Creatives Grab Coffee - Retainers and Pricing Strategies (ft. Slant Visuals) | Creatives Grab Coffee 19

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov. This weeks guest is James Clement from Slant Visuals. Slant Visuals creates video content to help businesses share the stories that make them human so they can connect emotionally with their audience, drive action and inspire brand loyalty.To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comInstagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast where we talk about the business of video production. Kirill, you're always really good at the intros, so I'll let you go ahead and do your thing. All the pressure, the pressure is always on. No pressure, man. It's not going to be watched by like, you know, like 2000 people. No one's watching this. Yeah. It's so viral. Something weird happens. I don't know. It's for the three fans that we have, you know, one, two, three right here. Right.

Exactly. Exactly. Okay. Anyways, welcome everybody to Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we're joined by James Clement from Slant Visuals, a video production company based out of Montreal that helps businesses share stories that make them human. So James, how are you doing today? I'm good. How are you guys doing? We're doing absolutely fantastic. I'm just so shocked. Carol got that, like he improv that whole opener just now.

Well done. I would have been like a mess trying to do that. There would have been so many ums and uhs and who's this guy again oh yeah yeah it's a gift well done well done so how has uh 2022 been for you so far james uh 2022 has been pretty good. You know, when the pandemic hit, there was definitely a dip initially, like I'm sure it was for most people. And then, you know, started doing some Zoom interviews, stock footage, content, whatever we really could. And then eventually it started just picking up again. I've had a few shoots as we came back that, you know, my clients

called me up and said, Hey, just so you know, one of us tested positive and we're like, Oh, we got to test everybody from the crew. And we've had a few of those. So, but fortunately anybody who has caught it's been good and business is getting back up. So right now we're, we're like full, full capacity, really. We can't take on much work than we have so that's awesome yeah that's awesome and or it's always nice to hear that other people are keeping busy you know like amidst the the pandemic like we've mentioned this many times on the podcast before you know where you know in early on the pandemic in the pandemic we were really concerned you know for everyone you know and anytime we saw someone being able to work it's like great this is awesome you know everyone is

still keeping busy it's the balls rolling back again but uh one thing you mentioned you were doing uh stock footage yeah when business was a little slow during the pandemic tell us a bit about that because we were thinking about doing that too and i think carol was looking into it and at the end of it he just we just decided it wasn't worth the effort like it was too complicated to do it what was it carol i i think i think what he meant though was that they were doing a lot of like stock footage type uh content for their clients is that correct a little bit more in that no even using stock footage to create like content for instagram linkedin facebook things like that just like for your own for your own brand or for like other people for for other brands um so basically i use um art grid they're like pro accounts so you can get the log footage

which helps because sometimes when you have the regular one like everything's very saturated everything's different so it starts to look like a you know a stock footage piece put together um and we were able to you know we were there's one company i was working with on uh retainer um and for example they had an event where they were offering the vaccine to all their uh their staff if they wanted it so we were creating content it was called take the shot and we were using stock footage to create like a short series of videos highlighting like where we came from in in the pandemic and how we're progressing and where the company's at now. And it was all using a stock footage. Oh, that's awesome to hear that you managed to kind of keep to that.

Cause that was the idea that we were thinking, you know, most companies would kind of go with that approach, but at least on our end, a lot of the, like a lot in our case, a lot of clients just, just stopped working altogether. So there wasn't even that opportunity to explore that option. Right. And I'm sure that was the same case for a lot of people. Do you feel like, um, like with the clients that you were working with, were they still like very, uh, determined to kind of keep pushing forward so that they don't stop during the pandemic or was it kind of like a slight dip, but not,

not sure what to do. Yeah. I had a bit of a mix. Most of my clients still were pretty keen on moving forward. I had switched to having a lot of, like I mentioned earlier, retainer clients. So I've been shooting in the past and building up a bank of footage as well for them from previous projects. you know if it's footage of people working in office in an office i had a ton of it so i was able to kind of piece sometimes footage i previously shot with stock footage and that gave me a good ability to to tell the stories i needed to get the message across and yeah they were they were keen on on moving forward i would say more like 70 of the the work they were keen on keeping something

going and they were open to discussing with me ideas on what that would look like, you know, be it zoom interviews or stock footage or, or, or what have you. I think by retainer clients, do you mean like, just like your long-term clients or did you actually have like a retainer agreement with them? Like, I don't know, like a six month, 12 month, like how did that work on your end yeah so you're actually able to okay because we're wondering about that we have we've never able to implement that too well and we we barely know anyone that that kind of has that type of agreement going on like we mostly just have like our long-term clients that just use us as their like main vendors but in terms of actually actually securing like a like i don't know i don, I don't know what your what your packages like tell us a bit about that like approach to it.

Yeah, for sure. So I had clients where I was doing just work on and off. And then eventually we switched to doing, you know, here are all the videos we want to do maybe there's like 12 videos we want to do. 12 videos we want to do. Uh, and I would create a package for that and price that, and that would be it. And then I also did a weekly. So per week, you know, how much content are we creating? We're doing, you know, three social media posts a week and maybe one, uh, longer piece a month, and they would pay X amount per week. And then it became kind of a, a monthly retainer. Um, and basically we just agreed upon the amount of content to create for that month and then they every month they they send over a payment and yeah it's been a it's been a good switch because it's you know i was fortunate to always have enough work but it's nice to have that retainer to be able to know there's like stability there. And then you can take shots here and there on other projects.

And I didn't want too many of them because I, I don't know, I'm a bit, part of the reason I'm in film is because I don't like doing the same thing all the time. So I also don't want to be stuck, you know, telling the same stories over and over. And so it's nice to have a little bit of a mix, you know, there's that stable kind of bit of a balance and then you can, you know, take some other shots on other projects and get a little bit more, um, a little different. I mean, the good thing is that essentially that pays the bills, you know, it keeps you consistent, which allows you to, to know that you're financially stable to be able to

do a lot of the really cool, uh, human focused stories that you promote, like for example, on your, on your, uh, on your website on your, on your website. One thing I've always been curious though, about with these like retainer type projects is that do you feel like there is like a type of client or industry necessarily that kind of leans a little bit more towards the retainer type projects, or is it kind of like, it's all over the place, or it's like a luck of the draw of like who you've been connected to and what their goals are? the place where it's like a luck of the draw of like who you've been connected to and what their goals are yeah it's you know i would say because right now i have two main retainer clients that one is a logistics company and the other is a marijuana growing company so oh wow very different

ends of uh the spectrum there so is it the logistics of marijuana yeah exactly i mean i should link them together so they'll have someone um so it's a bit of a different mix um i mean it's just companies who who put a strong emphasis on on social media more than anything else they realize that you know they need content they need a lot of it and they're they're burning through it uh it's a bit of a balance that though, too, because, you know, I have a lot of clients now even like, Oh, we want to get into Tik TOK and short Instagram stories. And there's all these little gimmicks of someone, you know,

putting their hand in front of the camera and then it changes to something else. And it's not super my jam to, you know, I'm more into the storytelling element of it. So it's, but you know, some for the real and some for the meal, they say so some for the real some for the meal I love that saying I've never heard that saying before that is that you gotta like patent that or trademark that yeah so I tell myself for sure I mean I met I've met a lot of filmmakers I admire who do like really cool like I see their Nike specs I'm like man the work you do is awesome. And they're like, yeah, that's like 2% of my work. He's like, I just shot a diaper commercial,

you know, there's a mix, there's a mix of the two, you know, and you've got to, those projects allow you to do some of those more fun creative ones. And ultimately as long as I have a camera and I'm editing and I'm shooting like that, I'm happy really. It's interesting because like whenever you look at anyone's work online, like everybody's promoting that 1% or 2% of projects that they've done because, because obviously that is the, their,

their best potential and their best foot forward. But it's almost crazy to think that there's such a whole other side of it where like people are just like 98% of the work that they do is like you said for the meal, you know, like the, the work that kind of keeps everyone going. And, um, it's, it's sometimes like when you see other people's work, you're like, Oh man, I'm not doing enough of that. Cause they keep posting all this great work, but it's like, Oh wait, no, we're doing the same thing. You know, we're putting our best ones out. Yeah. We're all just, you know, trying to make everybody else think we're cooler than we

are. All our filmmaker friends were like, Oh, I don't want him to see my, uh, you know trying to make everybody else think we're cooler than we are all our filmmaker friends we're like i don't want him to see my uh you know my corporate video i did with some guys sitting at his desk that's not cool i'm gonna post the uh the nike ad with the model i shot you know yeah you know it's almost as if you would be more more uh you would be very different posting that corporate work now you know because everything's so super creative how do you stand up with the basic stuff out there right yeah yeah yeah exactly exactly oh sorry go ahead no i'm just saying i'm trying to bring some of that that coolness i don't know what the word to use to the corporate world as well so like the human stories like you mentioned on the website is i'm really you know we're really focused on creating a connection with a brand with their audience and, you know, focusing more on the why behind people do what they do, the passion, more about their character. And that allows for a lot of really cool stuff.

And fortunately, like, you know, all the brands I've been working with have been very open to doing that. You know, we did a video recently where the guy is a logistics manager, but he was also a chef. So we did a whole video of him cooking combined with talking about how managing logistics is kind of like managing a kitchen. So it was really cool. Like you would think corporate videos would be this boring, bland thing, but we're finding ways to make it creative. And that's, I kind of take it as my responsibility, but like, okay, make this job interesting. I look at some person at a desk working on a spreadsheet. I'm like, okay, that's, I kind of take it as my responsibility, but like, okay, make this job interesting. I look at some person at a desk working on a spreadsheet. I'm like, okay, that's, you know, that's a challenge. So how do we get creative?

That's why they're paying me. And that's why I'm there. So I, I'm excited to like, you know, and they're allowing me to try new things, uh, to promote. So, uh, it's cool. What kind of, uh, industries do you focus on? Um, a lot of them, you know, I keep wondering if I should niche down to be a bit more specific. But right now, a lot of what I'm working on is recruiting.

A lot of businesses really want content to help promote their company so that they're an employer of choice. That seems the biggest one. that seems the biggest one, you know, they want to create content that kind of inspires the, the employees they have currently, and also kind of invites people in to want to apply for them. So that's like a lot of work that I'm getting now. I guess that makes sense. Why? Like, yeah, you're getting people that are employers that want to do something

different. Cause sometimes we found that with certain clients like they want different but they want the same yeah at the same time right that happens so often now yeah it's it's wild how uh like as you as you said dario like they they want to like make something cool but then every example they start sending you is a lot of the same stuff of what they want and it's really cool that you've kind of been able to start building that trust in your clients where, you know, like, like, trust me to do this project like this so that, you know, you guys are going

to get something different, you know, like, how do you typically go about kind of like building that? Like, obviously, like with a long term client, it's easier, but like, when you're starting with someone, how do you typically go about kind of establishing that? Absolutely. Yeah. So like I focused a lot over the years on forming more of a process when I meet with a client. When I first started like 13 years ago, I was like flying by the seat of my pants, just being like, this is cool. You should do this. You know what I mean? Look how cool this is, but it doesn't really work realizing you know a lot of these people they they want a video because they want to solve a problem they want to achieve a goal you know they didn't wake up and just say hey I need a video for no reason they're like you know they're saying

we're not getting enough followers on Instagram we're not having enough people convert for this or that so when I show them kind of how the type of storytelling i do connects with the audience and how it is the best way to drive action uh they've been on board with it and they've seen you know they've seen uh through my examples you know that it that can be very beneficial and it does it does work you know especially with all the noise there is now with mediocre content being thrown around uh they're they're focused on doing something a little more high-end a little more polished and they've been uh they've been open to it and the ones that aren't you know um we're not always the best fit and we'll tell them

like hey you should uh you know i'm totally fine now being saying hey maybe you should go with someone else because it's we're not the best fit for you do you get very detailed when you're explaining that to them like do you talk like kpis numbers roi like well a fun a question i like to ask often is okay you know because there's so often where a company might spend like 10 grand on a project you put it up on youtube there's like five views or like do you like did we succeed are you you happy? Did you spend that 10 grand and feel like, yeah, that was worth it? Or were you like, I never should have spent that. I'm not going to call this guy again. So I always ask them like, what's your, what's your goal? Six months down the line, a year down the line, what have we done? Like,

what are, did you increase, you know, website visits by 50%? Did you have, you know, 20% more applications? What, what are you hoping to achieve? And where are you at now? And then I try to get as much as I can information from them when the project started, as it continues, and at the end saying, hey, did we move the needle at all? And you don't always, and it's hard to directly come back and say, oh, you know, this worked because of this, because there's a whole media buy behind it too. They have to promote it the right places. It's not just the video, but the fact that they see that you're thinking that way and you're caring about those numbers is really important to them they're

saying okay this guy's not just making this his cool art project he's cares about helping you solve this problem uh and most of the time it does move the needle uh so they they see especially the returning clients they see the benefit of it they're like okay let's you know this work let's keep doing it it's not always cut and dry saying where you can you know they'll give you the numbers and tell you it's not that simple um but you can get some kind of they see that you're pushing it that way and they see what your intent is yeah we we notice a lot of the times like you know we're good on our end but they're not really promoting it properly on their end and even like sometimes they'll reach out to us and they're like okay this is our budget

for this video but it's like in terms of marketing budget they're like oh wait we gotta market this thing it's kind of like yeah it doesn't it's like this is fuel but where's your car right yeah yeah exactly yeah absolutely but technically they have the car but not the fuel or the other way around but no but that's exactly it yeah i mean i've done great videos mcmahon it's just like one of my favorite i've ever shot and then you get like five views on youtube and i thought that was the worst is when they've posted like friday at like Friday at like 3 AM. Why are you even up right now? That's going to work well. I found that was more early on though. Like in terms of those ones, like, I feel like people have gotten a lot more strategic now in terms of at least the people

that I I've seen in my network. I think it's more so the clients we're dealing with now are more strategic than our earlier clients. That too, exactly. You know, it's, it all depends on the people you're working with at the time. And obviously when you're starting out, you're going to get such a huge range of characters that you work with, you know, like, like, what would you say is probably one of the most like,

like funny or kind of like a standout kind of like, um, first client that you worked with? That's interesting. I mean, I started, uh, in just like my first year of college, I was doing nightclub videos. So, Oh my God. Yeah. I did a ton of them. Um, terrible pay showing up at 11, getting home at three, trying to chase a promoter for my money and he's offering oh my god vodka coupons instead of payment just a disaster you know my a buddy of mine from school we were trying to film these these nightclubs and hopefully you know hopefully the dj will see how good our video is and then hopefully he'll want a music video and we'll shoot a music video for him and that'll be our ticket you know to the top it's not it's not how it works it's not how it works and there's a lot

of people tricking you and i've lost money you name it uh you learn the lessons i haven't made those mistakes twice so that's good we did a video for a dj group early on as well it was it was fun to do but we knew right then and there like that that wasn't going to be like our long-term thing yeah because they're tough they're tough yeah and and it's like you're you're in you're you're driving to like even like different spots all the time you know imagine now if you needed to go do nightclub videos you have to drive down with your gear you park what are you going to get a hundred dollars but parking is like fifty dollars yeah you spend the whole night there you get a drink that's another 10 bucks you know you're going break even at the end that's a great gig if you're like in high school and you're just doing it as a hobby that's

amazing because what high schoolers are getting in nightclubs hey you guys were cooler than me growing up apparently took me a while that was just uh he's just flexing on the podcast so the thing i wanted to go back to, when you mentioned you were doing a lot of that stock footage type content for a lot of your clients, it's interesting that, you know, whenever we do projects for clients, we usually either start with like, you know, under the assumption that we're going to be able

to film something or do animations or do some kind of creation where literally what you're doing is taking building blocks that are already there and trying to craft new stories out of them like how did that kind of process start for you like how do you uh like how was that yeah i mean i remember seeing ads for this this um art grid website and i'm like well this footage looks pretty cool and i just kind of checked it out when i bet like man this i saw some of the footage I'm like this is really cool stuff wasn't the typical stock footage I'd see from like I

don't know any other website I won't drop names and um I was just like man I wish I had a shot like that and I could tell a story like this or like that just like for my own interest there was this cool shot I saw a guy in like a hazmat suit right on the water I'm like this is a cool shot but just the idea of I'm like, I wonder what, like for fun, using like music bed and the stock footage that I could create, that would just kind of scratch that creative itch and would be fun to put together. And then I thought, I wonder how I could do this, but for clients as well, you know, there's a limit to it obviously,

but there was, there was a lot, and I'm not doing it as much now that we're it's opening up more, but there was still a lot you could do with the stock footage well the good thing about it is that it's kind of like like this is like one thing that I've always kind of like preached as like a good thing about our industry is that the best creativity sometimes comes out of the limitations that you have sometimes I feel like when I had like like like nowadays, sometimes it feels like, you know, when we have like, say all the gear that we could possibly need, you know, then it's like, all right, so what, what, where do we start now? Right. Whereas early on when we were starting out,

all we had was a camera, maybe one light, uh, and a, and a microphone. And it's like, you gotta get very creative to make that engaging content. Right. And, um, the stock footage approach is kind of like a similar thing where it's like, this is what I have. Like, I have to get very creative in how to craft it based on that. Instead of like, say for example, um, uh, like being able to make it exactly the way it would be most convenient or, or, or simple. Right. And that's, that's one cool thing, I guess, that you were able to implement, you know, it's almost like that. I don't know if you guys saw early on that art grid uh ad where that guy is on his uh on his desk uh on his desktop he's just like how would you like to

start uh make a uh an advertisement using just stock footage you know go to art grid and this guy did it james did it yeah he's got that uh i don't know that ad yeah he's got like an aggressive like australian accent or something yeah he was like that come on you can do it it's not something i saw myself necessarily doing but i mean it's i've continued to use it for stuff where yeah i don't know we have a run and gun shoot and i don't have time for the drone and we're in the woods i'm like this is a great forest drone shot let's put that at the beginning yeah i can't sacrifice my whole shoot for this one drone shot so let's get the footage we need and then we'll find a cool establishing drone shot if we need it yeah it could be good filler for sure that's like that's a good approach like we've had that for a kickstarter project we did um at the end of last year where they wanted to have uh one particular shot of

like people kind of like walking into the sunset kind of thing i was like when do you get the time to go and film that very specific shot right and that's why it's there that's why stock footage is there yeah exactly so you said you uh been doing this for 13 years right uh yeah so i'm 33 now i started yeah when i was probably 20 oh when you're okay yeah that's that's interesting like so give us you give us the initial rundown yeah like with the clubbing scene so how did you get from there to where you are right now yeah i mean uh so i started doing that and then eventually i got into just event videos. I met some people through working there that were having events they would do, like when NASCAR would come to town, they would throw a big event. And so I would film that and I got into doing more and more events. And once I did events, I met a photographer at an event who did weddings. And he said, like, I'm going to do this wedding. Like, do you want to come film it? I don't even know what that looks like. What is wedding i don't even know so i just remember my first wedding

oh yeah yeah we all remember everybody's done it everybody's done it for sure i feel like it's like a taboo thing to talk about sometimes to write a passage yeah exactly yeah yeah you gotta do the wedding you know you're in a like a rundown motel and the bride's getting her dress on you're like how did i get here you know i thought i was gonna do hollywood movies or like there's no vendor table you're like man what am i doing with my life i gotta like standing in a corner like eating a spring roll i thought i was gonna be on the red carpet in school and now i'm doing that now i'm on a red carpet but not exactly exactly so I started doing those and I remember I did I did one and it just blew up like the I had was getting calls like crazy to

do more weddings so I was like hey let's do this I was doing it making good money I probably did I went from one then I did eight then I did 30 so nice it just kind of at the time too it was good money it was a way to really hone my craft i was filming like all the time non-stop what what year was that sorry like when you started doing the weddings oh the weddings probably a little like maybe a year or two after the 5d came out oh Oh, yeah. So 2009, 2010. That was a good time to get into it. Yeah, yeah. That was the boom.

That was the DSLR era. Exactly. I was following along with Still Motion. I don't know if you're familiar with those guys. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I was kind of like just taking their word as God.

I just followed them and bought all their courses and was kind of figuring it out as I went. Because I dropped out of film school. of figuring it out as I went because I dropped out of film school so um and kind of just was taking projects learning shooting whatever I could making mistakes ton of mistakes uh and just kind of learning and then once I was done um well the weddings I still have a wedding company that I own I'm just not as involved in it what's it called uh spark spark films okay okay yeah yeah um but that again is a like 10 10 wedding max like a high-end kind of clientele um so it's not like a wedding factory do you still shoot or you just like oversee it yeah no i still shoot for sure yeah i'll still shoot depending on

depending on the gig kind of thing if you're and i were debating just carol and i were debating like because we we did a lot of weddings too still have some some left over now but we were debating maybe just opening up our own thing like setting a high price and maybe just doing like five to ten like you're doing now yeah that's that's exactly. That's exactly what I'm doing. Yeah. I mean, you know, like I'm relying on my corporate and it's, you know, people don't want to pay the premium for the weddings. That's fine. You know, there's no problem, but there's a corporate out there who will, he has to go to corporate and he sprinkled in a few, a few weddings there.

And it's great. No. Yeah. So I, so where was was i then i guess i was doing the weddings uh then at the weddings i would meet people and they're like oh i saw the wedding video you did like it's great i have a like a car dealership can you do like i would love a video can you make something and then i started getting corporate gigs from the weddings and then slowly shifted more to the to the corporate side and those corporate gigs kind of got grew and grew and got bigger and bigger and i you know messed up a ton of them well at least my perspective the client was happy but i was like oh i didn't do very good there you

know just kind of figuring it out as i went and then yeah just got bigger and bigger clients and yeah ended up where i am now just snowballed right is it just snowball is it just you still that's kind of like the core team or do you have like a core team of people that you work yeah i have a core team of people nobody like on payroll or anything like that it's just like a group of so i have like a big excel spreadsheet with like my sound guys my like production that's what we have too yeah a project comes i'm like this guy's good this guy's on vacation i call my buddy hey like are you available we're going here we're going there and uh we work it out i mean i i did

a video a couple years ago where we drove like 12 hours for like a 30 minute interview so i was like okay i need the right guys wow that's oh my god oh my god it was it was yeah it was not uh i was like you should you should just fly these people in that might be yeah more cost of boston foot for with that drive we went to gaspe a gag so say that where where's that that's a guy it's like far uh far east far east like near gaspe halifax and all that 12 hour drive for a 30 minute interview i'd be we've had requests like that we've had requests like that even sometimes where it's like oh we need to film this one interview uh on this like on this side of the world it's like no no for one interview yeah it's like come on it wouldn want to be cheaper to just find someone locally so then i'm looking at people who can i spend 12 hours in a car with you know that's that's the other thing too right oh yeah you know everybody i've worked with i love like uh

like my best friends are people i'm working with so it's like we always have a great time on set there's like no egos or divas or anything like that like we like it's my favorite time being on set we're joking around we're like creating something it's on it's it's like what keeps me going i have a blast on set production day is always the the best day like and i've noticed it's the same thing with our clients as well it's almost like a field trip kind of day at school it's just it's, it's just fun to do, you know? Yeah, for sure. I'll have clients coming in with their, with their iPhone. They're taking pictures of the cameras. Like, Whoa, this is professional.

I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, it always, it always is funny when the, when they're like, Oh, what camera is that? Is that, that must be very expensive. The best is always the look on their face where they see the trolleys come in with the equipment. They're like, wow, there's so much stuff. It's just an interview. We're like, yeah, well, you'll see in like an hour why we need all this stuff. Exactly.

I've had that one before, too. It's just an interview. I'm like, yeah, you've seen too many Apple commercials where they press a button and everything happens. It even shocks us sometimes when we see our carts. We just wrapped up this like a massive like a three-week project and when we finally packed everything up again it was just one really tall cart it was almost like even up to like our chest level and we're like we gotta take a photo of this cart oh my god traveling with it is the worst like whenever i fly without gear i feel like

just i feel so light but traveling with gear man is like i hate those days you're going through the you're checking everything security is looking through it i'm like it's like i hate you have to like debate what to bring because you're always trying to bring it as limited as possible like like i used to think it was like i remember early on when we started out we were we were like traveling all over the place for like project and we thought like yeah you know we're doing we're doing projects with this bank they're sending us to new york to to houston so cool so cool but then and i was just like oh man that was such a pain yeah i know yeah it's good when you're just starting out but then you quickly like

the climate acclimatized and you're like nah it's not it's like a week's worth for like a day's rate of yeah exactly gone you romanticize it then you're actually doing you're like do i really want to be waiting in the airport airport day after day doing this all the time you're like not really they lose your luggage then what we had a shoot in the states um for this educational company and uh i remember like we were we were friends with one with the client so like i just told them like look just bring the bring the ronin you bring the ronin so they don't ask me a lot of questions and i'll just bring the camera yeah and that was like the way we did it years ago oh yeah i did golf bag with tripods in

it uh i mean i did a gig in dominican where we brought a crane with us which was the stupidest move and it was oh my god with the sand and everything oh it was the worst people like oh you're never getting the sand out of that jib no yeah yeah we had sand and everything you know we thought it was gonna be cool filming on the beach but like carrying all that stuff in the sand was the worst man we have this tripod that we brought on a we went to visit our friends in martinique and we brought it with us and there's we're still using that tripod i think carol has his camera on it right now there's still sand in that tripod it's been like over five years there's still sand particles eight years since 2014 we've had that tripod oh we went in 2014 oh my god okay

yeah i thought they'd take a reading they stand the test of time i guess that's why some of them are like 10 grand i'm always surprised by the cost of tripods it's a we have to get some new ones we have to get some new ones and holy shit we were looking at the prices yeah i think we're just gonna finance them i don't feel comfortable dropping that much all at one four grand for a try would get two that's eight grand right there just for sticks actually i see some of the like i think shatler brand and they actually call it zachler that's that's the right that's how they pronounce this yeah if you go to like the viz tech video like uh videos they call it like that mind blow or maybe it's just the guy you talk to you know everyone it's

a german it's a german brand so you actually call it zachler wow manfrotto was italian i think yeah they're italian yeah manfrotto you know i remember when i was in munich uh i was in munich back in 2017 and i was just uh walking around the city with my friend and we just stumbled upon the re headquarters we're like what they're they're headquartered there oh you didn't know that they're german they're german are they german i i don't know it was the re headquarters we're like i guess they are maybe yes wow i've always wanted to shoot with the re alexa like i wanted that to be my if i could get have one camera and just be my baby, it would be the Alexa Mini or something. Have you shot on it?

No, I haven't shot on it, actually. I've shot everything around it, but that's it. I have a C100 Mark II that I shoot 90% of my stuff on. Wait, still, huh? Still, yeah. I don't even... 4K, I shoot maybe 5% 4 percent 4k right now wow that's great you know that really shows that uh that's a great case study right there that you know like

it's not really about the the tool it's about like what the creative is behind it you know like we've seen a lot of people in our network uh you know get very gear hungry uh and they just like focus so much on that and it's like wait it's mostly the freelancers we know though it's usually yeah usually the freelancers like for example for us we always tried to let our cameras kind of like go as long as possible like i the first cameras we had first i started on a t2i that was the og yeah then the 6d which lasted us about three years you know and then we got the a7s2 which lasted us three years you know we always tried to keep it going as long as possible and then um then we got uh some uh c200s in uh 2019 kept those going up until just

last year is when we upgraded to like the c70s as like a base camera set you know like you know you don't need to upgrade every few months or every year you know it's for sure not really don't need to you would really love the c70 though like that i'm i love that camera it's really good the build quality is not the greatest but it's it's pretty legit that's the next one i want to get yeah c70 i like the small form factor and when i think about traveling for work which i do do frequently that seems like a nice camera to pack in the bag we also just recently ordered the r5c's okay those two are going to complement each other like so well big time yeah you're you're due for an upgrade i mean

it's not that you need it but you know it's like no yeah for sure for sure i mean i've gone gear crazy for sure i can show you credit card statements where you're like oh man you better I don't know we trust you we trust you I look at my statement I'm like did I buy all that you know what I mean so now I'm taking it easy uh and it's been for the better I also have a wife and kids so that changes your perspective sometimes when you're like I'm gonna drop like uh five grand uh and I have to like feed my child I'm like listen just eat cheerios I'm gonna buy this new lens. You know what I mean? I mean, well, one thing if, if ever you are in a bind where you feel like you need certain,

like have you thought about like even like financing any of the gear or anything like that? Not really. I try to keep my debts very low, like at zero pretty much. And like, I've never, the thing is, is I've, I've explored cameras. Like I've looked at, you know, C70 footage and shown it to a bunch of people on my laptop. And they're like, I'm like, which one do you like better? They're like this one, this one, they would like, it was a mixed group. Nobody could tell the difference. Nobody. Yeah. What I like about 4k is just like resizing is really good. Even for an interview, having one camera being able to punch in. I like that ability a lot. But I've never once had a

client say, I don't like the image quality. Yeah, it's not about that. It's more so like, like, anytime we've been motivated to upgrade our gear has been more so something that makes our lives easier. That's always been our motivation. Yeah, it makes the workflow easier, then we're gonna do it. And we used to think the same of like, you know, better to buy everything outright. But then we noticed in 2019, you know, like sometimes it might be better to have, you know, a little bit more cash on hand if need be, you know, and just kind of like, because like some cameras, they're actually not as expensive to finance as you think. Like if, for example, you were to finance the C70 today, that would be probably $290

a month. That's one rental fee a it's it's two it's two fifty oh wait uh to rent or to um to finance it's 290 uh 250 it's 250 yeah sorry 250 we pay 250 for each of them it's pretty low that's a good point i'm with you on that too it's like it's all about practicality if it makes my life easier that's the yeah that's that's my main almost uh litmus test for gear when i buy it like is this gonna make the like i remember i had um i bought the aperture lights uh i think it was the 300d and i had the softbox and one of them you had to like really forcefully take all the prongs and oh yeah the original one the original one and it was such a pain and like you looked like an idiot when you showed up on set it just took forever then they had one where you just

pressed buttons and it popped open and i was like man i don't care how much this costs i need this thing and she was just got went so much faster whenever i had to move an interview set up i wasn't like i gotta move all this i was like yeah easy let's go let's move so one hack though is that that original dome is actually really good for traveling purposes though because of how you can flatten it out that's the only thing that's why we still have ours for that one in case we travel that's the best one to travel with i was at a shoot with that one and i couldn't disconnect it oh yeah and like the the client had to leave the locate we had to leave the location it was so embarrassing because i'm trying to like yank it out of the,

yank it out. It just won't come out. And I'm like, oh my God, we got to get the new one like today. I remember going, I just went home that day and I just ordered it. I was like, I can't take it. That was like too embarrassing. Yeah. It's that or when you don't know how to fold the,

when you're having trouble folding like a bounce or something,'re just like wrestling that's the worst you just go to the bathroom while your client's in there and you're just like the bounces are not bad dario has trouble with them he's never been i still can't figure it out i i figure it out every now and then like i have to watch a video i'm like oh okay so 12 o'clock at three o'clock and then and then i try it after a week. I'm like, nope, I still haven't figured it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The worst is like, we did have this one black backdrop, which was like a, an eight foot by 16 foot backdrop. That was the same style of folding. And that one we've written off. We're never using it again because that thing, once

it's up, it stays up because we're like, like, hold it. Then another part gets undone. Then we get to that part. Then we go back. So, Carol, I had to take that down once we ripped up the old set. Yeah, I remember. And, like, I couldn't figure it out. And, like, my girlfriend was looking at me getting all frustrated. I was, like, angry at this thing, right?

I even, I couldn't, I had to bring it outside. So, it's completely dirty. There's no way we're using it anymore. I had to bring it outside so it's completely dirty there's no way we're using it anymore I had to put it over the grass I'm like somehow by some miracle after half an hour I was able to like close it up yeah I should have recorded it looked like a Benny Hill skit yeah maybe we will start uploading bloopers to to some of these uh episodes or like some other future content. Anyways, James, let's go back to like your team. Like have you, so you're handling everything by yourself. Like, like, are you, are you overloaded?

Are you handling pretty, handling it pretty well? Yeah, no, I'm yeah. Handling it pretty well. I mean, so I outsource some editing. Often i have a problem of like i'm like i can do it myself like i know exactly what i want so i'm gonna do it myself so i'm getting better at like offloading some of that at the very least like offloading things like you know can you sync all these uh interviews you know giving the kind of like i feel bad because i'm like i wouldn't want to do that now but you know when i was starting i would have done it gladly so i'll send sometimes some stuff just to get

cleaned out prepared for when like the creative decision making needs to be done um so i'm doing yeah basically doing uh i mean the the meetings the the the sales the editing uh primary shooting and but uh you know I yeah it hasn't really been uh an issue and a big thing for me has always I'm like very big on on like pricing theory and philosophy and you know sometimes I'm afraid I come across as like this greedy like capitalist or something but I'm very big on creatives charging adequately and what they should because it's you know like when you charge more I used to try to always lower I'm like oh no they're not gonna want that so instead of 10 it's it's 8 and this is better because it's like more economical but sometimes they you know they don't want that they want something really good they want

to pay you know they're willing to pay the premium for something bigger and sometimes the more money you have at your disposal you're able to you know hire that graphic animator you want to hire you're able to get a bigger team you're able to do it better and you're kind of cheap you're you're you're cheapening the project by always trying to make the budget lower you know it's like you might do it for eight but they would have said yes at 10 and 10 would have been a way better experience for everyone um so i'm very very big on that because there's i find creatives often don't value their work we're so excited just to be doing what we love that we forget that you know okay i need to like this has got to be a living too and you know you're creating videos for these huge huge companies and like the videos have a huge benefit and you deserve to be compensated fairly, I think, for that.

Yeah, I think a lot of companies don't see it as like the investment that it is like they just feel like, oh, they're getting a video. But one thing we've started to do in our pitches or our initial talks with clients or leads is like use like mentioned video as an investment to them. So it's like, what is your budget for this investment? That's how we've been phrasing things lately, because it is an investment. Like, if you're getting using, if you're hiring a company to do a video for you, you should at least expect this to give you a certain amount of returns, right? I don't think a lot of them think about that, right? Like, okay, if you're creating this product video if this video is costing you ten thousand dollars you should expect it to give you at least a hundred thousand

in product sales right otherwise like what's the point like there's no point in creating this video for 10k and it's going to net you a result of like less than 10k 20 that's not even worth it right like because all the time and effort that goes into it yeah exactly that's smart yeah and that's you know that's what they want to hear like i said they don't want just your your fun creative uh project uh they want something like you know they want that but they want it to serve a purpose ultimately one thing we've noticed also is that like um sometimes it's like clients not all clients know exactly what they're looking for. And that's when a lot of the, the, the scrimping and saving budget talks come out because they don't know what they want. They're like, Oh, maybe we don't need, we shouldn't spend $20,000 on a video if we're not exactly sure what we want to do. But in our case, like anytime we've had a

client that knows exactly what they want, then, um, then they're willing to spend a little bit more. Cause as Dario mentioned, that's when they see the investment value and they know what that investment is probably going to do. If they don't know what they want, then they don't know what they're going to get in return. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of like, you know, coaching explaining to be done in meetings, uh, that helps them understand it a bit more. Um, Do you find that there's like a, uh, it's sometimes a little hard to do that. Cause it's like, okay, you're basically telling them, Hey, I'm a production company, but you need, like you can get to the stage where you're basically telling them, look,

if you don't know this stuff, you kind of need like a marketing or ad agency to help you out. And then by that point, you're kind of talking yourself out of the room. And do you find there's like a fine line for that? Yeah, exactly. And I find a lot of it, you know, it's video production, but it kind of starts to bleed into marketing a little bit when you're steering them as to what they should do or shouldn't do. I've had companies like we want this video, this is what we want done. And I'll often say, okay, that's, you know, it's like going to a doctor and saying, Hey, like, I need you to remove my appendix. And the doctor's like,

why I haven't even checked yet. You know what I mean? You're like, so I'll go in and say, we need this and this and this. I'm like, it's like, how come you're telling me what video you need? That should be my expertise. I should be able to help lead you as to what you need. What's your goal? Oh, it's this. Okay. Maybe okay maybe that means you know a series of 15 second videos maybe that means a minute video they put on linkedin and i find that's where you can really get good projects with good budgets that allow you to make really cool content but it starts to bleed a bit into marketing and because you're starting to to explore like this is you know not necessarily just what you're making but why you're making it um but those areas is where yeah you start to command

bigger budgets and you start to have more just ability to do cooler things like the the moment i started charging was the moment my work got exponentially better and the projects had a bigger roi so it's like you know it wasn't a, a dirty word, uh, having a big budget. You know, I used to try to always stay under budget. Like, I don't want to go crazy. I want to get the gig now. It's like, okay, what do I need to charge to do it? Well, period. Exactly. And I'll often, the biggest thing I've done is charge, like, you know, providing options has been the biggest, I think change for me in my business is having here's option one here's option two and then option three i do okay if money wasn't an object and i just wanted to do this project the absolute best

i could no matter how much it cost how much would that cost what would be included and then the other two options are realistically one they'll they'll book but having the third one there doesn't stop them from booking the other ones. It gives them the choice. You're not giving them an ultimatum of saying, hey, this is the price or don't talk to me. And you're also helping them not go to other people to get comparable quotes. Cause you're showing them, hey, this is option one,

where we're kind of holding your hand a little bit, but we're just kind of saying, hey, this is what, usually for me, it's a consultancy style thing. We're like, shoot, maybe with your phone, I'll give you tips, what to do. We'll talk about it. Number two is realistically the option, the 90% of the time they take, which is kind of fits the bill exactly. And number three is okay. If you want to go crazy with it and really, really, really do this right, that option's there. And for like a plethora of reasons that I could talk about nonstop that,

that kind of gives them a good perspective on what can be done quite often. You know, they'll see a huge, huge, huge option. They're like, wow, that's like, that's crazy. You guys do stuff for that amount. This one's like a third of that price in the middle. What a great deal. You know what I mean? Let's take that one just from like a pricing perspective for them. They, it helps with that. And then again, then again like you you know you give them the choice you're you're you're making the choice for them by not giving them the high-end option maybe they do want that who knows yeah that's a classic sales technique right you offer them three options and like 90 of the time they go for the middle option we were actually wondering this

early on if because we uh i remember we were trying to bring on a salesperson he was telling us about how we need to have like packages and then we were like no like every video we do has to be like custom quoted but actually this this month we've we've been shifting our mindset more so towards like okay i think the best approach is actually to offer leads like three three options like this is like the very bare bones type of video we could do. This is like how we would want to do it. And then this is like, if money wasn't an option,

this is what we want, right? That's the key. Because essentially like, it's not about like, like a lot of companies, they put like three packages on their website for people, but that's very general, right? You know, that it's not tailored to the clients, but what you're doing in practice, which really works well. Uh, and what we're

thinking about doing as well is that, uh, you're creating three tailored custom packages to each client that way. As you said, usually they're going to go for like the one in the middle. Um, not necessarily that you want to steer them towards that, but it's like, you're giving them options so that they feel like, you know, they've already like weighed, uh, felt like they've, they've seen what's out there. They know what a really high end one will be, what a really low end one will be. You're teaching them, you're educating them and you're becoming like an expert in their eyes. And like I said, who knows, they might, they might find some, an extra 50 grand under the seat cushions, you know, to pay for that big one i've had projects like

that where i've done one and two and i'm like the third one like you know what let's just like let's go crazy and do this like a hundred percent the way it should be done and they call me back and they're like yeah just do the third one i'm like oh my god now you gotta deliver have you ever pitched have you ever pitched an idea where you were like you were sold on it but you knew it was a lot of it was gonna be a lot of work or like oh it's gonna be good but i kind of don't want them to pick it because of how crazy it'll be then they pick it for sure but you're booked you're jacked up and then you're like excited you know you're walking around the house or the office you're like yeah i got the gig and then you stop and wait i have to do all this now it's's going to be a lot of work actually.

So much. I know. Yeah, for sure. So much in pre-production, especially for those projects. And like the actual filming is like one or two days sometimes, like 90% of it is in the pre. Pre-production is, is, is huge. And I, I mean, a lot of my stuff now, like I used to, well, first i used to price and have like you know i'm gonna bring the ronin i'm gonna have the drone this is how much the drone is how much

the ronin is and so much and then i just it got simpler and simpler and simpler because like hey your clients they don't care they don't care they don't know what half that stuff is and they start picking away at it hey can we remove this ronin thing for 300 bucks what is that um so the more i got away from that got simpler and simpler and just kind of yeah the less i can have in there ultimately the better um did you go did you go more so from like equipment you're gonna be bringing uh to more so like people you're gonna be bringing uh i have that talent and expertise. Yeah. I'll have like, you know, sound engineer, things like that. But like even pre-production, you know, sometimes people are,

it's the most important part, but I remember getting, you know, they're looking at it. It's like, well, how, what's, how come this is more than everything else? Like this is where you're making the video. What's all this? Like I'm paying you to think, what is that? Like, that's kind of the mentality. They're like, you're not doing anything though. And I'm like, no, no, I'm doing a lot.

Like preparing this and that, you know? And so now it's kind of all encompassed in one thing. Like, here's the goal. Here's what we're achieving. And we'll do the video. Less opportunity to kind of nitpick at stuff. They don't know what it means anyways. So let's just keep it simple.

And yeah, that's helped as well well obviously there's some detail in there like this is how many shooting days we have or you know etc etc uh but i try to include you know as much as i can without having to go back to them and say hey like i need an extra 200 bucks i need an extra thousand bucks i need this i try to really make sure i get the scope of it well and if i got got it wrong, then I eat it. And I just take, take the shot. And that's what I tell them. I'm like, listen, I'm not giving you a pair of shoes and saying, you know, go walking. And in 10 days I'll be like, Hey, those shoes, they're 300 bucks. You're going to know before you put the shoes on how much the shoes are, you know? And you can charge a little bit more. You can pad it by 10, 20% just to cover yourself. But you tell the

comfort for them knowing, hey, like I'm not going to have to go to my boss and say, hey, you know that video we did? It's two times the price now, it turns out. Yeah. You need to be very upfront early on because the last thing you want to do, like a customer experience is everything.

Oh yeah. And if you, like you said, if you go to them and say, oh yeah, this video will probably be like $2,000, $3,000. And then later you say, oh, sorry, now it's going to be $10,000. They're going like $2,000, $3,000. And then later you say, uh, Oh, sorry. Now it's going to be $10,000. They're going to be like, well, hold on a second. Yeah. That's obviously, obviously there are other factors that sometimes determine it. Like if say, for example, a client comes to you and says, Oh, instead of one video, we need like three or four

videos. That's a different story. But if it's like, you need to know, uh, as the professional, you need to know, uh, how much everything is going to be. you need to know uh as the professional you need to know uh how much everything is going to be you need to know what resources are going to be needed right from the get-go because like you said if you get it wrong you got to eat the cost that's just how it is yeah exactly yeah you're the professional you should know and that's yeah i agree totally that's why you figure out everything before that contract is signed then you send over the the invoice yeah how do you do it do you do uh charge at the end of the project or do you break it up into two one before like the shoot date and then

one i break it up i usually do uh 50 25 25 so i'll do 50 25 25 oh that's interesting 25 once the uh 50 to book 25 after production and 25 once you get the uh the final edit at least amount at the end is good because you know sometimes if you're changing if you're you don't want to be chasing a client they're like we're gonna get the revisions to you but yeah taking some time and then like three months you're like hey you know where's that huge chunk of money that i'm waiting on so we need that 80 grand to be alive lenses and stuff to buy you know lenses to buy yeah we used to do that at the end like at the end of the project then we'd send it out and now we're just like as soon as that contract is signed we'll either issue the full amount or half uh

have to be due before the shoot date and then half like uh the other half is issued like right after the shoot day right but how do you deal with it when like because sometimes the issue we run into is that they have their um what are i mean like what our uh corporate clients the big issue is that they they have their billing cycles yeah you got to get into their what do you what do you do with that you just kind of just issue it and then just wait like they're for their billing cycle to go through unless they're like a big company like if it's nike i'm like you can pay me whenever you want i don't i don't care they'll pay you they'll pay yeah yeah exactly just do it companies

i'm like they're like oh our billing cycle is 60 days i'm like that's cool my billing cycle's two weeks so so you just tell them and they're cool with that if that doesn't work then it doesn't work but that's i't know, that's my cycle. I mean, sometimes I'll even, so again, doing the three options, sometimes I'll have it so that the first option is a hundred percent upfront. The second option is 50, 50. And the third option is, you know, 25, 75 or what have you. So the payment options are a little more back end if you pay the higher end

one so that gives you an option of saying you know yeah this one's cheaper but it's all up front this one's a lot more but i'm not paying as much up front and sometimes that you know that helps yeah that helps so but the irony is that if they're going for that type of budget they already have it anyways right yeah? Yeah. Exactly. Everyone has different money philosophies on this stuff. And everyone has a boss that has their own either old school opinion or their principles. Like, why would I be paying now when you haven't done anything yet? I don't think we run into that, Kiro.

Not as much now. you haven't done anything yet. No, I don't think we run into that, Kiro. Cause like they just send it to billing and then billing just says like, oh yeah, it's like 30 or 60 days. And we just like, that's it. They don't really care, right? This is more so what I've heard. It's not their money, right? It's also what we hear and what we see, you know?

So a lot of people complain about that stuff, but you know, I've learned very quickly over the last few years that it's, you know, it's the people, it's the clients that you work with you know like you have to vet them you have to choose who you're working with because like i remember the first time dario and i said no to a potential uh like massive project was like back in 2016 for for it was like a 20k project and we we were like oh man that's that's more than we've ever done in like a month too many red flags but the red flags just kept shotting up shooting up constantly we're like no we we have to

do it painful but you gotta do it smart you're just gonna have someone bad mouth you all the time because they just never were gonna be happy so you're like okay don't but we were kind of worried of not getting paid to be honest with you like there was a lot of stuff and they were expecting us to cover and we're like no yeah yeah for sure i mean when you start it's good to have some money up front too because it's you start renting stuff start paying people giving deposits and you're waiting for the money and you're like am i a bank like i just basically loaned money at zero interest for well it's commitment too right yeah because it's like if they pay then they can't just like last minute say ah you know what we're not we're not going to go through with this now

it's like well they have to go through with it they put 50 percent up if they don't then great i got paid for you know pre-production and part of post uh part of production right so cash flow is so important in our business because that's the one thing that lacks a lot especially when you're uh running with these types of like bigger projects you know like we've had times where it's like okay like uh we're waiting for like maybe like a whole half chunk of of a project to come in it's like yeah we've broken it up and it helps a little bit but again you know cash flow is so important to keep afloat you know paying the bills and just paying your your freelancers too right like i know we've all been on the other end just paying your freelancers too, right? Like I know

we've all been on the other end when we were freelancers and like you're just waiting for payment. You're like, why am I not being paid yet? Like I should have been paid like a while and I got a chase now. Like, come on, man. Like where's my money? Like that's why with us, like like we pay our freelancers like the

day, like the next day as soon as we want to get it done, you know, like I just want them to be happy and I know what it's been like. So like the next day as soon as we want to get it done you know like i just want them to be happy and i know what it's been like so like the next day it's like send me your invoice i'll get you paid right now so yeah exactly exactly yeah i'm the same way and that goes on with like again you know having a healthy enough budget where it helps because i want my team that comes to like to be fed i want to if we have to get hotel i want everything to be well done and everybody be taken care of be happy so and that makes the project better like i just don't want to have run productions where people aren't treated the way they should be yeah you

want it to be a positive experience not only for for the client but also for all the people you work with because if you have a happy crew the work is going to show it's going to show in the work if if you don't treat your crew, right. They're the ones who are handling all the, all the elements and materials for you. And they're going to be the ones that either put in the effort or not. So you got to make sure you keep them happy. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, James, since it's a, I want to go back to like, just how you've, you've structured your business in a very skeletal way because that's kind of how we we want to keep things going forward but have you found that like since you're the only one

running it like you've had to really pick and choose your projects and like sometimes you would have had to like say no to projects that you would otherwise would have wanted to take on just because you're too loaded up um trying to think of an example um not really i mean i could see that being an issue that could happen but i've had projects where i say okay like this is really good when's your timeline and kind of placing everything we're like that's cool like let's say can we do it in a month from now would that work uh what are you hoping to get the project done so I'm pretty good at kind of moving things around where I need to um there's a few projects a few times where I've said yeah I don't think we should you know if if you can do it next month, then we're yours. But this month we're booked up.

That's happened. But most of the time they've come back. It wasn't like as urgent as they maybe initially said it was. It's always urgent, right? It's always urgent. Yeah. We need this right now. We need it next week.

I need it yesterday. So yeah, that hasn't, that hasn't happened too much. And I think they just look at it like, wow, this guy's busy. You know, it must be good. He didn't just say yes and do whatever I wanted him to. Exclusivity, right? Yeah, well, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So sometimes I call this like, you know, I get really into like the money and the finance part of it and the business part of it, but I'm passionate about it because I love the art. I love all that. Like, I think that's just kind of a given, but'm passionate about you know making sure people can do this sustainably because sometimes I see people doing amazing work and they're like I'm like man you're gonna you're gonna starve to

death if you keep charging that you know I want to see you doing it a long time and I want to see you getting better and the only way to do that is to make sure you're you're being compensated fairly and you know I'm never trying to like trick people rip people off, I want to make sure like you guys mentioned, if we're spending 20 grand on this, let's make you guys 5060. Let's let's make this worth it. You know, I want it to be worth it. So both sides are, you know, you guys are eating and they're getting the benefit. And we're all just lifting each other up. Like, yeah, that's the other thing I wanted to mention, too, is like, how do you handle switching between, like business mindset and creative mindset because that's something we've we've struggled a lot in the past like

we're getting like it's fine now but like trying to switch between like okay now we just have to focus on like the business side of our of our company and then like all of a sudden now we also have to switch the creative like we got to come up with like a good story for this video and all that like it's difficult to do right like it's very hard to manage how do you go about it absolutely yeah i mean i really try to break up the time you know this this morning i'll wake up have coffee i'm gonna do just creative stuff i'm not touching business and make sure i compartmentalize it as much as i can and just having apps and software that helps like contracts i use agree.com um i have fresh books uh frame io frame io is amazing yeah the moment i got that like clients love it so yeah just having tools that that that help i have i've used acuity for like scheduling

and just trying to get tools that really help take some of the management off my hands. Yeah. And I guess it's smart that you're splitting up your time in chunks. So like, it's not like you'll do one hour business and then you'll focus one hour on creative. You're just doing like, okay, half of the day, I'm focusing on just business admin, whatever. And then the other half you'll do like creative stuff that that's a good way of going about it yeah i think we've tried that a couple times in the past

and we definitely need to bring it back like you've been having like 30 minutes just like uh creative uh discussion sessions on some like topics and ideas and things like that no business you know like the last year has been very business focused because with the pandemic, it forced us to be, because we realized all the, all the holes, all the things that we needed to kind of rebuild and restructure. And because of that, we got into such a huge business mindset. It's like, okay, now we're creeping back into the creative a bit more, you know, go back to the roots of, you know, why we started everything is to create great work, you know, work that we're passionate about. And, you know, like, obviously you need the foundation as a business owner, you know why we started everything is to create great work you know work that we're passionate about and you know like obviously you need the foundation as a business owner you know you completely understand right so yeah absolutely yeah i try to carve out time just to like sit on my couch and watch vimeo videos get inspired that's good and and feel often inadequate because

i see some work out there i'm like my god so good i know there's there's a good website just so there's a good website called the uh it's called the inspiration and they'll just like send you like i think daily uh content where they just show like these are the top ads like not just like video ads but they'll also show like paper ads as well like uh billboard ads like it's really interesting interesting stuff and they just curate it and send it to you yeah i have it right here open on my my computer oh you oh you uh you know that's right yeah you you shared it with me like a couple months back so i like i go on that every now and then and watch it helps it helps because on vimeo like you have to like do your research like you know what you're looking for versus like this they just do it for you're like okay these are like the top ads there's another website called it's called the inspiration

and there's another site called ads of the world if you just want like video ads like it's just a bunch of companies just posting their videos on there so you can kind of see like these are like what's what's trending now good to know the one thing I like about Vimeo and I think James, you, uh, you probably have experienced this as well is I like the, I like sometimes seeing where my rabbit hole goes, you know, where you're watching a video and then you see another recommended one, recommended one that you don't know where you ended up. You're like, these are cool projects that I wouldn't have found if I was trying to search it. Cause sometimes you don't know what you're looking for. Right. Yeah, exactly. and that's the cool thing about vimeo sometimes yeah that's true and more so than

youtube because youtube you just i don't know ends up being a cat hitting someone with a frying pattern you know again this is now i'm not melting my brain yeah exactly yeah all those react videos that used to be yeah exactly that's so yeah there's some funny stuff there's some funny stuff on there i've seen some funny stuff on twitch too it's an interesting uh oh i couldn't get into it no i'm not really i was just on it the other day kind of i was like i wonder what's going on on there and there's some just strange strange stuff there's like live feeds of some guys horses i was like some guys horses i don't know and it had like 250 viewers who's just sitting there watching horses i don't know there's a lot of people out there doing a lot of different stuff

so i'm like i think it's just people that got really high and they don't know how to exit it like i'm just i'm stuck i'm stuck watching horses have you seen the show bro it's crazy this is wild man that that's steven over there hanging out with josh yeah exactly oh man so we're kind of like already past now the the one hour mark before we kind of like uh start to wind down a bit we just wanted to kind of get a sense of like what what's what's in store for the future of uh for you with slant visuals like what's what's in what's coming down the pipeline honestly i'm excited about getting more into these human stories man i love one of my favorite parts is interviewing people and i think the interview i watch documentaries now where i'm like man that

interview was incredible like the answers they, it's such a huge element. It's really hard when you have a bad interview to make something really strong and powerful. You're like, yeah, visually it looks good. The sound's good, but there's just- Yeah, there's nothing to it. Like there's nothing like, yeah, it's pretty, but I'm not feeling anything. You know what I mean?

And it's when all the copy and the text come in to explain the story. Yeah, exactly. It's like a black and white movie without sound. You got to go to like the title screen. That is the new way of doing it. Technically, if you think about it and, you know, avoiding having to like, before you show someone being like, okay, like this is what the video is about.

I'm going to explain it to you. Like you should, they should just be able to watch it and the voiceover. It'd be good. So just getting more into that and helping you know clients because i've had so many clients often say like here's our script that we want people to say for the video and i'm like yeah it's not gonna be like we want i'll like reverse engineer the question so we can get those answers but these people aren't actors let's get something human and i'm very passionate about helping these brands who have that mentality saying hey let's get something human and i'm very passionate about helping these brands who have

that mentality saying hey let's like let's connect with the people here let's tell an authentic genuine story and that's going to do way more than you think being perfectly polished robotic corporate companies is going to look let's like there's people at your office let's or whatever your company let's tell their story in a genuine way and just getting you know getting better at doing it getting better at getting the right answers finding the right questions to ask you know um really getting into asking why a lot you know i used to just ask certain questions now i say why up to five times why why why that's where like the kind of the meat of the story is so just really like hubrick he's asking this he's doing like 50 takes just asking the same question absolutely I mean sometimes I'll I try to be concise but

I've done like an hour and a half interviews just to like really get comfortable and I've also done 15 minutes the interview is fantastic and I don't even need to go any longer really depends on the person you get so just really getting better at the story element you know the filmmaking element is always important I want to get better at using that skill set to help tell it, but really just, you know, getting better at finding good stories and, and, you know, fleshing them can you can do it in writing. You can do it in print. You can do it in video and photo. There's there's an infinite number of ways to tell stories. And people get a little bit too focused sometimes on on that aspect. But it really is all the content and that kind of focus. You know, occasionally we've had clients who even asked us, like, what camera are you using?

We're like, yeah, why are you asking? using? And we're like, why are you asking? It doesn't matter. Like, why are you asking this question? It doesn't matter if I'm giving it to you in 4k or HD, if your story is not good, then it doesn't matter, you know?

But that's like you said, James, that's why we're here. We're here to tell, tell the real stories, you know, like try to really find the content that even sometimes they don't even see in themselves. And that's the one cool thing about it you know finding like that chef's uh idea you

know like that you that you probe for like that's awesome you know the client would never have thought what kind of what kind of like financial institution is going to think oh well do we have a chef in the house yeah yeah absolutely and it worked did he cook you a meal he did actually he did tuna tartare actually it was delicious oh interesting i know yeah the budget for the food was a lot like the fortune of the company i was like man that was an expensive tuna that you bought wow it was a delicious meal yeah it was good that was a fun uh video and it works you have to get lunch for that shoot or did he just no the chef cooked it exactly it was a dinner we shot that late too we shot that at like

10 at night or something because he didn't get food he got ingredients yeah so that's what he did he went to he went to he went to the grocery store yeah you can see it's on our instagram so you can see it there if you want to oh yeah yeah we'll definitely check it out but it's your what's your instagram uh account called uh so slant visuals yeah there'll be them everywhere there on my website visuals yeah oh dario dario just froze again i froze exactly as he started saying his instagram yeah you find on the website or just google, I mean, Google Instagram search, Slant Visuals. It'll be there. James, before we end this off,

why don't you tell us how you came up with the name? Slant. Well, I was trying to come up with the name that's at first, I'm like, what's a sound interesting, what sounds good. And what I liked about Slant was apart from it just being short i like condensed names i don't want anything too long yeah i like slant as you know when you're looking at something you kind of tilt your head slanted to see it from a different perspective that's kind of where i'm just saying i want our heads to be with my clients often is like let's not go into it super obvious let's like look at it from

a different perspective maybe there's something else there that we're not thinking about that'll be really interesting let's let's get a little creative with it man everyone we've been bringing on they have such like cool stories for how they came up with their name i feel like we haven't done enough work for ours ours wasn't too bad but it came up with like it does sound cool though yeah we came up with cool ideas behind it though you can spend months trying to come up with the name eventually like i i need to start shooting so you need to get to work you know yeah exactly i don't think our clients will mind too much what our name is you know yeah no no but uh yeah okay i mean i could like i could go on for if i didn't have a meeting in like 30 minutes i would stay on forever no i i think like honestly like our talk was so good like

we're definitely going to bring you back on in the future as well for another episode like i think it's good now we're just past the one hour mark which we promised our listeners we were going to stick to trying to keep it to one over an hour or under but there's always so many cool like ideas that we that we were sharing and talking about you know and then we just go on tangents you know and then who knows like yeah i used to wonder how podcasts would go for three hours sometimes like i'm not surprised now yeah yeah especially with this like you know i'm a man i could yeah like i said i could keep going and going and going you know i don't know if my wife wants to hear about it anymore you know i've chewed her ear off we get it we get it you're creative you're awesome

you know just exactly yes the website looks good yes you've told me that story yes the website looks good i've seen that page already yeah i see that new logo. You're using the new icon. It looks good. Okay. Anyways, what's for dinner? Exactly. It's so fun. Like talking with people in this industry, you know, like I know some people it's like, what do you do?

I do this. I hate it. Like I can't wait for the weekend. I'm like, I find people in film that was excited to like, check out this new video. I saw, check out this piece of gear I bought. Like we're a bunch of kids just then we're having a blast, you know, it's awesome. And I love like, I like even getting off this call. And when I go to my meeting, I'm going to be like so full of energy because I'm just

excited now about doing more cool stuff. Like, so for me, it's like, it's contagious. And I love that about this industry. Absolutely. And we have to hustle like so much harder than everyone else. Like that, if you didn't like it, you would have just gone and done something else. It would have been easier to do that than to like stick through with it so he wouldn't have gotten on this uh on this podcast show you know some some joe schmoes from toronto reaching out to him in montreal it's like want to

hop on a on a show with us man i'm gonna tell my call my parents tell them i made it i'm famous he's famous he's famous i'm expecting to see a billboard somewhere about this episode yeah no no we really appreciate you jumping on uh and and talking with us and like you said you know that the one good thing uh that we like about the show that we're noticing and you kind of pointed it out is that you know it's kind of like hyping us up you know like we get inspired by hearing other people's stories as well hearing some of their ideas sharing some of yours and just feeding off of that energy you know like like i like I get surprised each time with like, just kind of where we're at by the end of the call. It's like, wow. It's like, James, I feel like I really know you like just

after this one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I'm down to grab a beer, man. Let's do it. Anytime you're in Toronto, anytime we're in Montreal or if you're in Toronto, like we'll go to Schwartz in Montreal. Oh yeah. You definitely need to. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. He hasn't tried it. Dario hasn't tried it yet. No, so good. So good. Awesome. Well, we'll leave it at that, James. Uh, thanks again for joining us and, uh, you know, we'll keep in touch. Sounds good guys. © transcript Emily Beynon