Creatives Grab Coffee - Improve Your Client Experience | Creatives Grab Coffee | Episode 36

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Today we welcome Adam Duguay from Coelement Inc. A strategic and creative storytelling partner for purpose-led businesses and organizations. Listen as we dive into what it takes to improve your client experience, growing your business, working in small markets and many more topics.Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions. Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional, there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production.To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/ Subscribe and follow for future episodes! Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/

hello everyone welcome back to creators grab coffee this is episode where we at now 36 35 36 we got adam from the co-element on with us another person from winnipeg we're slowly going through our our winnipegians it's actually it's actually winnipeggers that's what what we prefer but i'll take i'll take winnipegans. Whatever. I'm not picky. I applied the Torontonian to Winnipegonian. That's exactly what you did. Ah, spoken like a true Torontonian. So Adam, I guess let's start off with something easy.

Just tell us how you got, you came up with the name The Co-Element. It's a weird question. Sorry, it's a weird name, isn't it? Yeah. So when I started the company with two other partners, this is almost 18 years ago now, I'm dating myself. One of the other owners, one of my other partners was a real marketing guy. And so he wanted to, there was a play on words. So co was all about like collaboration. It was about creativity.

It was about, there was all these words that he had. And so there was this methodology behind it. And I think there was a magazine at the time, it was an advertising magazine, and they had this sort of section called Co and it was like Co underscore, Co underscore. And so we sort of played off that and then we came up with the Co element.

Actually, the first name of our company was actually Elemental Motion Media. underscore and so we sort of played off that and then we came up with the co-element actually the first name of our company was actually elemental motion media it that's why that's why we rebranded because it was like man no one wants to type this in their email address right so it's like yeah it was it was it's a funny story but that's how it was and i i had really nothing to do with the name at all and then as years went on I had the opportunity to buy my business partners out because I they didn't want to continue with it And I wanted to continue with the business and that was probably like almost seven years ago now and

We just had brand recognition in the market and I didn't really want to Change the name because everybody knew our name. We had a pretty big client list at the time and a growing client list. And people were getting to know us. So part of the reason why I paid so much was to keep the name. And I think it was worth it. It was a huge gamble at the time when I was going to buy the company. I'm like, oh my God, I'm paying all this money just to keep this name I don't even like it but it was worth it it was worth it because when I bought it the phone kept ringing people

knew us as co-elements so I just kept it so that's kind of the backstory behind it you had two other partners one of them was focusing more on the marketing was the other person focusing on she was more uh web and interactive and uh they're two super talented people uh i still know them yeah they both just sort of wanted to go in a different direction and um my my background which you're probably gonna ask about i i'm not sure if you're gonna ask about it but uh was always production so it it you know it made sense sense for me to keep it and just continue on with it. I've always been curious how it would be when you're starting a business with several partners.

It's usually a little bit easier to buy other people out when there's a business that deals with a lot of product, a lot of employees, and it's a little bit easier to quantify that. But when you're doing something that's like a service, that's very, it's harder to quantify like that. Like how would, how did that process go for you guys in terms of like, like defining the assets of co-element? Was it just the name or was there some, what else was there behind it?

Yeah. I mean, you're, you're exactly right. And I mean, this, do you guys know who Blair Enns is? Oh, yeah, from Two Bobs. Two Bobs podcast, right? They talk about this all the time. It's really interesting. It's an interesting conversation because really what it is in marketing or creative companies like us where our value is our creativity. It's really about perceived value. It's perceived value. Or sometimes it's a book, right? So advertising agencies, traditionally, if they're going to sell, they'll have a big book of clients, right? And they'll sell that book of clients, right?

And typically, you know, the way, you know, the agencies work is that they have a roster of retainer clients. So it's guaranteed business over, you know, year after is that they have a roster of retainer clients so it's guaranteed business over you know year after year and it's easy to sell something like that because you go well you know x client is 30 million dollars a year and then you add it all up over a year you say well my business is worth this buy me right but how do you do that with a company like back to your question how do you do that with a company like, back to your question, how do you do that with a company like ours and yours as well, right? Where it's like project to project, you don't know what next month looks like. I mean, if you guys have retainer clients, I would love to hear about that because I want more of them, but it just doesn't seem to exist.

It just doesn't seem to exist anymore in what we do. So it's month to month that makes, so yeah, how did we figure that out i don't know it was a guessing game it was a total guessing game like it was yeah well i figured you probably you guys probably looked at your year over year and said okay we roughly make this much every year it's probably kind of consistent once you get past a certain level anyways right yeah projection based yeah yeah and i mean there's some slow growth in there um and you know the the opportunity to grow um how much i guess uh market penetration did our uh did our name have in the market right so i was like basically for me it was like there was no guarantees like

all those clients if he wanted to just go just go start his own business and say he didn't want me in it and he wanted to just start another production company, he could have pulled all those clients with him if he had better relationships. So it was really all based on kind of relationships. What was fortunate for me in my case is that he went to a totally different industry. So a lot of those clients were kind of left going, know well we still need service and we still work with you so we'll call co-element and and it just seemed to work out like that and actually i maybe lost like two percent of the clients you know they went to other production companies but yeah but but if it

was like that you could have kind of just started your own company totally different company and actually And actually, that's a really good point because that was a huge lesson I think I learned was like this business or the business that we're in anyway is just so reliant on relationships. Like the relationships, the human-to-human relationships that you had with those clients and they enjoyed working with me. And that's why they kept working with me. Right? It really wasn't about the whole company or what the brand was. It really was about if they liked me or not. Yeah.

Yeah, that's why I was always curious about how some service-based companies, like you mentioned, would be selling the book of clients of like, say, 30 clients that they're going to be transferring as part of the value of the business because clients are not

yours to give really to someone that often because there is no the one thing dario and i have learned is that there's no such thing as a 100 loyal client that will always be there because circumstances always change for them imagine that one ad agency you were saying like had like a list of 30 clients if all of a sudden the changing leadership is there for the for the organization maybe that client doesn't like that leader immediately that value goes out the window especially in today's world where people stay at their jobs for like six months to a year then they dip then they job hop like how that wouldn't work at all when you get into big agency work you know a company is typically invested in

millions of dollars with that company and they're really really like attached in like a lot of different departments so actually moving something on that level of that scale probably would cost more in bs or you know inefficiencies right actually transfer over, it's a big deal to change agencies for a big, you know, for like a multimillion dollar company. But, but yeah, you're right. I think with the small, I think the big agency, um, seems to be like, there's still a lot in the U S still a lot in Toronto, but you know, you're starting to see it's so fragmented now. I mean, if you're starting to see these micro agencies pop up with three people, I mean, video companies are really popular for having, you know, you know, three to 10 employees.

That's like, sort of seems to be that magic number, right? Yeah. It's, it's interesting how it's all changed, but, but we we've stayed quite small actually. Like that, that, that actually was a conscious decision that I made when I bought the company that I wanted to keep it. I wanted to keep it small and change the model. I didn't want to, I don't want to be a 10 person company. I mean, there's, there's competition in the city, you know, and God bless them. I love them all. They're all awesome guys and I know them, but they just want to build a different company. They, you know, some of these guys, you know, they want to have a big team. They want to build teams around that and they want to have people come full time. I've built mine completely different than that. My model is very different. We're kind of trying to lay the foundation for that as well, because

the same as you, when you're dealing with companies such as ours, I feel like a small, nimble, skeletal team of people is probably better than when you expand and you have a much bigger team. Because again, you're dealing with in an industry where the... I mean, we also haven't cracked the retainer model and almost no one we've spoken to has figured it out. So it leaves a lot of uncertainty, right? I mean, we're in the process of like this year we hope to hire our first employee and like we're kind of

scared shitless about that because it's like it's a big responsibility like what happens like if you can't pay them like that's that's a terrifying idea if it's carol and i it's like we'll always figure something out worst case we go freelance somewhere to make a little extra money but like if you have someone else you're responsible for them too, right? And especially with the types of projects we always end up with, it just feels like a smaller team just works a lot better compared to having a ton of people. Because again, the bigger you get, the more bureaucracy gets involved,

the more inefficiencies start to happen. And again, in an industry like ours, where it's like project to project, a lot of uncertainty, you got to be very flexible and be able to adapt, right? Just what you're saying, I feel like I identified that when I bought the company and I was like, I kind of saw that's where it was going. I mean, when we started like 17, 18 years ago, we were probably the first like small production company of three people in the whole city. I mean, it was only, it was only the big production companies where they had, everybody went, went to that one production company and there was like 20 people that worked there. And it was like, now, I mean, from that time until now, we, we must have like 20 here now or more i mean every time i'm on uh on on social i mean

so a new one pops up and and they're all doing really really great work which is great but it makes it you're right it makes it really tough to scale because in a way it's almost it's like turns our our our work or our type of work into like a commodity like there's so much choice which drives down prices which like you know it's uh it's it's really interesting i don't know if you guys have noticed that in your market there's a there's a ton of companies in in our market oh yeah you guys are obviously a lot bigger than winnipeg but dario it's funny because he was saying like oh it started from like one and now it's like oh my god it's 20 and for him that's a lot yeah yeah 20 here is a lot 20 within a block like and we're we're we're a very small market

compared to i can imagine toronto so you can imagine the competition that that brings and like you know your proposals i i find you have to be so competitive now and so many add-ons and so many discounts and like, Oh my gosh, it's a, it's crazy. The discounts, right?

Oh, even at your level still, you're getting a lot of those requests. You know, this other company is doing it for this and they're giving us this. Oh, they're price shopping. They try to play the bargain.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Price buyers. So yeah, I mean, then we can get into that. That's a really interesting conversation versus value pricing or price buying. Have you guys ever got into that conversation before?

This is a Blair Enns thing. We've touched upon it on the podcast, but... So yeah, we deal with that. But whenever I get into those conversations, I always go like, so what am I working with? I always ask them, what am I working with? What's your budget? What am I working with?

And then from there, I kind of assemble the menu. It's like, well, you know, it's like at a restaurant. Well, you know, with that money, you could get this dish. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A little extra. So it's not like you're it's not like you're offering the same service at a discount. You're offering the service that is afforded by the client, you know, basically a customized solution. You know, you're not going to push on them 8K video content when they can only afford the resources for the 4K crews. I mean, this analogy is not 100% accurate, but I'm just trying to be relatable with it.

You know, I always like to pitch them more so. Yeah, there's a pricing element as well. There's a pricing co-element of everything. But I like to pitch them more so on like they're really buying our expertise. That's really good. There's obviously the value part of it as well. And I really push for the expertise part of it. And I go into like, listen, this is what I – down to the questions I ask them.

And they recognize that right away because a lot of the other people that they say they talk to just give them numbers and that's it. But I like to drive them through my sales funnel and make sure they know what they're getting into. And I mean, I guess luckily we're in a market like Toronto where there's a lot more, maybe there's a lot more leads coming in. And even though there's a lot more competition in terms of video vendors here as well, I feel like realistically, like our company is not actually dealing with, let's say there's like 50 here. We're probably dealing with, I would say maybe five when we pitch for our projects compared to maybe with you, it might be different. But because they got to narrow it down and usually they only go through like the first two, maybe three pages of Google anyway. So from there, you can kind of nail down and say, I know they're probably not going to go for that guys. And they're not going

to go for these other guys because they're way past their budget. We fall within this range. So I know I'm dealing with these other guys. It's very interesting to talk, to hear this, because your market is obviously a lot bigger than ours because we're probably more like and i tell clients it's like we're not for everybody like we're probably a more expensive option like i give them a base i say we don't really do anything for less than ten thousand dollars i made like that's that's that's it you know so right now if we're having this sales conversation you know if they're thinking, well, the last guy did it for $2,400, it's like immediately that conversation ends. Go to them.

So I made a commitment a while back to say we're not going to take on any projects less than $10,000. And then there's only a few, probably a handful of these production companies I've been telling you about that really probably do projects at that level right so whenever we put in a proposal here locally it's always we're always competing against the same people right it says same people right so yeah it's it's very interesting in a small market how how that's been kind of challenging and but um yeah like the you know the value the value uh conversation is interesting like when when getting on those sales calls i'm glad this is going in a sales conversation because it's probably most of what i do and most of what i can really talk about like my background actually when i in tv i was a motion designer actually like uh i worked for i

worked for uh aol time warner actually uh down in the states uh for about two years i worked for i worked for uh aol time warner actually uh down in the states uh for about two years i worked for uh canwest global i don't know if you remember specialty channels the global specialty channels do you remember fox sports world canada mystery deja vu do you ever remember those like how how old are you guys That might be before our time. I just know Discovery, History, YTV. I don't know how old you guys are, but anyways. We're from when Joker was on YTV. That's our time.

That's a good way to date us. That's where I cut my teeth in the industry. I started as a motion designer and then I was brought on by Canwest Global to help with branding for six digital TV stations. So we actually got to do all the station IDs and branding and motion design branding for all those stations. So I was able to sort of oversee that as a designer i worked with a lot of outsourcing uh outsource production companies and i worked for global for some time and then i and then i did a stint down in aol for about two years which was a really cool experience actually to go down there it was actually right when aol like uh do you remember you got mail it's probably before your time you got. Um, it's, uh,

I worked down there for a while and it's right when everything was transitioning to digital, which is an interesting time. Uh, and then I got really lonely down there, uh, because I was a lonely Canadian. That's what they called me. They called me the lonely Canadian. So I was the only Canadian that worked there. There was guys, there was like guys from like the, uh, uh, like Brazil and like China china all these amazing motion designers that were brought in from all over the world it was an amazing experience um you could have make friends he's the only one yeah that's exactly they're all like what is this they oh i don't know like they were like they had no idea even oh, Canada is just cold there and you live in igloos and stuff.

And I'm like, man, really? It's always the assumption. First of all, that's just in the winter. Maybe in Winnipeg, but not in Toronto. And then after that, I moved back and I got engaged to my wife that I'm married to now. And we went out to Edmonton. I worked for teletune and family channel out there they're now in toronto actually they moved to toronto and i did

motion design there and then i did freelance and then i ended up starting the company um from there but where was i going before that whole stint telling you about where i was uh where i came from wait well first you wanted to kind of give a little bit of background you were talking about how yeah yeah because that's what i do over like the sales and business side of things. Uh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Cause that's, that's what, uh, that's what creatives grab coffee is mostly for is like the business side of things. Cause there are so many resources. There are so many resources online about technicals and gear is constantly changing. So Daria and I didn't want to get into the habit of talking about, Oh, what, what light do you want to use? What camera do you want to use?

But nobody ever talks about the business of video production. No one ever talks about it. So that's what the goal of the podcast is. So let's talk about the, let's focus on the value side of selling because that's kind of what you, you looked a little excited about that. So let's go into that. upselling? Cause that's kind of what you, you looked a little excited about that. So let's go into that. Um, yeah, I mean, I, I think bringing up this company, growing this company, um, I've really had to become a really, really good producer and really, really understand how to work with a client and how to hold a, hold their hand through the process really, really well and do it in a charismatic way, do it in a creative way and, and just really a nurturing way. Right. That's

something that I've worked really, really hard on is, is getting that down properly, because I think this can be a little bit intimidating to people, right? And, and there are companies that these businesses need a video done and they'll go to a company and they'll just throw numbers at them or whatever. But what we really try to do or what I try to do in the sales side is really say, listen, this whole process, I'm going to lay it out to you right now. This is how the whole process is going to go. And I'm going to walk you through the whole thing. And I actually have a diagram that we've actually designed that I bring up that I kind of articulate how the flow is going to be right and you know where they'll be involved and where we'll sort of disappear for a while and then where we'll come back and I when I find that I articulate that all the way through

it's such an awesome response from clients we have the we have the same same thing on our end not a diagram we have a couple slides to kind of go through everything. But I think the way you described it is that's almost identical to what we do. And again, you just want to make sure that they understand that you're going to be there and just, like you said, guide them through the whole process, but also show them that, look, you're not going to... Because a lot of times i've actually found that a lot of people that come to us might have had bad experiences actually because a lot of the questions they ask me it's stuff that i i was like a slide or two away from answering right in terms of like am i going to be there to kind of uh for for that

particular stage just to go over that with them how do they get to input their ideas like what's the revision process like i feel like a lot of other companies might have actually created a negative experiences for a lot of clients right and that might be due to just not knowing how to be a good producer or just not being good at it entirely right like uh because like you said being a producer is a is a lot you got to like that interaction that you have with the client because i find that like when i produce i really get excited i love i love talking to them about the whole the whole video stage process i love talking about that stuff i had a meeting before this one we were we're having

our first pre-production meeting i was having blast. I was late to this because that went over a little bit, right? But if you don't have that as a producer, you're just not going to provide a good experience and you're most likely not going to provide a good video because that's integral to that role. Yeah. If you're not excited about the work you're creating with your client, how do you expect your client to have any enthusiasm as well? And to your point, Dario, unfortunately, like a lot of clients, they have bad experiences because they firstly, they didn't know what the video production process was like beforehand. So their first experience with a company was essentially someone who didn't do it right, didn't explain it properly to them. And because of that, the client felt like it was, they were completely shut out

of it. I sometimes think to myself, if I wanted to go and say, get a website done, and I had no knowledge of it, and you go to a company, it's like, hey, I need a website. What is the process? And then someone just says, it's going to cost you $10,000. I'm like, I don't, I just, I don't know what the, what is the process? How does it work? You just threw a number at me, you know? And that's what a lot of leads must feel like when they come to a video production company. You know, they want to understand. And you as a producer and a business owner, it's your responsibility to explain it properly. You know, I think we could actually tie this back earlier in terms of there's a lot of

companies that have popped up. And I think the reason for all these experiences is because a lot of these companies are actually not companies. They're just freelancers. Right. So, I mean, we see them often. There's a ton of people here where it's like they're, they mostly are a wedding company and they're trying to get into corporate, but they can't.

And you could kind of see based on the work that they get, against them it's just corporate is a different animal entirely but the type of work that they get is very yeah it's okay it's nothing special it's not a big client or whatnot but i sometimes hear this with with those people where they kind of complain and not just not just them but even let's say for example someone that it's a that is in another creative industry if they're a freelancer a lot of times they complain about the client and they complain about a lot of things that they really shouldn't be complaining about because you kind of got to be that person for them that kind of guides them in the right direction and i think a lot of the time they just don't understand how to do that right a lot of times like with I'll say less sophisticated clients that meaning less sophisticated with their understanding of production.

A lot of times they don't really want to know about this whole process. I actually find I have to change my conversation. So if I'm working with a digital, like an agency of like, say a 30 to 80 person agency, my conversation with them is a completely different conversation than say a not-for-profit or, you know, like a startup or something. And I think really, really good sales in what we do is about knowing how to approach those different clients because they're all different and you really can't it's not it's not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to that so you know for an example like an agency you know when i work with a large agency here in the city uh we're sort of their go-to production company i mean i'm always talking the creative director there's a project manager there uh you know there there might be an art director there right so i have to be able to navigate and and understand what each of these people needs from this project right project manager is going to be all about deadlines it's going to be

all about timelines how long is going to take you what do you need from us things like that you know the art directors wants to be on set they want to understand that we can sort of execute that the creative director wants to know as a producer that i can execute his vision right so with say smaller companies like startups that have never done a video before or like a not-for-profit what you're really doing in that sense is you're teaching them what like how to work with a producer what a producer actually does so when i talk to them i'm like okay so i'm going to be your producer on this project this is what my role is going to be this is how i'm going to take care of you like i'm going to come up with these creative ideas on how to get your message across so that that's these are the conversations you're going to come up with these creative ideas on how to get your message across. So that that's, these are the conversations that you're going to have. So I think knowing, knowing, and I think that just comes with years, years of experience because I've, I've been able to work with,

you know, um, some of the larger agencies. I've worked with agencies out of the city that have 200 or sorry, um, in, in the States that have like 200 people before. So I've been able to navigate some of those and have those experiences, right? And that just comes with experience. But knowing how to tailor your conversation in the sales conversation is super important. Because what I do find is that some of these production companies,

they want to systematize, right? When they start, because they think that you have to have systems in place. So we have to formulate this whole thing, right? And then they just start throwing that thing out at every single client. And it's not, you sometimes have to be a little bit nimble there.

But that's just me. That's just how I do business. So it has to have a, there has to be a skeletal structure to your process where, you know, obviously in the video production world, it's pre-production, production and post. But those are broad. And like you said, you have to tailor it to every client, every lead that comes through because

their situation is always going to be different. You can go into the one size fits all category if you want, but that's usually in volume-based selling when you're just trying to get hundreds of clients coming in for that one specific service're but that's only for like that type of video for example like if it's a product video you need a 30 second ad you can productize that whereas in our situation with value-based pitching we're like sometimes a client needs a social media video sometimes a client needs a web ad sometimes they need an internal video you can't have a one size fits all solution for a different deliverable and for different clients. So you nailed it 100% on the head. You have to be able to be nimble.

How to talk in those different circles and how to guide them. And some groups are going to be overwhelmed by certain things. Some people are going to be turned off by that, right? Agencies are going to be a lot more sophisticated, way more layers to what's happening there. They want all the details, right? They want to know your crisp and all that stuff. But the agency work is the highest paying work that we do. So it demands probably the most amount of labor, right?

What's the percentage breakdown between uh direct to client and and and uh agency work for you almost right down right down the middle yeah really okay that's pretty high like normally a lot of people we've spoken to i think it was under 10 for us i think we're down to maybe two percent for that very little under 10 under 10 for agencies under 10 of their work is agency work. I think it varies though. Like I think some, cause I know some companies here in Toronto

that are also trying to set themselves up as only agency partners. So there are some that are trying to kind of go with that. That's like a model that they're building around, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I've noticed that, which it can work potentially, but I feel like that will also be like a slow burn. Being able to talk to clients directly

gives you potential for more longevity. That way you're also not relying on agencies as well. Because yeah, if you're relying a lot on agency work, if for example, that agency doesn't have any clients coming for you, where's your next work gonna be coming in? And if there's only two agencies in your city, you're kind of limited at that point. That's why he's stuck with a smaller skeletal team, right? Because then exactly, exactly.

There we go. Yeah. You know, we we rely on a very small core team here full time, but then like 90% of the work we freelance out. Oh, yeah. And it seems to be getting easier and easier. There seems to be more freelancers flooding into the market. People want more flexibility with their work. They want more diversity. It pays more for them too, right? I mean, it pays to be a freelancer compared to a salaried employee. You just got to have that hustle.

The challenge comes i find and and because the stamina a lot a lot of motion design work you know we just we just got a big project for an organization called agriculture in the classroom uh canada and they're a national uh organization they go into schools and they teach kids about um agriculture really cool organization um you know but they they just came to us and they're like, we need an e-learning animated series done. And it's five episodes and each one's going to be 15 minutes long. Right. And I look at that and I go, Oh, wow, that's gravy train. Like that's going to be an awesome project. And then I actually start looking at how I'm going to manage resources on

that and go, Oh my God, what's I don't, I, I don't have the team to handle this. Right. You know, but, but you gotta scramble and you gotta make it work. You gotta build, you gotta, that that's the model that we've built. We've said, listen, we're just going to scale up and scale down. That's what we're going to have to do. So we, this is, this is the pain of being nimble, right? It's, it's having to scale that up and build a team around that. But when you're talking about a project that could potentially go five six months freelancers are like what no that's that's that's not how i work it's like you give me the project i do the project right you'd think that a lot of freelancers like would you know be licking their chops at a

project like that but they're like well i i do work for 20 different clients i can't just commit all my time to you so so there's there's challenges that happen with that right right all right so what do you do in that case like how do you handle a situation can you even take a project on like that just take it and you just make it work baby you just make it work you just make it work baby that's what i just figured out my senior producer that works with me i'm like hey we are producers well he's a motion designer he's got that background so where's oh and that's what i just figured out my senior producer that works with me i'm like hey we are producers well he's a motion designer he's got that background so we're oh and that's a slippery slope my friend that's a slippery slope we don't want to do that but you're right you're right i mean uh you know just a few months ago actually we went through a busy time and i'm like i'm

sitting here you know editing this thing and i'm like what why am i editing this thing i should not be doing this this is not the model, right? But yeah. You know, we have a couple of projects coming up and the timeline is a little intense. It's these quarterly videos, but the due date is a couple of days later. And we actually, we tried to cover our asses with this one and we pitched to the client. We're like, look, just in case one of the editors ends up with COVID let's have a backup guy just in case right and they they bought it we're like okay thank god and then we're like you know we'll also get them to help out somehow with the with the thing like because we're paying for them to be on the you know and the on the bleachers for a

second so the bench warmer yeah i think that was like that was probably the first time that i'd ever realized that someone has tried to i mean they probably do this in other like other companies have probably done this to have editors on standby usually you have shooters on standby but no one's ever said can i get an editor hey if you know a guy that wants to be a standby editor you let me know because that would be lovely to have no i mean we're gonna we're gonna pay them because i was like they're not gonna do it for free they might get oh oh so you're gonna actually pay him and keep him on like keep him paying just to make sure he's there oh yeah yeah yeah yeah as as a

yeah yeah it might not it might be i mean we haven't done like i mean we've we've we've sold it to the client the idea um and then i just gotta ask and see how much it would cost because it's like it'll be a couple of days like it's like worst case you, you get involved and then I'll pay you the full rate for that project. But the best case you don't, and you make half of what you would make on that. So it's like, do you want to take it on? It's like guaranteed work. Like, Hey, that's actually really, that's a good way of thinking about that.

I've learned something here today. Yeah. Because we were, we were thinking about, yeah, I was talking to kira i'm like kira you know what we got really lucky last year when we did it because it was a four hour uh quarterly video or agm it was four hours right and uh yeah we delivered it in like under a week and i was like oh my and they needed a major revision halfway through the week so that took even longer to implement but but i was like kira imagine if, God forbid,

our editor caught COVID. What the hell would we have done? We would have had to do it, right? To find someone that last minute. And you know, we're a little rusty with the editing too. This is an AGM, like an all day thing that you recorded.

And you had to package it all up. So it was like a four hour thing. And then they wanted the full thing. And like our editor is good for it. We have a couple editors that can do it as well. But we used our primary. But this year we even told the client, we're like, look, people get sick so randomly nowadays. Why take a chance?

It's going to make everyone look bad because we're going to miss that deadline. And they're like, yeah, you're right. Especially with those types of projects where if there needs to be like a next day edit or a same day or something where they need within a few days, that's very time sensitive. When you have projects that, for example, you have like two weeks for a rough draft delivery, then a week for a fine cut, and then another week for the actual full one, there is some flexibility. If someone gets sick for a few days,

like the time has been built in there so that we can still do things properly for the client, right? But as Daria pointed out, nowadays, things happen. You never know what happens. It's not just COVID. People get sick for anything.

It's so common for people to call in sick now for all sorts of reasons. Have you guys interviewed anybody about like um differentiating at all as a production company do you mean like adding like niching down how to differentiate yourself in in your market because like okay so how many production companies are you know maybe two three four person companies are in toronto like a hundred? Probably thousands. Not thousands, Carol. It's not thousands.

Yeah, lots though. There's lots. There's lots. So how do you... 8,000. There's lots. There's lots. It's frustrating because how do you stand out?

What we did was, I mean, I knew our quality was good and we just focused more on marketing ourselves, like focused on SEO. And that helped us climb the ranks. It brought more inbound leads. And then this year we have a bunch of content marketing that we have planned. But in terms of standing out, you do that based on the quality of your work and also how we publicize yourself online, I guess. Like it's, it depends. Like, I mean, if you want to do like, if like if you want to do say like okay we focus more on like car commercials or whatever then obviously that's that's different you're niching down on your thing and you could specialize in that but if you're kind of like us where it's more general stuff you just do it based on your

popularity i guess i mean you get to a certain point where you get comfortable with the amount of work that's coming in anyway so it doesn't really matter after a certain point like i know a lot of the top a lot of the top companies that we brought on board for the toronto scene at least they're all they're all pretty comfortable they're bringing in enough work where it's like they're fine they're doing fantastic they don't even really need to think they don't even really need to think about brand branding or differentiation at that point because you're happy not really no no and i and again like you're always going to get certain amount of clients that you or leads that you get along with anyways and the certain amount that you're not going to get along and those ones

will probably go to the next company and they'll get along with them so that's such an interesting thing to hear because that that clearly is that's a result of of your market because you have so much competition there. It's just a totally different world where in a smaller city where there's only so many eyeballs, it's pretty easy to get known here. Right. So our challenge is a little different. Yeah. You guys pretty much nailed it on the head earlier. You answered your own question where how do you differentiate yourself from all the other companies around you? It's you yourself as the expert, because your experiences are unique to you and how you approach a problem, a business problem for a client or a challenge and how to solve it. The next company might have very similar service offerings, but the way you

do it is not going to be the same or even if it is even if it is like it's just a lot of a lot of our work is person to person so they might just click better with you than with the other person or they might not click with you at all but they might that's what i mean the person even though you might be better right totally and it's a lot of human human dynamics at the end of the day right the human The human element is so key. It's the human co-element, right? It's the second time. That human element is always going to be, at the end of the day,

the ultimate differentiating factor. You can have everything else done right, but if the client or the lead does not connect with you or does not like you, you could be Spielberg. But if you don't like Spielberg, they're not gonna work with Spielberg. Obviously, word of mouth is huge for us.

It's been huge for us. And just the experience, I think, really concentrating on the experience that your clients have from sales to product delivery to final video delivery is a great experience. It was positive positive it's something they remembered as long as you focus really really hard on that and don't take it for granted we have i have never ever taken that for granted and and it's been one of the successes that we've had and

we get we get calls all the time from other other like from from new clients to say listen we had this really bad experience. This is what it was like. We don't want that to happen again. And that's, that's a really, that's interesting. And we go, okay, absolutely here. And then I, you know, I lay out how, how it's all going to go. It's interesting how much business we actually get that way. But I think that, you know, that's to highlight that is like experience everything that you do. Every, every, every touch point, every time the client has an interaction with you, it should feel good and positive and organized. You know what I mean? And, and in a way, like

you were saying, that's, you're branding yourself through that because other people are going to tell that story, you know, Oh, you guys were doing a video? Where did you guys get your video done? Oh, this company did it. They were awesome. This is what they were like. You want your clients to tell those stories, right? And those stories spread like that. And one thing that we haven't done a very good job at is promoting ourselves.

And I don't do a whole lot of this. Well, that's what I was going to say. You said, how do I don't do a whole lot of this. Well, that's what I was gonna say is, if you want to, you said, how do I how do I make myself? How do I differentiate myself in a smaller market? Do more content, right? There's there's the internal stuff where it's like, you know, with your in with your inbound clients and everything, you can provide the experience. And then that that brings on more referral business. But like, you got to view yourself like you view your client in a way, right? If they come to you and say, I need to differentiate myself. It's like, okay, well, are you doing any video content? How are you marketing your stuff? You, you got to view yourself like you view your client in a way, right? If they come to you and say, I need to differentiate myself. It's like, okay, well, are you doing any video content? How are

you marketing your stuff? You got to treat yourself like a client in a way and kind of see what works out well for you, right? Like that's kind of what we focused on a bit. We haven't done too much of it, unfortunately, but this year we're hoping to change that a bit. But yeah, like it's, there's a lot of stuff like i mean i think number one thing for us has obviously been seo that's helped us a ton wow that's crazy wow i don't know much about that it's basically just helping yourself rank higher on google because if you think about it you got to think about the client the the leads journey how do they how do they usually find companies and it's usually by google right google or bing or whatever the hell they use um and then searching certain key search words and then from there it depends on

how how well you rank like if you're on the first page for most of the key search terms and chances are like you don't need to do too much marketing on other areas right like you don't need to market yourself too much on linkedin obviously it's very helpful right but if you're getting enough incoming leads from Google where you're busy enough, then sure you can kind of just focus on that a bit more and not worry about it because the money's coming in, right?

In our market, it was just different. Like it's always, it's so much like one-to-one like competition, right? Like either, you know, it's, it's your competition or you, and it comes down to, well, who are we going to go with? Right. And I've thought a lot about how to solve that problem in, in a small market like this. And one of the things that I did, um, uh, during the pandemic, actually, this was a, a, a branding exercise that we did. There's a agency out of the States, they're called Strawberry Frog. Have you ever heard of them?

What do they do? An advertising agency, marketing agency, just like any other. But the way they've differentiated themselves, you might have seen this with some other companies, is they focus on purpose-driven brands. Purpose-driven. So what do I mean by purpose-driven? Purpose, you know, any corporate company can be a purpose-driven organization, right? Whether that's a not-for-profit or just having a higher purpose.

They brand themselves and they see themselves as a company that has a higher purpose. All their employees buy into that higher purpose, right? And Strawberry Frog made a conscious decision. They were probably one of the ones that first did this in the whole industry, is that, said that we are only gonna do this type of work. We're only gonna be doing purpose-driven work, right?

And as the purpose-driven sort of culture phenomenon came and made its wave through business and industry in the States, they were the ones that were connecting with those clients on that level. So I was like, you know what? I'm going to try that. I'm going to try that here in Winnipeg. So when you go to our website, I don't really say video anywhere, really.

I think maybe it's like a couple small prints in there. I actually say that we do video. But what I do say on there is I think it's, I have to remember it now. Strategic storytelling. What is it again? It's storytelling for groundbreakers and then movement makers.

You have it alternating. You're a strategic storytelling partner for purpose-driven brands and organizations i think that's what it is yeah so i don't i i really market us as yes we do video but we also do motion graphics we also can do print like like you know assets that might go along with that or or web or things like that right so we're kind of like bridging agency digital agency a little bit but more just on the content creation side right creative development but uh but yeah when i have a conversation with a client and they're like oh we heard you do video i'm like yes but actually this is what we are and when you're having sort of when you're changing the conversation you're starting to

you're starting to look different right one video production company that you're dealing with yeah yeah we do video and production they talk about all production production everything technical right i don't talk about anything technical with the client first first off actually throughout the whole process they i barely talk about technical. It's really about creative approach. It's about understanding what their goals are. You know, it's saying like, yes, I'm a video producer, but I'm also a storyteller. I'm also a writer. I'm an accomplished, you know, I consider myself a pretty accomplished writer. And all those things come together into what into the value conversation of what what we're going to provide back. So when you're talking about all that stuff, and your competition is

talking about, yeah, we just we schedule shoots, and we shoot, we shoot, we edit, we make motion graphics. That's also a really, really good way to differentiate yourself in the sales process. But also on a on also on a wider level, just like on your website and how people talk to you. So that's one thing that I've worked really hard at in differentiating us, just changing the conversation. And I think it's worked. I think it's worked really well for us.

That's a great way to do it. Yeah, we've done a similar thing. We focus more so on, I mean, I think it's identical. We just phrased it differently. When we do it, like we talk about how we'd like to we focus more so on i mean i think it's identical we just phrased it differently when we do it when like we talk about how we'd like to get involved more so on like the strategy side we want to know exactly what they have planned for the for their whole marketing campaign and how this piece fits into that part of their vision and then we've gotten we've started doing that since 2021 and the reception to that type

of approach has been has been really good so yeah we pitch strategic video as well just but we're also very limited in how far we get along with that so we also let them know it's like listen it's like we're giving you the gas for the car yeah but like ultimately it's you have to drive right i think the best analogy is bringing a horse to water, but they have to drink the water. Yeah, and I don't know, maybe this is just the experience that I've had, just like writing and doing a lot of reading too,

is just having an intuition of how an audience will perceive something or how someone will react to something is such a, sometimes in what we do is such an emotional response. Right. And I think coming at it from that angle where you're maybe, you know, there's a lot of government organizations we work with and,

you know, they want to do a video. Right. And it's the classic, you know, our marketing person wrote a script. We want to create this, you know,

and I take the script and I go, wow, this is, um, this is um this is a brochure you wrote a brochure oh good awesome so we want to make a brochure into a video they're like yeah yeah we want to do that i'm like yeah you shouldn't do that like we like we don't do that like we'll we can take this concept and shape it into a creative approach that is that is has true storytelling in it that resonates with an audience that people can latch on to and you know and and

it's emotional right and and when you start explaining those types of things then they start going oh yeah okay it's like that that makes sense because you know who wants to make who wants to sit there and watch like you know a 30 minute you know brochure video where it's just like it's just you know and so you guys do that a lot too like do you deal with that a lot we deal with similar things i was actually talking to carol about this the other week about how we pitch ourselves as being creatives but at the end of the day what we do is so technical because if you think about it when you're break when you're producing a video there's very little creativity i should put into it there's more technical stuff you do into it

down to like okay so let's say you got to create the script for it when you're creating the script it's like okay i gotta hit these messages key messages yeah i gotta fit them i gotta gotta i gotta fit these key messages in there now i also have to figure out roughly what the script is gonna be even though we do a lot of interview based format but then you gotta know okay i gotta fit these key messages in there. Now I also have to figure out roughly what the script is going to be, even though we do a lot of interview-based format. But then you got to know, okay, I got to have them answer it in this type of format. Then how long should that answer be? See, break everything down because it's like the video, by the time they see like the storyboard and the script, you have everything timed down to the second. And it's actually really interesting when you

break that down to the client, when they go like, okay, we need all these key messages, and this is the script. And you're like, you know what? Great. But one big problem, that script is 20 minutes, and this video is two minutes. How do I know? I timed it out. Let's do it together. Let's sit down and read it out loud. And you know what? We got to have like breaks in between. We can't just, it's not like a drug ad where like, you know, at the end you got the disclaimer that you try to feed everything in into two seconds, right? You got to have a little breathing room too. See, the real creativity, like one of the big parts of the creative process is figuring

out your, how should we say, dimensions and limitations and being creative on how to maximize it. So like, for example, if you're given a deliverable that you need to do something in a minute, the creative, you can have the most insane idea, but you have to be able to quantify it and break it down into that specific dimension of one minute. How will it work?

How will it look? How will it work? And that's when you're like, that's creative, technical, being technically creative. That's probably the best way to put what you were saying, Dario, is that it's not that you're not being creative and being technical. It's like how you are adjusting your creativity for that particular project. And, you know, being able to navigate that with the client. And, you know, because I don't know if if you guys notice but a lot of the clients will they'll nowadays there's so much video and there's so much work out there and a lot of times they'll

look at something or they'll look at a competition something that the comp their competition did and bring it to you and you go we need to do a video like this right oh awesome okay so what's it all going to be about what's your key messages like what are you trying to do what's your goals everything like that and right right. They come to you with, you know, the brochure that the marketing person wrote that they pulled from the website, probably in some, some other brochures and things like that. And they give you this briefing document and you're like, yeah, we can't do that. So you have to, but I, but I think it's like, it's goes back to that sort of care being

really getting good at being charismatic and understanding how to shift the conversation in a really soft way, in a nurturing way that gets them to do what you need them to do basically. Right. It's like, you guys have a $20,000 budget for this. That's all you've got. We can't do a 20 minute video. So let's look at our constraints, right? This is your, you know, you, you want a two minute commercial, right? So maybe, you know, doing 16 interviews, you know, with your employees,

it's probably not the best idea. Let's just do it with a voiceover or something. Right. And I think like getting really, really good at that at that i think is like can be such a a huge benefit to your business like in sustainability and it opens so many doors absolutely absolutely and that's all about yeah even even with the budget even with the budget because i find that a lot of the times when they come to us and they say because we have we have the the budget options on our on our contact yeah right so i i kind of know you guys have like you guys do that where you're like it's uh completely transparent pricing you guys is that how you guys work uh no no no so okay okay what their budget ranges are so like if they're getting in touch with us i would

like one of the the the prompts is like what is your budget and ours starts from 5 to 75 and it goes up in 250 200 2,500 increments and then passes on point 5,000 increments but and then I also I always make sure to like confirm what their budget is because sometimes they just randomly select it and then you find out it's a lot lower and you're like well we I gotta cut this call then you know yeah but uh yeah but uh it I always find that if you are presenting yourself as that type of uh if you're if you're a good producer and you explain the situation correctly to them you'll be able to get more budget out of them and i'm not saying that in a way where like you're gonna squeeze them for every penny they got type of thing no it's like

more so in terms of like what they want and uh what the value the value they're getting because the way we do it i have i even let them know up front it's like these are my costs like i can i could probably milk you for more but why do that right like we've we've already established this dario he's the nice guy dario's the nice guy i i you like i do the good cop approach. That's smart. That's smart. Yeah. But then I let them know. It's like, if you guys want to do a little bit extra, we can also add this in and that

in and then we can go to that level and do that. I'm actually wondering, do you offer like... Because I've been thinking about maybe offering pricing packages, like a standard option, but then we could go the extra mile with this and then we can really go out with that one, right? Have you tried that out? I haven't, but when we're working with some of the budgets that we're working with, it can just be a really slippery slope, right? It's like you promise something for that and then you end up getting into the project and it's like oh my god this is like way more i actually find but you know what on the other on the other side i mean i you know it's weird ebbs and flows right like some some clients are are you know are responsive to higher budgets some some some aren't some are response uh respond okay to

say having a contingency have you ever done the contingency idea? The contingency budget? Okay, this is a little strategy. I'll get into that with you right now if you want. Okay, okay, cool. So if I know it's a fairly larger client, and I know they have money, and these are projects like $40,000 plus, let's say,

right in that window. I'll put in what's called i'll say okay you really want to be at this number i know you really want to be at at 45k on this but i know in my head that this is going to be a lot that it could be a lot more work and we could go over on this if something goes wrong you know anything right maybe they change their mind or you end up getting into too many revisions past your revision rounds and things like that so what i do is i build in um what's called i'm gonna say okay i'm gonna promise you this but because we're so unsure about this we're gonna build in what's called the contingency budget and that contingency budget is something that you commit to up front and that's a fifteen thousand dollar contingency budget our goal though please please know that this our goal is to not go into

this i don't think we're going to have to go into this right but if we do we need that pre-approved how's that sound oh that is good and it in it what it does is it gives something for the marketing manager or whoever's dealing with that to go back to the finance people and go, listen, at least it's a driver of a conversation that they can actually have. Nine times out of 10 that I've offered that, if I get it right with the size of the client, they're like, yeah, absolutely. Let's do that. That's fair. Right? Because it's like anything. it's it's like architects right it that's actually where it where i got it from i think it was an architect podcast and they were saying like yeah like like we're building the bridge here but we don't know like fluctuations and concrete and

metal and stuff like that we you know how do we guess this stuff, right? So they put in contingency budgets. And, you know, you just have to be, as a business, you have to be fair with it. And I think as you're going through the process, you're informing your client of the process. Things are going great. Things are going great. And in the background,

you're probably coming under budget, right? If you're coming under budget, be honest and don't charge them. But if you're creeping up close to that budget and you're like, holy man, we? If you're coming under budget, be honest and don't charge them. But if you're creeping up close to that budget and you're like, holy man, we've spent too much time on this. As long as you've informed the client in the project management process all the way,

how things are going, where things have bloated, where things haven't, and you need to go into it at that point. And there's no surprises because the budget's approved. They've been constantly updated throughout the whole project. What you don't want to do is like go through the whole thing and say,

oh, we're charging you the 15 grand. That's not cool. They're not going to like that, right? It just seems like they do. Well, at that point, they feel like they're gouged. So do the contingency budget. Work it in as a strategy, but but be honest with it because again going back to that experience i've really liked always going back to that experience that you have with your

clients don't create a bad experience by gouging right so that that's that's the sort of happy medium but anyway in things you know it's a good strategy because in what we do you know what it's like right like things can kind of go awry pretty quick i i'm i'm telling you right now i'm i'm taking that one and using it because you can you can you don't even need to do it for uh projects of that size you could do it for any project even even if it's like something like we have a lot of projects that are in the 8k range even if we just tell them hey let's set like a 500 to a thousand dollar contingency budget just in case something happened you know what we decide last, let's set like a $500 to $1,000 contingency budget, just in case something happened. You know what?

We decide last minute, let's bring on a makeup artist or something. Absolutely. Things happen. Things happen. Great. Now it's like, it's fine. Like you said, they're committed to it.

But if we don't go through it, great. We don't go through it. You know, it's great. You're managing expectations. And that's the brilliant thing that you've done is that you figured out a way to more strategically manage people's expectations because there's nothing worse that you commit to a budget that you've pre-approved with the client and then something

unforeseen comes through you can't really like at least on your end you can't really um tell them it's like hey this is gonna if you want to do this now it's gonna actually have to cost another two three thousand clients hate that like say ten thousand dollars that's a twenty thirty percent increase no one no one wants to have that conversation and with that can or like if it does have to do if you do have to do it and the client agrees and is willing to do it to your point they now have to go through the process of getting it pre-approved again, which delays the project, which is another big thing. And the one thing that your leads and your clients are always going to value above anything is time. Not just the money, but the time.

If they have something set in their marketing calendars on when they're going to get certain deliverables, they want everyone to stick to that. Because if you keep delaying it, then they're, like you said, it's going to be a bad experience. Yeah. So, you know, again, I think a lot of this conversation that we've had today really comes back to that, to that experience, right? What are the mechanisms as you're going through the process with the client that's going to make the experience fluid and and make it feel like it was a positive and honest exchange of services right and doing setting all that stuff up front is like is is is so key the other the other thing is are we running out of time or can i add no this was that was really good if you got more like that

up your sleeve free to like toss them into the car i gotta be uh honest like you guys check out uh blair ends his stuff the two bobs the two bobs yeah yeah no no we listen that's amazing and so he he's got something called which is really interesting in the do you guys ever deal with the whole proposal thing we want a proposal a little bit we want a proposal very little well blair ends is awesome because he's he's he's he's shaped this whole thing yeah oh this is that this is with chris um yeah i forget what his name is but anyway so yeah he he basically says well we're not really you know the conversation goes well we're not really in the business of writing proposals but maybe we could you know, have an agreement in principle.

And then maybe we can move on to the proposal stage, right? So how do you get out of the, you know, the proposal writing, you know, oh my God, I got six proposals to write, and this is all I can do. And none of this is guaranteed work, right? I mean, it takes time, right? It takes time. So what we do is like, because I know exactly the, the, the situation you're talking about where a client asks you for a proposal. So you come up with this whole creative, uh, and you develop a budget, everything. Yeah. So what Daria and I do differently is that we basically just simply, uh, go over what their needs are and what we will do for them and see, and have them sign off on that.

We don't do any creative until a project is actually moving forward. And this is like one of the ways that we filter leads out. So for example, a client will come to us and Dario or myself will hop on a call with them, go through our checklist of questions of trying to figure out what they wanna do. And then we have a follow-up call with them and we just go over everything they've talked to us about what their budget is,

say, this is the video we're going to create for you based on these examples, or something like that. It's just it's very, it's very basic. Oh, man, we should do a role playing thing. You guys ever do the role playing thing? No, we haven't haven't we haven't that could be another piece of content for creatives grab coffee i'll be the the the client uh from a thousand person company right okay that's all great and all but uh yeah i have to field this i need a proposal from you guys because i have to field this out to three different departments and they all have to meet and they have to meet on that proposal uh to make sure that the price is right and the service is right. And then we'll get back to you guys.

So can you guys put together a proposal for us? So here's the beautiful thing. This second call that we're doing it, we're putting it in a document form. So that's something that they can take and hand out to other departments in there. And it's basically a step by step of what's going to happen. And a lot of this document is already pre-made. Like we do this for a lot of our leads as they come through. And we just change a lot of like the project details.

Are you asking, sorry, Adam, are you asking if we give a lot of our creative ideas within this document? Like this is like the types of songs we're going to use for this. No, it's like, it's like, so it's like, you can quickly get pulled into writing big bloated proposals. Oh, no, we don't we don't do any of that. We don't do any of that at all. I guess where you guys have done a really good job at is that you if they demand a certain thing,

and it doesn't meet what your criteria is for that sales process, then you'll walk away, right? See, this is the catch is that a lot of companies aren't in a position to go, okay, we don't work that way. We're okay. You're not the right client for us. We're going to walk away. Some people need that business, right? So it's really hard not to get pulled in because the client is demanding like this is a situation where the client would be demanding something really specific okay we need an intro we need to know kind of like what your general approach is going to be to this we need to know uh how many people are going to be on this project we need you to outline um all of the all the

freelancers right i know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. So they have what's called a standard form proposal, an RFP that they send you, and you have to respond to that RFP, right? Your system doesn't matter to them. Your system doesn't matter to them, right? So for that, we haven't... We've only gotten, from what I remember, we've just gotten one like that.

We don't get, like the RFPs we get, they don't get, the ones we've gotten at least, I mean, again, we don't get that many RFPs to begin with. We're starting to get a little more this year, actually. As you grow. Oh, yeah. The more you grow and the bigger clients that you get, the more you're going to get dragged into that proposal writing stage, right? And so, I don't know what the solution for that is because we have... So Blair Enns, the way Blair Enns handles that is he basically just comes out and says,

first of all, you have to have the nards to walk away. You have to walk away. And the way you guys have formulated your process process that's really awesome that you said listen we do this all the time this is how we work and if the client says well no i don't care how you work if you want the job you have to do this well then you have to be prepared to walk away but that that particular episode i listened to it and he basically said most of the time you're going to lose that battle and also there was a fun there was an interesting episode they did on the rfps where they basically said the you know the dirty little secret is that most of the people sending out those rfps already know who they're gonna choose oh yeah and we we get dragged into that

all the time because we we do a lot of government work here right and so and and the and the government work is the worst for the RFPs because it's like you absolutely have to do it. There's no, if you want the business, yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to know your firstborn child's name. They want to know who you're going to marry in five years. Yeah, so Blair ends, I think what he says is, one of the techniques is he goes in and he says,

it's like, why don't we have, why don't we just talk about this first and just have what he calls an agreement in principle. So we're going to have an agreement in principle of this is what the budget is going to be. This is generally what we're going to do. We're not going to, right. Okay. So you take that back to all your departments, circulate all that information, and then you get back to all your departments, circulate all that information, and then you get back to me.

And I think that's brilliant because now you've just, you've given them a solution, but you've shedded all that potential work that you would have to do for no guaranteed work. Now, when they come back to you, they've done all that circulation and all that bureaucracy that, that all that information has to go through. And they've come back to you and said, okay, I think we're ready to go. Now you put together a proposal. The chances of you getting that proposal and winning that project now has just shot up like by 80%.

So it's interesting. So one of the things I wanted to just quickly touch upon, Adam, is like how you were saying some of those leads when they're asking for a proposal and you tell them your process. And if they say, oh, I don't really care about your process, that shows disrespect right there in terms of the fact where if you don't respect how i work why should i respect how you work and that goes back to your point where you have to be willing to walk away at that point because if you immediately on the

onset say okay i'm gonna abandon everything i've done for the last 10 years of my life just to make you happy just in terms of the process, then that relationship is not going to start off on a good foot. And sometimes when you're creating proposals with very little information for clients, you're almost doing a disservice to them as well because you don't have all the information. You don't know what is the potential. You don't know what their strategy is. So how can you propose an entire idea when it's not 100% applicable to their situation? Are you getting that type of resistance? I get it for RFPs, it's just the nature of the beast, but are you getting that with your direct clients as well, or just with RFPs? but are you getting that with direct uh that with your direct clients as well or just with rfps no no uh that that's a specifically an rfp issue yeah it's a specific yeah and and honestly it's it has

more to do with larger organizations that have a lot of bureaucracy and and and government contracts but but here but here's here's kind of an interesting take on that though it's like yeah yeah you know it's all easy and all to just kind of say, well, you have to be willing to walk away. Right. Well, when you've got 10 employees and maybe you had a couple of slow months. Right. And you got to make payroll and your payroll is like, you know, 30 to whatever thousand dollars a month. And you're like, we need to get a contract in here

that's a very different like mindset if you think about it now when you're sitting there and you have a few if you're the only people working in the company and it's just like hey we got cash flow i know i can pay myself for a year out from now yeah awesome i can say no to that but when you're starting to grow a company and you're starting to get bigger, those decisions you have to start making and some of the sacrifices that you have to make to get that business becomes a very different conversation. And trust me, I've been there. But I'm assuming at that point, at that point, I'm assuming you have employees that would work on that anyway. So it wouldn't really make too much of a dent on you.

Well, not to me personally, but now everything costs money, remember. I can have a project manager work on a proposal for two weeks that takes her off of all this other stuff that she should be doing. Yeah, you're right. You're right. So yeah, I've been thinking about that.

But that's the flip side right there. It's that you have to know when to also put your effort in. If you know RFPs that 95% of the time, you're not going to get the job because A, they usually have someone already picked out. You might be thinking to yourself, oh, I'm having a little bit of a slow month. How am I going to make payroll?

How detrimental will it be to your business if you spend two to three weeks on a proposal, send it in that's not going to go anywhere. you might as well use that two to three weeks in time to drum up actual business that will be coming in so like with rfps it's one of those things where the only time dar and i really dive into them is if we have the time uh to do them and if they're not asking for too much because unfortunately a lot of rfps they're just not worth it we had one that was asking yeah yeah yeah we had one that was asking for a ton of stuff and i was like carol i'm not in the mood absolutely yeah i know and i agreed i'm like i was trying to

look through this rfp like they and i'm like why does this company need to know the backstory of our oh my god that's way too much information audio operator how they got into the industry like i'm like we like i don't know who's going to be picked three weeks three months from now you could just write back you're not getting that you know adam you said like you know if it's a slow month and you have like you know a big company and you haven't been getting a lot of work i think that's a good time to question why you're at that stage rather than, because it seems like if you're really banking on, you know, we're going to do that RFP and it's going to save the company, that really does sound like a last ditch effort. And if you're relying on that, you screwed up probably six months. Oh yeah. And I mean, I'm not talking extremes like, hey, the, oh my God, I got to

take this because my whole business is going to go under. Right. I think it's more about just building, you know, just sustainability into a pretty large organization that you've that you've built. Right. And then you have a lot of people to pay. Right. And just when when you're in sales and you get to that level, it's it almost turns into more about like, we just need projects in the bucket. Fill the bucket. Fill the bucket, right? But I think it's a great point. I mean, it's a slippery slope and it's just something that I have really struggled with.

It's something that I have struggled with because when you get, as an organization of our size, if you get a project that's $70,000, that's a big deal, right? And so you really have to kind of weigh out what it's worth and everything like that. And it's an ongoing struggle and conversation with marketing agencies and organizations like us as we grow, right? I've done a ton of reading and you know this is where i've just dove into blair ends because he specifically consults with agencies like larger agencies on how to deal with all of this stuff but there's so much to learn from all that stuff

that can trickle down into what into what we do it's so on the business side it's uh it's really good one benefit of the rfp i would say is probably that it can help you fine-tune your sales process as a whole right because i remember when we worked on we worked on an rfp for for fedex and we didn't get it but i even followed up with them afterwards to say we wouldn't follow it up i was like i was i was like i'm just curious but we're on the right track at least at the rfp and they're like oh yeah it was down to you and another company i'm like okay carol we'll apply that temp so close we were so close that template to like the rest of our sales process right because i was like okay i guess we were on the right track we just missed out maybe it was budget or whatever but but uh it helps you have to keep improving. Yeah, it helped fine-tune our actual sales funnel or sales process.

It helped fine-tune that a bit. So we just applied that template to our other sales documents, and it's going well now. One of the coolest things that I've learned as I've grown the company and moved naturally from a technical person into basically that's all i'm doing is like producing and sales right but i think that have you have you listened to much of chris doe's stuff yeah a ton yeah the future his his role-playing stuff is just that stuff is just next level it's just so awesome to do role-playing he's so calm he's always just he never gets emotional when he talks to anyone

and that's what that's how you have to be with the business as well it's like you know it's like okay just be reasonable be logical just that like i find i've i learned a lot through that role-playing stuff because you're like oh my god i, I've been in that exact conversation. And I had no idea, and I said this, and I ended up doing way too much work. So I really like his stuff, especially when it comes to sales and creative, like selling creative services.

It's really, really good. Have you thought about joining his group? I have, I have, I have. And it's just, I mean, you guys probably agree, it's time really good have you thought about joining his uh his i have i have i have and it's just it's just i mean you guys probably agree it's time right i i find that the older i get and the longer i keep doing this you know i have a family now you know i'm married you know i have a mortgage all that stuff time constantly becomes my number one priority. And currency. Yeah.

And even money doesn't, even money takes a backseat to time now, right? Like I, you know, I ended up buying this. We moved our studio from the exchange district in 2019. I ended up buying an infill property and I moved my whole studio. I wanted that sort of like house vibe to a studio. And I bought it personally and everything like that. And I totally forgot where I was going with that. Time, time, time and money.

So I moved the studio. And I, you know, you know, it snows here in Winnipeg. Have you heard that? Yeah, I think I've heard a thing or two about that i had no idea um we also get really cold and uh i have two houses so they're like you know 15 minutes apart which is awesome but when we'd get a huge dump i was like you know snow blowing my front yard and then like coming here and having to like clear this house and i was like by the time i get to work like actually get to work it's like one and i'm like clear this house and i was like but by the time i get to work like actually get to work it's like one and i'm like sweating and all this stuff and i'm like i can't i can't handle this like i'm running a business here so so you bought you bought a house yeah you bought a instead of you move from you know we were we were talking about that that's our idea too just

just to cap that off is um so what I did is I just hired a company and they just manage the whole, they manage the landscaping. They manage in the summer, they come here and they do all the snow removal and everything like that. And I'm like, that's super expensive, but that was the smartest decision I ever made.

We're going to do that. Because time all of a sudden, you know, also cleaning, right? We ended up, me and my wife were like no we're just gonna hire a cleaning person they're gonna do both both houses and we'll never have to clean our house again and yeah it's super expensive but i you wouldn't believe the time that i saved on that well it's the time that you like like you as you mentioned like if you're spending all that time just shoveling snow not doing your work yeah that's all that's the only thing you're doing that

day but there's also other maintenance for these houses. So that might take time as well. And that day of work that you could have spent bringing in new business. It makes so much more sense, right? So sorry, I cut you off. What were you going to ask about the house? No, no, we had the exact same idea. Oh, you should do it. It's great to see that you did that. Do you have your employees go work? It's just more expensive. Yeah, here in Toronto. Oh, gosh, yeah. So your employees, like, they work out of the same, like, you got, how big is the place? I'm going to say, like, 1,700 square feet. But it's like a, it looks like a duplex.

It's like a, it's a two-story. It's a two-story. So upstairs we have, I converted all the bedrooms to, like like edit suites um i have floating desks in there and it's all i had it all really really really well done that's exactly our idea that was that was our plan for like the next five or five or so the way i managed that is like so i was talking to my accountant about it and how how am i going to manage this because i was like okay the business will buy it and things like that so it's a little bit different with a partnership but because i own the company me and my wife just purchased this this this house as a second house and then we rent it to the business so the business pays the mortgage the business gets the write-off right of of the, and I get a property that's getting paid for

through the business that I can flip when I retire. Because as video creators, as you know, I don't know about you guys, but I don't have a pension. We don't have a retirement package. We don't have pensions. You're incorporated, obviously. Yeah, we're incorporated. Yeah, we incorporated at the beginning. Yeah, we're incorporated. Yeah, we incorporated at the beginning.

Yeah, we just incorporated last week, but our plan was to buy it through the incorporation, through the corporation. Was that not a better idea for you? Well, it could be. You know, and again, I'm not an accountant, but your accountant will definitely like talk to you about that.

Like, so with a partnership, it's a little bit different, right? If you're a 50-50 split partnership, it's very different where, yeah, you'll probably want to buy it through the corporation. Then the corp, the, the, um, the, the, the property then is, is looped into the assets of the company. And all of a sudden your company's worth more, right? So the benefit of that is that if you want to go flip that, right? Say you want to go sell your company. It's like, hey, we have all this gear, but we also have this property actually makes it a lot more appealing.

Oh, I see. Right. The only thing the only downside I can think of is you have the the lie. But like, you know, if business gets sued to oblivion, the house goes along with it. That's what you get insurance for. All right. All right. I've never been so overly insured in my entire life. What are you insured for through the business? So we have... Because we just have the equipment insurance and the $2 million liability. That's it. Yeah, because the house is, Dario, health insurance.

So we have employee health insurance. Oh, you owe, right? So then we have... Yeah, yeah. Then we have, yeah, like the house insurance. I have all my equipment here, which is all like, and it's in the house. So yeah, so you have to insure that. I mean, I've got like, I've got life insurance on my personal side.

I mean, I've got just so much goddamn insurance. I hate insurance companies. I don't need any more insurance, but I get it. I get it why you want it. It's super important. But I think it's really important as a business to weigh all your options and work with a broker like if if you're getting to that level like work with a broker yeah we were gonna rent a place but then it didn't make sense because we actually spoke to one of our one of our friend one actually previous guest

yang from sd we're like you know we're thinking of eventually renting out a place it's like why it's like you'll be spending like 70 to 90K on a place. Like, you might as well just buy it. I was like, oh, that's not a bad idea. Or, you know, a lot of companies like in 2019, we had everybody in our studio, kind of a, it was a large space down in the exchange district. We had everybody coming there. And then 2019, everyone went home anyways right so i was like all right this is just going to the way i'm just going to do it this way everyone's just going to work

remotely i'm going to have this and so i do have some edit suites if people want to come here like we meet here for creative meetings like i have a really nice setup here a nice boardroom table where you can have meetings get together and you know we can cook meals and things like that it's it's more of like an add-on like for um for morale and things like that right just to get together every once in a while but i find with what we do that nowadays i mean i'm doing 95 of my my sales like this you know i mean you yeah but you guys are probably doing the same thing we're doing 100 of ourselves like this no we're doing 100% of our sales like this. No, we're doing 100%. People don't really want to do business that way, I find.

They don't even want to meet. They don't want to meet in person. It's just too much of a pain in the ass. Everyone's busy. Yeah, everyone's busy. Hey, with employees though, because it is mostly remote, how are you keeping employee morale up? Or keeping that sense of loyalty like loyalty but also like mentorship and

everything else because if they are mostly remote like what are you doing on well so we like you know we have a small internal internal team of people and then and then so the way we nurture those uh those people is we hire younger talent like the senior producer, Brian, that works for me, he's, he's more my age. But we have a graphic designer, and we have a motion designer. And, you know, what we try to do is we provide as much training as they want to expand their skill set, completely covered. So if we hire a new motion designer, on their contract is if you want to go through school emotion you guys know school emotion you ever heard of that no no school school emotion in in the states it's a really really cool online course for motion designers

and just teaches them incredible stuff like it's and it's like i don't know i think it's like a three or like a one month course and we've done that with some of our other employees. We'll say, we'll completely, we'll pay for that. If you want to go through that, um, you know, we'll give you a certain amount of time, uh, like at work to commit to that, to that training. But some of it you'll have to do on your own. We, we kind of make a deal that way, but we completely cover the costs of all of it. So I think younger people that are getting into the industry for sure are

just wanting to expand their skillset. Like they want, they want to be mentored and things like that. So we just try to create mechanisms that with that mentorship, where they're always learning, where they're never, where they never stopped learning the minute where they stopped learning and they start,

you know, they start doing sort of redundant things or it's the same amount of content. I mean, we're creative people. We're, we don't, out you know they start doing sort of redundant things or it's the same amount of content i mean we're creative people we're we don't we didn't get into this industry to do the same thing over and over and over again right so yeah so that's that's kind of how we do that and we do try to get together we try to have um weekly team meetings um at least one a week where we all get on talk about all the projects across the board, what we're doing, you know, what's what potential projects are coming up. You know, if we're talking about

one specific project, we make sure that everybody has a chance to give their opinion and speak. And I find that a lot of that type of work is really good for morale. Yeah, good, good for team building. Yeah, you have to invest in your talent, you have like part of investing in your business is investing in the people that you work with and yeah it's nothing worse than like like having someone where you're giving them the exact same thing to do over and over and over again without uh giving them the opportunity to grow and expand over time and um yeah like as as you start, that's the thing, like Dario and I are already thinking about that even if we don't even have any employees and trying to think about like how we could even help our freelancers in ways to give them different work as well and keep them happy because then

they'll want to keep working with us as well. It really changes the dynamic as soon as you hire somebody. It's interesting because when we started started we were three people and i was kind of the technical guy like i did the i did the motion graphics and the editing um but man as soon as you add someone to the mix it's like everything everybody's priorities sort of shift and you're like oh and you say everybody has to sort of find their own way and i think i think that was one of the you know uh, reasons, you know, earlier on in our business between the three partners that maybe became, made it a little bit more difficult is that we didn't really have a plan for like when we started to grow what everybody's role was, right?

And as you move forward, you know, it's like you're stepping on each other's toes and like partnerships are, I have a lot of experience with partnerships. If you guys ever want some counseling, you guys seem actually awesome together. And I love, I love seeing that. I love seeing that camaraderie and just like that dynamic between you guys is, is just, uh, is just amazing because partnerships are in business, are, are work. They are like real relationships. It's just amazing because partnerships in business are work. They are like real relationships. It's like being in a marriage. I mean, I was seeing my partners more than I was seeing my wife at the time, right?

Yeah, we're married, all right. So yeah, yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. But I love to see success stories of that. I love to see what you guys are doing. And it's awesome to see that. The way you said that, it's like when you see like your friends that are like a couple you guys are so great together the way he said that i'm like i mean it's not really that far-fetched is it i mean it's i mean you spend i mean when you when you see and communicate more with your part your business part than when you do with your girlfriend or spouse or whatever.

I mean, yeah. Everyone always says that we argue like an old married couple. Anytime they see that, it's hilarious. That's a good sign because old married couples have been around a long time. They've been together a long time. That's why they're called old, not young married couples. Yeah. No, it's interesting to hear that perspective, you know, because you don't always get a chest

to like wonder. It's like, oh, it's like, how has this been going? But that's like an interesting compliment to also say like, oh, you guys seem to have a good dynamic. Absolutely. It's cool that that's how it comes across. There's certainly things that I miss dearly about having partners and, and having people on the same level of the business to be able to bounce ideas back and forth on and to be able to have that collaboration. Because when,

when you become a, like a sole owner of a company, you're it and all that disappears. And you have to make like, you know, a friend of mine, uh, know, Doug Darling, you know, Tripwire Media, right? He's been really successful. He had a partnership too, you know, and it kind of went through the same thing where he had to buy it out. And, you know, we don't talk, get together too much, but I know that it's tough at the top, right? But I know that it's tough at the top, right? When you're having to sort of make all these business decisions, everything rides on your shoulders, right?

And it's not sort of spanned across other people. The pressure goes up. It's different. It's very different. That's true. It reminds me of Sopranos when Junior was talking about how it doesn't matter what decision you make it's about how well you can steer the ship yeah

that's very true okay so we're at the hour and a half this is officially our longest that's awesome is that okay wait it was your longest one yet is that a good thing no no our longest one I think our longest one was like two hours or something oh yeah we did we

sorry someone beat you no problem i bet it was doug he likes to talk i will come i will confirm after this recording and let you know if it wasn't if doug if doug sees this buddy i love you so much i love you doug shout out to doug i think we'll bring you back on maybe closer to when we actually hire someone because then we'll probably have like a lot more questions to ask you in terms of like the hiring process. Because I mean, right now, like one question I wanted to throw at you was like, how do you deal with like, I mean, there's probably higher turnover rates now compared to the past. So how do you deal with that as a business, right? But yeah, we could leave that for another time as well. It's a whole nother conversation. I have a big rant on that. Anytime you anytime you want to get together man i'd be happy to share that yeah happy to have you on man

well thank you so much yeah thank you guys if you want to check out adam's company his company is the co-element and you could find it at the co-element.com they're based out of winnipeg in manitoba am i correct yes the place where snows. It's been a while since I passed. Yeah. It's been a while since I geography class. Yeah. It's in Manitoba. So yeah. Anyways, thanks so much, Adam. And be sure to check out his website. Thanks guys. You guys are awesome. Thank you.