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

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Kyrill00:00Always something to be fixed in post.

Dario00:03And then you're specifically from Jersey City, right? New Jersey?

Gabe Nazario00:08Yeah, yeah. We're based in Jersey City. Yep.

Kyrill00:11Is that different from New Jersey or just it's the same? Okay.

Dario00:14It's New Jersey.

Gabe Nazario00:16It's in New Jersey, yeah. Jersey City is just the city that is right next to New York, so it does matter in terms of context. Like none of my clients are really in Jersey. They're all in New York.

Kyrill00:23okay.

Dario00:28Mm.

Kyrill00:28okay.

Gabe Nazario00:29Yeah.

Dario00:31Cool. All right, well let's get this party started. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to a

Kyrill00:35Wait, before you do Dario Dario, before you do you're not fully centered. You're a little off to the side. Well, if you get chopped off, you were asking.

Dario00:39Jesus Christ who cares, girl.

Gabe Nazario00:42Ha ha ha.

Dario00:46I this looks centered to me, it's not. Where do I need to go?

Kyrill00:46Right.

Kyrill00:49there you you y I think you just got there now. Yeah.

Dario00:52my god, he's micromanaging me already.

Gabe Nazario00:55We love a perfectionist.

Dario00:59Anyways, take two. Hello ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Creators Grab Coffee. Today we have Gabe Nazario from Off Beat Creative, and he's based out of Jersey City, New Jersey. So Gabe, welcome to the show.

Gabe Nazario01:16Yeah, thanks for having me guys. Really appreciate it.

Dario01:19Yeah, and again we haven't had we've had New Yorkers, now we have people from New Jersey coming on. We're slowly expanding across the New York State. but I guess just let's just start off with a quick history lesson. Tell us about you and how you got into the industry and a little bit about your company.

Gabe Nazario01:27Nice.

Gabe Nazario01:39Sure. I'll try to make this as quick as I could. It's a long story. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean I won't give you all of them, but no, I you know, I I like like a lot of us did, I started in school, right? I I went to school in Rutgers, Newark, not too far from Jersey City, for film and video production, right? Was there and

Dario01:42You could you could make it long. We're doing we're doing a podcast so you can can dive deeper into it if you want.

Kyrill01:46Yeah. All those secret details, we need to know them.

Gabe Nazario02:07That was what I wanted to do. I had a passion for it. And thankfully, I was part of a generation that, you know, was we were still somewhat special. We were still very, very kind of like not a lot of people knew a ton about video. There wasn't AI. And so when I left college, people needed video producers. They needed editors. It was extremely rare, right? And so

Gabe Nazario02:33I jumped right into New York and I I I got into New York and and I was able to land really awesome roles. I was a producer editor at Fox for four years. I left and I started a a full team essentially at JP Morgan. JP Morgan had a brand new content studio that I was essentially part of. It was almost like this like startup experience, but in a really, really well, you know, pr managed bank, which was so strange. But I was there for two years running a video team and then

Gabe Nazario03:03Since then I've bounced to like two or three other places, mostly startup based. And within that whole journey, I was building offbeat. But offbeat was always on the side. It was always a freelance thing. I was picking up clients left and right, doing smaller projects that turned into larger projects. And I eventually hit a crossroads where I was actually working for a large company at a corporation and I I was able to

Gabe Nazario03:29kind of make that decision, right? Where a a job came on to me and it was it was massive and it I was extremely excited about it, but it would essentially mean that I would have to fully leave my corporate job. And at that moment it was like the crossroads of okay, do I do this? And thankfully I did it. and, you know, five years later now I've been

Gabe Nazario03:49You know, run and offbeat, growing slowly but surely every year. And like you said, we're in Jersey City. A lot of our content and our clients are are mainly in the East Coast, but we we travel all over the place depending on on the project and the need. So it's been a a fun journey.

Kyrill04:04Nice. before we continue, like what year was it that you that you graduated school and then moved into the space?

Gabe Nazario04:11So I went to school twenty twelve to twenty sixteen. So twenty sixteen is when I graduated, so not not, you know, too long ago, but with AI and everything that's happened, it feels like it's been like three decades, even though it's been one, you know.

Kyrill04:29I a decade is still a decade. Like it's crazy how much it it's like phases, you know. I feel like cause we graduated from school around 2016 as well. we started laps in like twenty fourteen. Twenty fourteen is when we started the business, but twenty sixteen is when we graduated school. So I always see it in like phases, you know, it was like twenty sixteen to twenty nineteen was you know, the early years, then the twenty twenty to the twenty twenty three was like the COVID years, and then twenty twenty three to now is like the

Gabe Nazario04:31Yeah, yeah.

Dario04:39Fourteen, fourteen, fourteen, fifteen.

Gabe Nazario04:42Yeah.

Kyrill04:58AI years, you know, it's like it's like different three year stints almost at this point, right? It's kind of crazy.

Gabe Nazario05:00Yeah.

Gabe Nazario05:04So true. Who knows what's gonna come next? I'm sure it's gonna be something we're not expecting.

Kyrill05:09for sure. something good, you know. Let's have some more good come out, you know. But yeah. So when you were making that transition from the corporate to your own company, like that's a big step and it's it's very difficult for a lot of people to make that leap, you know, from leaving a safe, you know, safe job.

Dario05:10Hopefully, hopefully something not bad.

Dario05:15Something that doesn't replace us.

Gabe Nazario05:17No. We'll be good.

Kyrill05:32to, you know, running your own thing. And like I of course it wa you said it was that one particular job that kind of pushed you through. Did was there any other factors, like a runway did you see in terms of work that was coming in that made you confident? Like I'm assuming that's kind of what it was.

Gabe Nazario05:47Yeah. Yeah, there was one, you know, big moment, but there was years of runway that happened. especially in those like probably like two years, you know, twenty four months ish, like prior to that job. There it was writing on the wall. I ended up hiring somebody as like a part time producer while I had a job just to help run the things that I couldn't run because of the other job. And it was just like again, it was a safety net. I was like I just

Kyrill06:09Mm-hmm.

Gabe Nazario06:16I liked the paycheck. I liked the health insurance. Like I I liked all of those things and I was like, I still want offbeat to run properly. And there became a point where it was it would have been a a risk. And so instead of leaving, I just I hired somebody else to help run it with me and and she's still here with me today. So so yeah, it was definitely there was a there was a a good runway before I made the jump.

Kyrill06:39That's interesting. I've never heard of someone running their their production company while working full time at another one, you know, almost like the full time business is also on the side in a little in a way, a bit.

Dario06:40Then

Gabe Nazario06:51Totally. Yeah, it was it was fun and an interesting time.

Dario06:56tell us a little bit about like growing the company, right? you started off yourself, left your full time, now you're running the thing. How did you grow it to what it is today?

Gabe Nazario07:09Yeah, I mean for me it it was it was little by little, right? and by design again, like like I just explained to you how I I hired somebody while still having a job. Like I could have went full blown, let's just do this. I'm gonna hire you and I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna solely focus on offbeat, but I don't know. It whether call it like how I was raised or just like my my risk tolerance, whatever it may be, I I did it slow and steady.

Gabe Nazario07:38To a point where I was able to essentially match what I was making at a corporate job with what I had at Offbeat solely off of like profit. And that felt right to me to say, okay, I'm gonna move on, even though there's still a lot of risks. but but there was this slow and steady nature to it. Like I said in the intro, I always had a side job, no matter what I was doing.

Gabe Nazario08:05Whether it was at Fox, JP Morgan, I didn't mention this in the beginning, but I worked at Disney. I was always doing something else. Like that no matter what. So like every day after I logged out at 5 p.m., I opened that same computer and I had a side job. No matter like it didn't matter what day. And so I was very busy and it that took a lot, right? It took a lot of effort. It took a lot of like mental just focus to say like I

Gabe Nazario08:31I'm going to do the best I could at this specific corporate job, but then I also need to make sure I have enough in the can for when I have to go and do you know, go edit for three and a half hours tonight, for a a separate job that I was I was thankfully making money on. But yeah, it was it was a a hustle, a slow and steady hustle.

Kyrill08:51So how big is your team now? Like a and and or even the company itself? You mentioned you had someone that has been with you from the very beginning, and now that you're in it, like how what is the structure of your business in in that regard?

Gabe Nazario09:06Yep. Yeah. So it's quite small still. and again, by design, truthfully for myself. So right now it's myself who I very much am in the weeds, right? I'm I'm managing the company. I'm going to shoots. I'm making sure things are running properly at shoots. I'm directing sometimes. and then I have my my producer who essentially is is with us full time. She she is managing all kinds of things. She's working on budgets. She's emailing people, she's

Gabe Nazario09:34Sometimes running her own shoots. She's a very, you know, interesting flex person who is essentially like a production manager, producer type. And then I have a full time editor. and that's it. Those are the three. everybody else falls in the 1099 world. Right. And you guys know, everybody else who probably listens to this knows, like that is that is how it runs. Like I I have I go to shoots every other week and there's a different shooter there.

Gabe Nazario10:01Because it's just based off of availability, but also based off of what the shoot entails, right? There's a shoot that I have next week that's strictly, you know, shooting on a phone. That person is different than the person who's gonna go shoot a commercial with me in three weeks. So it's just kind of depends on on the ask. but yeah, a lot of a lot of 1099s, a lot contractors that that have been with me for for five plus years.

Dario10:26You know, I lost I lost a pitch recently because I I told the clo the lead that. How like, you know, it's usually very small team and then we scale up and down based on the project. And they got so like worried about that. They're like, my god, it was like a red flag on on their end. Right. And I was like, Well, like no one's gonna hire a full time makeup artist, a full time audio operator for the shoots, right? That's not how that works. And

Kyrill10:26It really is.

Gabe Nazario10:40Yeah.

Kyrill10:42They didn't like that,

Gabe Nazario10:51Yeah, no, of course, yeah

Kyrill10:55That's so funny.

Dario10:55I had to explain it, but I c I already knew the the sale was lost at that moment. I could just sense it. I'm like, it's a waste of time now. But I I was shocked too. That's the first time in like over ten years that I actually got an objection to that. They're like, what do you mean? We're worried about liability. They're like, How do I like what if you don't pay them and can come after us? I'm like, Well, we've been in business for over ten years, so like I mean if that if if we were if we were one

Gabe Nazario11:01Yeah.

Gabe Nazario11:11Yeah.

Kyrill11:18What is that that's such a bizarre concern? What if you don't pay them?

Dario11:22If we were that kind of business it would've already come up by now, like what?

Gabe Nazario11:25Yeah, interesting. I don't know. Yeah, that that feels strange to me. I guess they just don't don't fully know the world. I mean, that's how a lot of even big agencies work too. Like, yeah, there's like there's amazing agencies in New York, but like seven seventy percent of their workforce is is either contract they're contractors or they're permalancers. Like they have zero equity in that company. They are just walking in, checking in, checking out. It's the same exact thing.

Dario11:46Yeah.

Kyrill11:51Hermalancer, that's a new term.

Dario11:51I think the issue was we had the word I think the issue was we had the word because this was right after we had done this government RFP. So some of the slides we had I had copied over had the wording that the government wanted to see. So I had subcontractor as the title. So I think that's what kind of threw them off. So after that I was like, I'm getting rid of that. I'm never gonna use that word again, you know, and just keep it kind of like, you know. Team. Team and that's it.

Kyrill12:14No. Just put team. We just put team. This is this is the team for your project. This is the team for your project. How they get paid, they don't need to know.

Dario12:21They don't need to know under the hood too much, yeah.

Gabe Nazario12:24Nope. Nope. I agree. That's funny.

Dario12:29I'm checking out your website and on their services I see two things that I wanna kinda go into. Social media being the first and AI consulting. Maybe let's start with AI consulting. Like tell me a little bit about how you're offering that to your clients or leads.

Gabe Nazario12:45Yeah, I mean it's it's something that it kind of falls in this line of of of consulting and then also kind of twisting it back to us helping them with, you know, whatever that creative content ask is. And so just explaining to them, you know, for instance, again, social is an amazing space to utilize AI in a specific way, in a in a creative way, right? Being able to go out, shoot.

Gabe Nazario13:13A specific call, let's call it a podcast, right? You're shooting a podcast, it's an hour-ish long. You can, of course, have an editor cut this up into 10 pieces of content. You could also have AI do that, right? And and that is, I don't want to call it mindless, but it's extremely simplistic for an AI to give you a, hey, here's 10 ideas for a video of a 60-minute podcast. We're using AI.

Gabe Nazario13:39We're telling them about it. We're explaining how we're gonna use it, but we're also making sure that like the human element is a part of that. And so that's that's typically what we're doing when we're talking about that.

Dario13:49Hm. And is it okay, interesting.

Gabe Nazario13:52Yeah. Yeah. So it's it's less about like, Hey, you pay us to consult you to

Gabe Nazario14:00A use AI properly. It's more about, hey, we can we can use AI in a specif specific way for your content need is usually how I how I spin it.

Dario14:02Mm-hmm.

Kyrill14:10So it's more so like a tool that you incorporate when you're providing content to clients? In in that regard, more so?

Dario14:10And then you're I dn Yeah.

Gabe Nazario14:17Yeah. Yeah. And truthfully, deep, deep down, what you're seeing there is just SEO play. So it's throwing AI, throwing consulting, throwing kind of the combination of those things on a website is just based off of making sure people can see us and understand, okay, like these guys are are new and up to date and fresh and they're not, you know, this like older production company who doesn't doesn't f mess around with AI.

Dario14:23Okay, okay.

Dario14:45That makes sense. Hey, if it works for the S P five hundred, why wouldn't it work for you, right? Just throw AI in there, stock goes up.

Kyrill14:46That answered my other question, yeah.

Gabe Nazario14:50Yes. Yeah. Exactly.

Kyrill14:54It's not a bad idea. 'Cause I mean, yeah, like I mean, I feel a lot of people, a lot of companies in our industry is incorporating AI in some way, shape or form into their workflows to not only make the process easier, but also to provide more value to their clients. You just have a you just found a good way to kind of package it and then just kind of like put it at the forefront for people to kind of see 'cause I was gonna s I was wondering like like you're essentially using it as a tool for your clients, to deliver the same kind of content, but you know, with

Kyrill15:22that as as an aid, but with the SEO play, yeah, that's that's smart. And have you found that a lot of people inquire about that since you started using that, or is it kind of like something that you bring up to them when you talk to them?

Gabe Nazario15:28Yeah.

Gabe Nazario15:37There's there's been a c it's it's probably fifty fifty. I think a lot of people ask how and if we use AI in in our workflow. That's we've gotten that a lot. We've gotten a lot of random requests to

Gabe Nazario15:54consult in a way through through specific kind of websites that just essentially ask us to talk about the AIs that we use. And that's like consulting in a way. being able to say, hey, like what AIs do you use? Or do you use what do you use ChatGPT for? What do you use? Like there's an AI called Munch that helps like kind of cut up social media videos. Like there's like there there's people who are out there, whether they're using that data to create their own AI or whether they're actually interested in like what

Kyrill16:05Mm.

Gabe Nazario16:24AI's video production companies are using, we've gotten that like as an ask too. to like jump on an hour call and strictly consult about what we use and then who knows what they use that for. But yeah, we've done a few of those as well.

Dario16:39Interesting. which AI programs are you using right now for your business?

Kyrill16:40Nice.

Gabe Nazario16:45It's we're we're kind of in the standard. you know, we have we have Chat GPT, we have Claude, I mentioned Munch. We we use Gamma. Gamma is a a really, really interesting AI, which a lot of people have been using lately, I've seen. I've we've been using it for a while. It's it's like a deck creator. It's that's probably my f my favorite AI, honestly. It's like it's absolutely unreal.

Kyrill17:06Yeah.

Gabe Nazario17:12And it gets better every year. We've been using it probably for like two and a half years. So typically what we'll do, I literally did it this morning before this call, we'll run through kind of a chat GBT exercise of massaging a bid or a proposal, you know, so talking through like a a pretty hefty like five to eight minute voice memo to chat GBT, asking it to structure it this way or that way, add budget, add this, add production, add the deliverables, and organize it.

Gabe Nazario17:40In a way that gamma reads. And so like what it'll do is it'll spit out this this, you know, hefty kind of like structure and it knows it remembers that gamma likes it this way or that way. And we'll we'll massage that and then we'll take that that essential, you know, like document and put it into gamma and then gamma creates a full blown, beautiful bid, and then we'll go in there and adjust it. But yeah, really cool.

Kyrill18:01wow. And it does it with PowerPoint, like the is it only with PowerPoint or does it also do it with like Google Sheets or something like that? Or not Sheets, slides.

Gabe Nazario18:09It so like Google Slides. So there's it's you can

Dario18:12You could you could you could put PowerPoint into Google Drive and it'll convert it to to slides, Carol.

Gabe Nazario18:18Right. It's it's the same though. It's the same same exact system as what you just said, Dario. It's essentially it gives you a presentation, you could adjust it within gamma, and then you could export a PDF, a Google Slides, a PowerPoint, etc. You just have pick the the caveat to that, which usually is the case, is you export that and structure and like formatting kinda gets funky. So like you might have to drop that into Google Slides and then adjust again.

Kyrill18:19All right, yeah.

Kyrill18:31okay.

Dario18:40Right.

Kyrill18:40Mm.

Gabe Nazario18:43But but honestly g gamma, like dropping it in, adjusting there, I've presented through gamma directly. I've also just exported a PDF, which which is a soup like clean, you know.

Kyrill18:44That's what I was thinking, yeah.

Dario18:55Did you find it's better than like what you could create with Claude?

Gabe Nazario19:02I I don't think there's a haven't fully tested it, really, is the answer. I don't know if it's

Gabe Nazario19:11Neither here nor there. Like it's almost like it's it's you pick your poison, right? It's like, hey, if Claude is the what you use and like you like Claude, like use Claude. Like if you figured out this structure and it's worked for you and you've won jobs with it, like don't don't fix it. You know, like keep going. Yeah. And so until it gets to a point where like Claude has something like revolutionary or something else pops up that's revolutionary, we'll probably just keep flowing with what we've done because it works.

Dario19:26Use that.

Gabe Nazario19:40For us at least.

Dario19:43Yeah, it makes sense. Once cloud design is out of the beta, I guess, right?

Gabe Nazario19:44Yeah.

Kyrill19:44I'm very curious about it.

Gabe Nazario19:49Yeah, no, Claude is Claude is definitely I mean, as you guys know, I know you guys use it a little bit too. I think Claude is is really making a name for itself, in the past like e even six months, right? I think ChatGPT blew up and everybody loved it and now we're getting to this point where it's like, Whoa, Claude's coming up and chat's like kinda like going down here and now you're like, What? And so it's it's interesting. and I've heard a lot of things. I don't know if they're you know

Dario20:09Yeah.

Gabe Nazario20:17Real rumors, like who knows like but it's just it's interesting how the whole AI world works. And so I will be very curious of of the next even six months, right? Of like what what what else comes up or if Claude just kinda starts to take take over and we'll probably have to make that full switch from chat to to Claude.

Dario20:35It reminds me kind of like the crypto space back in like the early twenty twenties where it's like, this this coin is now the hot item. And then six months later, no, this coin is a hot item, and then it kept switching. but yeah, we we jumped on the Claude bandwagon like two weeks ago and man, it's been blowing my mind. Like I love like basically I I'm not too like creative at creating documents or like web pages or whatever.

Kyrill20:36What would Hm, yeah.

Gabe Nazario20:51Really? okay.

Kyrill20:53Yeah. It's been very helpful.

Dario21:04So I had I struggled with that, but this thing just understands it and just helps you with it and it's it's smooth as butter really. Like we I've been using it to create a bunch of different templates. like even even the the release form I sent you for this, like I I just I created it on that. Like I've been re redoing the website with it and it's been it's so easy. Like it's crazy. Like now I'll just have like I I just have like a random idea like in the shower and I'm like, it'd be cool to add like

Gabe Nazario21:16Yeah.

Gabe Nazario21:21Yeah.

Gabe Nazario21:26Right.

Kyrill21:28It polished

Dario21:34this thing to the website. And then when I come out I just like quickly type it in. It's like, hey, create the code for this section of the website. Address. there it is. Copy, paste it. It's good. It works.

Gabe Nazario21:41Hmm.

Kyrill21:46It's crazy how good it polishes everything. It it's it's it's taken it's taken our websites to like this kind of next level in terms of its design that's like we're not designers. We're not web dis developers or anything like that. And it's and it's hard to kind of learn things like that. And that's like the one benefit a lot of these softwares have kind of come in, and we're finding new and new things to kind of help make our lives easier that we never would have realized. And I'm actually curious now that you've been using

Gabe Nazario21:46That's interesting.

Kyrill22:15AI so much with all your with all your work. What is like maybe one thing that you hope can be made to make your life a little bit more easier? Like what do think is missing? Or I don't know if you've even thought about that. I feel like some of the time with this stuff w n none of us thinks of it until it comes out. It's like, shoot, yeah, this is very useful.

Gabe Nazario22:34Yeah. with AI, right? Is is your is your question? I mean, yeah, there's there's lots of things, right? And I think it's funny is sometimes they're not like on the top of your head. Sometimes it's similar to what Dario mentioned of like, you're in the shower, and you're like, that would be nuts if like I could do that. one thing that I have dabbled in, which I don't remember the name of the AI, but I know there's a few out there, is this concept of

Gabe Nazario23:03dropping in a full video. So less of what I was explaining before where it's like, hey, here's a 60-minute podcast. Just cut it up into pieces. But more so a, hey, let me drop this this 60-minute or these these four 30-minute interviews into this AI. And maybe maybe you guys are gonna about to tell me that Claw could do this, but and you could send it in there and you explain the story that you want. Right. So not just like

Gabe Nazario23:33Hey, cut this up, but say, hey, I want this story to do this. I want you to say, I want you to focus on this theme within these interviews. Cut me something up. And then give me an actual file that I could open up and premiere where it's already cut. So somebody told me recently that that exists, and we tried it out, and it was extremely slow, but it did it.

Dario23:55okay.

Kyrill24:00Yeah.

Gabe Nazario24:01It did it. It took a while. And then my editor, Kayla, was was essentially saying, like, yeah, like it's worth it if like you have if you're making like a a a documentary or if you're making a round table and you're also just extremely busy and you don't want to hire another editor, like, sure, let that AI kind of ramp that on the side. But in terms of how long it took to upload the footage and have the AI run and then export it out and then like it doesn't export the footage out, but it exports an actual premiere file for you to open.

Kyrill24:29Right.

Gabe Nazario24:29It just it just took a long time, is what she said. And so i that would be killer for our like kind of meat tier to like documentary round table style projects. I could see that being cool.

Dario24:43I can I can totally see that happening too, because all it would take is maybe like a collaboration between Claude and Adobe, right? And then again, you create you have the transcripts and with the time stamps and timestamps and everything. You figure that out in your conversation and then it kind of connects to Premiere and it finds the files and then it just kind of does its own thing. That that can yeah, that could totally happen.

Kyrill24:43Yeah, getting Yeah.

Gabe Nazario24:53Yeah.

Gabe Nazario24:58Mm-hmm.

Gabe Nazario25:06And it does it. And that's that and it's it's funny because it's like everything up until that point you could already do, right? Like you could drop a transcript in a Claude chat and give them a theme and say, Cut this up, give me time codes, yada yada. Sure. We've been able to do that for a while. It still requires the editor to go in, time code it out, which we all know like takes time and like time is money. And so it's like, hey, can we be able to just do that? You do it for me. I open up a premiere.

Gabe Nazario25:34And now I'm like halfway through my edit already, like that'd be that'd be great.

Kyrill25:37Yeah.

Dario25:38It could totally happen 'cause like for this podcast, I've been slowly working my way down the episodes, like with the bl with the w with the ones that are posted on our blog and I've been redoing them, right? So I was asking it, I was like, Do you want me to like feed you all the transcripts? And then you you you create like a a blog post per episode, or do you want like I connected my Google Drive to it. So I like, Or do you want to just go into the Google Drive folder?

Dario26:03And find the transcripts and the old blog post documents and then gonna create recreate it. It's like, I'll just go in your Google Drive and do it. So it already has the capability of going into like different programs and reading and writing and creating stuff, right? So it just Adobe just needs to collaborate with them. Just do it. We need it.

Gabe Nazario26:16Yeah.

Gabe Nazario26:20That's it. That's it. Yeah. No, I'll find out the name of the AI that I that I found that did it and I'll send it to you guys and you guys could noodle around with it 'cause I'm sure it's like gonna get better. but it was just like definitely like on its like version one.

Kyrill26:34Yeah, like from what you're describing, like the the thing that would make the most that would be the most effective is not necessarily having a final rough cut product unnecessarily, but at least having a general story cut, that is kind of like a group together along with a lot of other good sound bites and even going through all your b roll and cleaning it up and having that set up, like that's something that takes the longest time sometimes.

Gabe Nazario26:54Yeah.

Kyrill26:59I mean, one benefit I found though of of actually going through all that stuff sometimes is that it gets you gives you a sense of like what you're putting together. especially if it's like a lot, like and it's a big project and there's a lot of footage to go through. There is the benefit of where you get to see everything, you get a sense of like what the story is, what the people are, which is one thing that could be something that you lose by getting all this stuff done. But in terms of time saving, getting all your sound bites, especially if you have a project that has a lot of them.

Gabe Nazario27:25Yeah.

Kyrill27:29lot of interviews. They have to have a lot of different especially if you need to fit ten people into like a three to four minute promo video that a client wants because that's happened before and man the amount of times it takes for me to just sit down, put some sound bites together, see kind of how the flow, if the message also works, you know, there's a lot of trial and error in that, right? So at least getting everything up until the point where you start doing that and with having like a

Gabe Nazario27:38Totally.

Gabe Nazario27:54Mm-hmm.

Kyrill27:59bit of a baseline skeleton can really, really, really elevate your game at that point, right? But we'll see what happens.

Gabe Nazario28:02Totally.

Gabe Nazario28:05Yeah. I mean that saves you what what yeah, what you just said essentially saves people depending on your speed, like two days of editing, right? Like like I mean, if you're fast you could get it done, but like it might take you know, it might might save more people like three days of editing, like of just organizing, structuring, syncing, b roll string outs, like all that, if they could do that in in a few hours versus a two day span, like that's killer.

Kyrill28:14Yeah.

Kyrill28:25Yeah.

Dario28:32Yeah. yeah. Soon. I think it's gonna happen soon. w what about the your social media services? Like what what do you do for that?

Kyrill28:32Yeah. That that's the dream.

Gabe Nazario28:38Yeah, for sure.

Kyrill28:38In Adobe for sure.

Kyrill28:45Right.

Gabe Nazario28:46Yeah, that kind of ranges. there's and social media is such a funny term. It's it's just interesting, right? You put social media on on an offering and it's like, so what does that mean? Like like what do you do? Like, do you do you, you know, run a social media account? Do you create social media? Do you have advice? Is the social media on this phone? Is it on a computer or is it on a larger like cinema camera? It just kind depends. What we typically do

Gabe Nazario29:14when it comes to the social media aspect of of our business is it's a combo of kind of like that like very small, just like right above a phone quality that we we typically run. So someone, you know, we'll have a camera operator or two come out with just an FX3. Like no bells and whistles. Like not I I know some some camera operators are like, what about like my like these lights and this audio, like this my screen. It's like, no. Like just like

Gabe Nazario29:42Just the FX3, we flip it this way and we just run. And it's just like a phone. You just pull it out and like that's all the budget allots for, essentially, right? Is just like this next level of a little nicer than your iPhone, and you're getting this like nicer quality image from you know that type of camera. Those are typically run, it depends on like the the client, but those are run as like these like nicer kind of like whether they're paid ads or they're just like these like kind of like vignette style pieces that they want to just look a little nicer.

Gabe Nazario30:12That's probably like sixty percent of the social stuff. The other forty percent is all on the phone. And so very much like straight up a phone, a gimbal, maybe a small tube light, and we're running organic requests for clients, you know, like on a monthly basis. So it just kinda depends on on the client. But that's typically where it kind of splits.

Kyrill30:36So it's another form of packaging packaging the video in terms of the kind of deliverable, right?

Dario30:36So on the on the shooting Yeah.

Gabe Nazario30:43Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes those two kind of collide together, right? Like sometimes there's a shoot that requires, hey, we need ten videos on a phone and we need this one particular video that feels like it calls for a little bit of a nicer camera. And we'll do that. but it just kinda depends on the ask. But it's it's a tricky world because it it it's a different world than than corporate. It's a different world than than than commercial. Like it's people are asking, clients are asking

Kyrill30:58Okay.

Dario31:06Yeah.

Gabe Nazario31:12people like us for for f forty videos a month or for fifty videos a month. And if you're out here trying to actually think about that world the same as you do with a corporate environment, like you'll never win the job. You know, it's it's a different entity. Like if a corporate company said, Hey, I n I need 10 videos for this, you're like, got it. How many days of editing? That's gonna be like this much. But the forty to fifty people, like they're they're asking for rough

Kyrill31:18Well.

Dario31:28Yeah, true.

Gabe Nazario31:40simple videos that could just run, you know, just be be added to an account, they're looking at, you know, I don't know, like it's a range, but like probably like a hundred dollars a video or like even less, like sometimes. Like if if you're trying to charge anything more than that, you're gonna lose the job to the creator who just got out of college.

Kyrill31:55Right.

Dario32:00Yeah. But I guess you make you're gonna make the money back on the on the volume. By the way, Carol, try not to hit the mic, I think I'm hearing thing. so just to confirm then on the social media side, you're not actually like marketing the content for them, you're just creating social media videos for them essentially, right?

Kyrill32:06Did I I didn't okay.

Gabe Nazario32:20Yeah. Yeah. It's a creative development process too of of, you know, offering your kind of skill set and knowledge of like, hey, we know the trends. and like we'll work with you like creatively prior to showing up. But then a lot of that it's more so it's more so pre production. We edit obviously and then we send the videos to them. Like that's kind of it. You know, we're not we're not posting, we're not managing people's socials or anything like that. We're not offering descriptions. we're usually handing that off to the client.

Kyrill32:50Okay. So I'm curious with the AI content, social media content and the corporate and commercial, what would you say is the bulk of the work that comes in for you? Is it a little bit more of the corporate and commercial and then these are just things on the side? Like how does that work?

Gabe Nazario33:08Yeah. Yeah, I think it's pretty much a bulk of it is is that corporate commercial work, especially being close to New York. It's it's a pretty hefty amount of, you know, financial firms, private equity firms. There's some some larger companies in New York that are headquartered here that that will we'll need to go do, you know, training videos for or, you know, an anniversary video, like things like that.

Gabe Nazario33:37We get a lot of calls for a lot of interviews, a lot of like kind of that talking head style, which like all of us kind of get tired of, but like it just like never dies. Like everybody needs an interview. So, that's like bread and butter, right? We go in there with a group of anywhere from like five to twelve crew, depending on the ask in the budget, and and we typically capture, you know, all of that in in a one to

Gabe Nazario34:04four day span and then we'll we'll come back and we'll do our post production. So that's probably the bulk of the work. And then it kind of falls below that into like these other tiers of, you know, the AI stuff, social media stuff. And then every once in a while we'll get a like a a a really awesome like large job, right? Like a big kind of like shark type of job, which which are great. but it's not like we're we're like running our business off of those.

Kyrill34:32Right. No, that that makes that makes sense, yeah. 'Cause yeah, the corporate world is the one that really kind of fills in the calendar. like you said, it's our bread and butter and but we're always trying to find other types of ways to kind of like package things and like you did, essentially, right? Which is great. I'm also curious like with how things have been you said now you've been five years fully invested in in in offbeat. So like what do you see as like kind of like coming up, you know, with the

Dario34:32Interesting.

Kyrill35:00with your offerings now, what you're trying to do, is there any particular types of projects you want to do or anything like that?

Kyrill35:09Or clients.

Gabe Nazario35:09Yeah, I mean I mean I'll al always have always have dreams, right? Always would love to you know we've we've done some stuff for Peloton, we've done some stuff for like a small group at Nike out here. So like love the sport content content. Like that would be fun. Like just like in terms of like, like what would I would what I would want to to to like work on would be like more of that like sport fitness world.

Gabe Nazario35:35Because it's just fun, entertaining, engaging, like interesting content to to capture. And there's a lot of creative freedom there. but in terms of like a business like like projection, I mean, I would love to I love the mid-tier stuff. We're gonna continue to do that until it doesn't show up anymore, basically. But we're we're trying to figure out how to scale that smaller stuff to have this like kind of pillow, if you will. like this like run rate of like, hey, no ma if everything else stops.

Kyrill36:01Mm.

Gabe Nazario36:06this still happens and it's is mainly retainer work, which is like everybody's like, you know, challenge in terms of of what we do to get. But we've gotten a few of those. And so that's that's really our like our goal in the next, you know, three years or so is to hey, to to crank up that retainer work, even if it does mean lower rates, but to like guarantee a certain amount of money that's a that's that's coming in monthly, then you could have this like kind of like operation

Gabe Nazario36:36that is always breathing and then all of these other mid tier or larger scale jobs are essentially gravy within what you have going on. So

Kyrill36:46It's interesting that you mentioned retainer because we've talked about this many times on the podcast and it doesn't always work for everyone in our industry, you know, depending on what kind of offerings they do. So it's it's it's cool that you say you or you already have a few. So walk us through that process. Is it mostly like with like the social media type content where I can kind of see that being more easy a much easier to sell retainer work? Or do you f did you find retainer success even in the corporate world?

Gabe Nazario36:55Yeah. It doesn't.

Gabe Nazario37:11Yeah.

Gabe Nazario37:16No, yeah, retainers are tricky, right? all of us know that. I think

Gabe Nazario37:22It's it's much simpler when the deliverables are simpler. And so I'll that's what I'll probably start with is like the the more complicated the job gets, the more complicated the request is, the like less likely a retainer's gonna work. And so I think this idea of, hey, I want, like I said, 30 to 50 videos a month. You know, just being able to structure it where it's like, hey, 50's the cap. We might not get to 50, we might get to 30.

Gabe Nazario37:52But they're all gonna be shot on the phone. We're gonna shoot twice a month, and this is always gonna happen. that is a flow that just like by default is is not simple, but it's just like, yep, that could work. Let's just keep doing that. it's another it's it's different when you're jumping into, hey, we're gonna go do this corporate shoot monthly. It it doesn't make sense for even the businesses to do that, right? And so like that typically never works. What we have found works other than social media.

Gabe Nazario38:21Is the editing portion of that. And so what we have done with some people is we've just guaranteed like one edit per month or two edits per month for a certain rate, not knowing what they are, like roughly having parameters, but but assuming that they're gonna give us footage, whether it's from an an event that they have or you know, something that they've they've done separately from us, and they'll just send us a certain amount of things and we edit that. I mean, that has again, that has some risks too, because some people could try to take advantage of that.

Gabe Nazario38:51But what we've done is we've created structures around that, right? So it's like you gotta have your parameters of of this doesn't go past two minutes. you know, there's like no motion graphics involved. Like just like little things like that that kind of guarantee you're not shooting yourself in the foot.

Kyrill39:08So you mentioned editing where so like say is that like a client provides you content that they made themselves specifically and then you just produce the edits?

Gabe Nazario39:18Yep. Yeah. a lot of it is whether they like whether they just kinda shoot it separately or they work at, you know, a lot of we work with a lot of event companies. And so like a lot of event companies typically what happens is you go to an event, there's there, you know, whoever runs the event, let's call it Nike, has people shooting the event. And then you're working with this agency that helped with this booth and they're gonna give you the assets or the the footage from from Nike 'cause they w they figured that out.

Kyrill39:20interesting.

Kyrill39:46Wow, okay.

Gabe Nazario39:47And then we could just edit our own version for this agency. and that that's happened a few times. Yeah. And then there's also like the the com the the collaboration too of like, hey, we we do go shoot stuff. That's just a separate fee, right? We're just gonna go and shoot for an event, like that's that's our production fee. And then, yeah, we're gonna use our retainer this month for the stuff you shot. Sounds good. Don't have to talk about editing. We already know that process. We never we already know the budget. And so it makes it easier in that way too.

Dario40:17Interesting. Yeah, so you're kinda using the retainer pool for other stuff as well if you need to. That makes sense.

Gabe Nazario40:24Yeah. That only works with specific I would s I would assume that feels like that only works with clients that you've kind of already been working with, someone you have a connection with, someone who you know needs editing like often, that you just kinda pitch them a hey, like you need editing three times a year, four times a year. How about we just do this? And then we never talk about editing again and you just kind of always run it. that way. So, you know, it's it's worked. But I think the social media aspect of things is really where a lot of companies find success with retainer work.

Gabe Nazario40:54That and like consulting, which we haven't really dipped our toe into, but that also feels like something like people will gain like a you know, a a quick like two to three thousand dollars for just jumping on three meetings and just spitting ideas out to people.

Kyrill41:10That would that would be fun actually. I wouldn't I wouldn't mind those types of retainers. Doing all the pre-production without the actual production in post is not too bad.

Gabe Nazario41:14Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right.

Dario41:15Mm-hmm.

Dario41:19Pre production, yeah.

Gabe Nazario41:21Yeah, there's a lot of those.

Dario41:24I notice you have testimonials on on your website. I've actually had the I have that on my list of to do things for the year. do you do you find they help at all or

Gabe Nazario41:30Nice.

Gabe Nazario41:37I I don't know. I mean it's kinda like a box to check, right? I think what I did feel like helped a little bit was adding our we we went into a deep like SEO rabbit hole like two years ago and we we made our like Google business profile and like asking for a lot of reviews on our Google profile. I saw I saw like instant traffic from that. Nothing that came into like, you know, there was nothing that was like

Gabe Nazario42:06an amazing job that came out of that. But in terms of like people emailing us from our website, that type of thing, that happened more when we started to do things like that. So like it wasn't necessarily testimonials that we added to our website, even though I did grab those from some of those reviews, but it was more like the Google reviews felt like they they helped us rank a little higher.

Kyrill42:30Yeah. No, d definitely when you do that it it helps put your visibility out there. 'Cause once we did that, most of our I'd say now, like most of the the new business that we get all comes from Google at that point, from people reaching out to us. So I I'm actually curious also for you, like would would you say that most of your work comes from referrals or from people you've worked with in the past, or have you been seeing well, you I guess you said now you've been seeing a little bit more coming in from the website, but like

Gabe Nazario42:46Awesome.

Gabe Nazario42:54Yeah.

Kyrill42:59What is like the the distribution between that?

Gabe Nazario43:03Yeah. I I mean I would give it like a seventy seventy thirty, in terms of like ratio. So like seventy percent is probably word of mouth. People who I've used to I've worked we've worked with, they've left to another company. They they know us, like they jump back in, like the people who you know, they left like the company but the other the company still likes us, so we continue to work with them and so a lot of that. and then yeah, like we'll get like some random random

Kyrill43:08Okay.

Gabe Nazario43:32emails from people. A lot of those are are are simple jobs is the thing. So we I've I would love to see I if you guys have a strategy, I'd love to hear that. I mean I we've gotten like hey like events like one off events or some you know random things that like we've we've estimated out for people, but we've never gotten like a corporate gig from a email before.

Kyrill43:37Right.

Dario43:56I'm actually surprised because I mean if you're on this podcast I found you via SEO, right? And it also means I didn't go through page nine to be able to find you. I usually stick to the first three pages or the map pack. So I'm I'm actually surprised you saying that it's it's only thirty percent coming from SEO.

Kyrill43:58Yeah.

Gabe Nazario44:09That's interesting. Yeah. That's interesting.

Kyrill44:13Maybe they're maybe there, Dario, they don't they don't use it as much, like through Google. I don't know, 'cause like the thing that the thing that we have No, I get I get that. I that's what that's why I'm surprised. That's why I'm surprised too. Like it's it's odd that that's not the case 'cause a lot of the time, Gabe, with us, it's like we we get clients to reach out for one offs, like you said, but because we do those one offs and we build a rapport and build a relationship with the client, then it it yeah.

Dario44:21No, that doesn't make I mean, he's in a he's in a busy place. Like there's a lot of people living there.

Gabe Nazario44:29Yeah, I'm

Gabe Nazario44:33Yeah.

Gabe Nazario44:41Then it becomes more consistent.

Kyrill44:43Exactly. Like I once I I always like to mention this example because we I was on a shoot like a little while back and when we were traveling from one location to the next, I got a call from a lead, you know, just a cold call that was asking about, you know, if we do corporate video and stuff like that. And then I I talked to them for like five minutes and I scheduled a f a follow-up call with them like a few days later.

Kyrill45:06And then for a few months spoke with them and then finally booked in, you know, just for webinars. And now that client is one of our our most consistent clients over the last what four years now, Dario? You know, it's it's kind of like a retainer, but yeah, but we call it the Yeah, but we call it the pre booked client, you know. Like I I I call these pre bookings, not not retainer clients, you know. But

Dario45:18retainer client technically 'cause we do three webinars, yeah, and and a big AGM every year.

Gabe Nazario45:31Yeah. Yeah. No, that's that's awesome. I mean, that's that's great. And yeah, there's a lesson there, right? Of saying, Hey

Gabe Nazario45:38Take the one, right? Take take the take the simple request. Go take the the random headshot request or the the the hey, I have three hours that I need someone to go film something. And a lot of people be like, that's not worth my time. But it's like, hey, go do it. And then all of a sudden, who knows? It could be your top top client like three or four years later, you never know. So

Kyrill45:40Yeah.

Kyrill45:47Yeah.

Kyrill45:59Yeah, like it it's just a matter of like getting that first win to show that you're reliable, you're good to work with. And it's always good to do that on a smaller project than a bigger one on the first go. Because sometimes when it's a bigger one on the first go, clients don't necessarily know the whole process. They don't know how you work, you don't know how they work, you don't know how they have to do the revision process with their clients, because a lot of the time

Gabe Nazario46:06Yeah.

Gabe Nazario46:22Totally.

Kyrill46:23You have to show a video to a client and then they have to show it to their higher ups who have to show it to their higher ups. You never know what the behind the scenes are, right? So I've seen like we have seen it many times where we've had a client basically give us like a smaller project. We've seen kind of how it worked, then they were really happy with how it turned out. And then bigger projects come because then they're like, since we were able to do this, what if we tried to do this? You know? And you just never know. And

Gabe Nazario46:31Yeah.

Gabe Nazario46:49Yeah.

Kyrill46:51Like just yeah, start off with the one offs. That's the the best advice I guess for anyone.

Gabe Nazario46:56Yeah, for sure. I love that.

Dario46:59I guess another thing I'm interested in learning about is that okay, so you're based in Jersey City, but you do a lot of stuff inside New York City. To me, I look at them on the map, they're both right next to each other. They're probably the same. but do you find that maybe some clients want you to be more actually in the island type of thing? Does that does that happen at all with you or no?

Gabe Nazario47:24Not not really. it's very much like

Gabe Nazario47:31Jersey City is like a it's almost a it's like a borough. so like I I could get to Manhattan before somebody in Brooklyn. Like that's how close I am. So like if if people are like, I l we're based in Brooklyn, we're in New York, it's like I my team will literally get there at the same time, if not faster, than than some of them. So like it just yeah, it doesn't really shake us.

Gabe Nazario47:58It also help I mean it's it's there's there's there's benefits to it too. I think just generally like we get a lot of a lot of Jersey jobs obviously as well. and then it's just so much more space to to film out here. Like if you could get the clients, which a lot of people understand at this point, like in Manhattan, to like go film at a studio in Newark, New Jersey or Montclair, New Jersey, compared to like Manhattan, like East Village. Like it's just you're it's like a triple the size studio.

Gabe Nazario48:28And it's half the price and like it's easier to get into. You know, when you go into New York, I'm sure it's similar in Toronto, it's it's a you're budgeting like two hours to just get up into a building because that is how long it takes sometimes for us to go. Like we will go and we'll yeah, we'll we'll lo we'll load in we'll load we'll load in, you know, a few hampers of gear, you know, some some hefty carts and whatnot, and that takes that takes a while.

Kyrill48:31Ha ha ha.

Kyrill48:37Yeah.

Kyrill48:46We've heard, we've heard.

Gabe Nazario48:58just to get up into the fortieth floor of a building instead of, hey, like you're gonna drive over to Jersey, some like random office building, walk right in, it'll take you thirty minutes. Like that does not happen in New York.

Dario49:10In Toronto it also takes two hours, but not to get inside the building, just to get to delocation.

Kyrill49:10Yeah.

Gabe Nazario49:15yeah, no, please. I haven't even talked about that. That's yeah, by the time we get there it'll be four hours in.

Kyrill49:18Tor yeah. Tor we we always like to say Toronto is always an hour away from Toronto, but but what it sounds like, Dario, it's like basically Mississauga and Toronto with Jersey and and Manhattan, right? It's like they're like right next to each other, they're connected, same amount of traffic as as always, you know, but but same kind of deal.

Dario49:20Yeah.

Gabe Nazario49:25Mm-hmm.

Dario49:31Yeah. Yeah.

Gabe Nazario49:38Yeah, yeah.

Dario49:41what about in terms of like competition? Like there's a lot of I'm sure there's a lot of production companies, you know, all competing for similar clients and everything. And again, you're in one of the biggest cities in the world. I'm just wondering what's what's the competition like how do you handle that type of competition?

Gabe Nazario49:41Yeah.

Gabe Nazario49:54Yeah.

Kyrill49:57At least for you. Yeah.

Gabe Nazario49:59Yeah, I mean

Gabe Nazario50:03It's tough, right? I would assume I don't I don't know. I don't have data, I don't have numbers, but I would assume there's probably more production companies like per square foot out here than than a lot of other spots. Like there's a lot of people who wanna do this and they wanna do this full time. so yeah, it it's all the time. I mean, you never you never fully know, right? Like I I think a lot of times we we

Gabe Nazario50:32create bids, we we go through proposals, we we compete for for jobs and and there's plenty of losses. and that is probably an assumption or it's related to the amount of production companies that are out here. But what is also related to that is the amount of bids that you create. Right. So like I'd rather have more swings and live here than than live elsewhere and and and be waiting for a swing and and hope I get that and then

Gabe Nazario50:59And maybe you don't, right? And then you wait another month or so for someone to reach out. So I think there's like the constant hustle and bustle, the amount of companies that are out here already, like it just by default offers a lot of work. And so there's there's plenty of work, there's plenty of people to do the work. So it works out well. no pun intended. But that's that's essentially how how it how it kind of shakes out. it's also just based on trust too, which is you know, we talked about that a little bit, but i I I th I would again

Gabe Nazario51:29Don't have a lot data on this, but I would not I would bet something really expensive on the statement of saying that like the all the production companies out here, I would almost guarantee that they get the work they get because they know someone there or they've worked with them before. It's all trust based. You know, and that no one's no one's out there just throwing out bids to five different companies to try to win the work this year. They know, you know,

Gabe Nazario51:57Dario, they know Gabe, they know they know whoever it is and they they talk to them first, then they ask them to bid. So

Kyrill52:05It's so it's a lot of referral based and relationship building type inquiries, yeah.

Dario52:09Guess that explains the seventy thirty split you have then?

Gabe Nazario52:13Yeah, yeah. It's all trust. It's all trust based. It's all like half it's it's like sales, right? It's like half of the sale happens throughout the year. Like the the the gift you get somebody, the like the offer through email or text to go grab a drink or to go to the Yankee game, like that's that's how you're getting the sale. And and that's how you're getting the next sale, 'cause then they're gonna say, like

Kyrill52:13Yeah.

Gabe Nazario52:41This guy that I know just got the, you know, head of marketing job at XYZ company. You know who you should talk to? You should talk to Gabe because Gabe is the man. And not because Gabe makes great videos. Like everybody makes great videos. Like now. Like of course. Like everybody makes good videos. It's not I'm not it's not necessarily hard. It's just say a skill that people have figured out. And so it's like understanding like how are you gonna differentiate yourself? It's gonna be who you are as a person. You're gonna have to connect with somebody and actually make them like you.

Gabe Nazario53:10Versus you know, just like your work.

Kyrill53:11Yeah.

Kyrill53:14So what have you done to kind of build relationships like this over time? As you know, aside from working on projects with people, is there any kind of I wouldn't say necessarily strategy, but things you do, like you said, like do you like tips, you know, like yeah, that's that's a good way to put it, Dario. Like tips on how to kind of maintain relationships, build relationships or even like follow up with people that you've worked with in the past, even a while that could potentially lead to something? What would you suggest? Some tips

Dario53:27Tips? Any tips?

Gabe Nazario53:43Yeah. It's a good question. let's see. I think I have a lot in terms of like that flow because my my dad is in sales and so he's always been a sales guy, like through and through. He like runs a sales team now at the agency that he's at. So they he's like always in sales mode. which is a bad tip, but maybe I'll start there. The the bad tip is essentially always be in sales mode.

Gabe Nazario54:11Even though it kind of is a little bit annoying in terms of like your personal relationships because you're always like, like, why can't we just like sit down and have a good dinner? But if you're sitting down and having a dinner at a restaurant that you really like and for some reason the manager comes and for some reason you bring up what you do, at that point the door is open, right? At that point, like you shouldn't like, I'm off the clock. I'm not gonna say like I am repping off beat regardless of if I have a hat on. Like it's like

Gabe Nazario54:39I it's always there. It's always an opportunity to to mention to somebody like this is what we do. we can help you. Like we can literally help anybody, the small business to the JP Morgan's. We can help you with creative content. So, like, almost always be on is a is a bad tip, but that's that's that's probably a a tricky one for a lot of people to do. always be closing. Always be closing, right? Yeah, yeah.

Dario55:01Always be closing. A B C

Kyrill55:04Yeah. I think it's it think it's the way to keep it and make it the trick is to make it more natural and not and not too salesy like. I I I know what you mean. It's like kind of like it's kind of like making that connection that can potentially lead to a sale rather than actually selling necessarily, right?

Gabe Nazario55:11Yeah.

Gabe Nazario55:13Totally.

Gabe Nazario55:19Yes. Yes. Totally. Yeah. And I mean, this isn't necessarily a tip, but two things that I've been told which I I do fully agree with. One is the sale is never the sale's never closed on the hello. It's closed on the hello again. So you're not gonna send one email and you're not you're not gonna it's not gonna come back. Hey, you you got the job. No. It's gonna be hello again. Hey, checking in on this, hey, you know.

Gabe Nazario55:47wanna grab a coffee, it's then after the three or four times of saying hello, they're gonna be like, you know what? I'll give you the job. that's one thing. And then the other thing was someone mentioned to to me about about us, about offbeat, that we never feel too eager to like to to win. and so I'm we're never we we're we're hungry, we're always hungry, but we're never like overly hungry on a call

Gabe Nazario56:14To win the business because then it it starts to feel desperate. And so, to your point, right? Like the sales pitch, it's like it's less about that. It's more about like if you want to work with us, we'll crush it. You don't have to. Just know that we're really good and we will like help your business, but you call me.

Kyrill56:33It's the no pressure sales tactic, right? That's a that's a good mindset to have.

Gabe Nazario56:35Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is a tricky one. Yeah. So so yeah, I guess those those are some some tips and thoughts on on on that world, but that's definitely a learned skill for myself.

Dario56:51I remember during our pre interview you mentioned that you do reach out to past clients, you know, take them out to lunch and everything, try to relate to them and whatnot. And I remember mentioning like I can see that working if they're in like your age bracket, right? 'Cause it's like okay, you got common things that are happening, but what about like like a lot of our clients are or I would say there's like at least a ten year age gap between us. Like how do you recommend or suggest you do it in that type of situation?

Kyrill56:51Yeah, it can be

Gabe Nazario57:00Yeah.

Gabe Nazario57:09Mm-hmm.

Gabe Nazario57:14Yeah.

Gabe Nazario57:18Yeah, I mean, that's that's like a challenge in itself, right? Trying to figure out common ground, right? So so whatever that may be, I mean, tenure age gap or not, when you're a Knicks fan, you're a Knicks fan, right? Like and and you could be you could be seventy and I could be thirty two and like I got something to tell you every week, about the Knicks. And so like finding that that common

Dario57:32Ha ha ha.

Gabe Nazario57:44commonality and then like kind of like honing in on that in a in a very tasteful way could probably be smart. you know, that's that's a good one. I mean, gifting is always tricky 'cause a lot of companies don't love gifts, but being able to like creatively think of like something that you could give. I mean, like, Christmas gifts are key for us. We send a lot of Christmas gifts to clients that we we haven't got work from for two years, but we still send it. Like it's just like it kind of depends. Every year, like it's

Dario58:09What do you what do you send?

Gabe Nazario58:13It's like custom. We like to like kinda create like custom things. So like last last year we sent like I forgot what the website was, but it was really cool. very co I get all bunch of emails now for it, but it ships out, depending on where you're at, like a bunch of like food. So like we we sent like steaks from like Peter Luger to like people, like kinda like raw steaks like kind of packaged and we sent those out to like specific clients. We sent like Levaine cookies, which is like again a common

Gabe Nazario58:42Like a really popular cookie spot here in New York and so we've sent those out to people. The year before that we did like gift cards but in like an offbeat box with like handwritten letters. So things like that. Yeah.

Kyrill58:51nice.

Dario58:54Pretty cool.

Gabe Nazario58:55Yeah, so you know.

Kyrill58:56Yeah, it's it is it is definitely tricky and just finding like something that works for you, right? That's that's the that's the trick.

Gabe Nazario59:05Yeah. And I mean we're we're at a size where that that is we can do that stuff. Like we're we're not I'm not sending seventy Peter Luger steaks out. I'm sending like yeah No, no no. I'm sending I'm s I'm sending like four. Yeah. Like it's like yeah, I'm not I'm sending four steaks and like six cookie boxes. Like I'm not sending s sixty or seventy of these and so like I can't do seventy handwritten notes. I mean I could, but like I'm not I'm not we're not about that. So

Dario59:14I was gonna say like how many stakes did you z must have been like two stakes only.

Kyrill59:15Ha ha.

Gabe Nazario59:34Yeah, it's it's it's in that like nice size where we're sending them to specific folks. But Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill59:42Otherwise you're gonna have to do the Amazon packaging for all those seventy. I know, it's like here's a Ross steak in like a one of those classic Amazon plastic bags.

Gabe Nazario59:49Yeah, or like the c the classic like, you know, like wine bottle or like the fruit basket. It's like, you sent this to like four hundred people, didn't you? Like it's like that doesn't that doesn't mean much, even though I know it it kinda checks a box, but yeah.

Kyrill59:58Yeah. Yeah.

Dario59:58Yeah.

Dario01:00:04Steaks would be like if I got a steak from a vendor, that would be like amazing. I would definitely send you some more work for sure. Yeah, w w what meat costs? Yeah. Hell yeah.

Kyrill01:00:09Yeah. Especially now.

Kyrill01:00:15Yeah, you fed my di you fed my family literally for dinner that night, you know? So I mean that is something that that that does stick out. Or like little delicacies, you know, like you said, like cookies or chocolates or things like that might not be just something that's like a you know what it is? You have to give a client a new experience, right? That should be the gift in a way, right? Like if you're yeah, if you're giving a gift basket, everyone gets So like this isn't new. Like I've gotten gift baskets all the time, you know? It's like, what if I got a

Gabe Nazario01:00:15So funny.

Dario01:00:18Ha

Gabe Nazario01:00:26Yeah, yeah. No

Dario01:00:27Yeah.

Gabe Nazario01:00:33Yes, yeah, yeah, a new experience. Yeah.

Dario01:00:39The same thing.

Dario01:00:42Mm-hmm.

Kyrill01:00:43Like a cookie that was like like a giant cookie. Like that's all you got from me, you know?

Gabe Nazario01:00:48Yeah. Something something wild. Yeah. No, the other thing that was cool that I mean gift cards are slept on, but like figuring out this the like the the the gift card that people really care about, like like a Delta, like two hundred and fifty dollar gift card, like if they fly Delta, right? Or a lot of people fly Delta out here in New York. So it's like or whatever that airline is, like like basically paying for a flight for them. 'Cause that's interesting 'cause they're not gonna throw that out because that's like

Kyrill01:01:00Mm.

Gabe Nazario01:01:15somewhat valuable. And then they're not gonna use it immediately. And so what's cool about that is like they'll use it like four months later and they'll go like, yeah, like Gabe got me this. Like, I have a job for her or whatever. It's like, let me reach out. And so like it's just like this like, hey, here's this. Think about us like next time you use it, you know, type of thing. So like figuring out what that is. Maybe it's an Uber gift card. Delta's a good one I thought was a fun one that we got. So yeah.

Dario01:01:17Mm-hmm.

Kyrill01:01:35Nice.

Dario01:01:42Interesting. All right, well we're at the one hour mark, so we should probably tie off loose ends right now. Let's before we end off though, how did you come up with the name for offbeat?

Kyrill01:01:43That's smart. What

Gabe Nazario01:01:55gosh. I no not a fun story at all. I mean, I the original name was literally my name, Benjamin Gabriel Films, as a lot of us start with, and it came it became the time of saying like, hey, we should we should switch this. It was like that five year mark where I left and I like, Okay, this needs to be a real company. and I literally just wrote a bunch of names like in a notepad and asked people to pick which one they liked best and most people like Dolph Beat and and that was it. Like it was

Gabe Nazario01:02:25Very s very simple. Like I just I liked it 'cause it felt it you know, offbeat is off the beaten path, it's different, it's trying different things and you know, it's it's not like it's this revolutionary, wow, that's so genius. But it's that that's what the word means and and I like that as a as a term and a theme of what we do is to try to be offbeat, try to be different than the thousand other production companies that are right, you know, next door. So

Dario01:02:25Mm-hmm.

Kyrill01:02:31Yeah.

Dario01:02:50Funny it's funny you said, it's time to turn this into a a serious thing but the other two companies you worked with, it's people's names, right? Disney, JP Morgan. They just put their last name over there.

Gabe Nazario01:03:00True.

Kyrill01:03:01Yeah, it's it's yeah, you forget that those massive corporations are technically someone's last name, you know.

Dario01:03:06Someone's last name, yeah.

Gabe Nazario01:03:06A hundred, a hundred percent. No, yeah, that's so true. Yeah, we work with another company called Warbur Pincus. Two separate names of the founders. That's it.

Dario01:03:15That's it.

Kyrill01:03:16So the next one for you is Nazario. Just that. That is the company.

Gabe Nazario01:03:19Yeah. Maybe in maybe in ten years when we rebrand, I'll just kinda yeah, I'll just drop a a new name as Nazario. That's it.

Dario01:03:20Ha ha ha.

Dario01:03:26Nazario Films, boom. And then in 50 years it turns into a big corporation and it swallows up all the other smaller production companies in Jersey City. All right. Well, Gabe, thank you for coming on the show. Really appreciate it. so guys, if you want to find Gabe, go to offbeatcreative.co. How come dot co? Did they then have dot co or

Gabe Nazario01:03:31Yeah.

Gabe Nazario01:03:35Right. I love it. So funny.

Kyrill01:03:42Yeah.

Gabe Nazario01:03:53Yeah, dot com was taken, so we we went with dot C O

Kyrill01:03:56I didn't know you could I didn't know you could get just dot co even.

Dario01:03:59I've seen dot CO yeah, in the past I've seen it. yeah, it's rare.

Gabe Nazario01:04:02Yeah. No, someone recently was like, Hey, dot com is available and I like, I should probably go buy that but haven't really haven't gotten around to it yet. It's fine. Most people find this.

Dario01:04:07You probably should.

Kyrill01:04:12Nice.

Dario01:04:13But yeah, anyways, offbecreative.co and then your socials are same thing at offbecreative.

Gabe Nazario01:04:13Yeah.

Gabe Nazario01:04:18Same thing. Dot C O.

Dario01:04:21Dot CO, you gotta include the dot CO at the end.

Kyrill01:04:24That MPEG.

Gabe Nazario01:04:25Yeah. Yeah yeah. No, thanks for having me guys. This has been really fun. hopefully people gain some value from it and I know we'll we'll talk soon. So thanks again.

Dario01:04:34Sure. Thank you.