these are huge crews, you know, 50, 60 people, makeup artists and gaffers, electricians, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So these people, you know, were out of work for a whole year. So if you're a gaffer, you probably do a little shooting on the side. So maybe now you're shooting on the side so now suddenly there's way more uh people out there going after the same kind of work you know so and and i i think uh you know at the end of 2022 as well um and marketing budgets got much smaller with the threat of a recession

and all of this stuff sort of affects the bottom line so in the past when we first started we were just we were very happy go lucky we were still happy go lucky but like work would come to us you know

the other thing that happens and this happened um i started my career as a grip in new york city like in the 90s when we were still shooting film so when i was a freelance grip you know and you would get a call on a tuesday night for a music video on a wed morning. I'm in, bro. See you Wednesday morning. Because you took that job on Wednesday morning, the DP's like, hey, I got a job on Friday. You free?

Yeah, I'm free. So a lot of times the job you're on can lead to the next job. So when we were doing the long form, we're not having the same kind of opportunities. You know, like we just shot a commercial yesterday. Shot a commercial yesterday. The client brought a friend of theirs. And they're like, oh, you do video?

And we're like, yeah. And they're like, come on. I want you guys to come and meet. So we'll see you know that there's an opportunity those kind of opportunities um i think tend to happen more when when you're you're doing smaller jobs one after the one after the you know yeah because you wrap them up faster than doing these longer projects when you're working on one long project whether it's corporate or narrative you're dealing with the one the one client or the or the same set of people for a longer period of time if you dip your toes into five different projects you're and you're dipping your toes into five different networks five

different exactly potential leads who have five different networks of their own of people that could potentially need work and like word of mouth and reference um outreach is always going to be a big factor in our industry because like there is obviously inbound and um leads and there's also ways to kind of go and generate and meet with other people but that's the starting right? You want to build a relationship with someone. You want to be recommended because when you get recommended to someone, that is the biggest sign off as to why someone should hire you.

You know, there's already, it's like a vetting process. It's like when you're trying to find new crew, you go to the people that you know and say, hey, do you know another editor? Do you know another shooter? And most of our most trustworthy crew have come from recommendations from other people that we have worked with,

not from randoms. It's really hard to find random people out of nowhere that could get recommended. And it's usually... Recommendations are always like a little bit of a... It's like, okay, we're good. I can trust this person. They they've already exactly and and and it and it just doesn't work for crew it works for clients and new jobs as well you know if you do a great job again we've worked we did uh these

are some television spots we're doing for a company uh called Zendu. We did their first spots. We had a great time with them. They really liked what we did. You know, we busted our asses for them. So we just did their second spots. And again, now they brought a friend of theirs who has a completely different company. And, you know, you can't get a better recommendation than that, you know.

and you know you can't get a better recommendation than that you know um and so um that and that's why i i think that the networking is so important what are you doing on the oh sorry go ahead no no no good that's fine it's fine um i was just wondering because you mentioned the networking aspect and you previously also mentioned that you wanted to focus more on marketing. Are you doing anything on the marketing end? Yeah, we are. And I honestly was still trying to figure that out. But I'll run you through that.

You know, I was listening to one of you guys, one of your shows, and you were talking about how our industry is unique. Yeah? I don't think our industry is unique. I used to think our industry is unique. Yeah. I don't think our industry is unique. I used to think our industry was unique. So I'm going to, a little aside if you guys don't mind. Go ahead, go ahead.

All I say was just before the movie, no, it was after we did the movie, and we were doing really good. So we'd been in business for about eight years. This is all shit I learned afterwards. I didn't know this. Ian, my head of production, very good friend of mine, Ron does our finances, and he does the logistic you know i'm the creative one he and in this logistics but anyway so so ian adora has been being our

business guy but it's like i'm as my company too and i had an epiphany like seven years into running a business that i was a business owner and i'd never thought of myself as a business owner before and I've heard you guys talking about this stuff you know and and a friend of mine recommended um the entrepreneurial organization it's called EO and and they have an accelerator program for any small business that is doing a quarter of a million or more a year you can be part of their accelerator program and it's sort of a it's mostly a an educational resource and they help you to scale up so i joined it seven years ago and it's one of the best things i ever did and then i realized that and that was one of the first things he told me, he's like, businesses are all the same. Stop saying you're unique.

You're not unique, you know? You have a product or a service, yeah? You know, you need to sell the product or service, you need to manage your cash, and you need to manage your people, you know? So that was an eye-opener for me, and it's just like, so that was an eye-opener for me and it's just like um that was a real eye-opener for me and then it made me that these guys make you read business books i never read a business book in my life you know and um if you guys read uh michael

gerber's the e-myth yeah yeah yeah so that that the, the E-myth is, you know, you're a filmmaker, you want to be a filmmaker. So you start a business to be a filmmaker, but as soon as you start a business, you're no longer a filmmaker. You are a business owner who does films, you know? So, so, okay. So all that to say, so you're asking about sales and marketing, you know, and as I, as i joined this organization and and and watched other entrepreneurs see how they go about it i i more and more understood the importance of once you've started a business it's your product is already pretty good or you wouldn't have started the business in the first place you know so once so and i spent the first five years of our business just making the product better and better and better and better and better, you know? I didn't have to do that. It was already good, you know?

So, and again, we didn't have to do sales and marketing because everything came organically, but now as we want to scale, as we want to grow, we understand the importance of sales and marketing. So that's in all aspects so doing this with you guys is it is part of that it's part of our bigger and um it's part of the bigger bigger picture so the umbrella picture it's like get your name out there meet like minded individuals you know um i i love what you guys are doing that like now if someone calls you and they need a crew in boston

you've got the guys in boston you know what i mean so and in the same way that if i had something in toronto probably first guys i'm going to call are you guys do you know what i mean um yeah for sure and you know um and again but i'd also say you know if you've got something down here i don't need to be the guy that does it but like you now know me and if you need resources i will give you the resources you know and just say well reach out to these people you know yeah and we're inviting like all sorts of different types of video production companies that come on as well yeah like you focus a lot like on much bigger stuff right so for someone that's working on like a commercial for example or like higher level higher budget stuff like you would probably like the yeah you'd be like the perfect

guy for that yeah that's that's why we're trying to find like multiple different types variety yeah i like that there's variety yeah so anyway we you know uh strategy is big so we um as uh an outfit and my core team there are four of us is our core team um we expand and contract depending on what the job we have a couple of offshore animation teams we have a whole slew of people and that we work with on shoots and and we have about four or five part-time editors depending when you know what's going on the core team is four of us um and we have a we have a whole rhythm so we we we meet every day at 12 30 we went remote after the pandemic and it's still working for us so we're staying along we meet every day at 12 30 for a 15 minute huddle you know and we talk about what our north star is

every day we say our north star is so and give us an example of that like what do you mean well we have one north star so that's our uh it's sometimes they call it a b-hag you big hairy audacious goal okay yeah it's like yeah fucking shoot for the moon bro you know what i mean so our so our north star every day we start our huddle with our North Star is to win a fucking Palme d'Or, right? Nice. We drop the F-bombs. So we want to be critically and commercially successful filmmakers. So that's our North Star.

We start there, and then there's four of us, and it takes 10, 15 minutes. We just catch up, make sure we're okay, and then we all go do our different ways. Friday mornings at 11, we meet for an hour and a half it's called an l10 it's a level 10 meeting so it's called l10 because at the end of the meeting you rate it from zero to ten you know okay and once once once you get dialed in you should be scoring eight should be scoring at least an eight don't always score it and and there's a specific agenda so uh we get into that meeting we talk about good news you know personally and then we talk about good news in business and then if our clients have said anything nice about us or not nice about us you know we'll talk about that

then we'll look at our issue list you know what's going on so big issues at the moment is is you know how do we how do i keep my network going when i'm on a seven-day shoot you know how do we how do we do sales and marketing so we look at our issue list we'll pick two issues and we spend about an hour seeing if we can identify it and it's called ids identify discuss and solve you know so that's super helpful and then once a quarter we meet for a full day and we plan out the next 90 days so so we um so right now we've been planning out like how do we have a sales and marketing strategy so long way to answer your question so we understand that in a broader sense visibility is is very important so when we were when you guys reached out to us we were like we see this as an opportunity you know and i

listened to the podcast i like the podcast oh. I want to be on it anyway. I think it's cool. I like what you guys are doing, you know, and that's enough for me, you know, but it's also, this has now increased my visibility slightly, you know? So, so we look at networking events, you know, and, and again, it's a process. So I'm tasked and it's not a lot i'm tasked with hitting four networking events a month um a month not a quarter that's fucking easy and so um i'm going to a networking event on friday someone invited me it'll be cool but i can also

say yes that's one of my that's one of my networking events i'll have a good time again and then i'm no longer in there going i'll get a good fucking business cause fuck that just go and have a good time enjoy it say hi to some people doesn't matter you know so you know podcast networking events then we look at our newsletter. We do a newsletter at least once a quarter. We're looking at kicking off our blog posts again. All of this stuff is sort of organic sort of marketing. This is our brand. This is Brave Man.

And then we're now looking at different sales funnels. So we never did Google Ads, you know. And I have a good friend of mine who has a video production company in town. He shoots mostly photography. So a guy called Matt Stages from Fourth Avenue Photography. Great guy. And he's been he's been busting my balls for like six years like dude you need to do fucking google adwords you're ranking pretty well though i think i found you on the first page

yeah well and and but that's being because we have we do that but we we work at doing you know i mean like you don't need google ads once you're like on the first page that's like i don't i well i'll get back to you on that you know ask me about that in 12 months time sure yeah we will we will yeah yeah ask me about that in 12 months time so we've spent the last six months okay so um you know ground zero for us was was june 2022 we're like oh shit there's nothing in the pipeline we fucked up they're not doing another tv show what are we gonna do and um so we we've tried a bunch of stuff so So the first thing we tried, we reached out to an outfit that finds leads and works with you to build out an email cadence.

And we did that for six months and it was really expensive. And after six months, we still hadn't, we had interviews, but we hadn't considered, we hadn't, you know, converted a single opportunity. It's just like, well, we can't do that anymore, you know. And then, so the Google Ads is like a lot cheaper, you know, but we've spent six months playing around with Google Ads

and we don't spend a lot of money on that. I mean, it's a couple of hundred bucks a week. It's not a lot, but we're just playing with messaging and we've been doing it for six months and literally, I think for the first three months it's just like what words work what words don't work yeah the keywords i feel like i know now we think our messaging is pretty good and we're getting people clicking on our website and that we can attribute to google ads i think it's too early to to say if that's going to work or not and the big one is good leads have you gotten some good leads coming through as of yet or you're

still waiting to kind of see if it's if it's there we're still waiting i think we're still waiting and again the best at the best way i think is is networking do you ask your leads how they found you like the search terms yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah I mean it's all the process again back in the day we never we didn't think to ask those kind of questions now it's it's very important to us you know to try and collect as much but with without your head exploding thinking like a business owner now that's that's why and it's funny because you were mentioning how once you once you get become a filmmaker you start a business to be a filmmaker but then now you're a business owner that's what most most people in our industry want to create videos, create content,

but they start a business to do that and without them expecting it, they become business owners and then the whole dynamic shifts. The whole dynamic shifts and all of a sudden, again, the e-myth, if you haven't read it,

and you're starting a business is it's an easy read and especially if you're about to start a business you you should read that book you know um and and then what happens is you know you get busy and then you know you're doing the books your accounting you're doing the sales and you know it's just like but i want to be a filmmaker you know so i find it's like 70 80 of the work we do now is running the business and 20 is the actual creative and creation yeah work yeah same same here um you know ian and I are always trying to strike that balance and figure that part out a bit because both of us just love making films.

Whether it's, you know, I've got to say, I mean, we'll do corporate videos, you know, which like three or four of us, and we go do some interviews and shoot some B-roll. But, like, it's still fun you know we still dig it you know and i like obviously i i like when we get to do wacky commercials like we did these ones for the south florida fair and um we had like the fake superheroes and it was just so much fun and and um we did some for a hr company and and the the gag was that the hr company that they needed hr because they grew man-eating plants

and all their employees were getting eaten you know and they let us run with that you know and i was just like oh my god it was so much fun and like we like you know we had people in hazmat suits and we took a bunch of nerf guns and spray painted them gray and just like it was just like that shit was just that was cool you know um but we've but anyway june 22 flywheel stop we're like oh crap what are we gonna do and we're just like you know what let's let's go back to our roots let's go back to corporate and commercial and that's what we've done and it's paying off we've worked really hard to get the flywheel back on and our goal is still to to make you know uh commercially and critically successful movies uh leveraging

my background as a writer so sorry i kicked the table again i said i wasn't gonna do it all good so that's what we're that's um we have two scripts right now sort of floating around and we're kind of committed to the next long form narrative we do is probably going to be something that we wrote and and that we raised the money for so that we we have the creative control so do you have do you are you are you uh preparing like a strategy for yeah like avoiding the same type of situation you had where the flywheel would stop if you start doing a narrative project? Yeah, we're actually talking about that right now because we've been so busy. You know, my networking has almost completely fallen off.

But at least I'm aware of it. The big step is now I'm aware of it, whereas I wasn't before. So yeah, we're very much looking at if we were to do that. And if we were to do it, I'd say in 12 to 18 months, I'm really hoping we're shooting our second feature film. I think that's doable. It'd be a lower budget, I think, because we'll be raising the money. But we're just so much more ahead of

where we were I I can we can do it I know we can do it you know how you're raising the money like what sources are you using well so uh so the strategy so there are two strategies that have to go on one is how do we keep brave man going while Ian and I are completely occupied on something else? Yeah. So we have an amazing creative producer called Elpida. And, you know, Elpida joined us about three, four years ago, three years ago, I think, as a copywriter and is now our creative producer. So Elpida is part of our kill team has really helped us

you know to taking some of the pressure off of ian and myself um our creative lead is is actually wouldn't be me you know i'm a creative director creative lead is um a woman called veronica delgado and she's brilliant and and and so so our core team is starting to mature and and and is um sort of has a much higher skill set and so we're sort of building on that and looking at how do we expand that team? Where would our next hire be? That's hard to say, but there's definitely three or four people that we know we'd love to bring onto the team

to support us. We'll see. That would be ideal. There's two or three people that I would love to bring on today. If we had the money, I'd bring them on today. When we have the money, they'll get brought on. That takes the pressure off Ian and myself

to... It's working you know um I I on Tuesday um um I have an art show okay I started out as a mixed media artist and and and Brave Man has allowed me to to you know I I write I'd be lying if I said I wrote every day because I don't but I should write every day but I I write a feature film script every 1.2 years well thanks and then a lot of that's because I I have braveman and braveman allows me the flexibility and allows me the time to do that and the guys are generously allowing me to spend the next after after this, I'm editing all day today.

But tomorrow, I'm taking the day off because I've got to finish off my art project. And then Tuesday, I'm having a show. Because I want to have a show, you know, because I'm, you know, my mind's always. But it'll be a great networking opportunity because we're inviting all of our clients, you know. And again, I don't give a fuck because we're inviting all of our clients, you know, and again,

I, I don't give a fuck if we get work out of it, but it is a networking event, you know? And, and so, and, and,

and I get to have fun, you know, um, you know, I'm head. So that's cool, you know? And,

and, um, so we're looking to get back to where we were sort of um like just be the 2019 was we we had a great balance there i was pretty much my mornings were for me to work on my creative and that's what we're looking at seeing, can we get back to where we were then? Can Ian and I spend our first two, three hours of the workday looking at how we're going to raise money for our next project? So right now, we've got two scripts. I think we've decided which script it's going to be.

We've got two scripts. I think we've decided which script it's going to be. So the next, once this show finishes on Tuesday, I will go back in my spare time. I'll be doing a second draft, third draft. Ian and I are going to book some time off this quarter in the first 90 days to just probably do a day off site probably won't be off site but where we like switch our phones off and lock ourselves in a room for the day and just like what is our strategy you know so we will so we'll figure that out you know

figure out what our rough budget is and then like okay how do we go about raising that kind of money you know um and then there are other things that you can do and um so again i i i still have a network it's it's it's not as developed as as as this is my business but you know because i was a writer in the uk i still have contacts in the uk that you know, because I was a writer in the UK, I still have contacts in the UK, you know, when I used to write for the BBC. So there's a couple of scripts that are knocking around with old contacts there.

And then once the script that I'm on right now is in a good enough shape, we'll send it out to like screenwriting competitions and screenwriting festivals and see if you can get a little bit of traction there and then a little further down the line we'll start reaching out to our network here you know we have a few people that that um are producers and producers and we'll get some feedback and so yeah

nice it's a very interesting career you've had and like how how it's like balancing narrative and creative work with the corporate and the business side and knowing when to give the right amount of attention to one versus the other. And just sharing your,

your learning experience from that is definitely a different take that we've had on the show, which is great to have you on. I, I also want to, we also want to be respectful of your time. We know you said like an hour and a half and we're kind of like around that, that range. So I guess like one of the last questions that we typically ask is, how did you come up with the name Brave Man? Or why? That's a great question.

I'm cool for a little bit longer. I just, I got a three o'clock, so don't, if it goes a little longer, that's fine. Okay. If it goes a little longer, that's fine. Okay. I like to tell people that The Beatles is a terrible name for a band. It's awful.

The Beatles. It's terrible. Fucking awful. I'm from Liverpool, man. It's like a cheesy pun. It's terrible. I spelt The Beatles. the the b it's terrible it's spelled the beatles the beatle it's terrible and yet they were one of the greatest bands that ever lived the rolling stones that's a great name you know that's an amazing name so i don't actually think it matters yeah what your name is you know um could the Beatles are living proof of that but what happened

was um I had again I was realized that I didn't want to detail cars at the weekend and um I needed to apply the skills that I had so I started a company so I knew I was going to do I knew I was going to do corporate um I I had done some side work shooting weddings I mean a lot of us in this industry you know cut our teeth on weddings and I I must have shot 40 plus weddings and then i edited probably 30 weddings and you know 40 hours a week editing a wedding you know it's like it's funny i'll have friends now go hey get married you want to shoot i'm like fuck no it's like no i'm good i'm good no i'm good i'm good fam you're cool i'll occasionally i'll i'll say i'll shoot some photographs for you but not on the wedding day you know so but i looked at i looked at like you know i just i

knew i just needed to make money so i could support me as an artist i was thought about shooting weddings to begin with, but I looked at the most successful wedding photographer video guys down here. And it's like, there's only so many weddings you can shoot and that they're going to expect you to be the person that shoots it. So it's a finite resource I felt. And then plus I just couldn't stand shooting weddings, you know, it's just like still the hardest shooting weddings is harder than shooting is is you know i when i was in new york as a grip like i did like worked on a music video sometimes like 20 hours for the day and that was still easier than an eight hour wedding you know

what do they do in miami weddings like what's the difference there like you know i'd say what though they're a lot of fun a lot of fun that the um miami weddings would be a lot of fun everyone everyone is like an amazing dancer it's just like what it would be incredible and um everyone's gorgeous you know because it's miami um but i i don't we don't shoot weddings but anyway so i start this company and i'm like oh i call it blue hour films originally was still it's still our taxes go through blue hour films because i was like well that's generic you kept it never changed it i love it it's generic it's generic um and then before ian and me and this one other guy were working together and um guy called tyler ford and and tyler's like hey we're gonna do this i i i want to feel involved and then i'm like you you know, you pick blue-eye films.

I want a better name. And I'm like, yeah, whatever. So let's figure out a cool name. So we really liked, there's a production company in L.A. called Hungry Man. Okay. Hungry Man Films. Do you know Hungry Man? I don't, but I'll see.

Yeah, look them up. Do they do food? No, no, they do. i don't but i'll i'll see yeah look them up do they do food no no they don't do food no they do super they do super bowl commercials i think they did i want to say hungry man did the miller like commercials for the last super bowl but but like they're they're amazing they're next level you know so so we're like well that's cool something man you know what would be my and and we just like spent like two weeks just like you know just like throwing out ideas and we we thought something with man in it would be cool something man something man because we liked hungry man that was the only reason we were supposed to do that and then brave brave man well that sounds cool so we're like okay let's do brave man

and that was it you know just it sounded kind of cool um and then so it stuck tyler actually tyler um went and went off to to do other things and and ian joined me by then we were brave man and it was really just because it sounded like a cool name but it's funny um i don't know do you guys have um um what would you call it do you have core values no no we do what do you what do you mean we have we're on the website do yeah we have it on yeah we do he hasn't been to the About page for a while. Okay.

Yeah. So you were saying? So, you know, as a company, we have core values. And one of our core values is brave, that we take risks, you know, that we think outside of the box. And so we kind of sort of ended up, think like fitting into our name and as you can see here like our logo is pink because i didn't want it to it's not um it's brave man it felt masculine so all of our all of our logos are pink to sort of to to to appreciate you know half of our team uh uh our women you know it's just like so to feminize it a little bit you know why do you to appreciate half of our team are women.

It's just to feminize it a little bit. Why don't you change it to Brave Women? Yeah, it's just longer. It just doesn't fit on the team. He has to add three more letters. It's going to be going to his armpit at that point. Exactly, exactly. So that's where the name came from.

But I think you know nice you can have a name keep it short so it fits on it you know it fits on your on a shirt exactly fits on a shirt and and people can google you really quickly we're in the process of getting some merch for our business now which is long overdue i heard mark you guys just keep talking about mugs is that what you're gonna get get? Oh my God, the mugs. Yeah, we need to get mugs. I still have like a box. I have a box of mugs.

Yeah, we have a box of laps mugs, but we need to get Creatives Grab Coffee mugs, you know, so we actually, I mean, right now I have, right now I'm just using a different mug. Okay.

Yeah. We're getting caps. We're in the process of getting caps right now. Oh my God, they're crazy expensive i think it's gonna cost us like 650 uh per design so we gotta get two designs so we're gonna like 12 it's 500 per design is it yeah yeah it's really okay well it's 500 for 12 hats is a lot of money okay that's all i'm trying to say yeah it's a lot okay so my my um you know

thinking as a businessman, why are you doing two designs? Why don't you just do one design? Oh, we have, well, we have the podcast and the, yeah. Yeah, that's the only reason why. Otherwise, we were just going to standardize. Yeah, it wasn't because we love hats that we wanted to get. Well, technically, I do. I have probably the bigger hat collection.

I love hats, too, but, yeah, but not, I i wouldn't spend a thousand dollars on hats unless it was absolutely necessary yeah what we we have them this is actually uh this is a friend of mine and he has a i mean i was a cookie company in in new york city nanny's dough so this was this was his hat because nice before we came on i was saying the only hat i could find was my beta hat with the florida sweat stains i'm like no i'm gonna put on a nice hat you know we have we have cool we have cool uh baseball caps but they were really expensive um so yeah i have to you can't cheap out on it at the same time because when you cheap out then you're not gonna like it they're gonna like we they're gonna break apart over time like i remember early on we got laps t-shirts

years back and that thing faded away so quickly over over time that we were just like okay we're gonna avoid shirts for now but yeah like dario and i finally settled on a hat brand that we like and we're like okay perfect let's just let's just get our logo printed on it and then call it a day it's actually this one right here 47 that is our okay yeah yeah yeah you know they get those they're good hats yeah yeah for sure we're gonna get shirts too like we've learned that no well what we found out is is that they do uh direct to garment printing so you can actually find a company and give them your shirts, and they'll just print directly on the shirts.

And, Kirill, I was reading that it doesn't wash away as easily as it did with that first batch we did. But the cool thing is that at least we can provide the shirts, because I hate the ones that they usually offer. It's always, like, Gildan or something low quality and a classic gildan i don't like i don't like how it feels it's too rough you know yeah no we we um uh we did we did a big print run of t-shirts this is we did like the same logo but like different shirts and then we have a this is the pc one but then all our crew wanted one we have ones where it says we're fucking awesome nice and we had to put an asterisk over

at the u yeah but um and we we were like it's really funny actually we we meant to do just a small batch of those you know and then do general ones and the t-shirt company got the other wrong so like 75 of the percent of the t-shirts said we're fucking awesome but um all of our crew crews just want want that one and like a lot of our clients want that one too so and but occasionally like um i volunteer at a an after-school program and for underprivileged kids here in delray and occasionally like you know come with me and and when we do something like that i'm like wear the nice t-shirt for these 12 year old kids i'm gonna make sure we've got the pc t-shirts on you know yeah no that's great oh funny enough then you

then when you get into the class then you pull out of the guys this is the underground shirt that i'm gonna be wearing now mom i'm trying to be in i'm trying to be a good influence they don't want good influences these kids these days you know they want they want the edgy companies and business owners like yeah let's do that you know but yeah before we uh before we kind of sign off uh was there anything that you wanted to ask us even uh or touch base on it as a topic before we head off yeah i mean i and i thanks for giving me the platform and i appreciate i did most of the talking and i would um you know what's next for you guys well actually it's a better so question i ask a lot of people and it is um

where would you like to be in 10 years time from now yeah that's a tough one oh yeah dario's biggest is somewhere warm we get some pretty crazy shoot us down hey bro i wouldn't mind moving to the u.s to be honest with you i would love it's an idea we floated yeah yeah yeah yeah bring open up an office down maybe in florida yeah i wouldn't mind yeah yeah i mean we do see ourselves expanding the business and growing the core team because right now it's just been Dario and I as the core team for many, many years. And it can get exhausting doing wearing many different hats. You know, I mean, we have to order different hats for every job now at this point.

Right. So for the CGC platform, for the laps business. cgc platform for the laps business and um you know and like you said like you've brought on people that have been able to make your lives easier and help make the business run a lot smoother and sometimes bringing in other people can bring in ideas that you probably never would have been able to think of so that that is our that is uh what we do want to end up striving for. In the next five years, we'll probably be at that stage. Our main thing is we definitely want to remain skeletal so we can scale up and down easily.

Yeah, I appreciate that. I remember listening to you guys talking about another outfit where they expanded and then had to let everyone go right yeah yeah yeah we're trying to avoid situations like that especially because in our business uh like and i mean video production in general especially on the corporate end uh nothing is ever guaranteed for the year yeah of course that's like they're our biggest fear almost is like okay like we had a good year last year and you know we have a good couple months coming up but what about after that

nothing's ever like set in stone that's the thing i really don't like about it we're afraid of the flywheel stopping that's that's the thing you know you can't rely on a flywheel to build the to build a massive business you know and there's always like random circumstances that affect that too like last year was the economy just a little bit hard yeah like you know everyone was getting affected by that yeah um so yeah i guess it's that uh expansion into the u.s would definitely be one of our goals in the next five to ten years but again like we'd still want to be like a like a smaller company i don't i don't i i think we were even going to carol and i were going through the numbers and i was like you know what we could hit like some like we don't need to be like a 10 million dollar company and have all those headaches we could be like a tenth

of that and like we'd still be fine on the personal end we'd be pulling some pretty big salaries and like the stresses wouldn't be that high like it's so so interesting you should say that we um after we did the first feature film um you know we we took everything that we learned and um we we doubled revenue in in like a year and a half and so we doubled revenue because we doubled the amount of work we were doing but like Ian and I still like made the same salary it was just like yeah but now we're working longer hours yeah and and and you know the in in the organization Ian's still in. I stepped out. I've been in it for seven years.

So EO, which is a great organization. You know, they talk about this. Do you want to be, you know, you want to be a million-dollar company where you've got a 30%, you know, margin? Or do you want to be a $10 million company with a 3% margin, you know? Yeah. You're making the same money, you know. Do you know, do you guys know this one?

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash is king. Oh, I love that. That's great. I always just heard of the last bit, cash is king. I didn't know there were other two bits. Cash is king. Well, cash is king means... Revenue is what, sorry?

Revenue is vanity. It's vanity, okay. Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king well cash is king revenue okay so revenue is vanity it's just vanity revenue is vanity profit is sanity cash is king revenue is bullshit yeah it's like i do it i do it yes oh yeah but what's your profit margin what's your net that's your cause you know that's that's what they always do in the shark tank you know whenever people are saying like oh what were your sales last year it's like oh yeah we made like 20 million in sales like what was your profit like ten dollars it's like what yeah because it's like think in sales like what was your profit like ten dollars it's like what yeah because it's like think of it like would you rather have a business with like you pretty

much uh nailed it on the head damien is that if you get like 150 000 in revenue but 50 000 is is um is profit versus 550 000 in revenue but again still again, still 50,000 as profit. It's like, you're doing a hell of a lot more work and a lot more stress for the same money. So like when you're scaling, there has to be a relative like growth in that sense as well. Yeah, so I'll, if it's cool,

I'll just touch on a couple of those before we go. Yeah, go ahead. And profit is sanity. You know, profit is about your business. So we, when we bid on a job, we look at what, we have a profit margin. And if we can't make our profit margin, we don't take the job. Yeah. profit margin and if we can't make our profit margin we don't take the job yeah and um we are now probably just as concerned about what our profit margin is as we are about how much work we've got got coming in you know so we've we we really and again, we pride ourselves on giving our clients, like, just the best product they're ever going to get, you know.

But we're a business. We need to make money, too. So it becomes vitally important. Yeah. And then cash is king means that, like, you need, companies need cash flow. You know. You need operating cash on hand. Suddenly, you get a brilliant opportunity,

but maybe you need to buy a new piece of equipment or you need to hire an expert. And the expert's like, well, I don't need you guys, so you got to pay me up front. And if you don't have the cash on hand to do that yeah you know and then you're in trouble you know yeah you should never be uh struggling for cash to the point where you have to figure out a way to to to supplement that like i i've seen other people in our industry who sometimes their cash flow has gotten so low to the point where they've had to take out some loans, which I think is wild to try to maintain your cash flow.

It's like that should be purely for emergency, not for day to day. You're doing something wrong if you got to that point. That's what I think. Especially if you're like a smaller company too. Like I can understand with like bigger companies, you might need it. Maybe you have like a big staff and you can't just tell your staff,

I can't pay your salary this month. The whole thing's going to collapse, right? Yeah, like if you're a smaller business and you're at that stage, it's good to just revisit your process and see how you can improve it so that you don't have to do that. Because then, then yeah unfortunately you get on the hook then you're also losing money paying for interest that you didn't need to do exactly exactly we we yeah yeah i mean that's

the stuff we look at all the time and also for loans for small businesses banks are so stingy so if you're getting a big loan it's on your personal and the bank's not giving you yeah like for ours like oh my god even for our credit cards like our business credit cards they're so stingy with our credit limits it's shocking like on our personal it's like 10 times higher it's like what the hell's going on yeah yeah yeah no i was telling dario that i was thinking is because you know they look at businesses as you know they're not real people so they don't want to give too much freedom to them you know like because technically a business or a corporation is an individual what happens if that individual just tanks you know they disappear whereas an actual person they give more credit

because that person's real that'll chase them i don't know if that's the reason but well i i call bs on that because a person can always claim even like a real person uh can can claim bankruptcy and get out of it but i mean like look there'll be people selling credit cards giving random people at a gas station a five thousand dollar credit limit yeah we had to fight tooth and nail and they barely gave us somewhere close it's like what like but yet but yeah here's the funny thing like like our our economy is mostly like run by small businesses yet like like the banks hate them they're like so like rough on us yeah no it's true it's it's totally true but we we um but we we've you know touched wood i've never had to take a loan um well that's not exactly true i've i've loaned i've loaned the business

money when we've been in a pinch um but that's different that's different that's you that's you putting your own yeah like everyone has to do that like in the beginning that's what we had to do like yeah requiring resources like you're you're you're you're not necessarily just loaning out but like you're investing in your business so that it stays afloat that's what you have to do early on you can't start a business without your own capital it doesn't just magically appear but but the big one for us has definitely been like you know we have a process for everything you have strategy for everything you know that's why i asked you about where you want to be in 10 years i would i would

then then this is a i'm sharing not giving advice and i don't yeah and um my share is that um i have been more successful personally as a business when i have planned out where i want to be you know personally and as a business when i have planned out where i want to be you know so we have we have a one-year plan we have a three-year plan we have a five-year plan we have a 10-year plan and we spend time talking about it and it's like okay well this is where we want to be in 10 years where do we need to be in five years this is where we need to be in five years where do we need to be in three years you know we should do that cure we normally do it uh every january but we kind of did it this year well this year you were gone on vacation at the beginning when we usually do that so that's true so i would i would recommend uh what's his name

there's a guy who's written a book called vivid vision it's a small book he has a ted talk so if you look up ted talk vivid vision it's a 15 minute ted talk and he explains he does it cameron harold yeah cameron harold so i i'll highly recommend you you listen if you're gonna plan out your strategy go go go just listen to that it's 15 minutes at your time and it'll give you an idea of of one way it's not the only way of one way of how you write that out you know but like i mean my 10-year plan it's like i talk about where i am you know what am i you know everything how am i feeling where am i what am i doing what does my personal life look at, you know, everything, how am I feeling? Where am I? What am I doing? What does my personal life look like? Everything, you know.

And it's a goal, you know. But if you haven't set that goal, you know, that's why, like, okay, you guys want to expand into the U.S. Well, how are you going to do that, you know? What are the steps that you're putting in place to do that? I think probably maybe unconsciously or consciously, one of the steps you're doing is what you're doing in this in this podcast and and getting a feel for what that would look like if you were in the

u.s and then and interviewing you know companies that are here in the u.s you know so um but yeah like i you know i think you guys have got a really great head start you know right from the get-go you guys have treated this like a business it took me like seven years to feel oh no no it wasn't right from the get-go let me tell you that damien damien it was i wish we up until the pandemic and we talked about this in our early episodes of the podcast is about how it was like we were just two freelancers working together up until that point and when the pandemic hit, it all fell apart. So what we realized we had to do, and actually we learned it by starting this podcast,

was, damn, we've been doing everything wrong. Tear down the foundation. And we basically restarted the business in 2021. That's essentially it. So this is technically year four, technically. Okay, cool. That's awesome. We've learned.

No, no, we're not messiahs in in the business world far from it yeah but anyways um like well we'll let you go because we know you have a a meeting in a in a couple minutes damien but uh thanks for jumping on honestly this has been such a great chat and thank you for being our first guest of 2024 hey it's an absolute pleasure i love what you guys are doing and i i really respect and admire the energy that you're putting into this dario i really appreciate you for reaching out to me and putting up with me like counseling like a bunch of times i'm so sorry well now we know why yeah yeah yeah so uh but you guys rock keep it up and um and definitely uh i love now that there's a resource that i can reach out to if we've got stuff in in toronto or wherever in canada you know so and uh let's stay in touch

you know for sure man yeah even in other parts of the states if you need like we've had a few guests in seattle north carolina boston so um yeah yeah there's i was actually talking to my team about that i'm like hey we've got these guys a genius so like um so absolutely yeah it's good it's good to know before we end off guys if you want to find Damien he's at braveman.media so not bravemanmedia.com it's braveman.media and he's based in Florida

and you said in Delray correct? in Delray yeah South Florida and which parts do you like service? because I know on your website you actually had a couple I saw New cities as well. So we are based in South Florida. Yeah, we shoot all over the United States.

Right. Oh, I got it. Okay, so guys, if you need him for shoots outside of South Florida as well, he's good for it. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks, Damien. All right. Thank you.

You guys rock. Take it easy. Thanks for listening to this, Damien. All right. Thank you. You guys rock. Take it easy. Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Please make sure to follow and engage with us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your favorite podcast app. Creatives Grab Coffee is created by Laps Productions, a video production company based in Toronto, Canada. Creatives Grab Coffee is also sponsored by... company based in Toronto, Canada. Creators Grab Coffee is also sponsored by My name is Mehran, welcome to Canada Film Equipment.

We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages, or lighting and group band packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativesgrabcoffee.com. Thank you.

Hey what's up everybody I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, Foley. We service equipment. We do all your audio needs here in Toronto. We got you covered. Come on down. Audioprocess.ca. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you. And we're all going to have a real good time. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the next one.