Creatives Grab Coffee - How We Started | Creatives Grab Coffee 1

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

Welcome to the Creatives Grab Coffee Podcast. A platform where we bring on successful business professionals to discuss various topics within their field, all over a cup of virtual coffee. Our hosts Kyrill & Dario want to make CGC a community where people share their stories, experiences and insights.

Hey, we should grab coffee sometime. This is one of the most frequently used phrases by creatives seeking to set up a meeting and connect. Who knows how many ideas, plans, and relationships have been built over a cup of coffee? This is why we decided to start the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast. A platform where we invite creatives to come and discuss various topics about the industry, all over a cup of coffee. So let us start. all over a cup of coffee. So let us start.

The funny thing is today we're drinking coffee that is from the classics, the Costco coffee. Have you had that before? You got Costco coffee? Yeah, so we went to my parents' house and my mom said like, how much are you paying for coffee? I told her like $15 a bag. From the local place. And she's like, are you kidding me? For $15, I get a kilo of beans. I'm like, espresso? She's like, yes. Well, okay then. So this is what we're starting off with today.

See, the classics though is the Nescafe, the instant coffee. Instant coffee. That's what I have every morning. It's the easiest thing to make. It's funny because I was drinking that back in 2016 almost every day right before I met Vicky. And when she found out how I was drinking my coffee, she said, you're an animal.

You're going to start drinking some proper coffee. And so she started introducing me to all these different ones. Yeah, I don't have the grinder, like the thing where you grind the coffee and everything in the machine. Yeah. And I keep being lazy and not get it the thing is you were also giving me problems you were saying why are you drinking ness cafe this is so terrible i don't like this meanwhile now that's all you drink i went to healthy planet i got one of those like

high-end like instant coffee ones he's pretty good pretty funny uh anyways let's get into it so this is episode one of the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast. And, you know, the name kind of just stuck out to us because we found that anytime we were trying to meet or network with people, I was always saying at the end of my emails, yeah, let's grab a coffee next week. You know, what are you up to? And then they're like, okay, let's do it. So for those of us who don't know who we are, Dario, how do you want to describe my team? I am the multimillionaire, philanthropist, billionaire, Iron Man. I am Iron Man.

He was trying to figure out a bit. He was trying to figure out a bit right there. I was trying to remember what Tony Stark said in the to figure out a bit right there but i'm trying to remember what tony stark said in the movie and i'm like i remember he said philanthropist i remember he said billionaire and i remember the iron man bit well okay let's let's kind of go into the backstory of how we kind of got into the into the filmmaking industry so for me i started i started dabbling in in video content when i I was, I think about 18, just as I was going into university. And the first two years were a little bit more of that, just dabbling for fun, nothing too serious.

And then it all started when I... Did your school have like a film program or something? What, my high school? Yeah. No, I had a friend who kind of introduced it to me originally him and I were trying to go into business together but you know clearly it didn't work out so we just went our separate ways and um I just continued in marketing at Ryerson you never told me about this guy I've told you many times uh but anyway like while I was in school I had just bought my

first camera which back then uh was a hell of a lot of money for the quality that is out there now. I cannot believe it was the Canon T2i. That was my, that was my first, my first camera that I ever bought. I remember it cost me about $750. Luckily I had some money saved up for my birthday at the time and I was able to get it. And that camera lasted me quite a bit. And then I think it was in 2013, the summer of 2013 when I went to Bulgaria with my family, we were hiking up in the Rila Mountains. And when you're on a mountain at, what was it,

like 2,700 feet above sea level? You got to take selfies, right? Well, selfies were just starting to get really... 2013, right? Well, selfies were like just starting to get really... 2013, right? Like they were... How did selfies start? Well, selfies probably started a lot earlier than that. But I think at that time is like when it was all over the place.

Like that was like when people were starting to really realize that videos and photos are going to be so major in social media. And so people started to focus a lot on that. But anyways, when I was up in the mountains I decided okay you know what what do I want to do with my life do I want to do marketing or do I want to take a risk and try to go for filmmaking and I realized okay you know what I like marketing but I don't think I like it as a career I'm gonna go for it with filmmaking and figure it out I'm just gonna do it and at the set the same moment when

i realized that i'm like okay i just chose a career that i'm not gonna make any money in i accepted it at that moment instantly i'm like i'm not gonna make any money that's it so what what is the rational what is the rational move uh to do now and i realized okay i got two years left to school let me see if there's some way to get into the film program that's um practical yeah without wasting money or time uh and i looked into it but i realized you know what screw it let me just finish my last two years i've already spent this much time yeah you're already halfway i'm already halfway like i might as well and then transferred a lot of the credits over or no no i was I was basically, I would have had to start from scratch.

So that would have been like six years by the end of it. Exactly. And then I had friends of mine, I had some friends in the film program at Ryerson. They told me, yeah, the first two years are just, you know, you're working with a film camera or a lot of theory and things like that. I'm like. All outdated stuff. Exactly. theory and things like that i'm like all outdated stuff exactly like i'm not gonna spend 25 grand in time and effort over the next two years just to learn stuff and be back to where i am right now

still like you know what let me just finish school i'll use the the same two years to study to study uh filmmaking on the side practice a little bit, and then by the time I graduate, then I can go all out and start. Now, the thing that I didn't expect, though, is when I got back, fortuitously, one of our now friends, Mo, he reached out to me on Facebook. At the time, I didn't know him, and he asked me to join his student group that he was starting at the business school. And at first, I'm like, I want to do filmmaking. I don't want to be part of a student group. It's going to be business school and at first I'm like I want to

do filmmaking I don't want to be part of a student group it's going to be a waste of time. When was this around what time? This was I think in it's been like around September no mid no mid-July this was mid-July July okay it was in the summer when he reached out to me because I never met Mo. 2013? 2013 yeah I had just got back from I had just gotten back from Bulgaria knowing, okay, this is what I'm going to do. Let's get things kind of started. So the first thing I started doing was actually putting together some travel videos of my trip because I went not only to Bulgaria, I also went to France. And did I go to England? I don't remember, but I did a couple of videos from that. And I was just focusing on that when I got the message from Mo. And he told me, I want you to be my guy for marketing. And I said, I don't want to do marketing. I'm planning to be a filmmaker. He's like, okay, you're going to be my VP of media.

I'm like, who are you? Because I didn't know who he was. I'd never met him in person. But he told me that he knows of me and he knows how good I am and what I do. And I said, okay, let's meet and talk. And so the rest is history with that. I started working with him in the student group. And then the first video I made, um, was a promo video for the student group. And somehow that got shared everywhere. I think I remember it. It was like that you were jumping off the truck at one point.

Was that it? That was when you discovered like the Steadicam. No, that was like the you were jumping off the truck at one point was that it that when you discovered like the steadicam no that was like the second or third that was like the second or third video i did after that um but the very first one was this very i look back on it it's such a bare bones video of randomness but it was it was like the first thing that people had seen within that circle so to give a little bit of context of the Ted Rogers School, that about 10% of the student body was very involved with all the student groups, the extracurriculars and everything. It was like a big community. And so once you broke into that, everyone saw each other, everyone knew each other, everyone saw everything. It wasn't something I had planned or thought about. And when we released that video, it got like a thousand views within a couple weeks.

Student group for a student group? That's really good. Yeah. Like for what it was, it actually got quite a bit of attention. Like even getting a couple hundred views, that meant all the people within that space saw it. And it wasn't, they weren't even like a big student group at the time no it wasn't the the thing that made so the student group that we that most started was a speech and debate one which wasn't around it wasn't around at the time so

it was brand new that Toastmasters but this this was different from toastmasters yeah this was different and this was more like something a little bit more raw with debate and speech coaching. That's what most hook was with it. And because it was so new, a lot of people were watching it and were really curious to see how everyone was doing. He actually brought on board a lot of people from different student groups that he knew were talented. It's like he went to every student group group got the best of the best and put it together like an all-star all-star team of people like this was one of the most productive student groups i had ever uh had been associated with without actually having to do 50 000 meetings which was what that was a big thing right a lot

of meetings for no reason do you remember like people would say like uh like hey can can we uh get to work on this yeah let's set up a meeting in three days and uh and then we can go over what we will do not even not even do it yeah to go over what we will do i feel like that probably continues into like workplace right oh 100 because everyone always complains about like dumb meetings they have to attend and like nothing ever gets done it's because it's the old school mentality where you also make yourself something important and busy and it was the thing that was better if you say like i have a meeting to attend oh maybe it's like a nice way to like not do work you're like i got a meeting you know let me just quickly do that i got like two or three meetings tonight i can't i can't i just

can't do it i just can't do it that quick 30 second call i can't do it i got a meeting yeah and i remember um so like once that video um uh once that video was released and everyone had seen it that's when student groups started to approach me and ask me hey can you do a video for us as well and at the time I was thinking okay I obviously can't charge a hell of a lot because this is like I've only done like a couple actual videos that I put out there I want to make something minor like. I just want to make a little bit just so that I can make it worth it and I can actually get a little bit of income

to start getting better gear. So I just started charging $150. Really? That was it. It's not bad if you're just starting out. That's all that I was making. And they were usually like two to three minute videos. I would probably go in for one day usually like two to three minute videos.

I would probably go in for one day or like half a day to shoot. And starting out, looking back, it was a good way to do it. I basically did it like that because I wanted to make it in the habit where I don't do things for free from the beginning. Even if you charge a little bit, it's good to do that

because it tells people that you have value for your work. It's funny though, like with that amount, it's like, oh, I can only buy like a small battery. I your work yeah it's funny though like with that amount it's like oh i can only buy like a small battery i know like it's funny because like everything costs so much everything costs so much but you know the thing that helped a lot in the beginning is when you have limitations that's when a lot of creativity comes out that's the thing that i noticed and i feel like that was a luxury that the luxury of limitation I think is very it's overlooked by a lot of people like if you think about a lot of the best pieces of work in the film industry in advertising and documentaries a lot of the time it comes with limitations and

raw moments I mean one of the mind you their limited budgets are still limitations are damn high limit limitations are limitations the thing that made it a bit more Like for example in the movie casino there was that one scene between Robert De Niro and Sharon Stone who? Which was very intimate scene the one where there where she was crying and he was trying to comfort her on the bed And it was very intimate. It was a lot of emotion. Of all the takes that Martin Scorsese had, the one he included in the film was one where it was just a slight adjustment from the camera up where he moved the camera. It's such a minor thing, but a lot of people would have wanted to redo it. But when he was in the editing room, he noticed, you know what, that limitation or,

or thing that happened, uh, from the moment, uh, made that scene better. That's probably the best take with you because I don't even remember that. That's what I mean. Going back to,

um, uh, to the time of Ryerson, um, I started to charge $150 per video and that's when I was immediately approached by the biggest student group in, in the school, which was, uh by the biggest student group in the school which was the Ted Rogers Management Conference. Yeah and they wanted to do quite a bit of content that

year they wanted to do five videos and then a same day edit video of the three-day conference at the end of the year and I think at the time this was probably the first big big contract that i had set myself up with uh i said okay uh for all this let's do 1500 yeah which nowadays it's like okay only for a little bit a little bit that can only get you so much but we lose money on this exactly but at the at the time i thought to myself wow well you know how much I can get with $1,500? Were you just like throwing money in the air? I was just, I was really, I was excited. And so I developed like three or four promo videos for them.

And then... Wait, did they, was that okay with their budget? Or was that like you had to like sell them on it? Or were they just like... No, they were cool with it. They were cool, like right away. Like, did you leave that meeting going like, how much like sell them on it? Or were they just like, no, they were cool with it. They were cool. Like right away. Like, did you leave that meeting going?

Like, how much did I leave on the table? No, man, that was my first. Dude, at that point, I had only been negotiating for a month in the I was in the industry for one month. Yeah. In the industry. But, you know, if someone gives you a quick yes right away, you're like, it wasn't like that. I think they actually told me that the guy that they originally were talking to had quoted them like 2500 oh i see okay so you got i got a ballpark and they told me 2500 for one video uh and and that was like the conference video that

they would do and i thought to myself okay you know what this this could be something good for me let's i'll do i can do 1500 that's also a lot more than what i was gonna charge anyway that's a 150 that's like 10 times like the regular amount but i but think about it like this i made five or six videos for them so 150 by five that's a by six that's about 900 bucks thousand bucks total roughly so i just tacked on 500 extra and so it was done deal started developing content for them and because they were the biggest everyone in the school was looking at what TRMC was doing so even more and more uh student groups started coming to me and uh and asking to do work with me and the thing that's surprising is I I didn't realize how

an opportunity like that just popped out of nowhere. You know, it's like I was riding a wave for a little bit. And I think it was right at November or December when you reached out to me and you were saying that you were thinking about switching over to do video as well. What was it that made you decide to jump into filmmaking and instead of business law? So at the time time if I remember

correctly during the summer I was helping out this YouTube channel we both were on that we both were on that yeah I think that's how we well we met before that but then you joined that YouTube channel and then I started coming along so we were both doing videos yeah for that channel right yeah I don't even remember the name of that thing by now but anyways that's when I got a taste of like shooting and you know like just being a videographer camera operator and I liked it I thought it was really fun right yeah so I remember that thing ended up dissolving at one point

and then you were off doing your own thing. And then when I was seeing what you were doing, I was like, oh, that's pretty cool stuff. Right. And I wanted to get back into it. So I remember reaching out to you again around November, December. And I was like, hey, if you need an extra set of hands, let me know. I'd love to get back into the video world. Right. I'd love to get back into the video world, right? And yeah, we started doing, I think the first shoot I came on, it was some fashion thing you were doing, some fashion video. Because I remember the very first thing was just you were shooting something in one of the rooms.

And you were assisting. And I was just assisting. Yeah. And I was like, I just really want to shoot something for the camera. Funny story though, funny story with that first shoot was I had just bought these new lights off Amazon. Oh yeah. The lights. Okay.

Yeah. Tell them. So these are, these are buying, buying lighting equipment from Amazon is it's only Russian roulette. If you don't know the brands that you're buying from. And at the time, obviously I wasn't too educated with what was working and what wasn't because LED lights were not

as big back this was still the fluorescent still fluorescents and light bulbs were the heat up and everything yeah yeah and I bought these lights with fluorescents because they also don't heat up as quickly yeah and I set up the lights there and immediately two or three of the bulbs just burnt out and started stinking up the place. Like chemical smell. Like I remember that stuff was probably toxic. Yeah I could not believe that it happened.

Like I just used it once. This is like my first time shooting with you too. What's this guy doing? Like what's he getting right? You didn't say anything though. Maybe I'm made of a stink. Maybe this guy doesn't know what he's doing. Funny thing is you didn't say anything though because you didn't say anything.

I was like what's this guy doing? I was like what's this guy doing? I was like what's this guy doing? i made a mistake maybe this guy doesn't know what he's doing funny thing is you didn't say anything though because you're you didn't know better back then either so it's like what were you gonna say to me but yeah i go because then i remember uh the lights we didn't have lights so i remember what you did was um we just used a natural light from the outside because it was that place right by the courtyard yeah on the main floor so we just opened up the the blinds and i remember you just did like a like a gimbal walkthrough with the you had the there was like 10 or 20 people and you had them standing like two rows and you just went down the row uh so i guess that goes back to what you were

saying about working with your limitations because i think it was actually better that way. Because those lights were not... You had just one set of lights. What were you going to do with that, right? It was going to be poorly. There were three lights. There were three big lights. Oh, wait.

Didn't we still use them? I think just one of them burned out, right? It was like a couple of the bulbs burnt out, but the lights were still using. Oh, we like mis-Frankensteined them. We had like one-on-one, something like that. Yeah. Yeah. So we just kind of like did like a very basic spread and just worked with the concept yeah

granted these were concepts that if you look back on them now they're they're a little goofy in what they were but i think at the time it was very like i was doing student videos at the time nobody was doing anything no one's done well i don't know how it is now but i remember like a year or two after we left this is what i don't get no one in the film program i don't know why no one in the film program thought okay if these kids need experience let me hook them up to the business school the student groups there and get them to make videos for the student groups because a there's a need there's a need there's a big need there's a need uh they could they have all the equipment there like we had to like oh we had to buy our own stuff i remember i remember in november i went and i had to and i bought i knew i needed a better camera yeah so i dropped two and

a half thousand dollars on a new camera and in 60 with the 24 to 105 exactly that was such that was such a big expense in january too i remember that that was a big purchase i remember you boy camera i'm like oh look now i got it you know the funny thing is when you bought your camera you were barely even doing any video at that point you actually bought it for our first shoot as well uh the first the fashion one for the fashion yeah yeah yeah after it was after we did that um that one where you assisted but yeah why don't they why don't they like because uh okay those kids coming out of film school they need if they want to get started in in in the field you know like it'll be good if they have a portfolio right a real something right you could get that so easily from the student group videos

right and get practice in you get your producing in your directing skills client management like because we were like a one-man. We were doing producing, directing, shooting, audio, editing, not to the same extent. Now we, now we have a roster of people. We can just call upon them. Right. But before it was like, we were doing like five roles into one. Right. We're doing all that stuff.

For 150 bucks. Yeah. Like if they, if they did it like kind of like how, um, remember our capstone? Um, well actually I had a capstone course where they matched us with companies to do actual marketing projects for. That could have been a good way to also be not necessarily like a capstone, well, actually, I had a capstone course where they matched us with companies to do actual marketing projects for that could have been a good way to also be not necessarily like a capstone, but like a like a third year even thing where they pair you up with different student groups, work with them throughout the year to help them develop content, be creative, they get content, you learn, you could even do it as like a It's like pair three people together from the film program to go do content for that.

Yeah. And every, like, I think, year or so, I like to check in to see if any of the groups have done content. Have they been doing anything? Really nothing. We did a lot. Those two years we were there, we did a lot of stuff. I remember we were, like, we were the only guys that were doing it, and no one wanted a piece of us. of stuff. I remember we were like, we were the only guys that were doing it and everyone wanted a piece of us. Cause when you started helping me, like even, even when you got your camera,

that first year, I was still pretty much handling all the, all the workload and you were just coming to help me shoot a lot. Uh, and then it was the year after that, when we decided to start a business together, uh, and then try to broaden it a little bit more. After you started shooting with me, you actually helped in the sense of like getting different types of footage, different angles, you know, and I think the first really big one that we did together was the actual conference for the Ted Rogers Management Conference. Yeah, which was at the end of the year, right?

No, no, that was midway through the second semester. It was midway through? It was midway through. But that was also that second semester where i was doing the videos were that was when i really burnt out yeah i remember you were like i burnt out so bad got those like uh black spots under your eyes they're still there to this day yeah i know they're like permanently ingrained from that because at that point I had a full course load and I was minoring in entrepreneurship so most of my courses were all project-based where you'd have to meet with people to go over stuff which takes a lot of time and effort. So I had that, five or six classes of that.

I was working at the bank part-time like two, three times a week. I also had a girlfriend at the time so that's also almost like bank part-time like two, three times a week. I also had a girlfriend at the time. So that's also almost like another part-time job. No, that's a full-time job. Almost a full-time job. Exactly. Exactly. And on top of that, I shot and edited and organized 15 videos in three months.

It was a lot, man. I did not. I think I slept three hours a night for those three months. And I realized, okay, I've hit my tipping point. I'm going to spread it out a little bit. And the first thing I did was, I actually started a little bit before that,

but I was slowly starting to raise my prices. I went from 150 to 500. And then for the following year, when we were in business together, I think we started charging between 500 to 1,000, depending on how big the scale of the project was. Benefits of a monopoly. No competition. Exactly.

There really wasn't. I mean, there were a couple people. Like those student groups had the budget. They would waste so much money on like just bullshit. That's what I was noticing. That's why the prices started going up. I had one student group there today oh there's like the one of it made the news too oh no that was the student union that was

completely that was separate from what we were doing but the the interesting thing was like I noticed that they had budgets so I started raising my prices pretty early on and this one student group the marketing exec there i knew him and he started pulling the card oh you know we're friends yeah like come on you can do it this is business bro i told him like i can't man like you're asking me to do this everyone else is paying me this i can't charge you less when i'm charging them this price yeah for me it was a learning experience you know i learned okay you know enough student groups there were enough students coming at that point at that point like i was just like those positions only last one year anyways then

it's new blood i got i got time i don't have that much time i can only take on so much work you know so i graduated in two years but i got time the the funny thing is like it it it was almost as if uh like like my name was a luxury with your brand name it was like a brand name like i even had people saying like we want that that akira lazaroff film at the end of our student group videos like people were saying that i had i had not planned any of that to be where it was i was just riding this whole wave for that imagine you were waiting in line at Timmy's inside TRS here like I don't have to wait in line you know who I am imagine though don't get me wrong I was very humbled that I that so many people were coming to me like this like I think in that first year

that of doing video this was my third year of university mind you and I think in that first year that of doing video this was my third year of university mind you and I think in that entire year I did about 30 videos in total like a lot that's like including music videos on the side promo videos for external companies and yeah like 30 videos in in two semesters like the amount of experience that you get from that is i think i got like three years worth of work under my belt in just that's what six to eight months time frame it's a lot man there's a lot of work there and no one's uh thought about like you know opening that market up again i don't know if that's even like a thing anymore there. It always depends on the environment and how tight knit the people are. From there, that was the starting point.

And then you got more and more involved in that last year, like towards the end. And in that summer, you and I decided, okay, let's start a business together. Because the name is good. But again, it's a one person name. It's harder to scale that in the future. So I agreed and we decided to push forward with that. I remember when we were talking about becoming like a business, like business partners. I remember you had a bad experience with the previous guy, right?

So you were unsure about it. I was. Because that first experience taught me a lot about being you know. Being careful who you choose, right? Being careful who you work with in general, right? Because sometimes it could be someone you trust completely. And then all of a sudden, off the drop of their hat, they just decide to betray you or, you know, like turn on you without any communication whatsoever. I didn't like that there was that that there was no communication tell them what happened well what happened was like um so in case anyone doesn't know i started this um the guy who introduced me to filmmaking uh

the summer before university i decided to um i got i got very interested in the whole process because i saw what he was doing and i thought it was pretty cool. And he showed it to me and I was talking with him and I'm like, I think I want to do this as well, but more on the business side of things. That's what I wanted to do at first. Actually, I wanted to do the business side of things. He was doing more like narrative stuff. Yeah. He was doing more narrative and creative. So it was almost like a no brainer. It's like, let's, let's do it together. You handle the creative, I handle the business and and all that and for like two months it was going good and then we did this 48 hour film challenge program and why is it always a 48 hour phone challenges that cause issues I think is

because there's a lot of high stress and high tense situations and I don't know exactly what I think because everyone thinks everyone that does that is usually not professionally doing that stuff. So there's kind of like a clash of egos. Oh, 100%. We'll get to the other story because we had the...

We had another similar situation. But I feel like that'll be for another episode because this is already, like we're already getting close to the time. But anyways, so we decided to go into business together. I do the business. He does the time. But anyways, so we decided to go into business together. I do the business. He does the creative.

Then we went into the 48 hour film challenge and this was already, first year of uni had already started at that point. It was like September, October. This was first year? Yeah, this was first year. This was right before first year. This was like 2011 then?

Yeah, 2011 in the summer. That's when him and I started doing this, right? And then it spilled into first year. This was like 2011 then. Yeah. 2011 in the summer. That's when him and I started doing this. Right. Okay. And we, and then spilled into first year of uni. Uh, and we did the 48 hour film challenge. I think it was like towards the end of September or something like that.

And, um, something happened. Like, uh, like he was the one like directing the, the whole, the whole thing,

you know, and, and handling all aspects of it, uh, in terms of that and i was uh helping produce and like get some of the people together with him you know like help manage it yeah and then somehow randomly at one point i noticed that he just wasn't he was just ignoring me just started ignoring me the whole time i didn't understand what was going on i i don't know why I was trying to talk to him because what happens when something's wrong on set you communicate with the people right like I didn't

even have that much experience and I knew that that's what I needed to do but he he just kind of kept going like that and uh I just kind of let it be and like let's finish the challenge and um and get it over with and then later I can talk with him. And, um, I think it was like, I tried talking with him after that and he said, yeah, no, it's all good. You know, I was just very stressed and all that. And I know like you hear it now and it sounds like BS, but I don't know what it was at the end back then, but whatever. Uh, and then i think like a week later i tried to log into our youtube channel and facebook or something and i couldn't log in and i'm like why can't i log in and i noticed that the passwords changed uh and like everything changed and i'm like what's going on and then

change the locks on you get back home it's literally what he did it's literally what he did and then like the um like the name of the company was like a combination of our names and that was changed to a different name like a few days prior yeah yeah without telling me so he changed the name uh this was on youtube uh yeah this was on youtube and how many subscribers did you guys have we got a couple i think we got like a couple hundred like like two, three hundred at that point, which was OK back then. And yeah, so he he switched everything. And and then I messaged him. I tried calling him, but he didn't answer. He never liked talking to me on the phone that often. From what I remember, I don't know, maybe we did, but I messaged him and I said, like, why did you change all the passwords?

And he said and he said, I'm leaving and I said like why did you change all the passwords and he said um and he said I'm leaving and I'm taking half came back for everything no he messaged me saying uh you'll get access to our YouTube channel on Facebook when you finally get to my level you are you are not at the level that I am and then maybe I'll consider us working together yeah he just like texted me that without any context like what just happened there was no event that I recall that triggered any of this I was only trying to be helpful with whatever we were doing yeah and he just hit that with hit me with that and I just replied okay you know I can't believe that this is what how you're choosing to go about this.

And then I never heard back from him again. Jesus. Did that guy amount to anything? Did you check him out lately? Actually, he reached out to me a couple times over the last few years. Yeah, when he saw the success, right? No, he... He's like the guy in Carlito's way, the guy in the wheelchair, Viggo Mortensen.

He's like, hey, hombre. No, from what I understood, he's done some pretty good stuff. He's done a lot of narratives and music videos, I think. Because I was following some of the work he was doing after that. He reached out to me, I think, three years ago. It seemed like he wanted to kind of bury the hatchet a little bit you know and it's like hey i met with some people who've put life into perspective just wanted to see how you're doing which i i recognize that was a good gesture but

you know we're doing the 12-step program he's going through all the people he's been a douche to i mean i don't know like i i left it sounds like an episode of seinfeld i left it open-ended and I still leave it open and if you wanted if he wants to reach out to to meet and talk yeah like I'm cool with that I I hold no grudges you know there's I leave it open-ended but I realized that he I wasn't I guess he wasn't ready to like message me more than that and then I didn't hear back for like another year like that message just kind of fizzled out really quickly because there was no conversation. I remember like, yeah, there was some shady stuff that went on. And I was like, I remember you weren't open.

You were like hesitant to the idea. And I was like, I got to like. Hesitant to what? Becoming partners. Oh, you mean? Yeah. When we got partners. Yeah.

Hesitant. And I was like, oh, I got to like. Well, yeah, think about it. Like a mince this guy i was also with he was supposed to be one of my closest friends back then and then he just up and betrayed me just like that without telling me what happened really there was no communication and so i was hesitant and i was almost i was actually like when you suggested to do it together my first reaction I'm not doing it yeah I'm like no but I think the thing that the thing that was that got me wanting to do it was because uh you also had uh a pretty big moment when you reached out uh a couple months prior because you

and I at one point we just we stopped talking for like two months yeah like fizzled out like like I don't know how that friendship just fizzled out like that but I think it was because of the previous organization we were working with a little toxic it was very toxic and uh the person that was heading it um apparently was putting some negative uh energy out there about me with you and you unfortunately you uh it caught on with you and i noticed that and then we stopped talking for a bit and then before you even wanted to do anything with me you first came to me and said hey man like i noticed like i i haven't been treating you right and i'm really sorry you know like i want us i want us to still be friends going forward and i'm like you know what this is very big of you let's let's do it and that was the first thing

so i'm like okay there's i feel like i can trust this guy differently. And the second thing was that you had a willingness to learn. And you were wanting to do this purely for the passion of it, right? I almost saw it was like a bit of a reverse situation than what happened with my first business partner. Because he was the creative and i was the business and then this was kind of flipped because you were handling and you kind of do still handle a lot of the business aspects of uh of laughs but you also do a lot of the creative now um but that's kind of like how it started um i was a bit more the creative you were you were coming in more from the business and then i'll teach you what i can with the creative yeah as we go because i didn't have that background no like anything you ever learned from a video for like the next few

years was while we were working together i thought i was going to go into law like video is nowhere near the horizon that's what i'm saying like we wasn't something we ever thought of like uh i was just introduced to it as like something on the side i saw it as like something i could maybe learn for business or marketing yeah as experience and then i didn't even think we were gonna like i didn't think it was gonna amount to what it was like up until i think uh the last year of uni which was funny because when i was actually starting to like become you know uh when things were picking up i was like oh shit we can actually like turn this into like a business thing i remember talking i'm like should we even finish school like i don't even think i'm gonna

pass finance anyways so like let's just let's just quit he just really did not like his finance class finance 401 how many times did you have to redo it oh god oh god but uh props to dimitri that guy like got me to pass that class oh yeah no but oh but the funny thing was you forgot to mention the third thing which was uh when we're talking on the phone and you're kind of like all right i'm i'm open to this i was like all right but uh and then we did the the the uh scarface bit oh yeah we had the when tony's talking to sosa and he's like i only tell you this once tony don't don't do this i'm like okay i have to bleep it out don't don't mess with me but those weren't his wording but that wasn't his wording but um we kind of laughed at that i was like all

right a bit of a backstory about about this dario and i we first became friends because we have a huge passion for films and he introduced me to a lot of really good movies back then which I didn't I think all I would say a lot I'm gonna say a lot when comes to mob movies mob movies pretty much most of it yeah from Dario and with that like that's kind of like how we started like and once you and I started once you and I started laps the business started growing steadily over the next few years. I guess we can wrap it up around here.

It was good to kind of explore how we started. Got emotional almost at times. I thought I was going to have to grab you a tissue. No. Thank you for tuning in to the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast. You can find us on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Let us know if there are any topics you would like for us to cover in future episodes. You can reach out to us at creativesgrabcoffee at gmail.com.