Episode 117

Winning on Trust in a Crowded Market (ft. Offbeat Creative)

Gabe Nazario built a video company the patient way. While holding down producer and editor roles at Fox, Disney, and a brand-new content studio at JP Morgan, he ran Offbeat Creative on the side for years, taking every small job after 5 p.m., until the profit matched his salary and the leap finally made sense. Five years into running it full time from Jersey City, his lean team makes corporate, commercial, and social content for clients like Fox, Peloton, and Disney, mostly across the river in New York.

In this episode, Gabe joins Dario and Kyrill for a candid, tactical conversation about the business of video in one of the most competitive markets on earth: growing slowly and hiring deliberately, why a lean 1099 crew sometimes scares clients, treating AI consulting as an SEO play, the tools that actually speed up the work, chasing simple-deliverable retainers, and the truth that in a city where everyone makes good videos, you win on trust and follow-up, not footage.

Timestamps

From Corporate Studios to Going Solo

Gabe’s path is a masterclass in patience. After film school at Rutgers Newark, he landed enviable roles: producer and editor at Fox for four years, then building a brand-new content studio at JP Morgan, plus a stint at Disney and a few startups. The whole time, Offbeat lived on the side as a freelance hustle, every night after logging out at 5 p.m., he opened the same laptop for a second shift. He grew it slowly and deliberately, even hiring a part-time producer as a safety net while still employed, and only left corporate once Offbeat’s profit matched his salary.

That slow-and-steady build, funding the dream until it can stand on its own, is one of the most durable ways to start, and it echoes the long game in building a video business that lasts and diversifying your income. It is also the foundation any serious video production operation is built on.

A Lean Team, and Why Clients Sometimes Fear It

Offbeat is small by design: Gabe in the weeds, a full-time producer and production manager who has been with him from the start, a full-time editor, and everyone else in the 1099 world, many of them the same contractors for five-plus years. Different shoots call for different shooters, so the crew flexes to the ask. It is the standard model, but it can spook the uninitiated. Dario shares a story of losing a pitch because a leftover word from a government RFP, subcontractor, triggered liability fears from a client who did not understand the industry. The fix is simple: present the people as the team for their project and keep the staffing under the hood.

Building and managing a reliable bench of freelancers is its own craft, the ground covered in vetting and managing talent and growing and investing in your team, and it is a big part of what separates a production company from a solo videographer.

AI as a Service, and Really an SEO Play

Offbeat lists AI consulting on its site, but Gabe is refreshingly honest about why. Yes, they use AI as a genuine tool, turning an hour-long podcast into ten social cuts, for example, while keeping a human hand on the story. But listing AI and consulting is also a positioning move that tells clients they are current, not some older shop that avoids the technology. The tools are practical: ChatGPT, Claude, Munch for social cuts, and his favorite, Gamma, which turns a voice-memo-and-ChatGPT bid into a polished proposal deck. He is watching Claude climb fast, and the whole panel geeks out over the near future where you drop interviews and a theme into an AI and get back an editable Premiere file.

That blend of using AI as an accelerator and as a search signal ties directly to video SEO and the show’s wider look at where the tech is heading in Sora and the future of video production.

Social Media, Volume, and the Retainer Pillow

Gabe breaks the work into tiers. Corporate and commercial is the bread and butter: financial and private-equity firms, training and anniversary videos, the talking-head interviews that never die, shot with five to twelve crew over one to four days. Social is a different economy entirely, about sixty percent run-and-gun FX3 work just above phone quality and forty percent pure phone, priced near a hundred dollars a video and only viable on volume, because charge more and you lose the job to a new grad. Offbeat handles the creative and the edit but does not post or manage accounts. His three-year goal is more retainer work, even at lower rates, to build a monthly pillow so the bigger jobs become gravy.

Retainers only work where the deliverables are simple, social content or a set number of monthly edits with tight parameters, a nuance the show digs into in video strategy and retainers and scaling smart, not fast. Pricing each tier honestly starts with knowing what a video costs.

Where the Work Comes From

When it comes to leads, Gabe is candid: it is roughly seventy percent word of mouth and thirty percent inbound. Past colleagues who move to new companies bring Offbeat with them, while the website mostly surfaces smaller one-off jobs (he has never landed a corporate gig from a cold email). The one move that clearly moved the needle was an SEO push a couple of years ago, a Google Business Profile and a steady stream of Google reviews, which drove instant traffic. Testimonials, he admits, are more of a box to check. And his best advice is to take the one-off: a small headshot or a three-hour shoot can quietly become a top client years later, exactly the pattern behind Kyrill’s four-year pre-booked client that started as a single cold call.

That mix of search visibility and relationship-led growth is the whole playbook in new ways to generate leads, finding work in your community, and breaking into new markets. When a lead is ready to talk scope, a competitive quote is the natural next step.

Winning on Trust in a Crowded Market

Jersey City turns out to be an advantage: Gabe’s team can reach Manhattan as fast as anyone in Brooklyn, and New Jersey studios are bigger, cheaper, and far easier to load into than a fortieth-floor Midtown building. But the deeper lesson is about trust. There may be more production companies per square foot here than almost anywhere, yet Gabe wins on relationships, because everybody makes good videos now, so the differentiator is who you are as a person. His tips are practical and honest: always be a little in sales mode, follow up more than once, never seem desperate, bridge age gaps through common ground like sports, and give memorable gifts (Peter Luger steaks, Levain cookies, a Delta gift card) that create an experience rather than another forgettable fruit basket. The name Offbeat, which replaced the founder-named BG Films at the five-year mark, sums up the philosophy: off the beaten path, made to be different.

Standing out through personality and relationships, not just craft, is the through-line behind personal branding, pitching as a producer, and thriving in your market. For a Toronto team that plays the same relationship-first, full-service game, that is what Lapse Productions does.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Hosts

About

Creatives Grab Coffee is a podcast about the business behind video production: sales, strategy, pricing, team building, and everything that happens off camera. New episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.

Lapse Productions is a Toronto-based video production company serving tech, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing clients with corporate, promotional, event, and testimonial video. New to commissioning video? Start with our guide to the types of corporate video.

Offbeat Creative is a video production and social content agency in Jersey City, New Jersey, led by founder Gabe Nazario and formerly known as BG Films. The lean team produces corporate, commercial, and social-first content for clients including Fox, Peloton, and Disney, mostly across the New York metro area. Learn more at offbeatcreative.co.