Creatives Grab Coffee - Passion Vs Business & the Future of CGC | Creatives Grab Coffee 50

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Daria Nuri and Kirill Lazarev from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto? Do you need crew or a strong production partner to help you with your project? Laps Productions is one of the top
Starting point is 00:00:52 production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. Laps Productions is able to offer you production services, white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at LAPSProductions.com to learn more. My name is Mehran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages, or lighting and group band packages.
Starting point is 00:01:30 You can see our contact information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativesgrabcoffee.com. Thank you. Creatives Grab Coffee is on patreon help support the show by becoming a patron via the link in the description and get exclusive access to full uncut episodes all reels and highlights at episode release live shows and call-ins ability to request cities and guests, and updates plus BTS content. Join now via the link in the description to get access to all the knowledge our guests have to offer.
Starting point is 00:02:12 And now, let's begin the show. And take three of Creatives Grab Coffee episode 50. Let's go. Why is it take three, Carol? Oh my God. The funny thing is the first, the first two recordings, I feel like were more of a bit of a therapy session for us. You know, I feel like anyone in business probably goes through the same thing where you have things in your head. You just kind of, you want to, you haven't had a chance to get off your chest. And that's kind of what we used episode 50 as, a means to release what we've been uh holding up for a while and then we just realized
Starting point is 00:02:50 you know what this we need to give a little bit more structure to this it was too much of a rant yeah it was a lot of you sent me you sent me the the rough draft of the episode i was listening to it and i was listening to the short one because now we're doing two different recordings we're doing the full uncut for the Patreon listeners and the shorter one uh bite-sized one for the public listeners and I gotta say listening to that I was like this episode can never see the light of day we gotta hide this in a vault well now that we've done this recording a few times remember we have people don't know what's going on. We haven't announced anything yet. And firstly, yeah, we're finally on Patreon.
Starting point is 00:03:29 That is one little announcement right there. And with that, there's going to be some changes to how we kind of go forward with the show and the format. And as you mentioned, one thing we're going to be doing is putting the full episodes on our Patreon and then releasing shorter, the full episodes on our patreon and then releasing shorter maybe 20 to 30 minute uh summary versions of some of the key topics uh for public and this way for those for those who want to know a little bit more about our guests or some of the topics we discussed you're more than welcome to join patreon and check it out um i know they already saw the intro part of the episode they we already gave them a them our little spiel. Basically, we just need help.
Starting point is 00:04:10 We're trying to monetize this podcast because there's costs involved. And we want to make sure that we enjoy doing this, but we do want to pump it out a bit more often. And I'm sure the listeners are enjoying it too because there's a lot of knowledge that's being spread around from our guests and whatnot. And if you guys want to hear more episodes we gotta we gotta find some money for it because it takes time like carol and i gotta take time out of our schedule to outreach to new people uh you know like vet them i always try to bring on people that are good if they're not good i just don't invite you know don't invite them to the actual call like because you know you don't
Starting point is 00:04:44 want to bring someone who's a dud right uh and And then Kirill's got to do the editing. That takes a lot of time out of the work that he should be doing for laps. So the time is money. We need some money to run this thing. You guys want more episodes? This is the trade-off, all right? It is what it is. Here's a little sneak peek into the kind of rambling that we ended up doing on the other recordings no that rambling was like oh i don't even know we should go like it was i don't know i'm pretty sure our enemies whoever they may be would have used it against us at some point but aside from that um one thing we also want to announce is that we finally got our first sponsor for the show canada film equipment and as you probably have seen in our intro video, they are the first of many more
Starting point is 00:05:29 sponsors to come that we have in the works. And if you are interested in sponsoring the show, you know, feel free to reach out to us and see how we can collaborate in some way. We have a few others. If you're a coffee roaster, if you're a coffee roaster, by some miracle listening to this, we need a coffee roaster if you're a coffee roaster by some miracle listening to this we need a coffee roaster so yeah you can't have creatives grab coffee without coffee or in dario's uh sometimes uh sometimes based on what he's feeling the tea world you know when he makes his uh monthly switch back and forth from coffee to tea and tea to coffee. Yeah, basically, yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:08 If you're a coffee roaster, please get in touch. I reach out to a lot of the good ones here in Toronto. I don't know. I guess they don't check their emails or whatnot. But coffee roasters, please reach out. If not, I'm going to start reaching out to some other people. Yeah, it all depends on what opportunities present themselves. But anyway, so that's the Patreon and the sponsorships out of the way. So Dario, where are we at right now with LAPS and us as a business,
Starting point is 00:06:31 aside from Creative Scrap Coffee? Where are we at right now? Let's do this as like a little bit of a chance to check in. Where we're at right now, we're just, what's the term? Trudging along. We're just getting along. Treading along. Month to month.
Starting point is 00:06:51 Work is slow as hell because of the interest rate hikes. Those things are brutal. That's it. I'm pretty sure a lot of other people are in the same situation. We've got a trickling of leads coming in compared to the waterfall that was the beginning of the year. Yeah. Nothing. we got a trickling of leads coming in compared to the waterfall that was beginning of the year yeah nothing we got we got some more keeping us alive but uh next year i hope they cut those interest rates down otherwise we're in deep trouble yeah it's interesting i talked to a few other people that are also like freelancing just to ask them from their perspective what it's like in the industry right now and even from them them, they're saying, yeah, for some reason, September itself is really slow,
Starting point is 00:07:25 which has never been historically like that over the last five or so years because September is usually around the time where a lot of corporations and companies, their fiscal years end. So this is around the time when they're trying to be spending money. Even during the pandemic,
Starting point is 00:07:41 everyone was still trying to do work in September. Everyone's cutting costs, you know? So what do you think is the first thing was still trying to do work in september everyone's cutting costs you know so what do you what do you think is the first thing that's gonna get cut it's video yeah it's always like that the first thing that would get cut we're always the first always the first government government wanted people to cut excess spending well if a company's trying to sell products and people ain't buying it because they can't afford to do it. Well, that's that's kind of we got affected, too, you know, like. Yeah, it's funny, though, the end results. I always find it funny when video is the first one cut, when it's also one of the most important means of communication from business to business and business to consumer, which is almost like a bit of an irony when you think about it.
Starting point is 00:08:21 Right. I wonder why that is. Because it's more expensive than photos but it's also one of the more needed mediums right right but if you had to choose between photo and video videos are more expensive ones so video will get cut you could still kind of do it with photos yeah because sometimes companies all they really need is something they don't necessarily need video for what they're doing. It all depends also on the business you're in. If you're in a very B2B type business, then yeah, video definitely will be one of the first things to cut because it's not a major need of investment for...
Starting point is 00:08:56 Or you just reuse the same video content. You don't update it. Yeah, which a lot of companies historically have done. Yeah, historically they don't update. If it's B2B, that video is evergreen most likely so yeah just keep using it using it until you wait out the interest rate hikes and then you know then you can start updating stuff we've had some leads come through the front door it's like yeah we want to do a video and update this and we see the the first video and it's from like 20 years ago it was like there you go right there they had one video cost a lot at the time probably even more so back then compared to now
Starting point is 00:09:28 and they just were afraid to go back and update it since then but that was before that was in the good times that was when before the crypto was at an all-time that was before the empire that was back when crypto was at an all-time high. That's when that was happening. People had money to burn. Those were good times. But anyways, overall, yeah, things have been a little bit slower. But on our front at Laps Productions, it's actually been one of our best years as of yet, which is nice to know. But it's funny because during these slow times, it never feels like it. But when you look at the numbers, it's like, oh, okay, we actually are doing pretty well.
Starting point is 00:10:08 But right now it's a matter of us just trying to kind of focus on a bit more of the marketing, focusing more on creating a blog content, focusing on the expansion of Creative's Grab Coffee, because this has actually been one of our best tools for creating new connections, new networks and things like that. And it's really yielded a lot of benefits for us that we didn't expect. Right. And one of my one of my favorite benefits is the fact that we if we need to work in other cities, either whether it's in Canada or in the States, it allows us to Australia or Australia. Yeah. Well, that's that's the other thing we've We've been able to expand not only across Canada,
Starting point is 00:10:48 but to several states in the US, the UK, as well as Australia. And one thing we did earlier this year, one of our clients needed a workshop in Seattle and in North Carolina. So as a result, we reached out to a few production companies in those cities and brought them onto the show. Oh yeah, in London. Exactly. And in London, we interviewed those production companies, got to know them really well, we really clicked and vibed. And as a result, when we went down to execute those projects, we just hired them. And it's honestly become a really good means of building bigger and better networks as a result. So this, this is a big focus for us now. And this is why we've also monetized a little bit, because we also want to be able to start doing this on a more weekly basis, because we've tried in the past, and it gets difficult. But we want to make that commitment to try to release almost on a weekly schedule going forward. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:11:46 And as an added benefit of being a Patreon member, you get to request specific cities. So let's say you have a shoot in, I don't know, Paris, France, for example. I just threw something way out there. But let's say, for example, let's say, let's say, let's say Paris, France. You got a shoot in there and you don't know anyone well you can request that we find a guest from that city so it's almost like we're vetting the people for you it really just helps us narrow down who to reach out to next because like when i'm doing the outreach i kind of just scratch my head and go what movie
Starting point is 00:12:22 have i watched recently oh goodwill hunting okay I'll reach out to people in Boston. So next week, I got a guest from Boston. Boston, I suggested to you because I'm going to Boston next week as well. Oh, is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm like, I'm going to Boston. Why don't we reach out to Boston?
Starting point is 00:12:39 Well, anyways, I did watch Good Will Hunting too. So there you go. That was part of the reason. So yeah, lots of things to come both on the business side and also for Creatives Grab Coffee. In terms of next steps, oh, Dario, we talked with our guests about a lot of interesting topics over this past season, I guess like the last 15, 20 episodes or so.
Starting point is 00:13:05 Before we get into that, I want to leave that for last because that's just a rehash. I'm pretty sure people that listen to this show have been listening for at least a couple of episodes or whatever because it's all pretty interesting stuff unless they're new listeners. Yeah, that's for the new listeners essentially. That's what this is. If you want want you can also go to those specific episodes which will be the last 10 i'd rather introduce a new topic and then towards the end we can kind
Starting point is 00:13:34 of go back and revisit some older topics uh yeah i want to talk about what we were discussing in the previous two tries of recording episode 50, falling out of love with the business. I want to talk about that because we did touch on it. And it was like, you know, we were trying to form the topic in these two other episodes. So I want to go into that today. their episodes. So I want to go into that today. Well, the thing is, a lot of businesses probably experience that in one way or another, in one way or another, you can't be in love with the business 100% of the time all the time, right? I mean, when you think about also the kind of work you do in video production, when you first jump into it, you jump into it to create video content and things
Starting point is 00:14:23 like that. But when you start running it as a business, you're more of a business owner at that point than a creator. Like 80% of the work you do at that point is business development, business growth and outreach and stuff like that. And maybe only 20% of the time is actually more of the creative stuff. So I feel like that is one reason that can explain as to why a lot of people can fall out of love with their business in a way. That's one of them. I think that was your take. That was more so my take.
Starting point is 00:14:56 Yeah. Everyone has a different way, a different means of how that happens. For me, it's more so that where more of the focus has been on business side of things rather than on the creative and um well that's why i've started to let you focus more on the creative side because i prefer the business side so that's how we split that up so now like he handles a lot of the creative stuff i don't i'm i'm more interested on the the business side of it so i'll even like loop a minute it's like all right now I'm handing it off to you. You,
Starting point is 00:15:25 you fucking go, go along with this. Go, go have fun. This is actually one of the topics we discussed with, with one of our, on one of the previous episodes, how in any business you have to essentially divide up roles.
Starting point is 00:15:41 You can't have, you can't have one person doing everything or two people doing everything, right? Some people have to have certain... Who was the guest that said you can't have the creative people talk to the client? Who was that guy? I don't remember that one. But the thing that I'm specifically referring to here was... Well, this was definitely discussed with Adam from Digital Spark Studios. He was talking about how you have to recognize your strengths and define and divide responsibilities when you're sharing a business with someone, right? That was one topic we discussed with them, but I do know which one you mean. I think that might've been, who was that?
Starting point is 00:16:19 Was it? I think it was. Was it Maleshko? Ryan from, no, no, no. It wasn't Maleshko because uh we I only remember that because that was our most recent guest and I remember distinctly that that was Kiro edits these episodes so he probably knows better than me I just remember like the conversations on the day of and that's it but uh yeah like I remember I remember someone was talking about that how like the creative people are just like they gotta just talk to other creative people because they're like in their own own world and when they mix with mix it with like the business people that's when like friction start that's what i remember well it's because it's a matter of like one it's different skill sets and kind of
Starting point is 00:16:58 what you're focusing on right like what what might be an objection from a client to a creative the creative might be like well why why do we have to do that but the creative might not understand that there are other factors at play behind the scenes right so for example if um if a client communicates saying um hey we have to remove this this format for the for this for this uh video and then do it like this instead the creative would be like but this looks terrible like well why are we going to do it like this instead, the creative would be like, but this looks terrible. Like, well, why are we going to do it like this? You know, and then- The creative is emotional.
Starting point is 00:17:31 Yeah, the creative would be like, but this is going to be bad. It's not going to be good. And they'll start listing out things in a way that maybe the client won't interpret it as well. Whereas the business side knows how to kind of communicate that in a way that might be i guess not non-threateningly i guess is not maybe not the right word but um in a way that
Starting point is 00:17:52 is beneficial to the client it's like look if you want to be able to achieve this we can't do that we have to do it like this some don't get me wrong some creat Some creatives can talk a little bit better to clients than most, but most creatives, not necessarily. Creative people are emotional. That's why they're good at what they do. They're in touch with their emotions and whatnot. But when you're dealing with business people, business people are not too emotional about things. They just want to do the business.
Starting point is 00:18:20 So it doesn't mix well. It's like Michael Corleone said, it's nothing personal. It's just business yeah um so that that was your side that was that was my side so what was more so tell her tell us what your side was my whole thing was uh i guess my thing was that i kind of became disillusioned with the business but I don't want to give off the wrong impression. Essentially, what happened with me was that I guess I would say maybe in this year or starting last year, I became more in touch with my entrepreneurial side. And I guess I was under the impression that this business, I could have turned into like a huge moneymaker for myself and you as well. I haven't forgotten about you, Kirill. You're part of the team.
Starting point is 00:19:11 Yeah. After 10 years, I would hope so, right? I was under the impression that we could actually turn this into like a vehicle that could make us life-changing money, right? and then i met these people that are in the e-commerce space and the product they're selling and the money they're making i came to realize what we're doing essentially is still just labor and even then it's still capped labor so we're running a business where i mean it's not going to make a ton of money i mean for a regular person yeah it's a ton of money but it's not going to be that
Starting point is 00:19:55 life-changing money and i think even production companies that are very successful pale in comparison to someone that's running a product-based business right because it's not even at the height well it's not the problem is again it's not scalable because it's not easily scalable it's not easily scalable because we're managing a lot of you're managing people and specifically people with talent which is even harder right because you have to it's it's hard to find those people and whatnot and i guess even as if you scale this up uh close to the cap the overhead cause will still be insanely high and you know i'm sure there's companies out there that have grown the production companies to be pretty big and they're doing very well but i guess my
Starting point is 00:20:41 definition of very well changed after talking to some more people in the e-commerce space to the point where I was like, OK. So for a couple of weeks, I'd say about a couple of weeks, I was kind of like it was in the back of my mind. It was gnawing at me. And I think, yeah, maybe disillusioned with it because I thought, you know, I'm not going to work for someone else. I'm going to work for myself and it's going to become this big, big business. work for someone else i'm gonna work for myself and it's gonna become this big big business and yada yada again i like the creativity of it and all but i do like the business side a lot more too but when i broke it down i'm like oh wait a minute it's it's still as a business as a business idea it's small and even at its biggest it'll still be considered small right don't get me wrong i love i love what we do i really enjoy video production work especially in the corporate space but it was
Starting point is 00:21:33 just something about that really disillusioned me and then and then just recently i i came to terms with it and the way i came to terms with it, I guess, is that I'm just seeing it as another income stream, like one of many. I guess that that was the main differentiating thing for me was that I was seeing this as one income with the one and only income stream, the be all end all. And now I'm just seeing it as one of many that I will do. Over the course of my career. That's a really. That was my whole. You know. Mind shift.
Starting point is 00:22:13 On this matter. And I guess the love for it. That I had before that. Is still there. But it's not the same. It's like you love. If you have one child. You love that like you love if you have one child you love that child but if you have three kids you still love all of them right but it's still it's three kids
Starting point is 00:22:32 you got three three different kids right that's kind of how i'm seeing it yeah you're basically uh splitting more of your uh you want to be able to try different things rather than one. Like before, we used to think that this business would be the only business we ever do. And I think that's a realization is that it shouldn't be viewed as such. It should be viewed as one business of potentially other ones that we want to do because I think- No, you don't have to. You don't have to view it like that like if you're running your production company and it's doing great fantastic keep it up i guess this is this was this is this is what happened to me i don't know if there's other people out there in the space that i've had the same uh realization or feelings but this is this this is basically me just talking
Starting point is 00:23:21 about what happened to me over the last two months and in terms of like how my feelings changed towards the production business you don't have to do this this is not up to like i'm not saying you guys gotta start thinking like this it's just something that happened to me yeah every every person every business owner every every person in this industry is different and they have different uh goals and and desires of like what they want to do essentially you have to figure out what you're getting into this business for and i think what dario was saying was that um he wanted to see it as a potential to see how much he can scale and grow it but then uh the realization of how there are certain caps as to
Starting point is 00:24:02 how far you can grow and the challenges that comes with it. Like if you make an extra $50,000 in sales on a product business, great. You just made a very distinct profit based on what you're selling. If you make an extra $50,000 in sales for video production, one of the biggest thing is like now we got to figure out where we can bring the talent. Do we have to expand? Do we have to grow this and that? There's a lot of challenges that come with it that almost you might end up making as a business the same amount of profit at the end of the day with those other sales. I remember we were talking with Rupert from Perspective Pictures. He was talking about how when you're scaling, uh, this service-based
Starting point is 00:24:45 industry or video production business, once you hit a certain number of people, then you have to aggressively grow in, um, in the types of people and the way you structure your business. So before he was like mentioning that he would be basically managing a team of like seven to eight people when it was that small. But once they hit like 10 people, that's when they had to bring in middle management and that completely changed the shape of the business, right? So it's like, sure, you're growing and expanding, but it's like when you start looking at it from the business perspective, what are those profit margins looking like at the end of the day? Will the same profit margin be there with like a three-person
Starting point is 00:25:21 team versus a 10-person team versus a 20-person team based on the sales like that that it's it's interesting it's interesting how this this industry how i mean like look when you're selling a when you're selling a product-based business when you're running a product-based business you're gonna have the same stuff you got to bring a middle management and all that but the only difference is with products the numbers are just bigger because your margins are different right that's the only difference is with products the numbers are just bigger because your margins are different right that's the only difference so like i don't know what kind of numbers rupert's running but if he was running a product-based business i guarantee you the numbers would be like there would probably be several more digits added to the end of that figure of course that's that's all i'm trying to say like the thing is like the thing that that that
Starting point is 00:26:03 that i realized is that you know we're running a business where i really if we're not there it's doomed and i think yeah you could get it to the point where you just step back but then at that point you'd have to become like publicly traded or you know privately traded but you still need outside investment for it right yeah like these other businesses you could just you could take a easy step back i guess you could even with video production but i guess it's again the numbers are not are not really there like i'm trying to think like people we've spoken to it's like the ones that are doing really well it's like several million whatever maybe five million gross bigger bigger maybe more than that but
Starting point is 00:26:47 when you talk about products it's so the numbers are just ridiculously higher at a smaller scale of overhead too right like in terms of team running the team team can be smaller too but the numbers they're running are just so much higher like the scalability with video production companies just is not there it's very difficult i think i think about some of the top ones in toronto their teams are not that big they're very small small company i can't imagine if the team was bigger it'd be more successful like i can't imagine the amount of stress that would be added to the owner of that company by like you know increasing the team and all that like it'd be intense and it's like for what like if i was going to take that risk on i'd expect like a big big salary do you have a shoot in toronto do you need crew or a strong production partner to help you with your
Starting point is 00:27:43 project laps productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. LAPS Productions is able to offer you production services, white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at lapsproductions.com to learn more. My name is Mehran, welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages or lighting and group band packages. You can see our contact
Starting point is 00:28:26 information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativesgrabcoffee.com. Thank you. Okay, guys. This is future Dario and futureyrill chiming in again because we were talking about this after the show on the phone this is something i was trying to say
Starting point is 00:28:52 that i guess i didn't say properly wait for the camera to focus on me okay i was trying to say this i think i went i i feel like i was rambling we'll see what kyrill says after he starts editing it but this is what i was trying to say um we're in a business where, let's say you get an influx of, this is going back to the topic of, you know, like I feel like this, the scalability of our business is limited and hence the amount of money you can make and it is very limited.
Starting point is 00:29:14 And I think a lot of people don't realize that going into it or they become, you know, they just don't realize it, right? This is where my disillusionment kind of stems from. It's the fact that like let's say you get an influx of 20 clients coming in this month and they all need video work and whatnot at once right uh you couldn't scale your business up to achieve that effectively if you wanted to like where on earth are you going to find all the talent and the crew needed for that?
Starting point is 00:29:47 Okay, just let me add a preface here is that this is relative to us is what we're saying. So even if like say you're a team of like 20 people, if you're normally taking in only 20 clients per month and all of a sudden 100 clients come to you at once, you're not going to be able to service them like that. Yeah, we're exaggerating the numbers here, but just think of it relative to yourself. Yeah, like imagine you do whatever, 10 clients, 10 gigs a month. All of a sudden, you have 40 coming in this month. You have to turn work away, right? Versus if you're running a product-based business, you just up the numbers and you achieve it and that's it. But for us, it's like you can't bring in enough talented people to achieve that. And also the time it takes.
Starting point is 00:30:30 At least not in that short time. Yeah, not in that short time. You'd need a lot more time also because the way the videos are created anyways, you can't do it like that. Even if you wanted to, it would be a disaster unless you're a magician. But that's what I was trying to say is that you can't even – our scalability is so capped. Even if you had the influx of work coming in, I can't tell you how many guests we've had on the show that have referred work to us because they were at full capacity. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:31:01 But here's actually a funny thing now that we're talking about this and it just reminded me. That was actually something that Rupert accounted for with his business. He was talking about how the way he would scale in that sense and try to anticipate. See, the thing is for him, it was more so anticipation. So that's why it kind of worked for him where he would hire in the downtime so that when the busy times do come around, then they would have the people. Yeah, but you know, that's a big risk. You're basically, he's trying to time the market and we all know how well that works, right? So what if he was wrong?
Starting point is 00:31:36 It's not always straightforward. Yeah, but if he's wrong, then what? Now he's got to let people go, right? Yeah. go, right? Yeah. That actually happened with a lot of, that happened with a lot of people that we know in our industry here in Toronto, where people scaled up during the pandemic because they saw an influx of work in certain areas. But then when that work went away, they had to start downsizing again, right? So that's, that's, that's the unfortunate thing about the business as we mentioned, is that if you get a huge influx of work, it's going to be very hard to scale up.
Starting point is 00:32:02 And then when that work goes away, then you have to scale back down because you will not survive as a business otherwise. And that is unfortunately the biggest challenge in video production. Once you scale up, if the work isn't coming in, then you have, I mean, but this is like in any business though, as well, when you think about it, right? You know, if the work, if the sales aren't coming in, you have to then scale down. Maybe it's not, down. Maybe it's not that unique to our industry, but the problem is we're more susceptible because we're dealing with people and it's mostly service-based compared to product-based businesses, essentially. Again, whenever we bring people on, their skill level needs to be very high. Yeah. So right away, you're dealing with a small
Starting point is 00:32:46 group of people, which means the amount of work you can intake is very small. Just how it is. Talent, I would say that's like the talent shortage. I think that was like an issue that the tech sector was having for a few years as well. I think this happens in a lot of industries where talent is such a key part of what the work is. And if the, if there's a lot of work coming in and not enough talent to go around, you know, everyone's going to be fighting for the same people. So you can't, I mean, I remember like even we've had similar situations where some creatives we've worked with in the past where we brought them on, we brought them on for some projects, but then they became so in high demand with other production companies that uh one they they weren't as available to take on projects anymore but two they got so busy to the point where sometimes even the
Starting point is 00:33:36 quality of the work sometimes suffered um and then three it's like at that point because you know that they're that busy and they're not always going to be available as a business, you have to make the conscious decision where you can't pitch going forward relying on that person. Maybe once in a while to bring them in, but that person won't be someone that you can bring in consistently. But that's how it is on the freelance side if you're hiring contractors. contractors if you're hiring full-timers that's a bit more of a different story but at the same time to find those really good quality um full-timers that's that's a challenge as well because there's to in take people it takes time right like you have to go through an interview process that there's like a month right there training or uh basically that's what i'm wondering now that you mentioned how does rupert anticipate anticipate all that stuff or hire for it?
Starting point is 00:34:27 Do you want to bring him back on the show? Let's bring him back on the show and talk to him. Yeah, because it's not easy to hire people. And then to qualify them, train them, that takes a lot of time, doesn't it? Well, he was talking about it. That's why he talked about doing that in the downtime because then he's gone through all the hard stuff
Starting point is 00:34:44 when things were quiet, that when the influx then he's gone through all the hard stuff when things were quiet that when the when the influx of work does come in uh they are able to scale up he obviously doesn't hire he he's he's obviously smart enough to not hire too many people at once he probably does it like slowly with like one person at a time i remember he was saying like on average they add like maybe two people a year i like i i'd year. I'd have to look back at what it was in the episode. We'd have to take a look again. But of all the production companies that I think we've interacted with,
Starting point is 00:35:16 he's done it in a very smart way with how he's scaled it up in terms of people. His team is big. There's like 30 people there. And he's never really had to scale down from what I remember us talking about. other company i know that has like that many is sasha's indigo yeah but it's like a mix of different businesses too yeah but that's the thing he has a he has a diversity the thing that he does well is that he has a diversity in the in
Starting point is 00:35:41 the business lines that he's in right he's not only doing photography you think so but it's actually it's still part of the same like when you say diversity i think completely different business but his stuff is still all part of that it's still all photography it's all part of marketing yeah but it's still marketing in the video in the photography space right so he's got uh indigo purple tree but they also they also do branding and design work with uh august media they do weddings with purple tree they do corporate um corporate and commercial content who's that guy uh uh some of them some of them some of them in the okay so let's let's use a video production example uh i know a lot of people actually in the video space go like if they want to diversify they'll get the studio space or they'll start renting out gear or all
Starting point is 00:36:34 three right i think that's actually a bad idea because you're still just part of the video space you haven't diversified really diversification to me is like you add photography or something else entirely right because no i'll tell you why i'll tell you why because i'll use photography as an example let's say something completely unrelated to that designing websites okay that's real diversification why because if something happens to one of the industries where for some reason there's a down a down period downturn at least the other one is still in an upturn you know what i mean versus let's say you have a production company and you have a space you rent out for shoots and then
Starting point is 00:37:25 also equipment well if the video production industry is down the other two are going to be down as well so you haven't really diversified you're still you you still have all your eggs in one basket yeah which is it's kind of like an illusion of diversification in a way because you're the the difference the the thing that is diversified is who you're selling to, right? Because in studios and rental houses, you're selling to a lot of production houses and that's the same customer essentially, right? But a different need. So that's where the diversification is kind of lost. It's a subcategory of the same industry. That's not good. That's not diversification is kind of lost. It's a subcategory of the same industry. That's not good. That's not diversification. Yeah. Diversification is to selling to different markets and different
Starting point is 00:38:09 types of customers, I feel is the most effective way. If you're providing four or five different services, but you're still catering to the same clients, the potential to grow is, and also the potential to have a down season is just as high. It's like, it's almost like saying, like you're looking for clients that need animation videos and live action videos. It's like, you're still creating videos for the same clients.
Starting point is 00:38:36 It's still video content at the end of the day, right? Yeah, that's what I was trying to say. Like it's, I know some people are doing it and good for them if it's going well. I'm just trying to say though, it's like if something goes bad in one, it's going to go bad in the other two because they're all interconnected, right? The true way of doing it is to like literally diversify in something completely different because you're hedging your bets, right? That's true diversification. Yeah. Essentially, it's a way to kind of help support one one business with the other.
Starting point is 00:39:05 If something slows, something slows down. That's kind of what we're also trying to do with Creatives Grab Coffee in a way as well. Not really. It's still if you look at it like that, it's still related to video productions in a way. Yeah. But we're selling to different people. But again, but here's now the difference. The difference is that you're selling to a different type of customer all together right whereas um like and that's what i was trying to say customer man no i that's why right now no no cgc dario the customers and the audience for creators grab coffee are video production company owners that's mostly who are you really
Starting point is 00:39:41 don't freelance people you really don't see it If there's a bad time in the video production industry, for example, here we sell Patreon subscriptions. They'll be less likely to get it because they're not getting enough gigs to be able to pay for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's not diversification. I see what you mean.
Starting point is 00:39:57 Diversification is like what I'm trying to do now, trying to set up my own e-commerce shop. That's diversification. It's not related to video, completely different. That's diversification. Yeah, so in terms of diversification it's not related to video completely different that's diversification yeah so in terms of diversification of industry rather than um rather you sub you subletting you subletting one of one of the rooms in your condo that's diversification you're getting income from a different source completely that's called diversification yeah if you're in the same spot i mean you it's still
Starting point is 00:40:26 diversification you're just you're still exposed to the same risks yeah you would be in your main business yeah you're in the same industry that goes down everything goes down right yeah so anyway as a business owner you just have to think about what you want to also put your focus in and if you can diversify in some way to kind of make sure things stay afloat then go for it right yeah and also i i still don't know if i've really like explained my feelings this episode on what i was what i'm going through that stuff i don't know if i'm explaining it properly so i might not be explaining it the way i might have not figured out the way to
Starting point is 00:41:05 understand it myself and explain it to other people if anyone else is going through this or has gone through it and knows how to explain it better let me know but uh maybe by next episode i'll be able to explain it better or in a couple episodes i'll have figured it out in a more figure out a way to communicate it better. But that's it. Again, I'm not talking down on the video production industry, anything like that. It's just from a business perspective, I guess my mindset has shifted a little bit. Again, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:41:40 Maybe I'm not explaining it properly. He wants safety and assurances. I'm not trying to. That's what he wants, guys. He wants safety, security, long-term security. Againances i'm not trying to guys i'm not i'm not trying to security long-term security again we all want that we all i'm not trying to no it's not even like again i'm probably not explaining it well that's the only thing so if you guys are going like what the hell is he talking about i probably haven't explained it well but if someone else knows what i'm talking about and you know knows, knows how I should explain it, let me know. Or maybe Dario still hasn't figured it out and he's just trying to get it out.
Starting point is 00:42:09 Maybe by the next time we record this episode. But anyways, yeah, that's it. I'll just stop talking now because I feel like I'm just rambling. Yeah, we got Dario back to the rambling section. Anyways, yeah. This is future Dario and Kirill clocking out. Now we can go back to wherever the episode was taken out. I don't know where you're going to fit this in, Kirill.
Starting point is 00:42:26 I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. And back to our regular scheduled programming. If you're looking at it from just purely a financial perspective, like people who are jumping into our industry are not doing it purely to make money, right? That's not the main driving force. That's more so something that they would like to
Starting point is 00:42:45 have uh in as a result of it right i mean when i first jumped into this industry i thought to myself originally you know i don't think i'm going to make that much money in this industry so if i can make it to the point where i actually live off of what i do here then holy crap that is that is great so like i don't agree with that because when i don't agree with that because when you jumped into it you jumped into it thinking that you could hop over to the other industry which was films that's what you you didn't know that the roads right you thought you could do it make money to then go into films you didn't go into corporate because ever since you were a little child you dreamed of making ads for a conglomerate business, right? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:29 You didn't wake up at five years old and say, I want to make ads for McDonald's, right? Yeah. Well, we adapted. We all do it for money. Yeah. It's like we get into, like, I think when you get into this industry, even if whatever, like, I don't know,
Starting point is 00:43:45 you're like, I'm't know, you're like, I'm not doing it for the money. Blah, blah, blah. You have to think about the money though. That's what I, you are always thinking about the money because you got,
Starting point is 00:43:51 you come into it and then you realize, Oh, wait a minute. Like, you know, there's, okay. The thing is,
Starting point is 00:43:59 there's three different industries. There's film and TV. There's corporate. And then there's commercial, which is kind of in between film and tv and i guess we'll throw in documentaries as part of film and tv but they're kind of separate in a way so when you when you get into the creative space you know you're good producer director whatever here's a lot of us started out as cinematographers you get into this and then you're like what's the next step well if you don't know you kind of get you start freelancing and if you're freelancing you're mostly working on corporate projects right so
Starting point is 00:44:33 eventually get to the point where you get good at it and you're like you know what i got i gotta live money's good you kind of a lot of us just stick into corporate because of that right until we find out hey wait a minute if i went into film TV, I would have had to go through the union. That would have been a pain in the ass. And then, you know, I've got to work long ass days and basically- To make nothing for a while. Not have a family.
Starting point is 00:44:53 If you do, probably divorce because the hours are horrible. Okay, so screw it. I'll stick with corporate. You do weddings on the side. You get really good. You don't have to do weddings on the side. You just stick with corporate, right?
Starting point is 00:45:09 That's really how we all, or, you know, you kind of get really good you don't have to do weddings on the side you just stick with corporate right that's that's really how we all or you know you kind of get really good at corporate you make the jump into commercial work now you're working with different directors and you're doing commercial maybe you'll make that transition of tv or film at some point that's really but it's like we all fell into this because it just happened to be the zone where we could make money and do creative stuff. Right. Is that not what happened? OK, so I just want to clarify that. Like, it's not like we woke up and said we got into this out of passion. We found out that we were good at it and we made it a passion for ourselves, I would say. I don't think I think very few woke up and said, I want to make ads for, you know, Deloitte.
Starting point is 00:45:43 That's my life goal. That's not really a life goal for a lot of us. Right. Especially if you're on the creative side, you're like, I want to make ads for you know Deloitte that's my life goal that's not really a life goal for a lot of us right especially if you're on the creative side you're like I want to make movies I want to do tv shows and then you kind of realize wait a minute that's a whole different world and you get into this you get stuck here you're like I like it why not I mean we like corporate now like I personally really like it if I was to choose I would stick with this even yeah I mean look honestly you always remember the first bit of money you make off of a video that you create, especially when it was originally not believed that you can actually do that. And yeah, like I remember the first project I got that paid me, what, like 500 bucks for
Starting point is 00:46:20 a video. I was like, like back then, you know, like, I mean, like that's actually even today, like still a lot of money. It's like, it's like, oh my God, this is actually possible. And then you kind of start following that and seeing where the industry goes. And like you said, a lot of the time, the biggest market for making money through video production is in the corporate world right now. But see what you just said right now is you followed the money, Carol, because you got paid for a corporate project. If you're really passionate about video on like the stories, the filmic, the film. Like if you wanted to go into films originally, even if you got paid for corporate, you would have found your way to films.
Starting point is 00:47:00 Well, because think about it like this. You followed the money. You went into corporate because the money was there. Well, here's the other thing. You also want to make sure you're also financially stable. So there's like this balancing act that a lot of people have to figure out. It's like, look, you, if you're going to get into this industry, you also want to figure out a way to actually live off of it. Right. You can't, you can't do the passion work if you're not making money in one way or another, like anyone who's not doing video production or like people who want to go into films and tv and all that stuff but are only focusing on that you know they still have to they still have to put a roof over you can still make you can still make fun you can
Starting point is 00:47:34 still make money in film and tv i don't see any of any of them on the street with beggars cups they're making it work yeah but i'm talking about for people jumping into it not everyone can do it right out the gate right especially when it's why not there's a ton of them though you just you just apply for the union and then yeah you got to put up with the bad hours but they're a ton of them working that same girl we went into corporate because like the the work-life balance was a lot better and the money was good for us to live in live with basically that that's that's a real reason yeah we're saying the same thing here just trying to clarify because it sounded like like no like because even for film and tv you can still make good money on it it's just a completely different path is all i'm
Starting point is 00:48:17 trying to say but most of us started trying to get into that and then we realized what a different road it was that's all i'm trying to say yeah you realize the different path um the different paths that there are and you just have to make a decision on where you want to go and if you realize at some point you want to make some changes like then make changes and and do what you need to but yeah but anyways so that's that was basically our um the the gist of everything that we talked about for an entire hour that we condensed into 10 minutes right now the the next thing we're gonna just quickly go over is where was this um so one of the uh next directions for the show that we've already kind of touched upon is
Starting point is 00:48:58 expanding further beyond where we are now we've hit already three of the states in the US. And our next goal is to hit at least one guest or get one guest onto the show from every single state in the US. And I feel like that is going to give a very interesting picture of what the industry is like overall in the states where we can kind of compare
Starting point is 00:49:21 and see what it's like from one versus the other. And I feel like that would be interesting for anyone who's listening, because I don't know any other show or program that has done something like that, which is basically talk to people from every single state in the U.S., let alone even in Canada, every single province, right? Because we've done that. We've done most of the provinces. We haven't done, I think, a couple in the...
Starting point is 00:49:44 Well, we haven't done... Some of the territories in the north. We found land. Well, territory is not a province. They want to come on the show. They got to be a province to qualify. Try to find the bigger leads. But yeah.
Starting point is 00:50:03 I think we actually did look on that previous take to see if there was anyone and was that territory we're looking at none of it and there was none of them up there yeah well that's not where the market is when you think about it a lot of people go to a lot of these more remote parts of uh of the world well i don't think anyone goes there i think they well they haven't been going there for hundreds of years. I've known some creators that have gone to film some projects here and there.
Starting point is 00:50:31 To film, but it's not like they stay there and start their own company. That's what I mean. They're not people that stay there. That's what I mean. Not like the market is booming. It's only for very specific types of projects
Starting point is 00:50:47 but yeah so that's that's essentially it uh and that's and that's also why we need the support so we can try to get the through the 50 states as fast as possible and try to get it done at least one a week so with 50 states or i guess 47 are left now technically speaking that would be yeah within a year essentially that's 47 states right there. Yeah, we'll get through it in one year. Yeah. Yeah, so that's basically it for the next portion. One other thing we want to kind of ask our guests is what are like some other things that you would like to see on the show in terms of topics discussed um production
Starting point is 00:51:25 companies or well i guess this is something that goes mostly for our patreon users at this point which is like what would you like to see on the show what would you like us to kind of talk about where where would you be curious about uh yeah about us reaching out to as dario mentioned maybe paris france or maybe in germany or like oh oh we forgot to mention another thing too you get to do well we mentioned that because if you've listened to the first couple minutes you heard it over there but uh well we'll be doing live call-ins as well at some point yeah at least we'll try to do that yeah we'll try to do that i mean we're not going to cater to you to the patreon it's like look it's it's going to happen on this day at this time if you want to and then whatever so you get to see the show live and then you can also chime in and
Starting point is 00:52:08 ask some questions too because riverside allows that which is a really cool feature um that's going to be really awesome once the patreon numbers start going up i i think another good thing would be maybe even doing some q and a's um with with us on the show is um on patreon as well you never know like people can there could be like some discussions that come through it and like you know what maybe we could even do an episode like that like say we get a good amount of patreon users eventually and then we can basically do a live show for them and then they could be like uh what are your thoughts on this topic or something like that and then you and i can basically optimistic of the number of listeners look it all it takes is like five patreon users
Starting point is 00:52:49 you know that are we i i want like i want to get a hundred super fans i don't need we don't need a hundred thousand casual fans here and there i mean don't get me wrong that would also be nice but we would we would love to have people that are really involved and really passionate. Think about it. What are some things that you're interested in that you're diehard passionate about? How Dario is with his Yeezys. He loves that stuff. That kind of level of, or me with my hats, that kind of level of passion essentially is what we're looking for with with our audience but uh yeah and if there are other ideas in terms of what you might think is valuable for you as a listener let us know comment
Starting point is 00:53:31 the idea better not be lower the price look we got to pay for this show okay like i know we don't have the numbers that we need for listeners so the if we had like 10 times the amount of listeners then i would have lowered the price but hey you're getting more value out of this than Disney Plus. So cancel your Disney Plus. You've already watched all the Star Wars shows. Enough with the Star Wars. OK, you don't need to watch another one of those garbage shows. Turn your brain into mush.
Starting point is 00:53:56 No one cares about Ahsoka. if there is if you've if you've learned something on the show or from any of our discussions with our guests that have helped you improve your business in some way or even send us an interact at the following email at the following patreon at creatives grab coffee.com for 25 as a coffee at least god damn it yeah something yeah i know mean, that is except we shouldn't start accepting payments of coffee only. You know, then eventually that's how we're going to start getting paid. I'll take it. I'll take it. Send us something.
Starting point is 00:54:32 You made money off off this show. Send me some a little something, you know, do me a little like give me something a little tenor here or there like something a little tenor. I'm just joking. I'm just joking gotta have a little fun on this yeah and for those of you who are tuning in and are new to the show
Starting point is 00:54:55 there have been a lot of very interesting topics that we've kind of covered over the last little while and even like the one cool thing about what we do at the show is that even we're learning talking with these guests because we don't know what the industry like is in these other parts of the world. We don't know what their story is or their experiences. The thing we've learned with this show is that every single guest that has come onto the show, none of them have had the same path, essentially. the same path essentially there's always been some variances or like differences in how they get into the industry why they get into the industry how they've grown why they've grown
Starting point is 00:55:31 and we've talked about a lot of pretty interesting things and i remember one of my favorite uh discussions uh that we had just on our most recent one with uh zach from melechko was the whole retainer model bit because that's something a lot of creatives in our industry talk about wanting is finding more retainer clients. But what we came to the realization is that what we want is more bookings, not retainers, essentially. I love how he said that if you were doing that, you'd basically be losing out on the inflation cost. Yeah, that was a big realization. But you know what? In today's world is a very big problem
Starting point is 00:56:08 because inflation reported was like what? I'm pretty sure. 7, 8%. Listen, now right now we're down to 4 here in Canada now, but I'm telling you right now those numbers are fake. It's got to be at least 10%. It's got to be more, yeah. It's got to be way more.
Starting point is 00:56:24 I know how they pick and choose, right? Yeah. when inflation was two percent it wasn't a big deal no one no one brought that up it's like okay but even if okay in normal times it's supposed to be two two percent right so whatever you're charging you got to factor that into the the cost right so i guess how i would have pitched it to the client is like, I would have probably said dependent on monthly inflation. So the monthly inflation needs to be factored in because if you're being paid on a monthly basis, you got to factor in the inflation, right? So if it's a hundred bucks, there's a hundred and two bucks. But here's the thing though, is that with the inflation when you're doing retainer models you're also giving a kind of discount a little bit you know on that much work
Starting point is 00:57:10 so you're losing even more as a result because that's what a lot of companies do when they're looking for retainer models is like we need more well that's how the value is to get them locked into a contract is essentially provide some kind of overall discount and services you know that helps helps them swallow that pill necessarily right you know what so essentially why offer why offer the discount because if they're writing i remember adam was talking about it's like it only works it's worked with him with clients that he already has a good relationship with me with which means that he's been doing work with them for a couple of years so it's like at that point it's already kind of guaranteed why offer the discount yeah i think it's just a matter of like uh it's not like the the the retainer uh the traditional retainer
Starting point is 00:57:58 model is not necessarily applicable that well towards the video production world and yeah essentially what we're trying to do is just get more bookings, like more consistent bookings. That's how I would have pitched it. Now that I think about it, I would have said, it's like you, you will be guaranteed.
Starting point is 00:58:15 I will be available for the pro. Yeah. We'll, you'll, you'll get, we'll be guaranteed for your project. You'll have us for sure. You don't really need to do the discount to lure them in.
Starting point is 00:58:24 You could just say we might be busy right so this guarantees our availability i would still charge them the inflation on it though i think now it's probably easier to sell that too it's like okay if you're hiring us for the full year uh it'll cost this much plus inflation of two percent because that's supposed to be normal anyways and you just add that on top yeah but yeah that was just like a a little funny tidbit from one of uh one of the past uh episodes that we had uh oh actually this was one thing that i wanted to mention is that uh one thing that that Stuart from Chuck Media talked about, and this kind of goes back to the idea where you might sometimes fall out of love with your business if you find yourself doing a lot of the same kind of corporate work and things like that.
Starting point is 00:59:14 Maybe what you need to do is also take on an annual passion project that you do that can kind of that you can look forward to every year and get excited about. So that's one thing that he's done to kind of circumvent that aspect of, you know, feeling in like a little bit of a rut with your business is to do something that you normally wouldn't do. So that's something a lot of people should consider as well. Getting out of a rut though is different, isn't it? Well, maybe not getting out of the rut is maybe not the right way I would say it is. I don't know, just to kind of like stir up the creative juices a little bit.
Starting point is 00:59:47 Yeah, I think I think for him is it was more stir up creative juices. But I think it's different if you're coming to like a more existential situation. Right. Yeah. Another thing we we also talked about on our episode with Thomas from Offbeat Films was you need to realize that you're going to outgrow your clients eventually. You're never going to stick with the same clients from the very beginning up until now because you grow as a business, they grow as clients, needs change, marketing goals change. Don't take it personally if either they move on and they
Starting point is 01:00:24 won't take it personally if you also out on and they won't take it personally if you also outgrow them, right? Because when you're starting out in a business, you're also starting out with a certain price point, right? Like when we started doing videos, Dario, we were charging what? Like 150 a video, 500 a video. So I guess by outgrowing, you're really just saying you've become too expensive for your clients. That's of the that's one of the main ways that was one thing i remember we talked about on that episode what was the other one um well that was that was just one of them is all i'm mentioning outgrowing just basically yeah like well yeah obviously kira like you got you got business we got bills to pay like if client can't pay can't
Starting point is 01:01:00 pay you got to move on that's that's my point and like uh and i already mentioned it as well is that essentially different goals and needs change over it sounded like creatively when you were saying it it sounded like creatively you might outgrow the client i think it's just more so financially when you're running a business in the in the corporate space who cares as long as they can pay right well that but also yeah, but also, well, there's that. There's that. And also from their end, it's also their goals change as well.
Starting point is 01:01:30 So like if they originally brought you in to do monthly videos, right? Maybe they realize after two, three years, oh, we don't need to do these monthly videos anymore. So then they also move on to doing something else. So there's always gonna be an influx of change with the clients that come through the front door.
Starting point is 01:01:47 And like even us, like I'd say our current client roster is fairly new, like from probably two years ago. Yeah, because their pricing structure changed. That's it. Exactly. So like don't feel bad
Starting point is 01:02:02 if things change is all I'm saying as well. But if you're feeling bad you're in the you're in the wrong business or you should yeah you should give the reins to the create to the more business side minded person on your team like we're running businesses here like we got no time for emotional whatever your client doesn't care either like they're they're uh just a cog in a wheel anyways right they got a budget to work with and they can only sell you so much to upper management anyways, right?
Starting point is 01:02:27 There's no emotions involved in this. It's just business. Like you're just doing transactions really. Yeah. But anyways, those are just a couple of little interesting tidbits that we talked about over the last few episodes. And if you're really curious to see
Starting point is 01:02:43 what else we talked about, check out the previous episodes. we got hours and hours and hours of uh good content for you to check out girl you wanted to do like a whole summary of each of the last 10 episodes no i didn't want to do that i didn't want to do a summary of each one i just wanted to pull like a little uh one a couple interesting tidbits like that from past episodes. Like, for example, the retainer idea. That was like a very funny realization that we had talked about. Yeah, because I liked how we saw the two perspectives. Like Adam was really for it or when it worked. And then when we got Zach's perspective on it,
Starting point is 01:03:21 on the inflation part, I'm like, oh my God, that's so true. I never even thought about it. And no one mentioned that. Yeah. That's another interesting thing is when we interview some guests, we end up talking about similar topics, but our guests have one aspect of it, one perspective, and then the other one has another perspective. And it's just interesting to draw these comparisons because these are things, these are experiences from people that have gone through this that we haven't. And it's just nice to, it's just interesting to see that unfold and just kind of talk about. But yeah, like this and a lot of other interesting topics along the way, you know, we got another, another 50 episodes coming. By the time we hit episode 100, we will have hit all of the US. So here's to that. I personally wanted to hit that number close to now, but I would have liked to as well, but it's, it's not easy. And this is why it costs money to do this. It costs money to do this. And here's the other thing. We're also running, uh, the, the actual video production business side, right? We could be focusing on
Starting point is 01:04:23 a video. I would be like, we would be like editing or working on an episode. It's like, oh, we're working. Also two client projects have come through the door that we have to focus on getting done first. That's going to take precedent, right? So with a little bit of funding, at least it'll help us.
Starting point is 01:04:38 And at the very least hiring even some editors to actually help produce the content if we're busy with other things going on right um there's there's lots to there's lots to come through and uh honestly like look we would still we would still be doing this show even if we didn't have support it's just uh the episodes are just gonna trickle out a lot slower but uh you know like if you guys are getting a lot of value out of this you know help support the show i know times are tough less projects coming in but again cancel disney plus yeah yeah cancel one of those uh one of those subscription models that you don't need you know
Starting point is 01:05:17 those ones are just giving you some basic very very bare bones basic entertainment and whereas this is actually we're actually spreading knowledge spreading yeah that's it yeah cgc is all about spreading the knowledge yeah exactly but yeah so anyways uh i think that pretty much covered everything already this is what a more condensed version of those three hour first takes that we did just in all fairness carol there was a lot to rant about it's just our listeners are also in different countries and they don't really they didn't really need to know a lot of the ranting they don't need to they don't hear look we get it you guys are all here to to learn learn new things
Starting point is 01:06:04 from uh our guests and yeah not here you're not here to care about our problems you're not here to care about our problems and we're not here to and out and and the op and you know and vice versa but anyways yeah look uh we're trying to pump out this show more often expect a lot more episodes um you know if they come out pretty often and we don't have that many patreon users then someone please uh send carol like you know some coffee money or something because that means he's editing he's editing a lot yeah god knows i ain't touching these i'm dealing with the outreach actually Actually, I got two calls of people from Boston coming up today.
Starting point is 01:06:45 So I better get to those guys. Yeah. Our next, our episode 51 will be our next guest from the States, from Boston. So stay tuned for that and stay tuned for more. We're excited. Yeah. All right. Thank you guys.
Starting point is 01:07:00 Thanks guys. Cheers. And yeah, that's the next thing. We're going to get some lap we're gonna get some cgc mugs all right so you know as with every patreon user you might get one of these right in the mail if uh if you sign up so my god you know what carol did for us back in the couple years back he ordered mugs i don't know why this guy ordered like a hundred of them no no we or i ordered 75 because that was the minimum that was the minimum 75 i still have
Starting point is 01:07:25 i still have 70 sitting in my garage in a big box i don't even know what to do with that i can't even give them away no one will take them you have 40 what do you mean i have 40 no one will take them i got 40 mugs in there i don't know what to say no one will take them we just haven't given them out to people there's a difference you're making it sound like nobody wants our mugs hey listen if they keep raising those interest rate hikes, then I definitely won't be giving them out to anyone. Yeah, because these are actually really good quality mugs. They're actually really good. I will say they're actually really high quality mugs.
Starting point is 01:07:54 Yeah. I've abused them to hell and high water, and they're just scratched up a bit, but the logo is still clear. They're really high quality. Let me get this in the frame yeah that's pretty good like i've scratched mine up it's they're really good mugs i haven't broken a single one yet either yeah oh i've i've accidentally broken one
Starting point is 01:08:15 it's fall it's it's been dropped it happens how did you drop it i don't remember this happened during the pandemic like why are you trying to ask me questions like this how depressed are you you drop a mug how do you drop a mug i've never even heard of that like who drops a mug you know how many movies there are of people dropping mugs and everything it's such yeah but that's done for that's done for you know cinematic effect and then maybe that's what i was trying to do the slow-mo of it shattering into 50 million pieces wait just out of curiosity how many pieces that break into like just two or like it was like it literally it was just the handle fell off and that was just a handle right yes yeah it was could still technically use it right i was still able to technically use it i
Starting point is 01:08:57 was just like i just didn't want to have that chip but yeah like it's honestly it had like maybe like a little chip on one other side but yeah these are good quality mugs so we'll get some uh cgc ones uh with maybe like uh some kind of like patreon supporter we should ask that company to sponsor us then yeah okay there we go now we have an idea for a sponsor numero tres we already have another one that carol's gonna go film next week and week. And you'll see this company in episode 51 and maybe this other one in episode 52. Yeah. So anyways, thanks guys for tuning in
Starting point is 01:09:33 and thanks for everyone who's been supporting the show from the very beginning. We know a couple super fans who've been around since the beginning and we look forward to the next batch. Yep. All right. See you guys.
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