Creatives Grab Coffee - How to Grow Organically (ft. Noravera) | Creatives Grab Coffee 27

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

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 come on the show and share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production. Today we're joined by Geoff Livingston from Noravera, a video production company based out of Vancouver, B.C.. His video production company focuses on creating beautiful, emotional and engaging stories. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 - Intro + Slow/fast season/growing organically 11:30 - growing the team / team structure 24:00 - Client discovery / ROI / Time spent on client work / Pre-Production 30:00 - Partnerships / Creative Differences 40:25 - Buying out your partner / Future Plans / Shying away from retainer projects 46:45 - New marketing initiatives To view the post for this episode, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/how-to-grow-organically-creatives-grab-coffee-27/ To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/ Subscribe and follow for future episodes! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.com Instagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/ #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #creativesgrabcoffee #videomarketing #videographers #videoproductioncompany #videoproductions #videoproductionservices #videmarketingstrategy

Welcome everybody to Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we're joined by Jeff from Nora Vera, a video production company based out of Vancouver, BC. His production company focuses on creating beautiful, emotional, and engaging stories. Welcome, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. So how is it over in BC right now? Is it getting a little bit hectic right now as we're jumping into spring, out of the winter caves we're all kind of emerging right now as uh we're jumping uh into spring out of the winter uh caves we're all kind of emerging right now right yeah it's still it's still wet it's still very wet over here but uh things are things are picking up things are good it's yeah usually like you guys probably slows down a little bit every kind of january february but we're things are ramping up for us and yeah, it's nice to just be kind of,

it feels like reality is kind of starting to starting to be, be back, which is, which is awesome. So I'm starting to see, see some faces more often. Do you have like those slow and fast cycles? Cause we thought we, we had them. We're like, Oh yeah, every, every December to, I would say March was very, february was very slow for us yeah but then this year was like the total opposite i think even last year didn't happen either and the more people we were talking to like some people have those cycles some people don't

for some people it's just busy all year round or it's a different variation of that yeah it's something that we've been trying to like figure out and we've had numbers tracked for like a few years now, like four or five years. And some years it like has stayed busy right through, but it usually like more than not will dip a little bit or slow down. We tend to work with other agencies. So they're usually starting their conversations with clients like once the new year kind of kicks off and then once those plans of how to move forward then they'll reach out to us to start like planning the video or producing the video side of things so it uh tends to slow down for for a month and a bit good time to take a vacation yeah not uh not not last couple years but i have two little ones so two year old and 11 month old so

it's been uh been pretty close to home you got several uh full-time jobs going on right now then right most definitely so jeff why don't you give us i was literally exact same question jinx we're a little too stinked we're a little too stinked go dario you go i was going to ask the exact same question. We're a little too stinked. We're a little too stinked. Go, Dario, you go. I was going to ask that. Like, why don't you just give us a little bit of background on who you are and how you started Nora Vera?

Sounds good. Nora Vera started basically, videos have always been a passion of mine. I grew up, my dad always says I was more engaged with the tv commercials than I was the actual shows and I've always just yeah really paid attention to to creative and just things that are that are visual and I grew up filming skiing and mountain biking with my friends and I pirated a editing software, I think in grade eight that my friend sent to me. So I started to edit some things and put some, put some videos together and just really loved it. And I was riding mountain bikes pretty hard and just wanted to see where I could kind of go with

that. But when guys started like flipping step downs, I was like, all right, I'm just going to like film this and then kind of see, see what I can do with that just without putting, putting my life on the line. And then, yeah, I went to Capilano College at the time, now Capilano University, took interactive design, did a little bit of web design, graphic design. My graphic design teacher told me that the business card I did was one of the worst that she's ever seen. So it's just like, okay, I'm going to stick to the video side of things as that was always where I excelled in things. And yeah, I ended up working for a company called Rip TV, which was an action sports online television network. It was coming out kind of when YouTube started. So they were trying to create the place where everyone goes to with their own player for watching news about action sports and things like that.

They were a startup. They ended up running out of money. I got laid off. I went to BCIT and ended up getting my business degree. And yeah, from there I did four years. And my longtime friend, Brian Cece, we went to preschool together and kind of were friends all the way along. He was super creative with the camera and I was more on like the business kind of side of things. So I would always kind of be camera and do editing and things like that. But we were just getting asked a bunch of questions from people or just started doing real estate videos. We did weddings for about four years. And we're just like, let's give this a shot and see what can happen. I also didn't really want to do the whole resume and apply for jobs kind of thing. Real estate and weddings.

Real estate and weddings. That's where everyone gets started. It's always like the first kind of like initiation step. But one thing I really found funny that you mentioned is that when you were younger, you, you really focused a lot more on the commercial side on the commercials rather than the actual shows. So I'm guessing when the super bowl comes around, you're tuning out for everything except for that halftime show with all the ads, right? Yeah, I always really enjoy seeing like how creative things get.

And it's, yeah, it's pretty wild how expensive that is for just like that 30 seconds, but it works. And now with YouTube and just, you get more views from there than you do probably on the television, but it's, yeah, I like the commercials for sure. I heard it was like roughly a few million

per second if you wanted to advertise on the super bowl so a few seconds is it's like it's like maybe like one to five million roughly i think it was the expense where every second that you want to get on the super bowl because of all the eyeballs that are there and yeah i really liked reddit's ad where they literally just got like one second with the whole kind of uh message that they had i forget exactly what it was but it was basically to get people to google the reddit ad and then once they read it afterwards i'm like oh wow that's pretty genius you know you literally get the bare minimum of one second for an effective ad right you got to be creative right totally probably use up their

whole budget for the year if it's like one to two and one to five million per second and so 30 seconds take that in that could be like yeah over 50 to 100 million just to just to use the ad not even the production aspect that's just for the airtime crazy uh question so uh how tell us a bit about the transition going from doing like a lot of real estate a lot of weddings and to doing more corporate work because i feel like that's probably something that a lot of starting production companies are trying to figure out and some of them probably will never figure it out fully so I'm just curious to see how you did it for us it was just like continuing to to work at it and like meeting different people like doing free work to

to get in and create opportunities and network and um for us we worked for another uh wedding company for like four years and we just really wanted to start creating ideas versus like capturing a day and filming something that's already pre-planned and then putting something together we wanted to yeah create have an idea pitch it create it and then be able to market it and work with companies that way. You can hear my daughter downstairs. She might be coming up. All good. All good. Don't worry. Okay. We'll have another special guest on the show, right? Yeah. She might show up here in a second. No worries. Was that like a, like how long did it take? so how exactly did you do that did you like okay so you

you started pitching more to businesses like did you start doing like cold outreach or how did that how did that we never did we never did cold outreach um even today it's something that like i always hate receiving cold calls so i never really want to do cold calls so we're continually trying to figure out other ways to approach people and make new connections. But it's just, it was word of mouth. Brian, he worked with a company and still does called Obaki. They've just done an amazing campaign raising a bunch of money for the Ukraine. But he filmed their fashion shows. They used to do do fashions now they're fashion um and clothing and now they're doing more um just different things you can purchase from merchants around the world and

helping market and promote those um but yeah that kind of got him into that space and he got connected with a company called milk shirts which they filmed in a fairmont hotel which then got him connected to someone at fairmont and we did something for a coffee, which they filmed in a Fairmont hotel, which then got him connected to someone at Fairmont. And we did something for a coffee shop that they had in one of their hotels, and then it turned into more there. So we had the Fairmont name as one of our clients, and that started to become more reputable for us. And it just kind of happened organically in that way. I was a part of the the vancouver board of trade and a program called leaders of tomorrow where i was just met a bunch of people through

there who someone ended up working for bc dairy so we got connected through that to them through another agency and it's just uh yeah it's it's a slow process but it yeah it just kind of evolves over time it's it's quite surprising and if we've always like done good work haven't been jerks about things just tried to make it as enjoyable and and fun for our clients as possible and just being as open and transparent as we possibly can for for all of our projects and whenever we're we're communicating things and it's it's just kind of it's it's grown from there. Yeah, trying to network organically to, you know, grow your list of leads just seems to be like,

I mean, for me, it seems like one of the best ways to do it. We haven't really- Most challenging though. Most challenging. It's slow. Yeah, slow, the slowest and most challenging, but I feel like it's also the- But most effective. Most effective, right?

Cause doing cold outreach, we've, we've had a couple of guests on that do that. And for them it works, but I feel like, but it's volume-based they're very volume-based. So you don't know, it depends on how much time. Yeah. It really depends on how much time you have. And I guess it depends on also like the structure of the organizations, right? So if you have a team of people where you have like one person that's dedicated to just simply cold outreach, you know, it's a lot easier to be able to incorporate that strategy

because of that. Whereas if you're doing a mix of other roles as well, it's a little bit harder to take the time to just, you know, sit down for three, four hours a day and just only be doing cold outreach when you have other projects mounting creative briefs that you need to get to sales. It, yeah, it really varies. But like you said, it's the most effective is the slow, but it's very effective. Yeah, it's whenever you can get a referred in from someone that they know and trust it's it's going to be yeah much easier to start that conversation that's for sure yeah you've really grown your team into a into a pretty tight-knit a bunch of like a roughly what 10 people now on your team you have yeah yeah we're nine people like we're looking to bring on a couple more

um but yeah that's again just kind of grown organically as we've needed to. It started with Brian and I, and we just started getting busier and busier. And we put an ad on Craigslist and ended up, John, who's now part owner of the company and our creative director, and he still, yeah, just send out something that was funny and related to the movie office space. Okay, let's go meet this guy. And he had had some editing talents that we didn't have. And he just like, Hey, do you guys ever like, think about like having a director on your projects and where it's like, yeah, that would be like a good idea versus just kind of setting up, doing some interviews and kind of building it later but uh yeah he's uh john john's been a real real solid guy to have on our team and it's

yeah we brought on another editor when we needed help and another editor and then we brought in project managers uh to kind of to kind of help things and uh yeah it's been an ever, ever evolving process. And that was, yeah, that, that full-time full-time. Correct. Yeah. Okay. We shifted now. Sorry. How long ago did you, um, the junior business partner decide to start the business? Um, I guess not working on the real estate and the videos, but like focusing more on corporate, how ago was that that's 10 years like oh wow yeah yeah so yeah we started i graduated from ecit april 2012 and yeah just kind of started it from there i think brian got back he was traveling in india at the time and got back maybe end of april or may and we had a couple beers on the back of my patio and just tried to come

up with a name and ended up coming up with Nora Vera, which we took created Nora out of Nord is North in French and Vera is true in Latin. So North true, true North. Just wanted something that we could like, yeah, that could change with us and not be Brian and Jeff video Vancouver, like just like real siloed for, for things. Cause we knew that we'd have to change and evolve, uh, throughout the years. Most SEO optimized name possible, right? For sure. That's funny. Um, so at what point did you guys grow like start to grow the team to where it

is now because like did you was it just like each year you just had like one extra person or did you get to a point where you're just adding you're like okay i think we need to bring on like five people like did you ever have one of those type of growth spurts and in in hiring yeah there was it was kind of add one and like another there was probably year four or five we brought on like two people like quite quickly um and that was like an interesting time for me because that's when i really started to to struggle like the i was always like the point person from the clients and have to get information to the team for them to be able to execute. And there's a major disconnect there. So that's when I started to do some research and I actually found out that I had

ADHD. So there was a real like disconnect of being able to bring the information in, keep it organized and be able to pass it along. So that was a real like turning point for me in my life to, yeah, got to go down that path and learn more and still every day trying to figure out how to, how to work with it more and learn techniques to stay on track and stay focused. I feel like sometimes I have that because there's like so many things we got to do. And it's like, I was so focusing on one thing. I'm like, okay, I'll go focus on the other thing now and then i'll do that for like five minutes you're like what about the other thing i gotta work on go back and forth you're like i

can't like i'm getting nothing done but you're still getting something done at the end of the day right yeah yeah it's you got to check things off you know you got to have the list of things to do and then and then kind of stick to it and that kind of helps to make sure everything kind of gets through the day but yeah like there's always like 10 things to do you then, and then kind of stick to it. And that kind of helps to make sure that everything kind of gets through the day. But yeah, like there's always like 10 things to do, you know, there's like a, there's like a client project and then it has like its own subset of, uh, of tasks that you need to do. Then you have like, you know, the accounting and the taxes. And there's also a couple more tasks that you need to do there than pitching,

selling the whole works, right? Absolutely. How do you guys build out your team? If you don't mind me asking a quick question. Like you mentioned accounting and taxes. Do you have anyone helping you guys out with that? Or are you trying to manage and kind of do that? Are you doing all that? Yeah, yeah, no.

I'll be honest with you. Up until i would say last year our accounting was a a disaster like an absolute mess and joel don't try to like make it sound rosy because it wasn't it was so bad and like i mean you know what like we weren't we weren't mature enough for it but then uh like we sat down last year and we like became like vigilant like everything as soon as like something happened like you immediately added to the excel file and everything um we we do have our our accountant howard silverberg that we we go to we've been going to for several years now and i still remember the first time we went there like the look on on his face, I feel like he was this close to just yelling at us because everything was just such a bad mess. You have to go back

three times. I was like, I was like, okay, after the third time, he's not going to, if we can't get it right this time, he's not going to, he's not going to like answer our calls anymore. Right. But anyways, after that, we kind of like, uh, we've been using Howard. He does our taxes for our business and our personal so it's mainly us doing all that we're planning on incorporating this year so I don't know what what that's going to be like I haven't really done any research into it I know I just know it's the next step we got to do yeah I gotta you know add that to the list happy to chat offline about that for sure yeah I gotta add that to the list of growing tasks we got to do.

Yeah. But aside from that aspect as well, you know, like obviously with any business, there's so many different roles. Dario and I have basically set ourselves up to be able to run things as if, you know, like each of us are able to take it on. So for example, I would take on three to five clients. Dario can take on three to five clients if need be. That way we're not needed to be both on every single project

that way we can kind of maximize the amount of work that we have going on at the same time. Cause essentially it's just the two of us at the moment that is full-time and we have a team of freelancers that we bring on, you know, depending on the needs of the project, how, how big it is, uh, what resources are needed you know we would have like one editor on one project another one on another and then we just kind of like be managing a lot of aspects of that but yeah we've kept it very skeletal our crew up at this moment until we get more of a natural growth you know um we're trying to get projects we need those yeah i think once we start getting those and we have that consistent income, then we can bring on like number one, I think is an editor. And then after that, some project coordinator. And then from there, we'll just see. But I think those two are the two of roles that like we've built the team out as like we did have

like internal like cinematographers um pre-covid we restructured things just with everything kind of shutting down for this spring 2020 for us um which has worked out quite well we still work with the same like dop and cinematographers and when they when we weren't having shoots all the time obviously they'd have to edit and which is isn't the they're good at it but they're wanting to focus more on the cinematography and the filming aspect of things so it's it's worked out well for them to just be able to work with other clients and um continue continually improving that that skill set um but having the the coordinators the project manager, producers in-house, it is quite a consistent workload for them with all the communications

and same with editing. You go shoot for a day or two days for a project and then it's a week or two or three for the post side of things. So I think that's a good way to go about it for you guys as well. Just try to bring on people to do the things that you don't want to do and the things that, uh, yeah, you can, that people might have more skills, skills at you then for sure. Yeah. That's the, that's the biggest challenge is finding that talent where, you know, people can come in with a diverse kind of background and experiences and, you know, skill sets that you don't necessarily have. I feel like sometimes a lot of people are always in this mindset of trying to find people like them to work with, which can be good for certain parts of the job. But sometimes, depending on the role, like if you want to bring on another producer, what can this other producer essentially add to your business that, you know, can elevate you. And that's like a question.

I feel a lot of companies and entrepreneurs need to be thinking about is like, how does this role, like what can, what can this role be? Who can come into this role that can essentially elevate the whole business? That is a, that is like the question that everyone needs to be asking themselves when hiring new talent. Absolutely. We've just brought on two senior producers this last fall that have really

elevated our game and experience from agency standpoint and just having money conversation standpoint. Me never working in a large agency. It's kind of just, yeah, like I mentioned, like grown organically and it's scary to put like big budgets out there. Like it's numbers I never would have imagined, like when we first started that I'd be working on budgets, the size that we are. And it's just, you still have that like, okay, let's send it out. But it's, yeah, it's necessary. And it's now like working with the team that we have now, just talking through it

and like me questioning it. It's okay, like, is this necessary? And it's like, yeah, it is. It just, it takes time to do the work that we do and be able to provide the quality that our clients expect from us when they come to us to, uh, for, for their final result. So what has been like the number, what has been the scariest number?

I'm just curious. We, we, uh, hit one. Hi, Linnea. I'll say I don't, this is my daughter. Hello. the uh i'll say i don't this is my daughter hello um but yeah we've had like we've had a few big numbers like in the quite like we had one for 800k earlier this year that was wow it was pretty big so that was with a a client down in the states but uh yeah it's it's getting up there when you're starting with projects that are 500 bucks thousand bucks kind of thing it really changes that's literally that's literally 10 times our biggest number that we've had and we thought that was like when we said that we double checked

the invoice like 10 times we're like okay everything's good right it all makes sense like we thought this out thoroughly okay send it out yeah yeah like sometimes you're double checking the numbers i'm like is this what everything's really adding to especially if it's a volume-based project right because then you start like the numbers don't seem as much it's like okay so this is how much it'll be for shoot day. This is how much we're editing for the video times. How many videos? What? 80.

Okay. And put it in the calculator. Oh, wow. I know. It adds up. It takes time. Right. And that's like, yeah.

Wow. How many people would, did you have to involve in that, in that big project? That would, would uh did you have to involve in that in that big project um that would that would have been like a travel like film on location somewhere for three weeks like big kind of crew it was like a whole like video series like youtube kind of 20 minute long episode uh series kind of thing so it's i don't exactly remember the numbers but it would have been a decent size, a decent size team. So you guys really do a whole mix of like the type of content that you do,

like not only like the, the corporate commercial type projects and the other ones that you have, but also like these like full on series, like how did you find pitching for like content series versus, you know, standalone commercial pieces or corporate video projects. That was like, that, that came to us. So we were, we were asked to put a pitch together for that. Um, but yeah, it, it really just ranges for like most of our work is, is inbound. So it's just kind of like assess and like work with the client do a deep dive discovery and

figure out what they're after and then like we we do we have tracked our like hours and projects for four or five years now so we like really are quite dialed on how long it takes to do this type of project and then it's like okay this project is essentially like two or three of these put together. So we'll kind of like add, add those numbers or buffer it a little bit because it's, you know, that there's going to be efficiencies and communications once it's just like in the process and, and just going that way. But it's yeah, just all trying to try to get as much information. That's been mainly what I've been focused on the last like few years is like tracking information tracking hours looking at our numbers and just

really trying to like smooth it out to be able to put a number and a pitch out there for our clients that's like we believe that we need to the hours to do it, but also something that's not just like totally like unrealistic because they'll just go with somebody else. So it's all, you really got to think through what the ROI is going to be for, for the client, where are they, where are they putting it? What, what are they expecting to get back from the work that we do? Well, you've really developed it into like a science, like down to like the hour

i've i've like we just started recently charging for like pre-production and i didn't even think of like putting it down to like a amount of hours spent on that type of project it's something i've been thinking about this already we got to implement that how do you even determine that like you just go like okay roughly i'm going to spend like two hours on the pitch writing up the pitch for this three hours on researching it like how do you how do you break it down yeah it's not so we don't go that granular and we're even thinking about dialing back um the the time tracking on the pre-production side of things because it is such a a granular thing it's like or if you're spending 15 minutes on emailing this client 15 minutes minutes emailing this client, it's like, yeah, it's just, are we spending too much time

internally versus just actually doing the work for clients to try and get this much information and data where we do have most of it tracked over the last few years now. So we have a good estimate, but it would be like 40 hours for pre-production or and then you have but day rates and things like that for shoot days and then 20 30 40 80 hours for post-production um depending on yeah which project it is i can't imagine with like that massive project how how much time went into the pre-production side of things alone right i feel like that probably was maybe what at least half of the budget maybe even like who knows right we didn't win we didn't actually win that big project but it's if you guys are just starting to charge for for pre-production now i would increase your hours on that side of things for

for when you're pitching projects it. It's a significant amount of time and we've always kind of undervalued that. And we usually would put a number out there and it would be often double the amount of hours that we estimated for the pre-production side of things. Because that's the more time you can put in upfront to be sure of what you're going to be shooting, the more time that it

saves you later and the happier the client will be because you've all agreed upon something at the start. I actually have a bit of a, like, um, uh, what is it? Not a role play necessarily, but like, say a client comes to you and says, here is the script. Here is the video plan. Here is everything. Uh, we need you to, to produce this type of project shoot

it and edit it but then you know when you give them the quote for the pre-production because this has happened in the past that we've seen and one thing we typically tell them is you know like the pre-production is still necessary to kind of uh you know make sure everything is done right and go over everything but like how did have you ever experienced that too where like you've given still a pre-production cost and then the client has just been like but i planned it out you don't need to be planning anything out or something like that yeah it's it just comes down to the experience of things i think and how you have that conversation we definitely get have gotten pushed back on on budgets like why why is this so expensive? And it's even though they have put together a script and like concepts and all that, it may need some tweaks

and changes. And then you still have to plan the like locations or if there's talent or all of these other things that do take time to put that together, even if it is presented to you fully written and scripted. Exactly. I mean, we have to become familiar with the project. We have to know what the vision is, understand it, and then make sure that what they're trying to do will actually work. Because the last thing you want to do is have someone come to you with an idea in mind. You execute it, but maybe they had something different in mind based on what you did and how you interpret it. You have to have those conversations and those plannings beforehand. And otherwise they won't be happy with you.

Right. And that's managing expectations. That's the, that's the biggest key in our business, right? We have to really make sure we know how to properly do that. And that's in pre-production is the best way to do that. Absolutely. So let's talk a bit about your partnership. Your business partner is, who was your business partner's name again? Brian CC. We're not actually business partners

anymore. I ended up buying him out in 2019. So it's, yeah, it's partnerships are it was great for six years or maybe eight years almost um and it was totally necessary for us to get to where we are but we had a bit of different visions of where where we wanted the business to go how we saw it moving forward and um we just had a great chat with him like a couple days ago just about what his freelance kind of life is like now. And it's, he's, he's totally stoked. And it's, it's, it, it's an interesting thing when you start as a creative and even for me, like I don't do a lot of filming or I don't do a lot of editing anymore. And you start to miss that after a while.

more and you you start to miss that after a while um so he fell out of like the love of running an agency or kind of being that that business owner in a way so it's um yeah we we ended up parting ways it was not the easiest thing that we've ever ever had to to deal with and go with and yeah we we weren't the best of friends I didn't talk for almost a year maybe like little bits here and there but um yeah it's we both had our our things that we need to to figure out and we've talked it through and now we're we're good buds again so it's uh and we hire them and still work with them for for a ton of our projects so it's great and I think we both just needed a bit of time to just realize that it's when you're working together as friends, as business partners, money is involved. It's the stress of needing to keep work coming in and pay for other people's living.

There's a lot of stress that's involved in that, for sure. What would you say is, what do you mean by creative differences like was it just like the types of projects you guys were uh starting to focus on is that it or yeah like they're like either going for like big projects or like small projects trying to get into that like retainer like social media model um and and like we've even gone like back and forth like since since then that was 2018 2019 um but i think it just came down to yeah us not fully agreeing on on certain things and it's yeah we just we needed to make a change it's uh yeah it was necessary for for ourselves and and for for the health and success of the business.

Yeah. But I think heads if you, if you tend to butt heads too much and more often than agreeing on certain things, I guess that is usually like a good first tell sign of like, is this partnership really working? Is this sustainable for the business? Is, you know, with any, with any business partnership, there's always going to be, you know, with any, with any business partnership, there's always going to be, you know, creative differences at times, you know, but as long as you're able to come to a resolution at the end, which both parties can agree on, then usually that shouldn't

be an issue. But if it's too much bumping of heads where one person thinks one way, the other one wants to do it another way, then if that happens way too often, then yeah, they, you have to make those, you have to ask those hard questions and, and make decisions, you know, that like you said, sometimes you just need to change it as well. Yeah, absolutely. It was at a time in my life too, where like I, looking back now, I think I probably needed a break from just running and running an agency and us having that like dynamic, that was a bit of conflict.

So I ended up doing a bike ride. I rode from Banff to Mexico through the Rocky Mountains and did it to raise a bunch of money for a non-profit uh called Take a Hike Foundation in Vancouver and yeah we had a goal of doing it in 30 days and we ended up doing it in 38 days but like the wildest thing out of all that is that we started riding in all the forest fires in 2018. So I developed quite a bad like cough and like then getting up in Colorado, we got 12,000 feet. So that cough was like just consistent. And I ended up having like a pain in my lower left abdomen.

So when I came back home, I got an ultrasound to make sure that I was all good. I thought I might have had a hernia or something and complete fluke other side of my body. They found a tumor and I had kidney cancer for about four and a half years. So it was, uh, yeah, right through all of that, where we kind of decided that we need to make a shift with the business. And I was just like, yeah, we got one shot at life here. Let's, let's try and enjoy it as much as possible. So it was, uh, yeah, there was a lot that went into it. That's for sure. Yeah. Like it's, Oh my God, that's hectic, man. That's, that's quite the turning point over there where you're doing all good now.

Doing good. Yep. That's yeah. That's good to hear four and a half years now. That's still cancer free. So got lucky. That's amazing. My kidney taken out from surgery and yeah. Imagine though, if you didn't have that conflict or like a, the creative differences with your business partner that you decided to carry on with the business, you know, all was good, but you never had, you never,

you didn't do something that forced you to kind of get yourself checked out like that. I can like, the crazy thing about our industry is that every little decision or major decision or anything like that has like a rippling effect that i've noticed you know sometimes it's like yeah exactly and say industry i'd say life it's like yes yeah every decision you make is just you don't know what's going to happen and it's like stupid idea to bike to Mexico, save my life. A hundred percent. I remember, I remember early on, uh, um, when I was starting to shoot, I remember I applied, remember Mandy, when they used to put job postings back in the day,

back in like 2013, 2014, I applied, uh, this was early on when I was starting to shoot. And so same with Dario and they needed a shooter for a wedding, this one company. So I was starting to shoot and same with Dario and they needed a shooter for a wedding, this one company. So I applied to that. And then through them, I met other people that I've worked on on other jobs connected with another company than another company who hired me on what was it? Another wedding where I actually met my girlfriend at one of the weddings that we were filming.

Whereas then a few of the shooters that I worked with, they're connected to other creatives who have connected us to other producers. It just keeps going, you know, and who knows where it even goes. Right. And it's just wild to see. And, and kudos for you, you know, you've managed to catch something that was very life-threatening and we're happy to hear that you're finally cancer-free too. thanks man that kind of like loops back to what you're talking about the beginning with networking and how it just creates like that ripple effect of this you get introduced to someone and you're a nice person and you're pleasant to be around and

you work hard and people see that and they they feel comfortable sharing and sharing your name around and spreading your name around and spreading your name around right and that's that's how it all all kind of works and that was a big part of like the doing the right as well as that it's like something different it provided me a break from just the life of running an agency just to go get healthy like be fit. And we created a documentary around it as well called Shorten the Divide. So we just, hopefully that would be something that would help elevate our capabilities as a company.

It like would help like elevate my name and provide a talking point to chat with you guys about it, right? So it's just the gamble, like I didn't know what was gonna come out of it. And yeah, cancer came guys about it. Right. So it's, it's just, it's a bit of the gamble. Like I didn't know what was going to come out of it and yeah, cancer came out of it. So it's just crazy. Something completely out of, out of left field that it just, it felt like the right decision to do. And it clearly was.

Yeah. Interesting. Okay. On a lighter hearted note, why don't you tell us about the podcast you had going on? Yeah, we had Table Till You Make It was a podcast we started up last year. And yeah, it was just something that the team was interested in getting going. I've wanted to get one going for a while. It's kind of been on and off with it, like throughout COVID and trying to get people in and started mainly internally just because it's yeah people weren't comfortable coming in and um yeah but it's just as you guys are are know and as you're doing it it's a new it's an easy way to have great conversations and learn and provide value and share information with people. So it's something that we need to get going again, for sure. Get marketable content. Again, they're advertisements for the business in a way, right?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I remember checking it out on the website. I'm like, oh, they have a podcast. Then I checked the last day. I'm like, oh, they stopped it in September of 21. What's going on here? You got to start it up up again i remember it's the fiscal year ending in september so everyone's gonna stop what they're doing you know that's why dario we're banking on all the interviews right now getting ready for that time yeah right now we we're doing two a week and actually just check the the calendar and if we we stop at yours like we don't we don't film any other ones we have enough to keep us going once a week till about end of july august amazing yeah end of end of july good for you guys and i haven't even done any outreach since like the latest batch which was

like almost a month ago i gotta get that started again that That's great. And that's like we're doing it in the office and in the studio. And it's like you guys just doing it remote like this. It's like you said, it's like it's quick and easy. It's simple. It just it gets the content created to share it. And it's it's the most important thing is just getting it done. You guys have a dope setup, though. Like, yeah yeah it looks awesome

i'm gonna give you props for that we unfortunately we can't really invite uh like almost all of our guests because they're all outside of toronto like you like you want to fly into toronto for that's another thing right yeah yeah yeah covid covid shifted it it really like made this normal and a much easier possibility for sure. Okay. So I guess let's talk a bit about the future of your company. Like now you're kind of running the whole thing. How was that like actually when you, when you did buy out your partner and now it's just you running it? Like, did you like, were you like nervous or were you like, okay, now I kind of get to implement my vision of where this is supposed to be like was it just

easy to get easier to do or what did you miss or what did you miss maybe even um i don't know if i missed anything it's like because i do have john like our creative director who's part owner of the business um as well so being able to have like that person as a sounding board and bounce ideas off of is is so so helpful and um it's it was a bit of i don't think i was nervous at the beginning it was definitely some more pressure and then some intensity but it's i i enjoy that. And it's, it provided a little bit of freedom as well, just based on that, that conflict and just like disagreement that kind of had disappeared. So we were able to just make decisions faster and quicker and just move forward without

needing to have so many talks and conversations to, to question things. It's just kind of, let's make a decision, move forward, see if it works. Yes. Great. No. Why not just kind of let's make a decision move forward see if it works yes great no why not okay let's make that adjustment and change let's move forward again so it's uh it it's it's been good but then like seven months after that kind of happened COVID hit and then everything changed so it was a whole new thing to figure out and as uh as you guys know it's like just everything kind of stopped and then it's like okay how do we how do we get things going what can we do what can we change do we need to modify what what we do like all together luckily like video that's like one of the most powerful tools you can use to communicate so we were able to able to kind of

ride it and things started to pick up in summer fall 2020 and uh kind of maintained maintained from there interesting um and then in terms of i guess like where you guys are heading into in the future like what do you guys have planned um the plan is to kind of stay the course, just keep, the goal is to just take on bigger and bigger projects. So we're shying away from that like smaller project retainer model, just based on the skill set that we have, the team that we have, the interest that the team has, and what they're wanting to do with their creative skills um so just trying to find bigger clients have more creative abilities to to flex what what we can do and uh yeah just keep keep going from there maybe take on john wants to put together a feature so might explore

that in the next uh next year or so here. And I just keep, keep doing work that we're proud of and keep working with people that appreciate it and are excited to, to share it and just yeah, just create, create good stuff. It's funny. Cause usually a lot of companies want to get more retainer like projects, but you're kind of shying away from that. Consistency. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's it's it's a it's a dance like when you have that smaller retainer

consistent like work yes that's there but also if you get like some big projects that take that amount of time as well it's still those budgets are locked in for you to be able to to use and have that time so it's just a different model and a different structure of how to do things and what what we find is that working with smaller clients it's there's there's a lot of management a lot of time management with things like working with many like lots of different clients versus just having like time to focus on, on some, a few, few larger clients in a way. Yeah.

I guess it all depends on what you resources you have available and what works for you. You know, like every company has different definitions of what they find in terms of being a successful model for them or what works for them. And like you said, what you laid out is like, yes, although you have the consistency with those retainer projects, you know, you've for you guys, you see that as potentially a crutch. If you get an opportunity like that other one, that's almost a million dollars, you know, that's going to take up all that time.

Meanwhile, you're going to be working on a project that's say maybe 20,000 a month, you know, depending on how much it entails, it's like, Oh, I, I don't want to turn down that big project, you know, to do, to be working on the smaller one. And yeah, it's, it's all about. If we could get a $20,000 a month retainer, I'd be happy to take that on for sure. I said, if we've got a $20,000 a month retainer project, we'd be, we'd be happy to take that on.

For sure. Don't get me wrong. Of wrong of course i'm just i'm just following examples so yeah it's yeah no but it really it really comes down to yeah the the team you have the skills you have and just how to structure it and you play with it and it's gonna like fluctuate and change over time and we're we're constantly assessing of you play with it, and it's going to fluctuate and change over time. And we're constantly assessing of how we're doing things. And when you're going for these bigger projects, it does create those times of scarcity. And if you haven't won some big ones in a while, it's just like, okay,

cash is getting a little bit tight. How do we do? Do we need to shift things up? It really changes. But if you can keep that consistent and we're starting new marketing efforts now to just be able to approach and find new clients to to introduce them to to our name and I appreciate you guys like having me on to introduce us to to your network as. So it's, yeah, it's ever evolving, ever changing. And yeah, I'm just hoping this pandemic doesn't just completely relapse and come back. But I think we're out of it. Yeah. Hopefully not. In terms of like the new type of marketing you're doing,

is it more like an indirect sales approach? So like, you're not really approaching leads with like, Hey, I noticed you don't have, as an example, I noticed you don't have a video. You could do it like that or more like maybe like educating them on something that might help them. And then kind of like indirectly selling yourself. Yeah. Yeah. It's like trying to provide value to people and always like the best way to go about things. We're doing doing some email outreach trying to like look through LinkedIn as to like who are we, who do we know that is working with people that we would like to work with to try and create those connections and things like that. and things like that. And it's SEO. And like, that's, it's been a big, a big driver for us. Instagram and Facebook, it's hard to have measurables on that. Like, we don't, it's not likely that someone's gonna like see a video and be like, Hey, I have 20 or $50,000 to spend on a

video, like, let's talk like it's, but it does keep you top of mind in that way. So we are running some ads and things like that. But when you're getting into the bigger budgets, it's trying to build that trust over time and just create introductions, have good conversations, and hopefully something comes up in the next 3, 6, 12 months that we have an opportunity to to show what we're capable of you got you got to do a bunch of uh different things you know you got to do seo is king uh but you guys think it's the biggest you gotta have like your adwords your insta ads your linkedin linkedin ads are a little expensive actually i don't know if you're gonna do

that but yeah like the nads if you have the budget for it that linkedin ads might might use up that whole 800k budget you had for that project to run a week's worth of ads a show to 10 people go to 10 people all right 800k pay up yeah you gotta be specific with it yeah and then and then just creating just creating like i don't marketable content you know something that gives clients values like that's what carol and i are trying to figure out right now is in terms of branding for our company like for labs like what kind of content could we create for clients or leads that can give them values that's what we're trying to figure out right now is like trying to see it from like a client's or leads point of view like if i'm randomly scrolling on linkedin or whatever like what would be something

that would draw my attention i don't know if like like it would have to be like a mix of like an ad and then like something else maybe so like i don't know we're still trying to figure that out i think everyone's trying to figure that out absolutely what one thing we noticed uh especially during the pandemic because everything stopped we were looking at the work that we had created beforehand and all of it was client work right which is Which is great. You know, we, and it's good to continue focusing on the work for your clients. You have to always make sure you're doing that, but at the same time, you should also devote some time to working on, on yourself, working on your business, create content for you. Something that, um, as Dario mentioned, you know, stuff that puts you on the map, uh,

stuff that you can provide value to your clients, your network, you know, stuff that puts you on the map, uh, stuff that you can provide value to your clients, your network, you know, and then from there you build your own library of content for your business rather than, you know, only having a client work, which a lot of the time we can't even show all the time, right. You know, there's a lot of that red tape. It's like NDAs and then say, great. So what, have we not been doing anything for the last three years? No, we've been busy, but this is another way to potentially do that as well. It's just hard because you're juggling like 50 hats and then like it's time consuming. So even if you're juggling 50 hats and then you also have to figure out like what this new branding approach

is going to be. And then even if you do figure it out, you got to go through with it. And then, you know, another fire starts here and then it's just time consuming. And, but you know, it's whoever, whoever figures it out, like reeks the benefits of that. Right. So exactly. It's, it's chicken and the egg. It's something that I've, I've really noticed, like, especially like with my ADHD and just like when I need to create time for myself to be able to slow things down to think and make the right decisions not more decisions so having people in place to do things where I know I'm going to procrastinate I know I'm going to struggle to get it done in a quick manner it's just like I don't need to to prove to the team or myself that I'm like, can do that. It's like pass it on because I have like so many things that I need to do, but I need to like focus on the real important things to be able to move that

forward. I don't think you have ADHD. I think you, you're just a business owner. I think we all go through that. You're 300 times more likely to be a business owner. That's part of our job description description can't focus on one task yeah you try to but then especially if you have a business partner then it's like you're working on one and then the other one's like hey we need to do this and we forgot or we need to still do this is like okay hold on let me pause this what is the emergency yeah i know my wife's been great with that in the last little

bit just she's been my like sounding board to write down my ideas what i'm thinking through versus just me throwing all of that at john and him just being like oh what's going on like so trying to trying to create that barrier of the ideas in my head to what's realistic and what we can act on now just gotta add them to like a google keep note but then the problem becomes there's too many notes and you can't sort through them or like some of them don't make sense. They just vanish and disappear anyways.

It's just like turns into a blur of nothing. It's like you got to have those discussions. Okay. I think that's good. I think we hit the one hour mark. Kiril, do the honors. Well, Jeff, thanks again for joining us on the show. You know, like we really like,

we really appreciate you taking the time to share your experiences, you know, and you know, especially some of those very personal stories that you mentioned, you know, and honestly, thanks again. I appreciate it, guys. Thanks so much for having me. And I hope you got some value out of it.

And I hope your viewers and listeners get something out of it too. So I appreciate it guys. Thanks so much for having me. And I hope you got some value out of it and I hope, hope your viewers and listeners get, get something out of it too. So I appreciate it guys. Keep doing what you're doing. Thank you. Awesome. Take care.