Creatives Grab Coffee - How To Find Work In Your Local Community | Creatives Grab Coffee 38

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Today we welcome Braeden King from There Media Inc. They are a video production company based out of St. Johns Newfoundland that focuses on communicating brand messaging to your target audience through engaging content production.Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions.Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional, there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production.To learn more about the show, visit: https://lnkd.in/g4mK_zH6Subscribe and follow for future episodes!

and we're live we have braden king here from their media based out of st john's newfoundland yo thanks for having me bro thank you your first guest from uh the east coast let's go the entirety of the east coast yeah we finally made it there we've had west middle ontario and then congrats man i'm pumped that you guys found me there's there's very few of us out here so i've only been to st john's once and it was for a layover i wanted to go explore a little bit but i was just too tired from a 13 hour flight so didn't get the chance oh you didn't you didn't leave the airport no i had to leave the airport because it was a very small airport smallest so there wasn't really anywhere for me to stay

overnight there yeah yeah that's fair that's fair now Newfoundland's a cool place man um yeah if you ever get the chance you should definitely come here uh it's it's different it's very different like it's like small town vibes like trying to be a big town kind of thing like it's really really weird but I don't know it's a cool vibe we'll talk about it we'll talk about it in more detail why don't we just go into it like tell us a little bit about like what the the market is like for video production yeah yeah i feel like the market only just like came to existence honestly because i was thinking about that too because i was like how am i going to answer that question when they ask me? But the market here, it's different because for a long time in Newfoundland, people have kind of relied on like a handful, like

literally like five or six people who are like, you know, the goat of like video production. And they're always like an older people. They've been doing it for like 15, 20, 30 years. And these are the people who have like that trusted name and like the word when you think of the word like agency it really doesn't scream st john's doesn't scream newfoundland like it's very much like the person who's good at it here um that guy that guy straight up and dude like that's that's a battle man because like people they don't trust businesses like that here. Like there's a couple businesses that are like strictly marketing here, like not so much video production.

But like people don't really like have an interest in going there because everyone here is like hashtag support local. You know what I mean? Like that's like the biggest thing in Newfoundland. So like having that like kind of presence about yourself, where you're like the guy is really important when you're building a business here. So I don't know if it's like that in Toronto, I guess in a much smaller sense, I would say because then there are a lot of a lot of us do do get a ton of referral businesses. So I guess in a small circle, you might be that guy as a as a whole it's you don't

really rely on it because you do get a lot of like cold inbound leads that do come in uh depending on you know whatever your your sales channels might be like if it's social media or just straight up just google or bing or whatnot but it's that what you said is like it could be really good, but it could also be very bad because, again, you are relying on word of mouth way more heavily, I guess, than we would be. When you're starting out here, it is kind of like in your circles, you are kind of that guy when you're starting out. But one thing that kind of intrigues me is what you said about how in Newfoundland, everyone is very much focused on trying to support the local businesses and like the smaller teams. Does that mean that you guys basically have a cap on how far you can expand your business in terms of size? It's like, like at what threshold is it? You're too big to support under the local banner. You know what I mean? I don't think it has really anything to do with like the size of your business,

but it's like the way you, the way you act in your business. You know what I mean? Like if you're, if you're the type of business that's like that exists to help other local businesses, I'm talking like more so in like our realm of like, because we're, we're a service-based business obviously. Um, so like, you know, if we're, if you're reaching out to other local businesses and you're trying to help the community and everything that you do sort of comes back to being like, I'm trying to boost Newfoundland up. I'm trying to boost St. John's up. I'm not just trying to become like this like international agency. Then that's probably where you're going to see like more local support. And even if your team was to grow, as long as you're showing love back, I think that's like really important for people in Newfoundland.

But yeah, that's pretty much it. So essentially showing support within the community, being active and like, even though your team might be expanding, if you're helping other smaller businesses in some way, shape or form as well. Pretty much, man. Because dude, like everything is so scaled down here from Toronto. You know what I mean? Like there's 100,000 people in this city. So like everyone knows someone in some fashion. Right. Um, so if you're not really trying to contribute to this, like it's more of a community, it's more of a community than it is like a city, you know what I mean? Um, and that's just the vibes here. Like if you were to

live here for a couple of months, you'd, you'd really get a true understanding of what it's like, but like, yeah, we're really trying to, to lift each other up in Newfoundland a lot. And you can lean into it, man. Like I've leaned into that a lot and I've seen a lot of success from it. Newfoundland is definitely a very innovative place in the last couple of years. Like we have a pretty good university here. We're known for how cheap it is. And like we actually have some, I don't know, some good profs and stuff here, or a good curriculum.

But a lot of people come here in the tech industry now, and it's growing pretty rapidly, which is opening a lot of doors for production businesses like us to come in and help them out, which is supporting local. Yeah, tech clients are really good to have in your roster because obviously, yeah, the budgets you'll be dealing with are definitely juicier than a lot of local businesses. It's like, oh, we have $50, funding how do we what can you do for us you know

like oh a ton of stuff do some headshots you know i i thought it was funny where you said uh because of how small the community is in newfoundland like a hundred thousand people everybody knows somebody or pretty much everybody knows everybody does that it's almost as if like there's not the possibility for too many new clients or types of customers to come in unless it's like you said tech or foreign because in Toronto it feels like there could be an endless row of leads that could come in from anywhere right whereas in Newfoundland I'm guessing it's probably a lot more tight-knit so it's kind of like if a lead is coming in, you already know who this person is almost. Guaranteed, yeah. Or like, you either know who they are, or they're coming to you because someone

you know told you about them kind of thing, right? Yeah, nuts. It's a weird vibe, man, for sure. So St. John's, so Newfoundland is essentially the ultimate referral uh environment it is capital of the world it's the ultimate the ultimate word of mouth market for video production pretty much i'm like yeah if someone like if someone hits me up like a brand or something or a business locally like i'm almost not like oh like this is crazy this brand hit me up it's almost more like, oh, like about time. You know what I mean? Like, because like, it's only a matter of time before everyone just hits you up.

And then it's like, what now? You know what I mean? How's the freelancer market there? Pretty, pretty slow, man. Honestly, like I have, I have like a piece of paper in my living room with like, like all the freelancers that I like, I hire with their numbers and shit. And I only need that piece of paper. So how big is the piece of paper?

Is it like this or is it like this? Just like a, it's, it's like a little one, man. It doesn't even have lines. Just a little tiny one. That's a cue card. It's a cue card. It's a cue card. Wow.

And it's, yeah. But like the people that are here like though there's very few there are some really talented people here and the beauty of like you know this whole like tiny ecosystem that we have here is that they're they're always looking to do something and like they're not being snatched away by 150 different people at the same time um which makes it really convenient as well. And the fact that everyone knows each other helps. Here, if you make a post trying to look for, I don't know, like,

I mean, we know a lot of audio operators, but I'm going to use that as an example. Looking for an audio operator, post it in the producer Facebook group. There's like 50 replies within 30 minutes. It's like there's too many people almost. Five minutes even. Fair enough, man.

Yeah, and another thing too like we don't we we don't even have any form of like a film school here like we we have a like our university doesn't offer anything in the way of like film or video production or anything like that we have a college and they do like an audio producer kind of program everyone's kind of like self-taught is that how it is over there i am that's we are we are too that's that's how we did it we just self we just taught ourselves basically exactly yeah that's an interesting yeah that's that's pretty interesting man like i don't i wouldn't be able to really talk in depth too much about like the benefits of like going to film school and stuff like that too but like i honestly feel like it just has it comes down to like how much effort you want to put into

it right like and like i don't know you need to be you kind of need to just do things badly first and be like oh yeah nah that makes sense and then just try again like it's it's like it's like the only way to to grow honestly if you're doing what we're doing you don't really need film school you just pretty much need i would i would say you wouldn't even need business schools because we went to business school and it didn't really help out in any way it's just it's just but it is business skills it is just business skills that you need to have yeah that's true yeah the environments the environments essentially can teach you can give you the opportunity to try to learn those business skills you know how you navigated it but in our industry it's not one that you could really be taught by someone else.

It is the hustler industry. And if you're not hustling in some way, shape or form, you're not going to go far in the career. That's so true, man. There's a couple of people that I know, like just good buddy of mine, like good buddies of mine, like that I've literally, I've kind of like transformed their outlook on what they want to do. Like there's, that's a big thing in Newfoundland as well. And I'm always going to keep saying that because Newfoundland is its own kind of beast. Um, but that's a big thing here too, is that you rub off on people a lot. You know what I mean? And like, when I started doing this, like I have an engineering background. So like, oh yeah, like I graduated engineering back in 2020 and I just

didn't want to do it at all. You know what I mean? Like I, like when you're going through the engineering program here you have all these work terms and you work for for different corporate businesses and stuff man and like the reason I did engineering was because I wanted to be an inventor like I just wanted to make cool shit like I literally all I wanted to do and then as I went through engineering I realized I couldn't actually create anything like there was there was so many restrictions and rules and procedures and like fucking fbd diagrams like i was just like not not feeling it at all so then i you know i've always sort of had cameras on hand because i'm a big like moment capture kind of guy and i've always loved photography like even growing up man like i used to take headshots of my teddy bears and stuff like that like as a kid like like straight up dude that's

hilarious i could i could that's awesome send you some i could send you something i'm good i'm good oh damn i shouldn't have said that no but basically yeah it's like you were wanted to be an inventor but i guess you are kind of inventing or being creative enough to invent stuff visually at least. And I sort of just fell in love with this whole business and everything. And eventually you realize that, okay, you got the talent to be able to produce these kind of creative things. And like you said, then it turns into a hustle game.

It turns into more of a business game. And that's where stuff that you learned in business school was probably super valuable. But I sort of had to learn that through network. No, not at all. I can't think of a single thing we used. No, it's what we learned was basically how we navigated in there. Because we've touched upon this in previous episodes. But essentially, we built our portfolio within the business school, like within the first year where we just went out there and just shot as many videos as we could. So we learned a lot of things right in the beginning, not only tech skills, but also how to talk to clients, how to talk to people and understand their needs and their wants. And the more you could do as soon as you can do, the better you have to kind of get started in the

in your career, essentially for this school, pretty much,'t know i don't i don't think it helps you for much but that's just me maybe it's like a one percent of the whole career like the rest of it is all hard work networking hustle like sure maybe you need that five percent of knowledge but it's all outdated stuff they teach you right by the time they're teaching it to you there it's running out of out of it's probably a couple years out of there but okay so you just you graduated in 2020 and then you went right into the video production because you said you didn't want to do engineering right so you're just you're just fresh you're still fresh like a fresh company right like oh yeah i'm curious though because you started okay you're you just graduated you're like i want to do video production you're in a market where

it's very referral based and were there like any other big players that you had to kind of like navigate around or try to try to like get to their rank like how was that because like i mean for us like here like when we first started sure there's like a million companies out here right but there were ways for us to kind of go there i feel like if we were like little fish in a small pond, it would have been even trickier now. So how did you get to where you are now then? Because it's only been two years, right? Yeah, about two or three years since I've actually been doing it for clients. Yeah. Which is super crazy, honestly, because it feels like a long time. But like, remember what I

said about like Newfoundland being like the place where it's almost like an individual that's trusted to be like the best in the industry? industry well you can use that to your advantage because like people love to you know people here do anyway but people love to share information and like and how they do things and they love to network and connect and like and that's why like this whole like local aspect is so much easier to gather information like you can't just pull up to a company of like 30 and like sit down in a boardroom with them and start asking them questions like hey can you teach me this can you teach me that but like you sure as hell can do that with a guy who's been doing it for 30 years be like hey can we meet up at a coffee shop and can you teach me some stuff and i've utilized that so many times man like just like networking

with different individuals like and learning from them and and in adopting new things because people learn in different ways you know what i mean like if someone's doing this for 20 years they don't know things that i might be able to figure out just because i'm younger i do things differently i'm more connected in social media and other people and seeing different things um so it's a back and forth type of game right like you you learn from people and you give to other people and then eventually you just become so intertwined in it that it's just it just happens right um so like yeah i don't know if there was too much like navigating competition or anything like that but yeah like i definitely saw some like competition like i and

like discouragement especially when like putting in proposals and stuff like that and then they come back and they say oh we gave it to someone else and then you realize that it was like one of two agencies in town and you're like what the hell is going on and then like but yeah it's just it just comes down to like practice and experience and like you said like just um like pumping out those videos like like it's just practice practice practice and like taking what you can get um i do that for a long time and i'm actually at the point now where i'm starting to be able to like refine what type of content i'm doing which is great and get into more things that i'm more passionate about like steering not that commercial um not that corporate you know videos are are something that i don more passionate about, like steering. Not that corporate videos are

something that I don't like doing, but I'm more selective on which type of companies I can help and stuff like that. And I do love supporting, whether it's not even local, but the up and coming hustler, you know what I mean? People trying to create brands and sell e-commerce, sell on Amazon, creating their own identity through a through a brand through a product i think is really inspirational and that's that's the route i want to take um so what about you guys though like so did you guys go into like business school with the mindset of like we're gonna like create a a production company no not even not even close i i actually uh when uh when i first got into university i at first wanted to be an actor. And I tried that for like a year.

I didn't like it as much. So I thought... You didn't like it or they didn't like you? There's a big difference. Who knows? Well, the one thing I didn't like about acting was that I didn't like the idea that my entire career would be based on other people's biased judgments on me. So you could work as hard as you can and put hundreds of hours of effort and work into it.

But if someone just even arbitrarily can decide like, oh, if this person is just not right for this, then there goes all your hard work. I just didn't like that idea. And so I was still kind of trying to figure things out. Then I started dabbling in video. And then I decided this is what I want to do halfway through university.

But I was doing marketing. So I decided, let me just finish it, see what works out. Apparently, they didn't teach him anything because for a while, I had to take over the marketing. Now he's finally taking the reins on it again. And I went to, I did business in law, which actually, it did help us out a little bit because they had this law clinic program. So we got all of our legal papers done uh there because we we started the business roughly at the tail end

of our university careers so we got all of our partnership agreements our contract our freelancer contracts uh i don't know what else we got from them but i wish we did our incorporation article articles with them articles of incorpor, that would have been good. I don't think we thought that we would actually make it that far with the company back then. We started the business essentially at the end of 2014 and didn't start kind of pushing it until like midway through 2015. Because up until that point, it was just working as freelancers essentially, right? essentially right and although that was fine we realized it would be better to start a company so that there's a chance for it to kind of expand and grow on its own rather than just under one person's name and then as the years kind of went by it was like a very slow burn in our growth and then like as we mentioned before on the on the podcast the pandemic shifted everything forced

us to readjust and reposition ourselves, focus on the business side of things. And now, and also the podcast came about. I wish we had that happen earlier, but I don't know. I guess it was like a perfect storm. Everything happened at the right time. Because yeah, it did feel like we were just two freelancers for a long time. And then, I don't know, we just sat down and then everything kind of like the stars aligned. Things clicked.

Things started to click in our heads. As we've talked about it before, it's the working in your business versus on your business kind of dilemma. And that's always going to be a struggle, especially when you work for yourself. I find it's funny. A lot of people say like, you know, it's not just like one big thing that like gets you going in your business. It's like little things that like add up like over time, right. Which is so true. But for me, it is the opposite. It was one big thing because it was, it was like the biggest project on that. Not that I've done to date, but like, it was just the biggest project that I've ever seen at the time. And it was, it wasn't the fact

that it had nothing to do with money, had nothing to do with the client, but it had to do with the, the idea that I could get a project like this. Like I could nail something that's a high budget, like a big corporate client at the time. And that kind of put me over the hump to be like, all right, you know what? I'm going all in on this and I'm quitting my day job. Because at the time when I graduated, I was like, okay, don't want to do engineering, but I should probably get a job because I got to move out and stuff. And I ended up getting an art director job at an e-commerce supplement company, which is pretty cool. It was a sick job. It paid nothing, but I had a lot of creative direction there. It was a lot of fun, really good team. But I still couldn't help feel like my creative direction was a little bit blocked because I had superiors and stuff like that.

And sometimes I feel like or what I felt like anyway was that my ideas would get refined by my superiors just because they felt like they needed to do something to my ideas. You know what I mean? And I'd be like, but you don't need to change anything. It's good. It's good. You don't need to change anything. Like, it's good. Like, it's good. Like, you don't need to change it. And I would find myself like working on like my own projects, my own like marketing strategy for my own business and stuff. And like my core values of like, how I want my business to be and feel. And once I got that gig, they were like, Oh, can you come in on like Thursday afternoon and chat about it? And I was like, like at that point I was only doing weekend shoots because like I couldn't I had a nine to five. And they were like they told me actually they were going to pay me and they were really interested in seeing my work and stuff. And that just put me over the hump. And I was like, you know, I'm just going to quit and do this.

And and I just haven't looked back since, which is great. It's great when you do that because we did the same thing it's just a a freeing feeling oh it's crazy and then and then my hands were shaking for like two weeks it was insane i remember i remember i was working at the bank as a teller and i called carol and i'm like man i'm done with this i can't take it anymore i just let's just do this money's coming in kind of consistently now we're making roughly this it was funny because it's like for we'd get like one small one gig would like be the equivalent of working two weeks at the bank like part time. And I was like, I don't want to do that anymore. I'm tired of it. Let's just do this full time. You do your mind changes when it comes to money.

When you're in this kind of gig, like I don't think about like hourly wages anymore. I think about like, oh, if i land a gig then this can sustain me for a certain period of time you know that can pay for this you know someone asked me to do headshots for him like sick there's my car payment like i think about things in chunks now i don't think about them as like hourly rates that's true that's true yeah because when we talk to some of our friends that are that are employees they always mention it like hourly it's like the equivalent of an hourly this or hourly that for us it's like that project is like okay so carol gets paid i get paid freelancers get paid and then business

gets this chunk that'll go part part of it will go for the light part of it for the storage locker fees part of it for the insurance that's how how we think about things. It's so true. Yeah. It's weird, man. But it changes. It changes, though. We kind of think of it like, yeah, in chugs, but then we're thinking, okay, we need about three or four chunks a month to actually live off of it, right?

So it's still the same concept, right? You think about it as an employee, you think about it hourly. As a business owner, you think about it in chunks. And then once we become a big company, you think about it in chunks and then once once we become like a big company you think about it in percentages i think that's the the ranking yeah it's it's it's it's value-based uh payments you know it's like your your salary and your earnings are based on the value you put out there versus the hours that you put in put out there but to get the value you also

need to put hours into it so it's funny because it's like, it feels different, but when you start to look at it and break it down, it's like, damn, it's back to the basics again. You know what's funny? Yeah, it does go back to the hourly eventually. It always goes back. So it's almost like we're running away from it, but we'll come back to it eventually. It's like a circle. It just comes right back to the starting point. Tell us a little bit about your structures right now you're just running the company do you have any other people that maybe like full-time or part-time no no full-time i had a full-time employee one time uh but she would she was like she wasn't um like she wasn't doing what i was doing like we weren't she wasn't like out filming with me she was was more so on like the marketing, social media, uh, copywriting side of things. And I found just like the stress of

having like this full-time employee. It didn't feel like, like it wasn't the fact that she was a full-time employee, but it wasn't, it didn't feel like a partnership. It felt like I was turning into like a boss or something. And I was like, dude, like I hired you to like, be like, you know, 50, not 50, 50 with me, but like, i hired you to be like on my team not like wait for me to give you direction every single day it's like she didn't have any drive drive to like do something herself and like build a company i don't know if that has to do with like you know because she didn't the name of the company doesn't mean what it means to her as it does to me or like i don't know so it didn't really work out and then i mean i hear it

i listened to like three or four your podcast and i'm pretty sure everyone said the exact same thing about how hiring freelance just makes way more sense like when you need it you know what i mean like instead of having like a full-time employee just like getting paid for certain roles because i mean obviously having like a full-time audio op doesn't make a bunch of sense, right? But having a full-time marketing or assistant producer. What are they called? Editor, for sure. What about the other one? It's not a PA.

It's a little bit above that. But they'll be handling all. It's not really a secretary, but it's like production coordinator. That's the one. Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of different roles that would add a lot of value to have them on your team as full-time. But I think maybe what might've happened

is you might've not have defined like that role too much in her eyes where she's like, oh, like I need to maybe go out and do this or do that. But the other flip side is that unless you have some kind of stake in a business, no one is ever gonna be as invested in your business as you will be.

That's so true. I know that one thing that helps kind of foster that environment is to create like a work culture of pushing each other. It's more so kind of like pushing the people that work with you to also better themselves. Because if they feel like they're bettering themselves, then that will also elevate you in your business. So that's one thing i want to do down the road with with our team like once we start adding people in it's like we want everyone that works with us to all

grow together right because if they grow you grow the team grows and hopefully the clientele will grow one thing to keep in mind though and and carol and i've discussed this before but there's no guarantee that you will even if you do have a strong sense of work culture you've like tried to vet out potential um leads and everything there's no guarantee that they'll still be the type of employee that you're looking for but at the end of the day you also have to realize that it is a uh employer and employee relationship so it is what it is type of thing and also you have to remember that not everyone is gonna i'm talking like as if we've done this already but i was gonna say like we're talking about this like as if we have experience but i can kind of i can kind of get

it but we can see it i can already sense it that i can already sense that like you know at the end of the day it is a paycheck to that person and you know, at the end of the day, it is a paycheck to that person. And, you know, they might have different aspirations or dreams. And at the same time, you don't want to have the same person for like, I mean, it'd be great to have the same person for 30 years, but having that revolving door every couple of years, at least allows for new talent.

Like three to five. Three to five, which I don't know, Carol, today's environment, maybe two to three is more accurate. Are you kidding me? It's three to six months nowadays from what I hear. Three to six months. I'm being a little optimistic optimistic but at least it allows for revolving door people to come in you you might learn something off them they'll learn they'll they'll be like an exchange of information because i don't know i feel like companies where it's like they've stayed there too long it's almost it becomes too static nothing changes

in a way it could be great but at the same time like it's like you watch a scorsese movie and after the sixth one you're like i'm tired of seeing the nero i want to see someone else right and then he puts in the capri like all right good i've seen enough the caprio now show me someone else right and you know that being said too like some of the freelancers because the network is so small here like i have worked with them to the point where it almost feels like you know we're kind of like full-time collaboration all the time you know how it is with video production too it's not like it's not like every single day nine to five you're out like on a set somewhere you know what i mean so there's always that like downtime where you're like either making

like strategy you're doing strategy sessions or you're you're editing or or what have you but and there's different people that i hire for different parts of that. So, you know, just like doing it every single week with all these different people and like having meetings with the same people, it feels like they're on your team. And in a way, like you, like with that sense of fulfillment, you know what I mean? Like how, how you said, like, they feel like they're just getting like a pay to them. It's just a paycheck, like a full-time employee would think that. But when you're meeting with these freelancers, they're just as motivated because when they're a freelancer,

they're trying to build their own personal brand too, right? Through your brand right now. So they want to do a really good job for you so that they can get recommended to someone else. You know what I mean? Absolutely. But they always keep coming back anyway because there's only three of them so sorry the reason also is uh that freelancers they have the

luxury of also choosing their jobs um you know obviously most of them how busy they are yeah like but a lot of really good freelancers like say for example dps they also have the luxury of choosing their jobs so uh they're not going to choose to do like someone's not going to choose to do like a corporate video if they have the chance to do some kind of like really engaging creative type of commercial project, you know, for relatively similar pay or something like that. So they get to choose their job. Whereas an employee, unfortunately, sometimes like you can work on some really cool projects. But at the same time, there's always going to be that work that you don't really want to do,

but you have to do. And as a business owner, there's so much work that you don't want to be doing, but you have to do it. I would say it's like probably like 60, 70% of the work you do is probably work you don't want to be doing, but needs to be done so that you can actually grow the business and expand it.

Right. What's number one on that list for you of things you don't want to be at? Taxes. Yeah, yeah dude taxes hurt i think it was talking about in terms of projects no in terms of projects or tax i mean i'm no no i'm talking in general i'm talking in general okay yeah taxes are annoying it's not always creative work man like it's always sometimes you got to just do the things that keep you a part of society um you know luckily like do you guys use like an account like a cpa or anything like that or you know what we just incorporated uh uh early this month and um yeah like we got all the documents ready for for our previous guy for howard howard is still with us guys howard's been mentioned a couple of times. Howard Silverberg, if you need a CPA or accountant

in Toronto, that's the guy to go to. But yeah, no, he's taking care of that. Before we were doing our bookkeeping ourselves and everything, then just giving him the finals and everything. But yeah, no, going back to the employee freelancer thing, again, as a business owner, it's kind of like Tony Soprano said, it's lonely at the top the top you know yeah no matter what at the end of the day like you're you're the the captain of your ship but it's just you at the end of the day the crew can always leave as soon as you land on uh at a port that's right you're the only one who's going to be making website edits at 4 a.m on a wednesday one thing you mentioned like like, for example, like sometimes, like you might be working with people who, yeah, they need a little bit more direction and being shown what to do is because they also may not necessarily know where to go with in

certain situations. You shouldn't always see that as like a bad thing, because then they're at least willing to learn and willing to kind of listen to see like what should be done, right? And then once you work with that person over and over and over again then they can kind of get a sense of like how you work and how you don't work. Praden you know what you could do because this is what we started to do recently I don't know where it'll go but we're thinking it might take off as well um you could always mentor someone like maybe they could start out as a PA like right now we're mentoring two of our PAs and like, cause we asked them, we're like,

what do you want to do and everything? And then they're like, yeah, we want to get more into video production, everything. And we told them like, look, if you're interested,

we could mentor you to be just like us. We could teach you like the whole 360 of video production. So now we're bringing them out to like every shoot, like in on the back end, we're teaching them out to like every shoot like and on the back end we're teaching them like how a project is made um the a to z of that we're also teaching like some of them are also editing this podcast as well so we're getting them uh used to like that to to everything right so that's one thing you could do as well that's true man and i've actually i've i've done that before um and

it was kind of a little bit of a failure i think i don't know i don't think it was my fault but i i you know there was like a behind the scenes photographer that i i used to hire all the time and he was super into you know super into photography he saw what i was doing loved it and wanted to get into it you know so i took him out shooting some random times then i would take them on projects i'd be like hey man if you can capture like some bts for me like i'll show you what i'm doing and all this stuff you can get a sense of like how i'm operating with like clients and stuff like that how i'm talking to people my setups um you know that was going pretty good and then we'd always have discussions about like my gear and stuff like that what i'm using and all that stuff and then and then he ghosted me and he

started his own production company based off all the knowledge that i gave him which like i don't know if i if i don't know if i like disrespect that or admire it it's a it's really hard thing to say but like i was i was kind of shocked that he didn't kind of just like lean into it with me a little bit more and just like went off and did his own thing which is like i feel like it would have been a lot more scalable if he kind of just like brought that up to me or something and was like hey man like maybe we could like do this together but he was probably he was probably nervous like what i told our pas it's like look i will if you want i'll teach you how to become like me in terms of skills and everything but i also don't care if you eventually go start your

own thing i'm like i said i've... That's a good disclaimer, yeah. I said, yeah, like, go ahead. Even if you feel like at the end, you've had enough, you want to start your own thing, go for it. And then if you need any help, like I can help you on that end as well, right? So he probably got scared.

He didn't want to disrespect you or something. That's probably what happened. Well, people are also not good with confrontation. And that is a very, that is like a type of situation where it could be kind of confrontational. And some people want to try to avoid that. And like, yeah, it sucks that like the thing that sucks mainly is that you feel like you've worked with this person for so long, they didn't have the courtesy to just let you know that that's what they were doing. But, you know, at the same time, take it as a compliment. If he's doing well with off the knowledge that you've taught him, that's almost like a case study for you to know that what you're doing is right. Dude, that's, that's what I was just about to say, man. Like when you're like mentoring someone on a low level or a high level or whatever, like it feels good, man. Like it actually feels really good because you realize how much you've learned throughout the years and like how much you're able to actually like give someone and like like dude sometimes it blows my mind man like for either if i'm talking to a client or i'm talking to someone who's going to be on my team for a project like and i'm talking and then i'll

like catch myself talking or something and like i'm just like dude they are so engaged to what i'm saying right now and i'm like this is crazy like where did i even learn how to do this you know what i mean like that's amazing and I love that, especially with the client experience when you pull up and you create this, like either like a strategy or a brief or like an overview or a shot list or something for them, you go through it and they're like, this is so good. Like, you know, and like, like that's, that kind of brings you back to like why you're doing it in the first place. Like, you know, like number one, you got to get paid and live but like number two man it just feels so goddamn good to help someone when a client trusts your expertise it is the most rewarding feeling and and i i love when they go like

when they say we're so glad we picked you guys that's that's the best that's the best compliment a video producer can ever get and then that motivates you as well to also go the extra mile too you're like okay now I'm going to really wow them with this next part big time it's showing appreciation and when you see that a client can show their appreciation

you also show your appreciation for them by putting in even more work it's kind of like a feeding off of each other type of energy. There's obviously a lot of situations with certain clients and leads where it's very transactional. And not every client you're gonna have

is gonna be the creme de la creme of relationships that you connect with and click with. And sometimes you have those other ones where it's a little bit more transactional, but you still have good experiences. But to Dario's point, when you have those experiences where things just kind of click, and it's almost like you're talking with a friend, you know, it makes the work a lot more fun, no matter what it is. Yeah, I think, yeah, like helping a new client for the first time and having

it be a success is amazing. And then there's a whole different feeling you kind of get with like repeat clients. Like I think like when someone comes back to you and they're like, Hey man, like it's been a couple of months, but we're doing something else now. Can you help us out? It's like, Whoa, these people like are really vibing with what I do, which is great. Um, I would say getting that repeat client experience is like definitely one of my favorite feelings. Yeah. Like you just start your two years in, but I feel like you've done more in those two years than we've done in all the time that we've been around it's just interesting to see because we've already tried the the mentoring the employee uh i haven't stopped so early too man like i wish we

did all this stuff when we were starting i mean like you like again how i for for those that don't know how i choose uh our guests is basically i go to that city and then I filter out like a ton of people just to see who has a really good website, good portfolio, how they're ranking and everything. That's basically how I choose our guests. Like out of all the people in St. John's, it was you and then Altitude Media who's coming on next week. So it's impressive in two years you've made. on next week so it's it's impressive in two years you've made like i'm telling you right now our first two years in you couldn't even load up our website because our hosting partner was so bad it would take 20 seconds oh my god to load up the website so i mean your website was like on the first page or something so it's congrats you have no you have no idea how long i've like how many

hours i've put into like making that happen like like you said before man like it's it's either hustling or you're doing nothing man like yeah it's it's not gonna just happen like it just it will never just happen and like dude I've spent so long dude like literally like there's been like relationships that I've almost had to like part ways with like there's there's things I've missed out on there's there's don't know, family events I couldn't make it to. There's, there's so much that's changed, like different parts of my personality have changed. Like my, my ability to, and this sounds pretty negative, but it's, it's just the way it is. But like my ability to like enjoy free time has changed because like, I love like working,

you know what I mean? Cause I'm not working anymore. Like I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing which is really rare and a lot of people don't understand it but if you do understand it you know what i mean um you live and breathe it that's essentially it and it it's funny because like like the free time people think that are a lot of people probably think that our free time is when we're not shooting and like shooting is probably only like like 30 of the time of the work that we're doing there. And like shooting is probably only like 30% of the time of the work that we're doing.

There's so much that goes into the backend. Like you said, no one really realizes just how much goes into just even trying to get the website to be functioning in a way that it can be found easily on Google. There's so much work that goes into the backend. And it's not like you just like make a website and it's like, boop, there we go.

We're good to go. There's so much more that goes into it, just on that side alone, even. It's funny, actually, how we were talking about like agency versus like word of mouth in Newfoundland, like back in, like, it's not so much the case anymore. But like you said, like my website ranks pretty high, which is great. But in order for me to have done that, like, I don't know, like a year or two ago, like my SEO was very directed around like my name, because like, there was a couple connections that I had were like, oh, like Braden King, he's like a videographer, he's really good. But I had this business, I was like, I want their media to be like the business, like, I don't want to just be a name, because it's just doesn't feel scalable to me. So all my SEO is like around like my name, like I wanted people to search up my name and get to my website. And then I had to like, my website has changed so much to like, the first thing that used to be on my website was a picture of me because I needed people to

understand that I was the one behind it and stuff. And like, I didn't want people to be like, who is this like random agency? How many employees do they have? You know what I mean? But like, it had to be more centered around like, oh, Brayden, he's a really passionate like videographer. And now it's starting to get to the point where it's like people are hitting me up and they're like can you get me 50 000 followers on tiktok and i'm like what are you what people actually people actually make those uh requests that's hilarious weird things on my email but apart from getting like seo solutions i don't know how my god i don't even dude like where are these people in the world honestly like who does you know what i my top

top three most annoying emails are the seo guys uh the voiceover people just won't leave me alone they keep coming after me here's my and the uh and the ai of writing now it's lately it's been ai uh solutions you know like, we'll write your articles. Everywhere. Interesting. That's like most of them, actually, on my end right now. It's mostly like, oh, yeah, you need an AI tool? Here's a random sketchy AI tool.

Pay us $50 a week to use it. Dude, let's talk about AI. Let's talk about chat. Let's talk about chat GTP. Have you guys used chat GTPp at all chad gpt i think he said gp gtp they couldn't they couldn't have called it they could not have called it something more complicated i know like something simple just chat ai done done leave it at that gpt like jesus it's it's tpg tpg okay see see what i'm no i'm just messing i'm messing with you um have you guys utilized that at all for anything i i tested it i was like these are

wikipedia articles it's spitting out i don't know like that's the weird part about it because you don't know where the references are coming from right it's just like okay it just spit facts but like you know am i like copying this from someone's like essay that they wrote for their phd or something you know what i mean like like where is this coming from but you could there is a there's another app that open ai open ai is the one that owns it so they open midger yeah you heard of mid journey at all yeah that's like the photo video version of chat gpt yeah that one and like you can you can put in what it spits out and it tells you sort of where it came from um but man it's it's an interesting tool like i find it's just it's been cool for a couple different things for me right now and i try not to utilize

it too much for like creative copywriting because i feel like if I sit down enough, I have enough like passion in my brain to write something that's like more true to me. And I don't believe in kind of like copying other people's work or anything, but like for, for questions and stuff, man, like it's, it's really interesting. Like for, for instance, we're, we're traveling overseas later this year to film for a TV series. And we're going to India. And in order to go to India, we have to register like all your gear because they check it at customs. You got to get like an India. Carnet.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And in order to do that, you got to like make a spreadsheet with like the weight of every single piece of equipment, serial number all this stuff where the country of origin like where it was made and stuff and dude i was just like searching stuff up and chat gtp i was like tell me everything about the sigma lens how much does it weigh where's it from and it dude just spits it out like that it was insane yeah but is it accurate what if it's picking up the the wrong one from the wrong gear you know what i mean i i proved i checked a couple of them but and it was okay so i i don't know i trust it honestly in a weird way i don't know like i i i've uh there's the seo subreddit the the main one is called big seo and uh i see posts all the time of people using it

trying to write articles with it and they're like man it's like it's not doing a good job of that like it's missing a lot of things i actually just heard that this week or last week google invested like 400 million dollars in their competitor so we'll see where it goes but i know the main critique of it is that you can't tell the references and sometimes like it just spits out like like extremely wrong information so i don't think it's there yet it'll get information. So I don't think it's there yet. It'll get there eventually, but I don't think it's there right now. I think the concept is the future, but.

I heard more so though that I heard that a lot of YouTubers, especially, and a lot of other content creators, they actually utilize it to help rephrase certain titles and different kind of like key sections of like the topics that they're talking about in their videos, which I thought was interesting. Like say, for example, if you had a title that was like 10 words and you can like literally write in chat GPT, it's like, hey, can you turn this title and say the same message in five words or something like that? Sometimes it would not work, but sometimes it would actually rephrase things a little bit easier, especially sometimes when you have a very long day and your brain is fried, but you need to get work but sometimes it would actually rephrase things a little bit easier especially especially

sometimes when you have a very long day and your brain is fried but you need to get this done that could be a helpful tool but who knows how advanced it'll get right if it doesn't do it right uh if it doesn't do it right on the first or second try and you have to do it like five times how long would it have taken you to just do it manually versus like waiting 10 times to get it to get it right plus also there's also the fact that like it does leave traces of the pattern of the way it spits out information and search engines like google especially if they consider it their competitor they could just uh down rank all content created by ai platforms right which they already did before right so it's like, why risk it?

I feel like I'm also someone who really cares about like my, my brain health, especially when it comes to like, I don't know, like dopamine consumption and stuff like that. Like random things. Like it's just like certain things make you think, man, like there's so much, like, like I'll catch myself sometimes like being on my laptop for like 16 hours a day. And I'm like, myself sometimes like being on my laptop for like 16 hours a day and i'm like holy crap man like this is insane like i like it's not really how humans are like meant to live like maybe it is in society right now but as like a biological species is definitely not how we're meant to live right so like with these these chat bots and stuff like that spitting out answers although it's like super it could be eventually super valuable for business and like copywriting and marketing and speeding up processes like crazy. It's like, you're not

using your brain anymore, man. Like, have you ever seen the movie WALL-E back in the day? Like the Pixar movie WALL-E, man, where they're all just sitting in the chairs, man. Like, dude, like I got like nightmares about that, man. Like, I don't want, I don't want to become that. And like, I heard someone say, I don't even, I think it was in a fictional movie but it's like true and it was like um it's like i was like when are when are we gonna turn into uh like cyborgs and then like i don't know the the father talking to the son or something was like dude like we all literally already are like if you think about it it's just the computer is not attached to us it's just in our hand right like like we are literally cyborgs like we like we wouldn't be able to have this conversation without you know being connected with with uh you know just like

electronics around us like it's crazy man but but on the flip side though like like if we're going to talk about also like obviously it's unfortunate but there's also that benefit where it's like i don't think we would have had this opportunity to have this conversation if it wasn't for this tech at the same time. So it's always like a balancing act. And that's, that's what people forget to do. It's not that you need to like, like stop using certain tech or anything like that. That's not what a lot of people are talking about. It's just awareness, I think. Exactly. Be self-aware. It's, it's almost like, it's almost like, uh, it's almost like an

alcoholic being aware of how much alcohol they're consuming, you it's like all right i've i've been on i've been on the computer for six hours for work two hours for enjoyment i need to have at least four or five hours minimum a day where i'm not glued to a screen you just have to like especially for us in our industry because our whole work is revolved around a screen we all forget to just disconnect even for like a second. It's like, even take 10 minutes, get up, go to the kitchen or walk away from your screen and just give your eyes a break, you know? And we all forget to do that.

And I don't know how editors do it, I have to say. Do you guys have TikTok? Like, do you use TikTok? Only for creatives grab coffee. We gotta start using it for uh for our main business actually we're trying to plan out our whole content like marketing strategy this week because we are focusing a lot on the podcast but not enough on our on our business so we gotta gotta get to it karel but you know it's interesting the views for this podcast on tiktok are

very consistent compared to like yeah youtube shorts or uh instagram reels instagram reels youtube shorts it's so random like one of these they fluctuate like yeah one of them will get like 94 and then the other one's like 2000 you're like so what's the consistency yeah it's odd yeah i don't really understand algorithms man and they're always changing and stuff like i find like the the biggest things that get views over time, which I just, I don't know. I don't even understand it sometimes is, and it's hard as a creative business who's working for a lot of different companies doing a lot of different things, but consistency on Instagram reels is like the biggest thing.

Like I follow a couple of people. There's one guy I follow and he's, his Instagram reels every single day are always just his desk setup and his desk setup doesn't change. Like he might just like put like a PlayStation controller, like on the top shelf or something, but he's always just making videos of that same thing every single day for a year. And he gets like, you know, 50, 60,000 views on every video and always like the same people commented on it, bro, this is fire. Love your desk setup. Oh, I love where you put your keyboard. You know what I mean? Like, and that kind of consistency

i think is where it's where it's at to get followers but like the thing that i question is like to what end you know what's your end goal there you know what i mean like are you marketing to your audience right now trying to sell desk setups are you trying to like i don't really that's what i don't really understand like these creators out there our audience is basically like business owner or you know gatekeepers or business owners so for us our target market market is on linkedin so our plan is to create stuff for linkedin and then just cross-pollinated and in other social media platforms that's that's what we're gonna go for basically because again like we've never had a lead come in from instagram or facebook or uh or tiktok and you know what to be honest with you if we do have

someone from there it's probably not a good lead anyways right because the type of work that we focus on is completely different and again that's that's how it is for us at least i don't know what it is for others well it's because most of the the clients that we work with a lot of them are very much b2b or they have been historically. And B2B clients are not typically looking for their vendors and partners on Instagram or on YouTube, maybe LinkedIn. But I feel like a lot of people who have very specific needs, they go right to Google for it. So like no matter what business you're in, especially in video, you have to know who your clients are, what type of people you're working with. And if most of them are on Instagram and that's where a lot of them are looking for work, then yeah, by all means, focus on that. But you have to define that for yourself. Yeah. I work with a lot of like e-commerce brands, like people just selling niche products online. Right. and like that is very much an instagram game right and by by posting kind of like quirkier fun like you know carousel posts on my my instagram like i

attract a lot of attention there because they're like oh i want like i want my instagram page to look like that as well because that's exactly what they're marketing on is instagram they're trying to get like more organic reach and stuff like that um but like you said like when it comes to corporate clients man like i don't know if LinkedIn would help at all but like it's always just like it's not even it's not they're not even filling out the form that's like I have like a brief builder on my website which is just like budget and what type of project and helps helps me out a lot more um but they're just sending me a direct email or they're calling me like just straight up calling me up hey do you or like we're looking to have a corporate video for done before Christmas or something.

Is that something you guys do? And it's always like old school kind of. You know what it is? I'm looking at your website now. And do you have it at the bottom of the page? Oh, yeah. That's like that's like a quick, quick contact. But if you go on the top corner, you say get started. there's more of a brief builder there you know what it is it's

because you see your email first oh that's just directly exactly it yeah you're probably right man it's interesting because most people stay on our home page because i've made it in a way where you could easily scroll to the bottom without having too much in the middle. And very few go to the contact page. And the only people that tend to go to the contact page are people with RFPs or marketing people. That's what I've noticed. Marketing people will go there to try to source out my email, right?

Most people though, they'll just go to the contact form. And that's the way we vet our people out. Because I know what you're doing and we did the same thing. We did it for a while. And it increases the amount of bad leads you get. Interesting. Yeah. Just it's sometimes not even bad leads.

It's also people trying to sell things to you. And that's even more annoying because they're not even people you could potentially sell to. These people who are trying to solicit services that are irrelevant to us, they still even do it through the contact form. They would actually even like put it in saying like, oh yeah, this is the project, it's this budget, this budget. They're like, oh, do you need an AI service for your things? Like you do realize what this form is. This isn't for you. This is for people who are looking for this form is this isn't for you this is for people who are looking for for uh for specific needs so yeah like if you take out your email and even uh mention it in a you know what you know sorry to interrupt you but one thing i'm noticing is basically you're directing them actually

to your email first that's that's what i mean below that you have save time with our brief builder where you're saying and the brief builder doesn't sound like what what i would need if i was a uh a client i'd be more interested in getting uh messaging you directly right okay so are you guys against forms like or no no i'm no we're for it i think the way you're wording is off because you said save time with our brief builder they don't know what a brief builder is that's true and uh i wouldn't have known like the only reason we would have known it is because we're kind of in the industry but if you had it like say let's start creating together fill out our contact uh form that that is a it's like a step one step two and they won't even have to

even email you or call you directly or anything like that. They'll immediately go to it. The way it's worded is basically like, oh, okay, if I have extra time, I should do that. Yeah, that's true, man. Yeah, that is actually a really good point. I needed to hear that. That is super helpful advice. One thing that's really helped us out is, for the website at least, and all the other things as well, but always try to think about

things from the perspective of the client and the client doesn't know your business. So I find that a lot of the times when I'm looking up other companies to bring on the show, a lot of the times they'll have a lot of information on their website that the client doesn't need to know and doesn't have to know and doesn't care about. Like a lot of people list, you know, we do pre-production, production, post-production. If I'm not in the industry, I don't know what the hell pre-production is. And I don't care what it is. I need to create my testimonial video because my manager's hounding me about it.

And I put it off till last minute. And I really need to find some people right now. Yeah, that information is good to explain to the client when you already are talking to them. And I put it off till last curiosity and get them interested to reach out to you so that when they do reach out and you talk to them you can explain a lot of these things because sometimes explaining something verbally is much more understandable than if you write it out as well yeah most people aren't gonna go to the i don't know like if you look at your uh look at your analytics it might be different for other people but for us at least it's like uh out of 100 uh 70 are gonna only go to the home page and 15 are gonna go to the contact page and then one will go to the portfolio page one will go to the about us page that's how it

is normally like i don't know how it is for other people for us it's like that most people stick with the home page because if you don't see everything you need to see right on the home page like there's only so much you're gonna find that's extra in those other pages that are gonna sway your decisions it's like think of it like when you're if you're looking for some kind of like product or service you know the next time you're looking for like say a plumber or anything like that think to yourself about what you look for. And then it's like, oh, this is why I clicked on this. Maybe I should do that for my own website. Makes sense, man. You're just basically trying to create like a high converting

landing page as a homepage. Basically, yeah. Again, like just try to think about it from the leads perspective, right? If they're going through, and again, they probably just go through the first page of businesses, sometimes dipping into the second, right? through the first page of businesses sometimes dipping into the second right maybe the first half of the second page uh and again this they've probably left it to last minute too so they got to quickly figure out like at least three to five people and uh that's why we've we've made a big effort to simplify our homepage, make it super fast to load. Because there's some people who go to their website, it takes a couple seconds to load.

Yeah. I have the attention span of a goldfish nowadays. Like, if it takes that long, I'm out. Even when I try to find guests, it's like, if it doesn't load quick, bye. It means you don't care about your website, right? Nice. Okay. Dario's already forgot who he's talking to right now.

Yeah, I don't know who this guy is. Who this guy yeah that's interesting who's this brain don't be uh don't be shocked if my website is completely different next week your website is pretty much fine it was just if i was to change it it would be the contact page and then i would improve the uh i would improve the uh the contact form on the homepage. And I would use specific keywords for that. And then I would also, I know you don't have a, like if I go to the Get Started page or Portfolio page, I wouldn't, I would have probably a home button up there.

Just so, I know you can obviously click the logo and go back, but some people might not know that, right? You gotta dummy proof the whole website. Yeah, that's true. I'm a big aesthetic person and I hate having the home button there because to me, I'm like, oh, it's so obvious. You just click the logo and it goes back. But I know what you mean, man. That is true.

You know what I got to do? You know what I got to do? I got to put this in chat GTP and see what it says. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, let's do it. I got one more question for you guys. I was going to ask you guys earlier, back when we were trying to, me and Dario were back and forth on who should be talking first. We were talking about budgets and stuff. How do you guys, well, A, how do you do it? And how do you guys feel about like giving quotes to your customers like not on paper? Like if you're in a meeting and like this happens to me all the time and like I'll be in a meeting and the person will be like, all right, like this sounds great.

Like how much do you think it's going to cost? And like they just put me on the spot. Like how do you guys feel about a situation like that? Personally, I'm totally fine with that because during if you're talking to them, you should have already gone through your whole funnel. We have an itemization of every, of all of our line items, right? So I know exactly how much they're going to cost and I know how much I can, I can quickly create a rough range, a rough estimate for any project, right? So as you go through your sales funnel, I'll just quickly add those up.

And then if they're asking me, I always ask for a range. So by the time we're having an in-depth conversation or even an intro call, I've already figured out what their budget is via our contact form. And then from the contact form in our first call, right in the first five minutes, I always confirm that the budget option they selected is what they selected on the website. So if they selected 10 to 12 and a half K, I go like, I just want to confirm this is what you selected on the website. Is that still true? And then I always, I follow that up with also, like, is it flexible? Like, do you have some wiggle room? Can I go a little bit above?

And then if they say yes, okay, I have a frame of reference now and uh i i have it broken down so as they tell me all the details i even break it down to them like near the end i go okay so you need a rough number let's see uh okay so i have my project management fee it's going to be this the pre-production for this type of project is this okay so for production i need this type of crew and i say it out loud i'm writing it down as i'm saying it to them okay i need well the producer director is going to be this much i need a dp we're capturing sound there is there's interviews right okay so let me put in an audio op because we got to capture sound i need a gaffer he's going to help the dp and then i need a makeup

you want makeup no okay no makeup okay pa we gotta have i add all that up production post-production we're doing this and that okay so that's gonna be this roughly this is gonna be that then i tell them total you're looking at about this sometimes it might even be below what their budget is because i for us like you can't you can't always just try to match their their their budget but sometimes i find like look this is what i need to make anyway so and then i tell them i'm like i'm a bad uh i'm a bad liar which it's true i am i'm very bad at poker so uh we just tell them the whole i just tell them the whole number there like a rough estimate i because i don't care i don't need to like hide it from them right because once i have all my inputs i can just craft like a quick estimate uh but that's the informal one i tell them straight up too this

is like informally like just talking like this it's this amount and then they'll let me know okay yeah it's roughly good or not right but then uh if it's good then it's like okay next step is let's get more people in this call and then we'll i'll go through everything because by just giving them a number you're just giving them a number but you don't know what kind of vision I'm going to have for this, what kind of reference projects and everything. So you got to always set up the actual summary meeting, right? So the last part in your sales funnel before they sign the contract. And the other good flip side is that when you give them this rough range, this is actually more of a filter for you rather than a filter for them. So just kind of flip your mindset on that because essentially when you're giving them these numbers,

even if it's rough, you can kind of gauge to see kind of what they're able to potentially do in that call then versus sending just a random email. It's like, hey, this is roughly what it's going to cost. Because if they have an objection in that call, as to like, oh, I don't know if we can kind of do that. And then you're just like, oh, why do you think you can't do that? Is it like a means of like, you just don't have the budget or is there like a timeline issue or something like that? And there's always ways you can kind of adjust it and figure that out later, as Dario mentioned in the call. Like, you're essentially just giving them something rough to kind of get a sense of that will work for them and if it'll work for you. And if they say they say oh i it's going to be 15 000 oh i was i i thought it was only going to be

like 3 000 we can't do more than that it's like okay then if they start giving you objections right off the bat of that magnitude you just say that's it no actually actually no no no you won't get objections of that magnitude because you've already filtered them out. Because then if they say that, you're like, so why did you lie to me earlier? I thought you said you had this much budget. Yeah, you're beyond the point there. That's true.

You're at the stage when, exactly, Dario's right. You're actually at the stage where you've already filtered them out and it's just going to be like very minor fluctuations. I think, Brayden, what you got to do is you got to filter them out because I know what you're doing. You got to add more filters because by the time you get to the numbers question, you should already know, okay, this guy or girl is worth my time. Cool. Yeah.

Because if you don't know yet by that point, then it's great when someone uses my website contact form and clicks a button and i'm like okay this is going to be a ten thousand dollar gig great like i know what's going on here i know that they're willing to spend some money which is good but like i'm talking more about like the cold calls that people call you up and they're like hey you ask them right away you ask them right away you know what i say you know what i say and it always works i always ask them what kind of budget am i working with? Okay. Yeah. That's what you ask. Put it in their report. Yeah. Tell them.

And it's like, oh, I don't know how much it is. I don't know how much a video costs. It's like, yeah, but you set something aside. What did you set aside? And then if they still don't know, you're like, okay, give me some rough details. And then I'll give you a rough angle. And that's the point where I'm at with certain clients. Like, I'm just like, give me as much information as you possibly can.

And I'll give you the same structure, line items. Like, I think doing that is the best possible structure because you can at least delete things. But don't get stuck in the, but if you ask for too many details, you might waste maybe half an hour of your time. So you got to go like, okay, give me some rough details and I'll tell you in a couple minutes if this is worth it for either of us right because if you go too in depth into it then it's like oh if you just burn 30 minutes i don't know about you i don't have 30 minutes to kill okay for each lead yeah i don't have 30 imagine if you spent 30 minutes with every lead that comes uh that that sends you or calls you or sends you a message that's that's uh that's basically your whole day is going to be gone in an eight hour day

that's a good chunk of it right there all all these you know what actually i take that back you got to tell them you got to figure you got to let them tell you right away before they even start giving you details because when they start outreaching they already know what their budget is yeah exactly if they don't know then they're amateurs and you don't want to deal with that that type of person yeah that's right yeah that's actually one of our filters where if they have no idea what the budget is and have no idea what the purpose of the content is that means that they're too too early on they don't even know what their their goals are for the project as it. Because if they don't know what the goals are, no matter what you do for them, they're not going to be happy with it.

And you're essentially trying to look for the people who have a better understanding of what they want this content to achieve for them. You're not the marketing agency. You're the video production company. It'd be cool to have a product or something, not even to sell, but if someone came to you and approached you and said, like you just said, don really know what i want don't know what the budget is and you're like okay i don't want to waste my time on this but give them like a document that they could fill out to get a better understanding of what they want and then give it back to you to save you time i think that would be really valuable yeah but it'll almost it'll really work because we have a we tried this i i we created a a briefing form right

with a ton of questions enough to go like once i read that i know the eight is that of this guy right and uh i can't tell you how hard it is for them to fill that out because you'll have what we were testing out was an inch we were testing out doing an intro call and then saying we will i'll send you a briefing form fill that out fill that out let me know when you filled it call and then saying we will i'll send you a briefing form fill that out fill that out let me know when you filled it out and then we'll have a follow-up call oh my god man it was like pulling too many steps so then what we tried was we're filling it out as they're talking that worked too but now we're at the point where like we could just do it in our hand in our head anyway so i don't i don't really need to do that anymore i basically what i do really now is i have my my apple pen and i'm writing on the ipad as

they're talking and then i'll just uh send them a follow-up email after i get if i've filtered them out and they're good to go uh i'll schedule a follow-up call with them and then i'll just uh summarize what we talked about and then i'll use that that as my reference point for the next call, right? So it's like, I'll take a look at the email I sent with all the details and everything. Because I'll say like, this is what we talked about. And then I'll let you know if I need anything else. That's basically what we do. You got to simplify your process as much as you can, you know, like only add steps if

they provide actual value for you to get to the next stage of signing them as a client. Like as Dario mentioned, the main reason why that briefing form system didn't work is because there were two or three extra steps that were just completely unnecessary. And every step in your process is another point where you could lose a potential lead. It was too much of a commitment. It was too much of a commitment. It was too much of a commitment. And it was too much. It was like, again, I was seeing it from my point of view. My point of view is like, this is what I need.

And this is what I want them to do. But from their point of view, they're busy. They don't have time to go through that. And I know how it is on their end. They're just busy. And it got pushed to the end of their item list and everything. So again, you got to try to make the entire process for your lead and client as easy as one two three right that's it that's all you have to do at the end of the day make make their life so easy when it comes to

creating a video that they'll want to come back to you or they'll sign you one of the two right both maybe exactly cool that was that was a great answer a lot of a lot of good information in there i appreciate that well we've already kind of hit past the one hour mark a little while but i think uh this is like a good point to kind of uh stop it off but uh one last thing how did you come up with the name for uh their media um okay so it's right there it was right there in front of me man it has to do with sort of two two it's two different kind of paths um the first being it has to do with me kind of hustling back in the day and always kind of telling people like okay i'll be there like don't worry kind of thing like literally as dumb as it sounds like people would say like oh like uh i need a headshot or I want to do this. I would take any project

I possibly could back in the, like a couple of years ago, just because I needed it. And I would always send the same text message to them and be like, I'll be there. Like, I'll be there. Don't worry about it. Like all the time. And it just kind of like, it was one of those obvious words that I was like, you know what? Nobody's taken it. And I'm going to take that right now. And then I looked into it more when I actually named it their media. I was like, if you look at the definition, and this is on my website too. So the definition of there from Oxford dictionary is, there is used in attracting someone's attention or calling attention to someone or something. That's the definition of there. That's what it means. And I was like, that's so cool because

that actually makes sense in the video business, right right so it's kind of just one of those things that started off to be very like philosophical and turned into just an obvious thing which is great and it's easy to remember so a lot of people call me the media which i'm like all right like the media yeah like that's oh damn that media so but yeah pretty funny i haven't really said that out loud in a long time so it's interesting where that came from nice cool well guys i really appreciate you guys having me on here it was a really good chat really informative uh i like that you guys take the time to to answer my questions in detail and and give me some some honest facts I appreciate that. And it was great to talk to you guys. Yeah.

And to our listeners, if you have a shoot in St. John's, Newfoundland, be sure to reach out to Brayden. His website is theremedia.ca. T-H-E-R-E. Let's be clear. Not T-H-E-M-E-D-I-A. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that.

Yeah. All right. All right. All right. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, thank you, Brayden. Thanks for joining us, Brayden. No problem at all.