Creatives Grab Coffee - Solving Problems With Story (ft. Signature Video Group) | Creatives Grab Coffee 7

Episode Date: October 28, 2020

Chris Stasiuk, the founder and creative director of Signature Video Group, a full service creative video agency. SVG has been around since 2009 and they’ve worked on north of 600 projects. They specialize in helping their clients solve complex business problems creatively and with video.

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kirill Lazarev and Dario Nuri. CGC is a platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas, and experiences. Today we welcome our guest, Chris Stasiuk, the founder and creative director of Signature Video Group, a full-service creative video agency. We hope you enjoy our discussion, so let us start. Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself, like kind of how you got into the industry. For sure. So we've been at this for 11 years in October. I started this company like way back when I was actually a corporate marketer. I was a marketing manager at Boston Pizza. I was actually a corporate marketer.

I was a marketing manager at Boston Pizza. And so there I was going to head office every day with my suit and tie. And just, you know, it just didn't feel like the right fit. It was an amazing, amazing job at an amazing company, but just kind of wasn't getting excited to get up every morning and do the marketing grind. And so I kind of just saw video on the horizon. I remember reading an article while I was just like at my desk one day about this company that was doing just small business video profiles. And I think they had done something like a thousand in the previous year.

And again, it was one of these sort of like, you know, volume-based scalable companies that just finds freelancers. Are they still around? What's that? Is that company still around? Good question. I actually haven't checked up on them in several years. I wouldn't be surprised if they're around in some sort of capacity changing names or brands or what have you. But yeah, I kind of like my backgrounds and communications before that. So it's sort of like, you know, the medium is the message. And we saw in the 50s, when there was radio, the dominant medium, and then television comes in and blows

it away, because it's warmer, it's just more engaging. and so I kind of felt that was happening with web video being more accessible and this is this would have been 2008 or 2009 and so yeah video video was on the horizon so I said hey like I I've always loved making videos let's uh let's try something out so uh I I called a couple of my franchisees that I managed, I think, like 24, 25 stores and just asked them if I could come and shoot a spec, you know, commercial at their at their location. And yeah, that was my first portfolio, a couple of free pieces. And it's always funny to go back and look at those first few pieces. Like it's it's another world away.

Were you shooting yourself or did you hire people because you said your mark your background was in marketing but yeah like to go from marketing to video production and actually shooting it's a whole different ball game now for sure yeah so i mean i've always kind of had a camera in my hand since i was a kid like always always the one doing video projects for school, trying to get involved in video content at Boston Pizza. On those first few shoots, I did have a buddy that I had come out and help me make it look presentable. Because quite honestly, I didn't, didn't know how to do that at a professional level. But yeah, learned a lot over the last decade.

That's for sure. What's amazing is that you kind of started around the same time as the digital revolution, which is a very unique perspective. A lot of people who typically now jump into the industry come in when a lot of things have already kind of been established with this new wave of content creation. When he said 2008, 2009, it was just starting. Yeah. For me, it feels like it's always been around, but mind you, we've been around, we started around five years ago, right? Six years, five, six years ago. So it's, we've, we've been exposed to it already. So to hear that,

oh yeah, in 2008, 2009, no one was really doing it to me. It's a little, oh wow. I didn't even realize that. It was, it was crazy in hindsight though because like you know knowing what I knew about the history and just what I felt in my gut I thought video was going to be huge um but nobody else really thought that way I remember when I when I quit my job my boss was like so what are you going to do and I told them and they're like that's that's not going gonna work uh my parents my friends you know it's just it was it was a risk right especially quitting a really good job um during the great recession which uh you know we were just kind of entering in but I was like 24 25 years old you don't think about those things you just think you know I'm gonna grow this this huge business this, this huge business, right? That's, that's what happened with us too. When we, when we first

decided to get into it, our parents had the same reactions. They're like, well, my son's a failure. I failed as a parent. There's no future for him now. For sure. But you just, you just know it, right? You just, you feel something in your gut. And also it was a business that I could, even though the barriers to entry were a little higher back then, I remember my first camera was a Sony EX1. So I took out a loan to buy that camera off of eBay. Old school.

Old school, right? Yeah, for sure. But yeah, it was a risk, but I don't know, I felt like it was going to pay off. And the first few years were what I call the lean years. But I mean, that's any business, right? You mentioned that you've kind of felt it in your gut that there is going to be something happening with video.

Was there any specific thing that you noticed in the industry or any trends that kind of led you to believe that this is a very lucrative opportunity for you in the long run? I mean, back then, they had just released the Canon 5D Mark II, which was the revolutionary camera for its time to bring filmmaking and video production to the masses. Like, was that magic lantern shoot it raw? Yeah, exactly. So was there any specific thing that you noticed that kind of led you to believe that that's what you wanted to do or was it just purely like a gut feeling from what you were saying and a follow-up to that why do you think no one else or very few others noticed this

well i guess like going back to the first question some of the things i noticed were again like cameras getting better and better and cheaper and cheaper. YouTube was, I think 2005 was YouTube, right? So it had been gaining some traction. But while I was working at Boston Pizza, I would go to a bunch of these commercial shoots and I would see this absolute show being put on, you know, to make a national TV commercial. We're talking, you know, a location locked down for three days, 100 people cruise, just, you know,

like the gong show of making national ads. And I thought, wow, like this is crazy expensive and such a spectacle to make a 30 second spot I thought there's got to be a middle ground between like hiring you know a nephew to make a video and a professional production company maybe uh you know maybe there's like a middle ground that can be achieved and so that's what we tried to do right off the get right off the bat did you feel like it took some time before you started to get a foothold like how long how many years did it roughly take for you to kind of really establish yourself like i feel like now a lot of people can come out and open up a business

and be pretty established within a year i don't know i don't know but oh depending on who they depending on who they know i'm saying like if they have the right resources and everything now there's opportunity to be able to be established right off the bat but back then this wasn't a proven model so it obviously probably took at least a few years like how long did it take you yeah it took it took probably three years before it started becoming more stable and what i what i tried to do right off the bat is I tried to almost like commoditize what we were selling we were trying to sell like these packages and the reason I named it signature video group is we were doing these small business profiles where at the end the

owner of the business we would put a piece of glass in front of the lens and they would come and say and this is this is my business this This is my signature. So trying to, trying to brand it a little bit and people loved, you know, signing their name at the end of the video. And so as much as it was a small business ad for them, it was also like, oh, the one with the signature. So we were kind of trying to brand ourselves a little bit. Um, and yeah, you know, I thought small businesses were going to line up to get a video done. And, you know, it took, again, when you also have no presence online, you have no portfolio, like, you know, I was kind of starting completely from scratch. So it took a number of years, I took a part time gig, serving at the keg at night and and truth be told in the

third year I almost I almost didn't make it we almost shut down and I was because there was just not enough revenue coming in and so I was looking for jobs and I found an agency that was willing to hire me as sort of like a, you know, director of content, but I convinced them to hire my company, not me, which still at the time was just me. So give me it gave me that like runway to say, you know what this I can keep this thing alive while still making a living. And we got into some really cool projects with that agency. And that led to enough momentum to bring it back to life. Yeah, with our company, we found the same thing in the first couple of years. What we were doing was, yes, we had the company and we were doing work through our company.

But we were also freelancing for other production companies. And we're also freelancing for other production companies and we're also freelancing for other wedding companies right so in a way we had three sources of income and that was letting us keep the company afloat um but well then thanks us afloat kept us afloat yeah that's the thing that we noticed was that and and this is what we've been trying to change over the last little while is that we were able to make sure that at least we were taken care of, but then we noticed that the company was suffering. Technically, if it was just the company, it wouldn't have made it like you mentioned. But, you know, like with now the whole pandemic and when it hit, we noticed,

okay, you know, we have to really now reflect on how to build the business, like started from scratch, rebuild the foundation and make sure that we can, it'll be sustainable and has a good growth for the future. And that's, that's cause we were looking at our company more as us too. That's how we were looking about it, right? We weren't, weren't seeing our company as a business to grow and scale. We were seeing it more as, okay, you and I are working. Let's try to make, make some bread and live off this, right? So now our whole mindset has changed. So we're looking more towards the future.

Yeah, this pandemic has been amazing for creatives and resetting their focus. Like I'm sure you guys find this. You spend so much time working in your business instead of on it. And you kind of just just you know there's certain things you want to do and you just either haven't had the time or you're just so exhausted after you've done your client work and so yeah this has been an amazing opportunity to like almost start from scratch right you can kind of take those years of experience and put it into into your

business for once instead of just clients. Yeah. And I feel like we're in a fortunate position where we're still at a very small stage in our in our growth. So we're able to make pretty drastic changes. But I feel like other businesses that are bigger and more established, they might be not as flexible in being able to do that. So there's some companies that maybe might be hurting a lot and the changes they'll make might either make or break them. How do you feel about that? Like, has your organization had to make any drastic changes? Nothing too drastic. I mean, we're quite small and nimble as well. And as much as I've scaled this business to grow, to support other people, it's always been the goal to stay small

and nimble. Because I think that's just the way the industry's moving. And it's amazing what you can do with like a four or five person crew that rivals what you can do with like a 30 person circus right even two people it's like you know two guys in a camera bag can almost make anything if they have the right preparation and the right creativity right so yeah nimble's the name of the game so we haven't had to change all that much we've just focused at least in the down months of making content for ourselves and growing our brand and you know reconnecting with with clients and building relationships and uh it's been fruitful for sure being nimble really really kind of gives you a little bit of a nest egg, especially when there's a lot of unpredictable things that happen, especially with this pandemic.

Luckily, you know, because we're nimble, we don't have huge office spaces, you know, a list of employees that need their salaries paid for. So that allows us to kind of survive through things like this pandemic, whereas other companies don't. And just to kind of transition now into this next bit, how have you found the pandemic has hit you since March? Has it been challenging? Have you had to make any other specific changes for yourself? Right. So I've been hit on two fronts, right? First and foremost, our life has changed dramatically because my wife and I had a baby. Oh, congratulations. Yeah. So April 20th, our first kid was born, a little baby girl. And so that's changed our world quite a bit, just like with a baby.

So no sleep, no sleep since April. What's that? No sleep since april right less sleep for sure it's like a waking level of alertness you know um so on that side it's been something and then of course on the other side the business side yeah we've seen we we were we were really scared in the beginning i I thought first when this was all happening, I thought, hey, you know, we're going to fight this. We're going to be just fine. And then, of course, when everything locks down, it's just out of your control. So we do quite a bit of work with conferences and also tourism. And so those projects either got postponed or completely canceled.

And these are, you know, canceled contracts. But what are you going to do? It's just the nature of what was going on. But we also saw new opportunities starting to happen. So we did a couple of virtual, I guess, events. Some things like supply chain walkthrough videos where normally a manufacturer would bring clients through their facility. That's not possible now. So they said, hey, like, let's create video assets to send to these people wherever they are in the world. And so we've seen a surge in things like that. So it's sort of like, you know, one door closes, another window

opens. Do you think that that door is the same size though? Because it seems that we're going to be in this type of situation for the next two years. From what we've been hearing, it's like, okay, next two years, we're still going to have to be wearing a mask and everything. So sure, new opportunities have popped up, but are they of the same quality and level as the previous projects you had going on? So they're, they're just, they're, they're definitely less creative projects, but at the same time, because to your point, everybody predicts that this thing is going to persist, right? Whether it's a year or two years or maybe even long tail 10 years. These companies are saying, hey, like we'll we're willing now to invest into this kind of content because we know we're probably not going to have guests visit this plant in several years.

So and they want it to look good. And these are big companies willing to. It's a major problem that they need to solve. And so they are willing to invest in solutions that do the job, especially if they're a brand. And this video would go to a very important customer. We found they're willing to invest a bit.

I mean, who knows what the long-tail effect is, though, on this whole industry, right? Yeah, I remember when it first happened, I remember telling Kirill, yeah, it's really bad, but I feel like this is really going to force every business out there to rethink their video goals. And I feel like before they would just say,

okay, let's just meet in person, yada, yada. But now that you can't, everyone's realized the importance. And it seems like everyone now wants it. And I guess the only challenge for us as businesses is to convince them that the price they're going to be paying is worth it. Because a lot of them don't know the amount of costs that are involved. And we've even had some inquiries where when we then send them a quote,'re like whoa what's this and it's like well and we're not even charging that high right and these are pretty decent sized businesses so it seems like everyone wants it but they don't know the amount of costs involved so i feel like that's the biggest challenge for all of us i feel like

though that's been a challenge for for many years is educating clients about how this industry works and the amount of money that is needed to make something successful. Obviously, you're always going to have Joe Schmoe who comes in with his camera that he picked up recently, who's doing cheap rates. And those are the worst because they really devalue the entire industry as a whole. Because sure, like when you're a business, like obviously we have overhead costs, but even just to provide a level of quality and not just send a one-man show out there it's going to cost some amount of money right but if a guy is you know he's just been he's just getting into it it's been a year or two and he's going out there and he's charging like 300 bucks for a

full day shoot plus an edit and this and that those clients are going to get used to paying that kind of price right and it's just it's just terrible for all of us and it's not only that not only are they willing to come out and do it for next to nothing in a lot of cases they have skills and they do a pretty good job um so but it's it's kind of like penny wise pound foolish because not only they killing you know that client for everybody else they're also killing that client for their future self because that client now expecting that they can get that level of content for whatever price when they need to come back and do another video and that creative has kind of leveled up as everybody

tends to do they can't go and do the same work at the same price and they've killed that client for themselves too it's so you know race to the bottom is is a dangerous thing so that's why you really have to set yourself apart with you know i i think quality is maybe not like quality is subjective i think we're all making high-quality stuff. I think it comes down to can you solve their business problems, right? Whether it's I need to sell more of this product. I need to retain staff longer. I need to recruit three top-tier software engineers, like whatever it is.

So if you can help them solve a problem and prove that you can help them solve it, they're willing to hire you. One funny thing I just kind of realized as we're complaining about these youngins who are coming in to try to get a foothold in the industry, trying to build their portfolio, they're charging not so much. It kind of reminded me briefly of, you know, we were also at that stage. So it's kind of reminded me briefly of you know we were also at that stage so it's it's kind of like a balance you know like when you're starting out you do want to get your portfolio you want to try to get some good names on your portfolio list as soon as possible so you can kind of add some more credibility to yourself but i feel like it just there's there's got to be a balance somewhere you know luckily we built our portfolio when we were still in a university and

we worked with a lot of student run organizations. So that's where the base portfolio came. And as you mentioned, some clients that we worked with, we charged certain prices. And then as we leveled up, we, we, we raised our prices and unfortunately we couldn't work with those. Some of them we've been able to keep working with, but it's, you know what, it's not even, I't even put the blame on it's not their fault like it's not it's just how it is and again like you mentioned there's lower uh barriers to entry so you're gonna have a lot more competition carol and i were talking about this on another episode how uh there's going to be way more competition going forward in the future just because the equipment costs less and a lot of these people will get that equipment and they'll level up their skills in the wedding scene and they're pretty much like a decent shooter

at that point all they need to learn is basic lighting but but because of that sure there might be a lot more freelancers out there but there won't be a lot of business owners because even if there's like a 200 increase in the amount of freelance videographers out there realistically speaking that would only be maybe a 15 to 20 percent increase in the amount of entrepreneurs out there so i guess it's just it's just up to us to figure out the how to handle this challenge right and that just comes down to sales at the end of the day yeah i mean he who's closest to the client ends up winning, right? So I mean, that's, that's number one. So you've got to get in front of a lot of different clients in a lot of different ways. And, and of course, like build strong, strong relationships with these people. And the truth is, if you can solve their problems, and, you know, if you're solving a problem that is worth a lot of money to them, a lot of entrepreneurial-minded decision makers understand that and they're willing to pay a portion of that. Okay, so you mentioned something interesting about being able to solve the client's problem.

And I feel like as creatives, we kind of do that with our... We do that both with our business mindsets, but also with our creative storytelling, right? So how do you how do you find that balance between being able to solve their problem, and also be creative and do it through a story element? The whole thing reminds me of this Albert Einstein quote, and I it's, I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like creativity is intelligence, having fun, right? So it's just like, thinking about having fun right so it's just like thinking about okay first of all defining the problem that's what you've really got to do up front um and I find that a lot of um a lot of the times we we go in at least in the beginning we we went in looking to

just make a video and, you know, deliver their key messages, but it was making them happy, but not necessarily providing value to the audience. And so we kind of had our aha moment when we started making content for the client's audience first and them second, because if the audience doesn't care, nobody wins. Nobody's going to watch. Nobody's going to take action. So, you know, first defining that problem and then saying, who's your audience? What do we need to make them feel to like achieve a result? And then, of course, making the content and then serving it to that audience. I mean, that's what it's all about.

If the audience doesn't care, it's a non-starter. I feel like that is one key thing as a business owner and a content producer is that you need to solve not only the problems that sometimes the clients come to you with. Like we always want to do that. We always want to try to solve whatever immediate issues they have. But we have to, they have but we have to as as creators we have to find what potential other problems they might have that we can also solve because that will help identify things that they haven't even thought of and then that will actually even put you in a better light than than uh than you would have originally and i i how do

you typically go about trying to identify those other problems that could potentially be there, like the audiences? Yeah, I mean, that's the million-dollar question, right? Usually somebody comes to you because they need a video, and that's what they think they need. But really what they need is they need more sales, or they need new talent, or they need to keep talent longer. So it's in that first discovery conversation, really just asking a lot of

questions like it was your own business, right? And this this whole exercise during COVID, you know, really kind of tone or, you know, tunes us into solving those problems. So it's asking lots and lots of questions, maybe questions that get them thinking about their business in a way they haven't in a long time. And then they start to see you as like consultants, not just content creators. You're creating content to solve their problems.

That's the way you want to get them thinking. So usually you're creating something, an initial video, and then once you build that relationship, now you can start probing additional problems. Usually that's not off the bat, but you create long-tail opportunities that way. I feel like one of the biggest challenges for us is we can create the content for them and lately we have been

thinking more along the lines of what you just said you know long term for the client like sure we're creating this product for you but what what other challenges do you have and maybe like sure you need this type of video but you know sure you might need this promotional video but what about these other profile videos that showcase your organization a bit more? That might also be helpful. But I feel like the biggest challenge that we run into is more on the marketing end. So we can provide the content, but we find that a lot of times the clients don't realize they need to put the same, if not more, power into marketing it, right?

So this has actually led to us kind of trying to create like a marketing arm for our company, right? So not only can we provide the content for you, but we can also help you market it. And I think you do provide some type of marketing services, right? Was this because of what you found with these clients that they just didn't know how to market it. Yeah. It's, that's a good point. And that's one of the, I mean, there's nothing more frustrating

when you make like an absolute cracker video for this client and then it just sits on, you know, an unused YouTube channel and it gets like two videos, two, three views. It happens more often than we'd like to admit. Right. And so, but I do remember right from the very beginning, um, we were focused on delivering results for the clients. So marketing was always something we did. I remember like the very first year I was in business. And Daryl, we talked about this before when I went like, I literally went door to door trying to sell video to like, every business in my neighborhood, like vacuum repair, man, like every restaurant. And anyways, I walked into a brewery and I got really lucky. I saw the right guy on the right day at the right time.

And anyways, I pitched them this kind of campaign that included the creative, the production, and also how we were gonna get this out to their audience. So it was like organic seeding, a little bit of paid distribution. But all of a sudden now, when you can start to guarantee eyeballs or guarantee that this video is gonna end up

in front of the people that need to see it, clients are much more willing to listen because now you're reaching their audience. It's awesome that you've been doing that right from the get-go. That's been a great business practice and probably you've been able to really evolve it and put it into a way that it actually works very well for the clients. And you're also in a unique position that I'm a little curious about. You've seen the evolution of social media and the social media marketing

in this industry. How has it changed in terms of how you create the content, you put it up, say, Facebook, YouTube, you put the ad dollars through and you get eyeballs on it? I feel like back in the day, it was a lot easier for people to see your content, whereas now, unless you have a huge budget, no one's going to see the video. It's so true, right?

And yeah, it's changed a lot how you how you reach an audience especially now with like the dawn of the influencer and just the amount of content that's being put out every day right it's it's an absolute avalanche and so um but that can be part of the strategy sometimes Sometimes it's, for example, bringing somebody with a bit of a social following into the campaign to be part of it. So you have a little bit of a leg up there. Um, yeah, but I think that's, what's going to change most about this industry. It's like not just having an audience, but it's making authentic content.

We can't just make what used to work even two or three years ago and just put a big ad spend behind it. Because one of their competitors might have hired an influencer or even has somebody who's savvy in-house. And they're going to achieve those results for a fraction of the cost. So it's definitely changing. So you, as a video production company you have a marketing arm and I feel like did you think this is actually the the future of video production companies because it seems that most people that we've spoken to they're actually they're not doing a lot of

work through ad agencies anymore and if anything they're trying to cut them out they're trying to go more independent So do you think that for video production companies, the future is to become a marketing agency? That's a good question. And I don't know the answer to that. Things have changed so much over the last few years just with the avalanche of content. I don't know.

I don't know what the future holds i've i've got some inklings that it just because it gets easier and easier to make content and um i guess it depends on who your audience is right um a lot of the stuff that will companies will still hire professional companies to make these sort of like high-end corporate films because their target audience their b2b audience is still you know older decision makers that are used to seeing a content look a certain way but if your audience is um you know gen z for example you can't just put a lot of money into a glossy commercial like like authenticity is, is king. In fact, you know, you're, you're probably looking at the wrong strategy when you're, you're trying to

create like high gloss content and trying to force key messages down, down that tube. I think what I think every few years, the, the, the thing that really drives and changes the future of video and content creation is the release of new platforms like with the recent release of tiktok that is one platform i'm a little reluctant to get into but i know that that is something we're all gonna have to really start to explore because maybe our generation and the millennial generation or not may not be on there as much yet. But all the young people that are in high school or middle school, they're all on that platform. And that's what they're going to use in the future. I disagree with the TikTok bit.

Well, I mean, this is what I'm noticing, right? Well, because it's funded by the Chinese government. And with how the tensions are with the U.S. and the Chinese government, they're banning it already. And I don't know if you noticed, but Instagram adopted a lot of those features. They're kind of doing the same thing that they did with Snapchat, right? When Snapchat was really popular, all that Instagram did was it just copied everything and put it on their app. And now they're – why would you go on Snapchat when you got Instagram, right? I hope that happens.

If you go on Instagram now, it's kind of turned into TikTok in a way. Yeah, I hope that happens because then it just keeps everything centralized on one key platform. You know, I never liked having too many social media accounts. I'm just seeing this,

like I have two younger twin sisters and they're about 13 years old and they talk to me about this stuff. They tell me about what's going on in their schools, all the weird TikToks that are sent to them. And I'm like, oh, God. You know what's interesting is that TikTok isn't even that much far away from our generation. And yet it feels so distant.

So foreign to us. Because we're like the Facebook, the Instagram, the Twitter generation and TikTok just came out like a year or two ago and I'm trying to still wrap my head around it. I think it's bizarre. Like it seems like it's Vine 2.0 from the looks of it. Yeah. And yet it's being treated

as something completely different. Have you explored it at all? I mean, I remember grabbing a TikTok account like very early on because I'd been hearing about TikTok and like my wife works in media. And so she said, you've got to check this out. And so I did. And I was I was absolutely amazed at the the like level of entertainment that you can get from some of these videos. Right. These these people people put a lot of effort into just creating just absolute value

for the audience, right? A lot of it's like, look at me, but there's some really incredible content creators on there. And it's a new way of reaching audience direct to your audience, right? No middleman. I wonder why it's doing better than Vine

because again, it's short videos. Vine was six second videos. They were second six seven second videos but i think maybe vine could have been just something that was a little bit early for its time i heard the ai in tiktok is very good so it's able to really uh calibrate to your your personal liking very quickly i think yeah some people said within five or 10 videos, they pretty much knew what kind of content they wanted to watch. So I guess their, their AI is their major selling point, right? Yeah. And it's the user experience of the viewer as well, right? It's just so addictive to just swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And yeah, the user experience is, is just pretty enjoyable on, on on a platform like you know tiktok or

as you mentioned instagram is now doing reels which is essentially tiktok in every way and yeah it fills up your whole screen there's no restrictions on how long that video needs to be so um yeah it just opens up opens up the floodgates of what's possible vines i feel like with vine it was just a very bare bones platform it was its whole concept was just six seven second videos and there was probably no convenient user interface which is why it had such a huge um uh initial um support and because that's probably what people wanted to see people wanted to see short videos but I think the the platform wasn't as intuitive as the tick-tock platform is and so that's probably why now it's so popular and it's probably so

easy to use that even youngsters are able to just kind of get on it like you don't see many of them on on Instagram or I mean Facebook is probably really dead what's once old people get on get on get on a trend that's when you know it's dead and there's a lot of old people on facebook so you know it's dead like once you're once your parents and grandparents are on it like if your parents and grandparents get on tiktok that's when you know you guys when you know it's time to go to that could be trouble yeah for sure yeah i i i think I did make, I've got a little dash hound. And I think we did like an Old Town Road TikTok video with him wearing like a cowboy hat and a little kerchief, you know, just messing around. But I think that was the first video we ever put on TikTok. It got something like 2500 views, which is not not crazy but from just having no content to that i mean i was pretty amazed by that i do think that they again like these platformers are built

to make you addicted to them right in every way shape or form they're meant to kind of release dopamine like a like a slot machine and so it feels like it's so damaging though because again okay if you're used to watching a five to ten second video and that's now your norm from a young age from a young age how the hell are you gonna sit through a 90 second promotional video so yeah even with our clients like when they talk to us about when they talk to us about creating like a promotional video and they're going like okay we want it to be kind of two to three minutes we already already tell them right off the bat, listen, you should be looking more at 60 to 90 seconds. And you know what? The other thing is, if I was one of their audience, I probably wouldn't watch past 30 seconds. Like we watch it because we create it and we're invested in it.

But realistically speaking, who's going to sit through that type of content? Like it's it's going to be an interesting thing for us to solve in the future. We're pitching these videos, but at the end of the day, even our attention spans are short. So anything past like 15 seconds, first of all, I have ad blocks. So I mean, I wouldn't even be watching it in the first place. Well, you nailed it too, right? I mean, again, that's coming back to value to the audience. If you start out with making a video that's too long, you've already lost them before you've even started, right? So yeah, I think content length and format is going to be forever evolving. evolving but that being said like short attention spans uh aside we found content that is in like that 8 to 12 minute range perform really really well like we do sort of like um you know uh like basically cinematic docs for businesses about their customers or their people that work with

them or partners or whatever. Those tend to perform really well because especially if the subject is really interesting. But yeah, now the audience is getting some value out of it. They get to spend some time with a really interesting person. And there's there's tiers. Typically, these short ads, like if you're if you're trying to create an ad to promote something to people people that's when the attention spans are low because people know they're trying to be sold something when you start creating content that has a story uh and has value when you start it's okay to make it longer because the people who are going to watch they're going to watch it because they're

interested they're not going to be like oh this this uh branded doc is only uh it's it's uh 15 minutes instead of 13 minutes. They're not going to care at that point. If you click on anything past like five minutes, you're committing to some extent. I guess it's like listening to a podcast. Sure, a Joe Rogan podcast could go to three hours. You might not listen to the full three hours, but you listen to maybe 50 50 to 70 percent right and that's still like what an hour and a half like that's still a good amount of time right it's not a 30 minute one just got paid right because people tune in and they they lean in and they watch

intently and he's got that audience for a long time and again it's value to the audience yeah no matter what it is as long as you're providing value to the audience, whatever the content is, it's solving that issue. But in terms of time length, it's pretty polar nowadays because you need, you're either doing very short content. Or really long. Or really long. There's no like in between anymore, right?

So the- Or it's hard at least. Like the two, the one to two to three minute types of content, it's kind of like, I mean, unless they're being forced to watch it, they're not going to watch it. Right. And I guess the other problem we're also dealing with is, is like, again, ad blockers, right? A lot of people aren't even getting to watch it. Yep, absolutely. I'm curious, how do you guys deal with a client when they I'm curious how do you guys deal with a client when they almost get in their own way with delivering value to the audience where you've got a great idea and that you can execute on and

they switch it up on you and they say well can you do this this this and this which you know delivers less value makes the video not maybe as. How do you deal with a problem like that? Well, we typically try to communicate to them as much as we can. You know, we, we try to let them know it's like, Hey, what you're suggesting is going to change so many different aspects of the video. It's not going to achieve certain, if it, look, if it's a small change, then no big deal. I think he's asking about big changes. Yeah, I know. No, I'm just, I'm just highlighting, like if it's a small change, then no big deal. I think he's asking about big changes. Yeah, I know. I'm just highlighting.

If it's a small change, it's not a problem. But if it's a really big change where they want to completely change the direction of the video, especially if it's last minute, that's the worst time. And I feel like that is usually when these big change requests come in. It's always at the last second, like a day before the shoot or even sometimes in post where they're like, oh, can we just instead promote this instead of that? But the whole project was based on what we talked about in the pre-production. So we always let them know what would happen if they want to make those big changes and what it would cost if it does cost more and what the results would be. more and what the results would be and if they still decide to go forward with it we'll just do it because at the end of the day the clients paying for it clients paying for it we want to make them happy you know whatever the results

you know at the end of the day it's on them because we did our job as their vendors to communicate to them what those changes would yield. And, and yeah, like, just from there, you know, just to kind of help keep the relationship going and make them happy. I guess at the end of the day, it's all about demonstrating to the client that you, you have a certain amount of knowledge about the, the project that, that you're collaborating on right so if you let them know look we've been in the video space for this this amount of time we kind of know what works and what doesn't work i guess it just comes down to them trusting you right yeah and at the end of the day maybe they might have stuff going on on their end um we we all know like in a corporation

there's a bureaucracy and they have people they have to answer to and those people have people they have to answer to. That's usually it. We're not privy to those conversations. So we don't know what's going on behind the scenes. And it's not like we're making a film and we're a director and we got to fight with the studio to get this piece of your soul into the film. We're creating an ad at the end of the day we're not creating pieces of art that will last like you know 50 to 100 years right like it's an ad it's gonna be it's it's good today and it might be outdated tomorrow i i usually find that the our contacts that we're in communication with they trust us yeah and they understand what we're

saying and as dario mentioned there's other people behind there there are other people behind the scenes that are pulling strings or want things done a certain way uh like i've uh funny enough i've been accidentally cc'd on a lot of these emails in the past where i would see a huge discussion between 15 people. And I'm just, oh my God, poor guy or poor girl just want to just give us the information and just get it off their backs. You know, and like we completely get it. You know, it's a business.

We have to do what we have to do. And that's it. Everybody's got a boss, right? Everybody's got a boss. Yeah. And their bosses have bosses. We have lots of bosses. And their bosses' bosses have shareholders.

Yeah, exactly. 100%, right? That's exactly true. Yeah. I guess another thing we want to touch upon as well is the storytelling element. How do you really create a story when you're making an ad? Well, I think a lot of the times we actually try to,

like I think the story already exists somewhere within their organization. Usually it's a person. Sometimes it's a product or a place. But usually it's about a really interesting person uh and so the key is to not create the story the key is to identify it and find it and like mine it out um we did this awesome project a couple years back for autodesk um in particular it was a software called sketchbook and it's a sketching software um and so rather than make an ad, what we did is we found some of the most interesting and world renowned artists that we could find that

actually just use this software. So the very first subject with this was this gentleman named Ken Lashley, who's a bit of a living legend. He's like a comic book artist, and he's worked on every major property you can think of. And so we spent just a day with him at his home studio and just him talking about drawing and learning to draw and how he started with pen and paper. Now he's, you know, kind of an old dog learning new tricks, or he's switching over to digital tools. kind of an old dog learning new tricks or he's switching over to digital tools but just seeing him do what he does best which is draw and talk about what he's doing just while using this particular software in the background and that that that campaign performed so well because it was authentic he's like incredible to listen to and um it worked out so well that they hired us on

to do like five more of those with just different creatives because yeah it was all about finding the right person and the story kind of told itself one thing I do want to talk to you about though is scalability because that's something that we're setting the foundations for right now but it seems that you've been able to do it and your company is very successful. So how were you able to scale your business? Like first steps, maybe? Yeah, so I guess my first step when, when it was just me doing a lot of this stuff. So I, you know, I had some people shoot for me. But then after that, I was doing it all right I was I was selling it pitching it making it post-production doing all of that so the first step was bringing in people

that were better than me to do those things like we we hit a quantum leap in growth when I just stopped doing the editing because um I did an okay job but I was just too slow. I would get too distracted. And so when we brought in professional editors, our productivity and also quality of work went through the roof. And that just allowed us to take on a lot more volume. The editing always takes the longest because even with us oh my god like that that's one that's the first thing we outsource nowadays just because i can't spend again i'm not the fastest editor kyrill's way faster than me but i can't spend a week editing a promotional video that's time i could spend on business strategy and growth or out doing outreach to other clients

like i think i remember as soon as we started first bringing on editors at the beginning of 2019. And right away, we started noticing how much easier it was to kind of let go of some of that work. And as you mentioned, it frees up your time so much to kind of bring in more business. And definitely we were on a good growth path since then. Obviously, because of the pandemic, things stopped. But even now, like with September hitting right now, I didn't think we would get to the point where we need to start hiring editors for some projects even now. But that need has already come up.

And editors really help solve our time time management because anytime we're editing you're you're glued to a computer you're burnt out and i feel like you end up it's almost like you end up hating the project because you're like oh no i don't want to i don't want to sit here for like 30 hours like doing this so you kind of go like uh like because we'd split it up we'd do it by turns it's like so if carol did it on one project i'd do it on the other and i'd go like oh man i really don't want to do this project because then it'll mean it's it's my turn to edit it but now it's like okay we're working on on producing and directing it and someone else is doing it and that person loves to edit yeah so the only time we take on any editing

duties is if it's a very specific type of project that we think only, because we're so in close communication with the client that only we can probably solve that. But I definitely want us to also get to a point where even those types of projects, we can start relinquishing that to editors. But I think that just comes with time and finding the right people to work with. Like, how did you go about finding the right editors?

I mean, in the beginning, it was like Craigslist stuff, right? Like just putting an ad out there and finding stuff. And it was like, my friend knows a friend who knows a friend who's an editor. And, you know, it started that way. And then once we started to build our online profile, we were lucky that a lot of talent comes to us looking for opportunities. And then when you start to kind of level up with the people you're working with, you move into their circles of friends who are doing this professionally. And, you know, not only does, for example, hiring freelance editors or contract editors or even bringing an editor in-house free up your time but it also increases the quality of the product if you have a really high quality editor that

sees things a little differently than you do you tend up getting better work than you even initially expected there's nothing better than sending a really high quality editor, great footage and a brief. And they hit all of the marks that you'd hoped, but then they put a little spin on certain things. And it just, yeah, it keeps that creativity really high. And that's, and that's how you grow as well, right? You don't become stagnant, because you'll find, you know, you've got a particular style. And that's great. But it's nice to bring in aces into their places where maybe one editor is fantastic at like sort of long form doc but they can't maybe sizzle or you know whatever so it's about finding the best fit for that particular project

it's so hard to grow a roster of freelancers because we, the editors we use now, they came, we found them through people that have used them. So our friends. Some of them. I think all of them, to be honest with you. One we got through Facebook. Was it through Facebook? Yeah, like one or two editors we've worked with in the past that we found through like an editor call on Facebook. It's really hit and miss with a lot of yeah

because we put a call out we we had like 50 applicants and i think out of that 50 one of them was was good this was like this was like a few years ago back when we started with them and but even recently we put another call out um and we haven't been really located that many there's like okay out of out of i think 50 60 it was maybe three to five that were like, okay, these guys might be good, but we still got to test them out. So it's so hard to find really good talent. And I feel like a lot of times it's just like,

we ask people, we know it's like, do you know any good editors? Do you know any good shooters? And they're like, this guy's really good, especially for that type of thing. So use them. Recommendations are the way to go. High quality.

Where we found another quantum leap is when we brought a full-time editor in-house because that just increased our capacity to another level, right? We stopped worrying about, you know, this project rate versus this hour and then we could just start taking on all sorts of different opportunities

and not worrying about post-production, just knowing that that side of the business was completely handled. And it was handled really well with, you know, really good at it. I think that's definitely one of the first things that any production company in our position needs to think about in terms of scaling. That is probably the first role that needs to be filled because it just helps divide up the workload.

It helps even have someone as the head of post-production in a way, right? Someone who can really help even build the type of style that a business has because a lot of the time you create the content that you create, but when you bring in other talent, the value that they bring is a whole new set of skills and eyes that you might not have even had with your own work. Like sometimes I love seeing what our editors come up with when we give them the footage and the project files, you know, to work with, and then they send it back to us. And we're like, oh, that's awesome. We never thought about that. We wouldn't, like I look at it and I think to myself, I don't think I would have made it like this because I didn't have that vision for the post, or at least in terms of the style.

I mean, it all depends, obviously, on the project parameters and the scope of it. Sometimes you have to, there's a very specific script that you need to adhere to. But then most times I find, especially if you're doing event videos, there's a lot of, you know, it's up to the editor and how they put things together. You know what though? It makes a lot of sense too, because if you think about it, the post-production cost is almost the same as the production cost.

Yeah. Even though it's not the same amount of people working on it. So like production, you might have a crew of anywhere from three to 10 people and it's maybe for a day or a couple of days, but then that's still equivalent to like the final video product.

It's the hours that go into it, because a full shoot day is like maybe eight to 12 hours, but editing sometimes can be 20 hour project, with all the, especially when there's a lot of revision. Oh my God, yeah. And that's one thing clients I think don't realize too, is that a one minute promotional video might take, again, 20 to 30 hours. Depending.

Depending. Depending on what it is. Depending on what it is. But on average, let's say maybe 10 to 20 hours. That's still 10 to 20 hours. The full shoot day was only eight hours. Yeah. And yeah, it depends on how much raw footage is coming into that, right?

I mean, how many times have we shot for three days for a 60 second edit, right? It's just crazy. And so the success of that edit comes from mining that footage, even though you've got a shot list, it's about finding the angle that works, finding the theme that works. And that's where bring high quality editors and not just button mashers that people that actually know how to tell a story. It's a huge part of it. And then where we found another level of scale is when I brought in high-quality producers. And I've surrounded myself with people that can produce much better than I. Because there's a conflict of interest when I have to

sell something to a client and then make it. It's a lot easier when we've got a producer that's handling that side of the business. And I now just get to do the creative and worry about the audience as opposed to the client at the same time. What do you mean? Can you elaborate on that a little bit? Yeah. So, I mean, we've got, I mean, you met Sarah, for example, a full-time producer, absolutely fantastic producer that makes the client feel like they have no needs at all. Client loves them. I don't have to work on that client relationship quite as much. Now I get to focus on the content. So, you know, it's not a conflict of interest where I am worrying about like the bottom line and this line item. The producer takes care of all of that.

They basically they create the box for me to then create in. And I think that's a huge piece of this business is having a box to create in because that's where we do our best work you just give us carte blanche spin your wheels for eternity right but uh paint us into a box and we can make great stuff do you find um so with this um with this other producer for example do you find yourself uh still selling at least for the business? Or do you think that your producer has taken on a lot more of that responsibility to find the clients and the business while you're now focusing on the content? Well, it's like a balancing act, right? Because decision makers do want to hear from the owner of the business. So I'm certainly involved in those conversations.

want to hear from the owner of the business. So I'm certainly involved in those conversations. But like that first contact is almost never me unless unless like they've requested to, you know, speak to me right off the bat, but then they the producer can qualify that lead. But I think it's important to make a distinction between selling and advising and that's what a great producer does they're not selling anything usually the client has come to us asking for you know a quote or even just to do the project in with no competition and uh they advise the client on this is okay this is what i think you should do rather than trying to sell them on something that we found pretty strong growth from that being advisors not salespeople we always tell our clients there are no salespeople at this company the people that are on this conversation are going to be the ones

directly involved in making your content and that's where I think a lot of big agencies um are in trouble because their whole business model is they're very best people at the top they're the ones that go in and do the pitch like the a team and then they win the business and then it's juniors working on the content so it's like a bait and switch. And I think that even large companies, they really they like that boutique service where it just it makes them feel at ease if they're going to spend a lot of money. And they know that we're going to be the ones taking it on and it makes them feel a lot better. Okay, so you just mentioned that you now have time to focus on the creative and sales, but your producer also focuses on, I guess your producer focuses just on the consulting part, but that's just if the client is reaching out to you. But then you just said that you don't focus on the sales either. So who's doing the sales? No, no, no.

He says that it's a balancing. They both kind of do it a lot of the time. So you guys both do the sales? Yeah. He said that the producer kind of does a little bit more of the um consulting and the advising whereas he um focuses more on the content but they do both balance out depending on the situation who is reaching out to or so do you guys reach out like what how much of your business is uh cold calling versus uh referrals or slash like clients reaching out to you?

So for the last five years, we haven't done any outreach at all. It's all inbound marketing. So it's referrals, repeat business and people that just find us on search or whatever lists and they come. They usually come to us. lists and they come, they usually come to us. Now, a lot of times we are, we are in competition on a pitch, but by, you know, slowly but surely building a brand, sometimes we'll have clients come to us knowing that they want us to make their video, not that they just want a video. And that's, those are the best types of clients because they already, you know, you've kind of put your ethos out there on your website or through your through your content. And when they want to work with you specifically, that's that's the type of client you can build a relationship.

So when you were first starting out, you were more sales focused or oriented, right? So what point did you decide, you know what, I'm taking a step back from sales, I'm just going to have people come to me because Kiril and I, we're still at the stage where we're just prepping for the initial stage of going out for sales. But I wonder if even when we get to that point where we have a lot of clients coming to us, I wonder if we're going to stop that or we just continue to do that for scalability. Well, it kind of happened organically, right? I mean, I don't remember if I actively made a decision to stop doing outbound sales or marketing or what have you. It just kind of happened

organically where five or six years ago, like I've always focused on search on SEO and I taught myself SEO. I still do most of our SEO myself. And five or six years ago, we just started tracking on Google where I think at one point we were, you know, one of the top three results for a pretty well-searched term. So people found us on Google. Our website was nice enough that it would convert them. And we got enough business from that, that I could stop doing outreach. And now, you know, search is a big part of our, of our strategy so that people can find us. I remember, like I read this book years ago called The Man Who Sold America. and it was about this gentleman named Albert Lasker who kind of like a pre-madman era this is like the turn of the century but he was like a godfather of advertising and he talks about this thing called staging the creative talent so it would start with he would have these account

executives all over town in the sports clubs or on the trains or whatever. They would find, they would start conversations with potential clients. They'd ask them about their needs. Okay, you're looking to grow your business. Great. You must meet Mr. Lasker. He's a brilliant admin.

So this person would stage that talent to them. They would get this meeting set up. And by the time the client met this, met this man, they were already kind of pre-sold that he's a bit of a legend. Then he would come in and he would then stage his creative director. And by the time this client met that creative person, they were already sold. So it's just sort of, you're, we're not selling videos. I think we're selling talent. That's kind of what we've noticed. And it works, right? It's so much easier when somebody else vouches for you than you saying, look at me, look at all this great

work I do, right? Yeah. One thing I wanted to touch upon is that you're still bidding for projects at times, right? So what do you find to be your biggest hurdle? And also, how do you handle the fact that they are not only coming to you at times, but they're also maybe speaking to an ad agency or other competition at the same time? For sure. So that's another million dollar question right how do you how do you win business and the truth is um a lot of a lot of the leads we get this is somebody maybe more junior that's been tasked with getting five quotes and even if it's at a big company, that's not the best type of lead because usually you don't even get to speak to a decision maker before you've sent off a proposal. They're like, hey, can you just give us a quote?

And we win almost none of that business because we're going to be, we're priced higher than all of those other companies they're getting quotes from. And so we're automatically thrown out but it's those it's those bigger longer-term relationship clients that we can really win on like when we're you have to be speaking to a decision-maker before you send off a quote like period that is typically kind of what you want you want to build though you want to work with clients that you can have a long-term relationship with you want them to succeed as much as yourself because at the end of the day, when one grows, the other grows. And when, that's why it's so frustrating when,

if that's what you're trying to look for and then you have people coming to you saying, hey, can you give me a quote and how cheap can you make it? You know that they're not looking to build a relationship with you and it's almost as if you see that they're not giving you value. And then, you know, you know, that that's also not a particular client that you want to work with. You want both of you to grow. You want both of you to kind of, you know, allocate and put you want both of you to kind of put in the same amount of effort, you know, and if they're just asking for if they're bargain hunting, you know that they're not going to be putting as much effort into that relationship as you would be, right? Yeah. And that kind of comes back to that point where this person just needs a video.

Whereas if you can educate them that no, like a video is what you're getting. But what you need to do is you need to attract talent or sell more stuff, right? And so usually you're not going to get that at the coordinator level, the person reaching out for the quote. So when we get those, we always make sure that we try to set up a conversation with the decision maker first before we even send out a quote. And saying no has been the best thing for our business because it just frees up so much more time. the best thing for our business because it just frees up so much more time. Cause I, I remember like years ago we would, you know,

you're not going to get this bid based on your price, but yet you still spend four or five hours working on this proposal. It's like, Oh, maybe just maybe, you know? And you know, we just,

those weren't working out. So getting in that, getting that conversation and with the people that actually understand the real problem that they need to accomplish. That's when you can start coming in as an advisor and having them trust you. And if you go into that conversation, asking all of those questions, really curious about their business. Now they start to see you as an advisor, as a video guy that's true do you think there's a you're priced pretty high for

the video production companies in the city do you think there's a cap between how much you can charge and then past that point the companies would just rather go to a bigger agency? So it's interesting. We're kind of in that middle ground where we're the higher priced quote for, you know, video production company, but we're far less than a big agency would charge, right? So we can come in and do something, say, let's say it's for 50K that a big agency would charge 250K with again, all of those bells and whistles. So at that part,

it's about educating the client that, yeah, even at 50K, you can get something exceptional because they're just so used to spending those big bucks, right? And so you have to educate them that, yeah, guess what? We're being disruptive and giving you the same output for far less because it costs far less. You go to a big brick and beam agency and you're paying for all of this real estate, lots of people's cool haircuts that you'll never meet.

real estate, lots of people's cool haircuts that you'll never meet. And, uh, yeah, I mean, I think clients, especially now, this is going to be a beautiful thing for the boutique agency where, um, service and, and quality are going to be King. The big agency is, is troublesome to a, to a client that is maybe holding on to those dollars a little bit. Yeah, especially now. Not everyone has the big money to spend on something that you can probably get at a boutique service. I remember a few years ago, I had a contact at one of the big banks in the city

tell me that they just put out this national ad. They sent me the link and I saw it. It was a 30 second spot. You know, one of those like touchy feely emotional pieces, you know, had a good message, very well done. And they told me they worked with this really big ad agency and they told me that it was, it cost them I think at least half a million

to a million dollars just for a 30 second ad. That runs for six weeks and then dead and then that's it it's like like that money is being wasted like what is the value that is being provided yeah people are seeing it but what is the measurable value that is coming from it it's very different like as if than if you were posting um a 30 second a 60 second spot on youtube with certain audiences that you're targeting on there. That's the beauty, I think, of social media marketing though, is that you can pick the types of people you want to see that content to, right? Whereas, you know, the traditional form,

you spend half a million to a million dollars on a 30 second ad, goes on TV, billboards, who's seeing it? Who's actually being prompted to do anything from it so there's there's definitely a huge evolution now in the in the boutique service as you mentioned and i really like where this is going it seems like there's a big opportunity for for a bunch of us uh to maybe get some of the businesses that don't want to spend money uh with the ad agencies but they would rather maybe spend a little less and can come to production companies like ours that are also starting to offer marketing services yeah marketing service yeah like that old guard that

those big big budgets the reason they get spent is because it's the status quo they've been doing it for so long they think that's what it is. So not only are budgets going to tighten, I think that as younger, savvier marketers achieve decision making status at those companies, as the boomers retire, and they're replaced by younger people who are a little bit more savvy. That's when, you know, again, like, say you went inhouse as a director of marketing somewhere and they said, OK, yeah, we've got $300,000 to spend on this commercial. And you say, oh my God, like, do you know what I could do with $300,000? I could create years worth of content for this brand, right? And that's where the value is.

It's just, I think that there's a shift happening. But I think the other thing we also need to be worried of is that, sure, they don't want to go to the ad agencies anymore. But I think the first thing they might be doing is creating their own in-house teams. And then they might take care of a good amount of the low-level production work, right? Because they don't need that much. They could just hire a videographer or two, and they could take care of all those low-level

projects so they no longer need to go to the ad agency and they might they might just use them for some big projects or they might go direct to a video production company and use them for higher level productions i think there's an opportunity there though i i tend to agree that a lot of brands are bringing production in-house um but it's expensive to do that. You've got to have all of the gear, you've got to have people, and you usually don't have somebody that can manage those people within that organization. So you as a production company maybe have the opportunity to say, hey, rather than bring it in-house and spend all this money, look at us as an extension of your internal team and let's just figure out your content needs

and we'll still deliver that content at a fraction of what it would cost to bring somebody in-house. It'll be cheaper, it'll be higher quality, and it'll be off your plate. We'll worry about everything. What people don't realize is that how expensive it is just to get the initial startup costs

to have a good camera package even right to get a cinema camera these days it costs you between 15 to 20 000 and that's just on the body not to mention lenses all the lenses the lights like people are looking at something like 50 000 as a startup cost so bringing in in-house people you can't expect them to have all this gear necessarily. I feel like a lot of companies might be trying to think like that. It's like, oh, we'll hire someone in-house who already has the gear, but that's almost cheating a little bit, right? So like you said, there's an opportunity there as well to kind of figure out how you can

communicate the value that, you know, maybe not bring in someone on salary in-house, but bring in our team on maybe retainer and then we can create content that has strategy over the years and we'll help you grow because we're growing with you within the organization. So one last thing we wanted to kind of touch upon with you, Chris, you've obviously had so much growth over the years

and you've definitely set yourself up for the future. What are kind of like the next steps for you in terms of scalability and growth? And what do you foresee as being one of the biggest hurdles for you? That's the even bigger multi-million dollar question. I mean, you know, really narrowing down to who we do business with has been a big one. Like, again, saying no has been one of the best things we've done because now we get to focus on the types of projects and the types of clients that we want to work with. And, you know, you only need to pick up one or two really good clients each year to really grow. And then pick up the odd project that you really like.

I mean, there's three reasons why we would take a project. And if all three boxes are checked, that's like a golden thing. That's if it pays well, if it's a cool client. Um, if it's a cool client and if we enjoy, we like really like the subject matter, we think this will be a great thing, uh, for our portfolio. And usually there's two of those three boxes checked and we'll take something on, but focusing on those, those triple check mark clients, that's, that's a good growth strategy. Um, and in terms of like how we think about pricing do you guys know much about value-based pricing can you can you explain that a bit yeah so value-based pricing would be let's say company

x comes to you and they need a video for their home page and it's a big brand and they have let's just say a hundred thousand people come to their website each month and they convert 2% of those people into whatever, whatever it is, buy the product, book a call, whatever. And we know that a great video will increase those conversions dramatically. Let's say increases conversions by 10%. I mean, think about what that's worth to that client. It's worth potentially millions of dollars. And so again, it's harder to get those types of projects, but if they're going, if they stand to make millions of dollars off this initiative, it's not unforeseeable that they would invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into solving that problem

because it's found money for them. And so if you can be the ones to solve those big problems at the top of a sales funnel or like we do a lot of recruiting and tech companies climb over each other for tech talent. climb over each other for tech talent and if you can help them create uh recruiting and retention content that helps them land those top engineers for example that's worth so much more than they're paying you and they're happy to to do it because they spent x and they gained y so so how do you figure that how do you pitch them on that because Because it seems that you would need a really good insight into their organization. Or they would share it with you. Yeah, they need to share that information with you. But not just that, you also need to, I'm guessing to get to be able to get that type of knowledge, you would also have to hire another

agency that specializes in gathering that type of information and then kind of merging merging the two of them together so what they have within their organization and then what the this other organization research is in that industry well not necessarily right i mean if you get in front of the right decision makers at these companies uh and you are seeing yourself as an advisor and you're putting yourself forward and you're asking these questions it's like i'm not shy about asking what their revenues are and i know it's like you know maybe a little i don't know what the word is but you know uh it's a bold move but you start to dig into these things okay what are the revenues what's the conversion

rate you they start to see you as again the consultant not just like what do we want to make them feel that comes later first we need to see what what are the problems that need to be solved what kind of numbers are we looking at here you know like what's you need to increase conversions okay well what are your conversions now? What's working? What's not? And now again, to achieve success with this model, you do have to get in front of decision makers and it has to be fairly large problems to solve. But I mean, it's pretty inspiring.

Just take a drive or a walk and just, you know, downtown, look at every single one of those windows in an office tower, that's a different company that's probably doing millions of dollars of revenue. And it's like that abundance theory. It's like every single one of those companies could benefit from a great piece of content, whether, you know, no matter what their goal is. Yeah. Yeah. And as you mentioned, really leaning into the advisor and consultant role is definitely the key to do that because no matter what, you always wanna create a level of trust

with the people that you work with. And you're not gonna get that information if you haven't been able to build that trust within the first meeting. If you realize that you're unable to get some of that information, then clearly that's a good indicator that maybe you haven't, like maybe you've built a little bit of trust, but not as

much as you probably should have. So that could be even a great indicator of how you were doing your client relationship management even. Yeah. And like, you know, as I mentioned, like we won't do a proposal or a quote until we've spoken to a decision maker. And if they're looking for that quote and they're saying, no, just give us a quote, we'll say, sorry, that's just not for us, right? So how do you get in front of that decision maker? Let's say someone below that person gets in touch with you. Do you say, okay, yes, here's a little bit about us. Let me find out a bit about you. But how do I talk? How do you navigate to the decision maker? So that's,

I mean, that's what a great producer will do. And that's why I surround myself with really strong people that again, are just, they've never been salespeople. They're advisors by nature. And so they'll just right from that first question, start asking those questions and they'll just let them know and saying, listen, we, she'll say, I'm not authorized to prepare a quote until we've had a conversation with a decision maker. We want to make sure that we're not wasting your time and also vice versa right um you know i wouldn't call it being elusive but being there's something powerful about being able to say no um when we're i remember like we've all been there like we'll say yes to everything yes no problem we can do anything we do everything

and it kind of like diluted our it diluted us a little bit in their eyes, just, just kind of like naturally, right? People feel those things. It's, it's because people hate rejection. Yeah. People don't like it. And if you're telling them no to something very simple, especially when traditionally they would be like, give us a quote and most companies will bend over backwards to get that proposal to them. Whereas this time you're saying, no, we don't give proposals or quotes just like that. We don't know what your needs are, you know? And I think what you're kind of getting at is that we shouldn't be looking at this industry as an industry of selling.

We should look at it as an industry of consulting and advising clients, because that is really the only way to help determine what their actual problems and needs are than just simply, oh, you need a video. I can do that. Dude, 100 percent. Like video is the medium of how we're helping those them solve those problems. Right. And, you know, we've got a lot of experience at knowing how to do that, how to make people feel something. But yeah, it's about getting getting to what is that problem. And getting in front of a decision maker is critical. Because if you don't, you just send off bids blind, the only thing they're going to look at is the price. And if you're the highest or lowest price, you're thrown out automatically and then and then what

are you competing on it's like it's out of your control but if you can get some time in front of that decision maker you may not win that project you may not win every project but you got face time with this person and people remember that right when you're just man like asking people lots of questions about their business it just it gets them fired up about the project too, right? It makes them realize there's more to it than frames on a screen. Honestly, like I think you couldn't have said it better. And I think that you've really shared a lot of great value and definitely given Dario and I a different perspective

in terms of how to approach working with our clients and how to manage those relationships. And, you know, before we kind of sign off, is there anything that you would like to share? Any other questions you want to ask us? Well, I'm curious, you know, what what do you guys see? For the future? You know, how are you scaling your business now? Like, what are some of the challenges you're facing? Like, you know, what's going on with you guys? Yeah, I think long term, what we want to do is grow our company to the point where we can add a marketing arm. And then once we have that, just keep growing it. And then past that, what we would want to do is get investors to be able to get the funding to open up internationally so it's a very very long term it's a long-term plan so next five to ten

years and it's it's not uh very detailed at the moment but this is kind of the the steps we're we're trying to develop right now so we're in talks right now with a smaller boutique marketing agency that we met through one of our clients. And we're in talks with the person there right now to be able to collaborate and just do targeted sales. So we have that going on right now. In terms of challenges, I would say our biggest one, again, is sales. We're trying to find some sort of consistent income each month, right? And I think the way we're going about it is on a not just a campaign-based approach, but also a retainer model. We've been hearing many responses to that. So a lot of the other production companies we've spoken to, they told us that they've tried retainers.

Most of the time it hasn't worked. We don't know if maybe it's because they targeted the wrong industry. So that's something we're really trying to narrow down right now is like, maybe let's try to target the correct industry for retainer. But we're also open to the idea that certain clients might just need campaign-based approaches. So sure, it's like they don't need content every month. They might need content for a certain campaign

that'll last three months. And even if we get a couple of those a year, that's still pretty good income. I'm gonna be pretty happy with that. I think the other thing we're trying to do as well is grow a team. So right now we do have freelancers, but as we grow, we do want to bring some sort of skeleton crew that is more of an employee. We're trying to convert them from freelancers to employees.

That's the thing we're trying to do right now. Getting those editors, as you mentioned, those full-timers are definitely one of the big steps that we want to first achieve. But in terms of like what's happening right now, we're doing a lot of research, something that we should have been doing over the years. But we're kind of catching up on five, six years worth of research to kind of figure out exactly how we want to go forward with it. And, you know, I think the other most immediate thing that we're working on is obviously this podcast show

because this is something that we see as a good way to help us maybe even see our own growth that we haven't seen necessarily maybe in other ways. Well, the purpose of the show is threefold. We're trying to A, grow our network, B, the purpose of the show is threefold. We're trying to a grow our network, be learn from all the people we invite, because I feel like with this show, it's almost like,

you know, people say you got to read like a business book a week, right? And that's like, Warren Buffett does like read a book a week, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I feel like with this show, it's almost like we're doing that each time we bring a guest on board, right? Because every guest has a valuable perspective and very fascinating insights into the industry. And I guess the third thing as well would be that we're getting our faces out there more. We're creating a lot more branding. So people will know not just LAPS the company,

but also the people behind LAPS. Yeah, what would you say, like, what is your brand all about? What is LAPS about? And what, tell me, like, where's the name come from? You know, what's the origin story? Like I did, I did watch last night, actually your first episode of how you guys kind of got started and it was just, you know, it's awesome. Cause we all kind of started with a similar, similar story. So, but where's, where does the name come from and where do you see your brand? So the name was actually the very first idea. Dario wrote this spec script when he was just kind of exploring getting into the industry.

And he called it LAPS. And I don't even remember how he came up with it. It was a very wacky script. up with it it was a very it was a wacky it was a script it was a dumb short film idea i had about uh this this person that uh meets his meets his double so for first with some unforeseen enemy and you made that script no this was before enemy because enemy came out a couple of years later so dennis villanueva stole my idea i should sue him but anyways yeah so he meets his double and it was supposed to be like i don't even know where i got that name from i'm like laps sounds about right i'm gonna call it that and then once we kind of we were joined forces we're like how do

we come up with a name and i was like laps sounds good that can work and i said no i don't want our first name i don't want the name to be based on the very first random choice that was thrown in the air and so i we did a lot of research on other names ones most were taken that were good and by the end of it i just we just decided oh there really is nothing else we got to go with it but the story behind laps is also that you know we all create content you know like the world just kind of goes by and the content that we create the videos those are little lapses in time that we've kind of no no no that's that that's not that's not that that was what it was we reverse engineered a meaning from the name well that's what it was which was when when you watch really good content um you

don't realize that time passes by it's almost like there's a lapse in time. That's like the reverse engineered meaning of the name. So we both have different relations to the name, I guess. That's the nature of the beast though, isn't it? And again, you can find, I mean, look, you guys are finding meaning after you've already named it. And that's awesome. Yeah, we tried to, with with the pandemic we're like you know

maybe it's time since we are kind of restructuring things maybe it's time to come up with a new name even though we sunk like 800 bucks into these beautiful mugs into the into the the branding mugs you know i was like is rebranding really worth 600 so we actually tried to come up and i think we had like ideas but i i like some of them but you know i gotta convince the wife and that always that doesn't always happen so we're we're stuck with this one for now well i i think i think going i think as one thing we discussed is you always have to trust your gut and i feel like the initial gut of us going into this business with this name you know it's just kind of meant to be and let's continue moving forward with people like the name like i love it yeah people love the name everyone

we talked to they're like oh it sounds really cool and they especially like our logo how has the the play button on the p they they love that and i was like i gotta give a shout out to alan boning for uh creating our logo i know we didn't even know how to what to make it look different. But he did that back in 2014 for us. So, yeah. Yeah. In terms of our brand, though, we actually did figure out our mission and vision statement. Finally, I know this is probably going to air like a month or two after. Maybe it will have changed by then. Yeah. I know because it always is evolving, too. But yeah. But right now we have it as uh we build trusting relationships uh hold on oh my god hold on this is the first time i'm actually

seeing it a lot somewhere where's it think hold on it's it's good i'm actually really proud of it let me just pull it out it's on the website it's on the website yeah but let me just get it here uh okay you're gonna have to cut some of this part out where he's no no i phone well it's fine it's fine so right now we have it as at lapse we build trusting relationships that transform creativity into tangible solutions with societal impact fantastic so everything you stand for but also what the client gets, right? Fantastic. Nicely done. I'm always curious, like what the favorite, I have two questions actually. Your first paid gig, but I'm more so interested in what's the favorite thing you've ever made

and why. I checked out a bunch of your stuff last night. I really love that wingsuit doc. I thought that was just really well made and like great story. And again, a great subject. But I'm curious from your perspective, what was your favorite and why? For me, that project was probably my all time favorite because I feel like that was one where it was our first branded doc as a company

that we put together a lot of like heart and soul went into it and we're just really proud of it and the one unfortunate thing that happened like that video kind of became an immortalization of of Angelo because he actually passed away a year ago wingsuiting and when we found out it just kind of hit us because we're like oh man like like this this is the first time we like worked with a subject that you know we really cared about and we really connected well with and you know it was just it hit us hard it's a shame because he was such a cool guy like just a just a positive upbeat person and um yeah like rest in peace rest in peace and you know he was living on the edge like it was clear right like just an extreme dude for sure i mean like with with

extreme sports like that the the ironic thing was that he was trying to make the sport safer for a lot of people and that's what he was trying to do with and that's what we were trying to show with the documentary and it shows that even those people who are trying to be as safe as possible sometimes you know life happens things happen and then you know they just like it's a la vie but yeah you know just to kind of circle back to your question that was probably our one of our most um exciting projects that we worked with that we're really proud of. In terms of the very first paid gigs, they actually came when we were doing freelance. Dario's technically first paid gig was with me when it was still just me freelancing.

And which one was it? I think it's the fashion show. The fashion show, yeah. That was when he first came on as uh as a second camera um for me the very first project that i got paid for was um this student-run organization at ryerson uh and at the time it seemed like so much money to me i think i i i i got like 1600 to do like five videos throughout the year and when that's like maybe your third or fourth project that's a big deal like back then i'm like oh my god 1600 whereas now it's like you could barely even get a good you're in the industry because now we can't charge more than 1600 that's

it that's it we've we've hit our cap yeah that's amazing yeah i love a good origin story i think like when you tell your story it's important to always have three things right your origin story your aha moment and some quantifiables and having all those three elements when you're talking to somebody or a room full of people um that should satisfy everybody in the room, right? The creative people, the spreadsheet people, and then the decision makers. And so, yeah, just always kind of consider having those three things in your storytelling and you'll tend to be successful.

Chris, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Like the answers you had were so insightful. Like it's such a fresh perspective it's actually making us rethink the way we're running as well like because again you mentioned consulting and and it's such an important thing to think about like i don't think we thought about the mindset yeah i think we we kind of were doing it in a way but we've never really saw it as we are consultants put it into words really yeah so it's it's been really helpful having you

here um and yeah yeah we look forward we definitely look forward to chatting again in the future and hopefully even collaborating and working on a project together that'd be fantastic yeah we'd love to work with you guys uh and yeah this has been a lot of fun and uh yeah i mean the more you talk about your own business the more you think about it, and the more you readapt. Getting in the room with a bunch of smart guys, that's always a win, right? We hope you took something away as well, however small it might be. I know our audience, for sure, is definitely going to see the value in this conversation. Hopefully, they even get something out of it.

It's a fantastic show. I really enjoyed talking with you guys as well. And yeah, we'll continue the conversation, you know, like that's what it's all about. Amazing. Chris, thank you so much. Thanks. And cheers. Thank you for tuning into the Creatives Grab Coffee podcast.

You can find us on Spotify, YouTube, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Let us know if there are any topics you would like for us to cover in future episodes. You can reach out to us at creativesgrabcoffee at gmail.com.