From Corporate to Feature Films | Creatives Grab Coffee 55
Join us in this engaging episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, featuring Damian Fitzsimmons, the visionary behind Braveman Media in Miami Florida. Dive into Damian’s journey from the UK to the US, his transition from corporate gigs to cinematic storytelling, and the birth of Braveman Media. Discover the principles and strategies that propelled their success in the competitive landscape of video production.
Creatives Grab Coffee is produced by Lapse Productions, a video production company based out of Toronto, Canada. Reach out to them for your video production needs.
Audio: From Corporate to Feature Films | Creatives Grab Coffee 55
Timestamps:
- 00:00 – Introduction
- 02:23 – Welcoming Damien Fitzsimmons
- 02:57 – Damien’s Backstory and Transition from the UK to the US
- 04:14 – The Evolution of Braveman Media
- 05:51 – Securing Corporate and Commercial Clients
- 06:24 – Producing the First Feature Film
- 09:56 – Transitioning from Corporate to Feature Films
- 15:50 – The Impact of Networking and Marketing on Business Growth
- 22:22 – Pre-Production and Logistics for Long-Form Content
- 29:57 – Adapting to Unexpected Challenges on Set
- 36:05 – Balancing Creative Aspirations with Business Demands
- 40:59 – The Importance of Sales and Marketing in Scaling a Business
- 51:58 – Joining Business Accelerator Programs
- 53:29 – Realizing the Role of a Business Owner
- 54:00 – The Shift to a Sales and Marketing Focus
- 54:56 – Networking and Collaborative Opportunities
- 57:53 – Regular Team Meetings and Strategy Sessions
- 1:01:31 – Experimenting with Google Ads
- 1:03:02 – The Importance of Networking for Leads
- 1:09:43 – Future Plans for Expansion and Team Growth
- 1:10:22 – Personal Projects and Work-Life Balance
Transcript:
Dario (00:01)
Alright.
Damian (00:03)
Cool, sorry, was, should I just keep going?
Kyrill (00:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you were sharing a couple of details about the feature that you put out on Amazon with a friend of yours.
Damian (00:12)
Yeah, so we put a…
Dario (00:15)
I had a question about the feature. So you were focusing mostly on commercials and corporate prior to that. So what was the transitioning to now doing a full feature? Or what were some of the difficulties you encountered or some of the challenges going from just like, because corporate projects are fairly short in comparison.
Damian (00:20)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that’s a really good question. So up until that point, we just done corporate and commercials. And by that time, we’d worked with larger crews. So I think that’s a big one. Is, you know, a lot of times we still do shoots where it’s like two or three of us. And that’s great for a lot of corporate stuff, you know.
We did a TV commercial yesterday in a studio. There were only five of us. But, you know, that kind of narrative, we had, I think, 35, 40 crew. And so there’s a different level of logistics, you know? And…
Dario (01:17)
Wow.
Damian (01:24)
we’d had some experience with that kind of logistics because we’d done a couple of bigger commercials.
As long as you got the right people, then you’re pretty good. Sometimes it’s difficult because if you haven’t done it before, you don’t know who the right people are. You know, you have people saying they can do it. But we had it by that time in 2016, we were like five, five or six years into our, you know, entity as Brave Man. So we had a really good infrastructure in South Florida.
was just reaching out to everyone we knew. And we had never done a real line item budget for something that big. So that was a big help was to get a line producer to help us out. And at the time we thought that was a massive expense. But.
I’m glad we did it that one time so we could see where everything went, you know. And I was like, yeah, we’ll shoot for five weeks and it’ll be fine. And then you look at the line item, bro, just like, no, you won’t. So.
Dario (02:36)
Heh heh.
Kyrill (02:36)
Yeah, I was going to say how you went about like fund, how did you go about funding the feature and then producing that altogether?
Damian (02:42)
So the great thing was that the executive producer and the co-writer, it was his story, it was a guy called Mark Ford, he’s now a good friend of mine, I just saw Mark last night and he made a lot of money and this was actually his third feature film, his wife told me he could make one more feature film.
Dario (03:07)
I wish I had that kind of money.
Damian (03:08)
Yeah, right, yeah. By his own admission, the first two, I think the first one when he showed it to his kids, his kids said, never show this to anyone ever. And then I enjoyed the second one and he’s a great guy and he had the money, he’s like, look, I’m just gonna put the money up and if we make the money back, great, if we don’t.
Kyrill (03:20)
Hahaha!
Damian (03:32)
I’ll live but my wife won’t let me do it. Fourth one. So… So that was Greypoo- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dario (03:37)
What a fantastic hobby. Just have so much money in your pocket, you’re like, I’m just gonna make a feature just for myself.
Kyrill (03:39)
Hehehehe
Damian (03:43)
Yeah, so you know, and I really, like I say, Mark’s a good friend of mine. We’ve become much closer friends over the years. He’s a great guy. So that was awesome. And actually, funny enough, the original budget was 350k. And when Mark came on to set on the first day, he’s like, oh shit.
He’s like, okay, this is how you… No, he was just like, he was blown away by the level of professionalism. I think he was expecting like two film students and three rolls of duct tape. So he… Yeah, well, you know, so anyway, so we ended up… He saw the potential, so he ended up putting another 150. So most of that went into post, or a lot of that went into post.
Dario (04:14)
Not enough.
For 350,000?
Kyrill (04:27)
Yeah.
Damian (04:43)
So we had a good run with that and I’ll be eternally grateful for Mark for giving us that opportunity. And what was great about that was then, it took a long time to get everything, it took us like, so that was 2016, it took us like four years to edit it, you know, because we begged borrowing stealing and…
Our editor is now a good friend of mine. That was awesome. We got put in touch with a woman called Julie Monroe. She’s a very…
but she’s Oliver Stone’s editor. So Julie Monroe was a friend of Colin’s, just socially, not through the industry. And Colin said, hey, do you have any editors that you would recommend that wanna cut the teeth on a feature? And she’s like, yeah, you should call this guy Rich Molina. So I call this guy Rich Molina. I’m like, hey, I’m Damien Fitzsimmons, we’re doing this movie. He’s like, yeah, send me the rushes I sent him the rushes. She’s like, yeah, there’s a movie here, I’ll help you do that. He’s like, but I’m in Calgary right now. And I’m like, oh cool, what are you doing? He’s like, yeah, I’m working on this movie
Dario (05:27)
Wow.
Damian (05:54)
Revenant. I was like what? Yeah, I was like what? So he, Rich Molina was the first assistant editor on the Revenant and, but this is how you do stuff like that, you know, so you, people like Rich want that top line credit.
Dario (05:56)
Ha ha!
Kyrill (05:56)
What?
Damian (06:17)
So we had a lot of people that wanted to take that next level, that were willing to do it for less money. And what an experience, man. It was just fabulous. And then it really helped us because after the movie came out, we were approached by an agency that wanted to do a TV show.
Set in st. Pete, Florida and they wanted to do sort of eight twelve to fifteen minute short films but put together it was a feature film and You know there are there’s some good production companies down here, but not a lot of them do long form and we just You know so we did two TV shows and in 21 and 22 and called life’s rewards and they’re on
Amazon Prime and that was awesome. So that, you know, from starting off in my bedroom, you’re just, you know, doing back flips because someone wants to pay me $2,000. We’ve come a long way, you know.
Kyrill (07:26)
Oh, a hundred percent. And like, like now kind of like diving into more of the long form narrative content, uh, like I can imagine what that, what that must feel like with that feature film, what was probably one or two big learning experiences that you took away from that, that have, that have helped you kind of progress forward with, uh, future projects after.
Damian (07:49)
Yeah, that’s a great question. So one thing I learned was, you know, when the crew was that big and you’ve got that many personalities, you wanna be friendly and you wanna be nice, but you don’t have to be everyone’s friend. You know, I kinda…
just that’s my go-to is to just I want everyone to be happy you know but like I would bump heads with some of the departments because I had a very clear vision of what I wanted and they had a very clear vision of what they wanted but it’s like it’s my film not your film so there’s a couple of times where I’m like just do it this way you know and deal with that you know we’re probably not gonna get drinks
ever. Which makes it, and that was a minor thing, but I think, you know, I just heard someone talking about parenting and saying how…
you’re not there to be your kid’s friend, you’re there to be their parent, and there are going to be things that you do as a parent that your kid isn’t gonna like. That’s just the way it is. So I don’t wanna make that sound like it’s a huge thing. I mean, I think it’s really important when you’re the director or at any stage really, but when you’re working with a team, you have to be nice, you have to be understanding, you have to listen, you have to be patient.
So yeah, that was the learning curve for me.
Dario (09:23)
Was that, did that, did that issue happen with like some of the like higher up personnel in the production? So like, or was it like?
Damian (09:31)
No, no, I’m not gonna throw anyone on the bus, but there was a couple of them. So not with Colin, not with Mark, but like some of the departments. They had an idea of what it should look like, and I’m like that’s not what I wanted to look like. And then, you know, so whatever, it was fine. So I think, again, I don’t want to be negative. I think some of the…
Dario (09:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kyrill (09:58)
No, no.
Damian (10:01)
But you got it. Some of the other lessons.
Kyrill (10:01)
Yeah, you’re not you’re not you’re not being negative about it. You’re you’re basically saying that like you have a very clear vision about a certain project and you want to make sure you achieve it. And sometimes you just have to like there’s no point in like discussing ideas if it’s not in line with kind of what you’re doing. You’re not you’re not saying that you’re being rude. You’re just trying to get the project moving along.
Damian (10:10)
Yeah.
I think actually, so maybe a better way of saying that is, and what I learned from that and what I’m still, I think the biggest lesson I learn every time I do something is trust your gut, trust your instinct. Go with your instinct. Because at the end of the day, you know…
It’s gonna work most of the time, you know, you trust your instinct, you know something’s a little off. There’s a million things going on. If you just trust your instinct…
Kyrill (10:49)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (10:56)
then I think you get a better product. So I’ve learned that, I’ve learned to listen. So again, so that bumping heads with like the other creatives because they have a vision and I have a vision, well, I have to trust my instinct, you know? So trust my instinct and then learning to breathe, man, learning to just like, you know, it gets really, it gets completely
frantic so now there’s 35 40 people you got you know heads from each department and they all want your attention and they all want to know
What colour t-shirt is that? What colour socks? You know, how many extras? But go, go. And certainly when I did the first one, it would have, occasionally, you just get really overwhelmed and I’d like lose the ability to speak. I would just be like, be trying to say too many things at the same time. You just gotta learn to like, okay.
Kyrill (11:59)
Hehehe
Damian (12:05)
Slow down. Sup.
Kyrill (12:05)
with what did you learn on like the pre-production side of things specifically for the project? Because a lot of that sounds like part of it is from pre-production, but also things that might happen on set and like with so many teams, so many decisions that you have to make. How did you learn to streamline or make the pre-production process easier for you moving forward with longer form content?
Damian (12:31)
Well, it’s funny you should ask that because again, we had a line producer, just do us a quick line item budget so we could figure this out.
And he said, based on your budget, you can do, I think it was like we had seven weeks of pre-pro. We were gonna film for 20, I think we had 18 days actual filming and then two days with skeleton crews, so 20 days. So based on that, we knew we could stretch it to about seven weeks of pre-pro. But Ian and I also knew that wasn’t enough, so we did an extra three weeks where we didn’t get paid at the very, very beginning. So.
you know, which you can’t keep doing, but it was our first feature film, and we’re glad we did that. But I think, and I’m sure you guys appreciate this, even on a corporate video, you know.
Most of it’s about planning, most of it’s logistics. Yeah, most of it’s logistics. If you’ve figured out your logistics beforehand, it allows you to be, and figured out your creative beforehand, then when you get on set, it actually allows you to be more creative, you know? And especially when you’re doing stuff when the budget’s tight, if you know what you’re gonna do going into it,
It’s just so much easier when there’s a change, for whatever reason, you just, you know, it’s much easier to adapt when you’ve, when you’ve planned it. So, you know, sort of to paraphrase, well, is it Willy Wonka said genius is nine or was it Willy Wonka or is it fucking someone, I don’t know. 99% inspiration.
Kyrill (14:03)
Well, you know how to adapt at that point. Yeah.
Ha!
Dario (14:21)
Such a random person to quote, Willy Wonka.
Kyrill (14:23)
I know Willy Wonka. I love it. That’s a first on this podcast
Damian (14:24)
Whoa.
Willie Wonka said, which is Roald Dahl, genius is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. But I think it might have actually been, Gene Wilder says that as Willie Wonka in the Charlie and Chuckle Factory, I think it might be Thomas Edison that said it first. So genius is 90, yeah, 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. So filmmaking is sort of 99%,
Dario (14:44)
I think it’s Thomas Edison. Yeah.
Kyrill (14:46)
Maybe, yeah.
Damian (14:54)
logistics and 1% creativity.
Kyrill (14:58)
Well, one of our mantras is that the shoot, the production and the shooting should be the easiest part of the entire process because of all the prep work that we have done going into that project because like we were discussing, if something unexpected does happen on the day of, which happens no matter what, whether it’s something small or something big, because you’ve done the necessary creative and prep work, you know how to adapt. We can all adapt to any situation, but knowing…
Damian (15:07)
exactly.
Kyrill (15:25)
how to adapt for that specific project is what will make you stand out as a business and stand out with your clients going forward.
Damian (15:36)
Yeah, so yeah, you know, just plan, and be aware of your environment. I’m in South Florida in the summertime, in the summertime in particular, it’s quite, it’s sunny and bright and beautiful in the morning, it rains in the afternoon, and then it clears up around dusk. So
we’re still to this day, in the summer we plan our shoots around knowing that it’s going to rain in the afternoon. Plus the light’s better in the morning anyway, so we’ll shoot all our next years in the morning. Plan to shoot interiors when it’s raining in the afternoon. There’s one scene in the movie…
Kyrill (16:11)
Yeah
Damian (16:23)
where I was like, I wanted a scene where the guys were in the rain, but you know, we didn’t have money for a rain machine, but I knew it was going to rain one afternoon, so we sort of had this one plan and that we were all on standby, and as soon as it rained, we’d stop whatever we were doing, and we’d shoot this other scene, and we did that, we ended up getting that scene, you know, the guys towards the end, they kind of… Okay, yeah, yeah.
Kyrill (16:33)
Hehehe
Nice.
Oh no, don’t spoil. He’s about to spoil the whole movie for us.
Dario (16:51)
He’s gonna spoil the ending.
Damian (16:53)
Yeah, yeah. But you know, what was super cool about that was then when we did the two TV shows, when stuff came up, I took all of that experience. And we had one issue in the second series of the TV show, Life’s Rewards. We’re about to shoot a motorcycle scene. And we had, you know, we booked the talent and…
we had the doubles to ride the motorbikes and the doubles turned up, because the actors don’t ride motorbikes, you know? So the doubles turned up and there had been a miscommunication and both of the doubles were like, oh, I thought I was riding on the back of the motorbike. I don’t know how to ride a motorbike. So, so, well, I,
Kyrill (17:32)
Hehehe
How did you adapt that?
Damian (17:51)
Don’t know what I would have done in the feature film. Exactly, but I just knew that I was just like, I said that everyone stop, let me grab a coffee, let me sit down, just let me think about it. So, it’s like, just give me 10 minutes. So I just sat down.
And then just started playing all the scenarios around in my head. So the guy that’s supposed to riding it is an African American and really talented actor called Jared Wofford. So Jared doesn’t ride a motorbike, you know. And then the woman that was going to be no, he was riding pillion, that was kind of the joke, that his friend is this sort of 70 year old woman who’s kind of a rebel.
riding the motorbike and Jared’s supposed to be on the back. And you know, we only, it was, we figured it out. So the guy that delivered the motorbike, his name is Aaron and he’s like this, he looks nothing like the old woman, but we’re like, you know, and he’s got a big beard. Oh my God, no, well, oh my God, bro. It was just like.
Kyrill (19:02)
Put a wig on him? Just a big buff old lady with wig.
Dario (19:07)
And I’ve always got a beard too. How did you get rid of the beard? You asked him to shave it?
Damian (19:10)
It’s got to be. So well, fortunately. So the old lady was wearing a full face visor. And but Jared was wearing like it was sort of a.
Kyrill (19:11)
Shoot from the back.
Damian (19:34)
I keep tipping my hat to Easy Rider and that’s that Stars and Stripes helmet, but so it’s an open face and Jarrod’s black, you know what I mean? So it’s like whoever sits on the back, and it turned out that one of our other extras was like had a motorbike license, was comfortable to be on the back of the bike and we made sure that, you know.
Kyrill (19:39)
Hehehe
Damian (20:03)
insurance, everything else is covered before you throw anyone on a motorbike. Aaron, who delivered the motorbike to us was obviously, you know, so we had Aaron. And what we did is how did we it was just it was just crazy. So we borrowed someone else’s leather jacket to throw on Aaron. So it looked like the leather jacket from the old lady. He’s now got a full visor. We just shot everything wide or from behind. And then.
Kyrill (20:32)
Yep, low angle.
Damian (20:34)
and then low angle and then we use an African American double so that we could, you know, from the wide he’s got an open face visor so you see that the guy is African American, you know. And then, but like just like figuring out like shoes and it was, it was, there were, there was probably about 10 variables and I just knew if I sat down and had quiet for 10 minutes I would
it out and I figured it out you know but it was that yeah so when we when we do when we do the larger projects when you’re you know you’re gonna
Dario (21:06)
I hope you put that in the commentary.
Kyrill (21:10)
in the bonus DVD disc. Hehe
Dario (21:12)
Hehehehehehe
Damian (21:22)
You guys know, we don’t think anything of shooting 14 hours a day, or at least working 14 hours a day. We really, we have really tried not to shoot longer than 12 hours. I just don’t think it works, you know? But we’re all used to very long days. But when you do long form, it’s, you know, it’s a cumulative. You’re doing that for weeks and weeks and weeks on end.
Kyrill (21:35)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (21:46)
So I always have somewhere written on a post-it note on my laptop or on a wall somewhere that says remember to breathe. You know, just remember to just every once in a while. Okay, we got this.
Dario (21:54)
Hmm.
Kyrill (22:01)
I can’t imagine that that’s wild. Like just doing, I mean, like Dario and I have had numerous shoot days in a row, but usually there have been separate projects, maybe one day. No, I think that was the longest, I think the longest we did was maybe like nine days in a row, 10 days in a row. Yeah, cause it was like, it was corporate based. Oh wait, no, no. Well.
Dario (22:12)
Not five weeks, not five weeks in a row.
Damian (22:15)
Yeah.
Dario (22:20)
9 days.
Damian (22:21)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm.
Kyrill (22:27)
in a row, but we strategically chose the weekends off so we can have a break. But doing like we did Monday to Friday, Monday to Friday for two and a half weeks. So it was like about 10, 11. It was actually 13 shoot days, practically one after the other. Otherwise, if we didn’t have those weekends, I think we would have lost our minds after that.
Damian (22:33)
Oh yeah.
Yeah, I know, I know, I totally feel that and you know…
Yeah, we were, we, uh…
We…
always at least had, I don’t know, when we did the TV show, actually I think we worked longer hours on the TV show than the movie, and it was for longer, but you know, you make sure to have at least one day off every seven days, or we were doing like one and a half days off every, you know, so we’d shoot for five days, and generally we’d spend Saturday.
we do a half day pre-pro for the next week. We’d already done most of our pre-pro. And then on Sunday, we would have a production meeting at like six o’clock. So the whole of, most of Saturday afternoon, Sunday, try and take off, recharge.
Kyrill (23:28)
Right.
Dario (23:41)
How did you handle the fact that you were going to be away for five weeks? And how are we going to, how did you handle the fact that, you know, you had, I’m assuming you had other corporate clients as well. Right. So how are you juggling both the movie and your regular corporate load?
Kyrill (23:41)
Yeah.
Damian (23:53)
Thanks for watching!
Kyrill (23:55)
See ya. He’s like, see ya guys.
Damian (23:57)
So.
You know, it’s a really good question for any business, especially for what we do, you know?
If you have the opportunity to do something creative, maybe the budget isn’t quite as big, but it feeds your passion.
you know, you might want to take that, but when that’s over, you better have stuff in the pipeline. So, Ian, my head of production, on the movie, he lived off Red Bull, you know.
Kyrill (24:35)
How many a day?
Damian (24:37)
uh dude I would you know turn up at fuck I’d turn up you know 7am 6.30am on satanians already on his like second monster you know
Dario (24:38)
the case.
Kyrill (24:47)
How much of the project’s budget went to his Red Bull addiction? 5 grand.
Dario (24:51)
hahahaha
Damian (24:53)
Yeah, a lot, a lot. So we’re always looking at how we manage that. And actually, this is a really, this is a good cautionary tale for you guys. So the movie, we kind of, we managed to just kind of navigate that.
We had a couple of big corporate clients. We were still doing corporate work the whole time through the movie. And Ian Godloven was finishing up and then doing two hours working with our offshore teams to make sure that we had stuff going on. When we did the two TV shows,
we didn’t do as good a job. And so it’s a cautionary tale here. We finished the last TV show in, everything sent off, I think that would be June, 2022. And it was awesome. We’d done, we’d done,
So COVID was 2020. We did just all corporate, we do 2D animations. So we had an amazing year in 2020 because we had a lot of clients that the only thing that they could do was animation. So we just like rolling it out. So we had, bizarrely had this amazing year in 2020. The end of 2020, we got the TV show. We went straight into the TV show and creatively, it was, you know, it’s just, just what…
what I got into the business for, so to kind of do this stuff. Then we finished that, we had a bunch of corporate clients, we did that for a couple of weeks and then a couple of months and then we went straight into pre-production on the next TV show. So you got all this money coming in, you’re really busy, you’re being super creative and…
I made the mistake of thinking that, there’s this concept of the flywheel. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with the concept of flywheel. Okay, well a flywheel, you know what a flywheel is? A flywheel is, you spin a flywheel and at a certain stage it has so much momentum.
Dario (27:04)
have.
Damian (27:17)
that it pretty much, so this heavy, imagine this heavy wheel that’s on an axle and you try to spin it and it’s kind of slow because it’s heavy, but the faster it gets, the easier it is to spin, yeah? And so at some stage, it just needs the lightest of touches and the flywheel spins. So business is, you can think of your business on one level as this flywheel.
Kyrill (27:20)
Keep scoring.
Right.
Mm-hmm.
Damian (27:44)
this aspect is your sales, your marketing, your networking, keeping an eye on cash flow. All of these things keep this sort of allegorical flywheel running. So, but it’s not a real flywheel, you know what I mean? So, in the second season of the TV show,
Kyrill (28:03)
Yeah
Damian (28:11)
We’ve got all this money coming in. We’re working really hard. So it feels like the flywheel is spinning and actually it wasn’t. The flywheel was slowing down. And we finished up in summer of 2022. And Ian and I finally had, we’re like, oh, okay, cool, we take a little, took a couple of days off and it’s like, okay, cool. Let’s see what’s going on. Let’s look at our pipeline. And there was nothing in the pipeline.
Dario (28:19)
I see.
Damian (28:39)
Like I mean nothing, like we had nothing in the pipeline. And one of our big corporate clients, this is another thing that happens often, one of our biggest corporate clients, like literally, that was May, and in June they laid off 2,000 people. And they’re a multinational company, they laid off 2,000 people and took all outside content creation and brought it inside. So they were 25% of our revenue. We lost them overnight.
Dario (28:40)
Hmm.
Kyrill (29:01)
Well… Ahem!
Dario (29:10)
That’s rough.
Kyrill (29:10)
Yikes.
Damian (29:11)
There’s nothing in the pipeline. And even if there was anything in the pipeline, you know.
I don’t know what it is for you guys, but if we’ve been talking to a client, they’re interested in doing a corporate video, we might need to follow up with them. We consider that pipeline, you know? So they might be in the pipeline for two or three months before they wanna proposal offers, you know? They get in touch, hey, we want a job, but we don’t need it till November, whatever. So it could be two or three months before that job becomes a real job, you know? So, and…
Kyrill (29:35)
Yeah
Right.
Damian (29:46)
So if your pipeline is empty, then you’ve basically got no work, in our case, you’ve got no work for the next two or three months. So, massive lesson there.
Kyrill (29:57)
That actually brings me to a question where, because you were doing all of these long form pieces of content, you were basically unavailable for such a long period of time. Did your pipeline diminish because maybe some of your current clients needed work during that time, but you had to turn them away? And because of that, they went somewhere else and maybe they just kind of went that way. Did you find that you lost some clients for that?
Damian (30:05)
Yeah.
yeah so the so more so
More so, I think I had stopped networking, right? We had COVID, so I’m just naturally sociable, gregarious, love meeting my clients, love catching up with them, grabbing a coffee, see what they’re up to. And I just used to do that organically, I used to do it because I like my clients that I work for and you don’t wanna see what’s going on.
But then, but you know, COVID, that didn’t happen. I go into these TV shows and I just stopped doing it, but I had never thought that what I was doing was part of my business, you know? And it was in May 22 or June 2022, we sort of stepped back and said, okay, why is pipeline empty? You know, what is it? And it was…
Pipeline was empty because I hadn’t been doing my networking. So I hadn’t been reaching out to past clients. So past clients seeing that we’re doing these TV shows don’t know that we still do commercials in corporate. We had got to a point where I think, and we talked about it, we knew we were at the point where we needed
strategic sales and marketing. You know, we’d grown to a point where we’d grown organically and at some stage you have to kind of pivot but we’d been so busy we just kind of like ignored sort of sales and marketing because you know, we’re on this TV show, it’s great, we’ve got all this money coming in, you know, we’ve got a couple of corporate clients and that just stuff just keeps coming in. So you know,
And yeah, that stuff is super important. And we talk about it a lot. And anyway, we’re doing great. But it took, I would say the flywheel still isn’t where it should be, but it’s taking a lot less effort to keep that flywheel going. But I went from just like sort of organically networking to deliberately networking and.
and there’s a process.
I have a goal to reach out to X number of people every week, make sure that I am meeting in person at least two to three people a week. And also change my strategy. I no longer go and have a coffee with a client thinking I’m gonna get a job. I’m more like, hey, is there anything I can do for you? What’s going on? How’s it going? And I think it’s a much…
healthier way to go about stuff so networking I
Kyrill (33:21)
Well, you’re organic. You’re organic when you network like that because you’re not going in there searching for work from a me perspective. You’re there to kind of like, you’re paying attention to your clients. You’re seeing how they’re doing, what you can potentially do to help them. Doesn’t necessarily have to be, like I always try to tell my clients as well, like, let me know if there’s something I can do to help you. I’m actually curious as to how that networking has yielded because you’re clearly…
Damian (33:30)
Yeah.
Exactly.
Kyrill (33:50)
putting a lot of time and effort to meet with people, I’m assuming in person, right?
Damian (33:55)
So, so I, but to go back a second, it’s, it’s organic in it’s that’s an organic way to generate sales. That’s organic. But it’s not organic in that it’s not like, oh, hey, maybe I’ll grab a, no, I have a process, you know, I’m, I…
Kyrill (34:07)
Right.
Okay.
Damian (34:16)
have a set number of people I’m gonna reach out to every week out of the set number of people that I reach out to in an email or a text, I’m gonna have a coffee or maybe dinner with one or two people a week. That’s a process, that’s not organic, that’s in my calendar. So in that respect, it’s not organic. And…
Kyrill (34:30)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (34:44)
Now I forgot the second part of your question.
Kyrill (34:46)
Um, was I asking, it was basically like how, how is that yielded, um, in terms of, uh, results like going forward, because you’re putting a lot of time and effort to do that, right? Versus inbound.
Damian (34:55)
So, but you’ve got, yeah, so, oh, yeah, okay. So, and I mean, and again, I think 2023, the end of 2022, 2023 was tough for a lot of us. Although, I mean, most of the work that we do is corporate or it’s like lower end commercials. So, the actors strike.
isn’t physically affecting our shoots but it has such a knock-on effect in the writer’s strike it had such a knock-on effect so I think everyone had so okay so if
Dario (35:30)
How so?
Damian (35:35)
if the people that would regularly do larger commercials with SAG actors or larger TV shows with WGA writers are not doing that work anymore. These are huge crews, 50, 60 people, makeup artists.
Kyrill (35:48)
Ahem.
Damian (35:59)
Gaffer’s electricians, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So these people, you know, were out of work for a whole year. So if you’re a gaffer, you probably do a little shooting on the side. So maybe now you’re shooting on the sides. And so now suddenly there’s way more people out there going after the same kind of work, you know. So, and I think, you know, at the end of 2022 as well,
Dario (36:19)
Yeah.
Damian (36:29)
marketing budgets got much smaller with the threat, the threat of a recession and all of this stuff and sort of affects the bottom line. So in the past, when we first started, we were just, we’re very happy-go-lucky, we’re still happy-go-lucky, but work would come to us. The other thing that happens, and this happened,
I started my career as a grip in New York City, like in the 90s when we were still shooting film.
So when I was a freelance grip, you know, and you would get a call on a Tuesday night for a music video on a Wednesday morning. I’m in, bro. See you Wednesday morning. Because you took that job on Wednesday morning, the DP’s like, hey, I got a job on Friday. You free? Yeah, I’m free. So a lot of times the job you’re on can lead to the next job. So when we were doing the long form, we’re not having the same kind of opportunity.
You know like we just shot a commercial yesterday We shot a commercial yesterday the client brought a friend of theirs and like oh you do video and we’re like yeah, and like Come on. I want you guys to come on in come and meet so We’ll see you know that there’s an opportunity those kind of opportunities I think tend to happen more when you’re doing
Dario (37:34)
Oh, I see. Yeah.
Kyrill (37:34)
Right.
Damian (37:59)
smaller jobs one after the other.
Kyrill (38:02)
Yeah, because you wrap them up faster than doing these longer projects when you’re working on one long project, whether it’s corporate or narrative, you’re dealing with the one, the one client or the or the same set of people for a longer period of time, if you dip your toes into five different projects, you’re dipping your toes into five different networks, five different potential leads who have five different networks of their own, of people that could potentially need work and
Dario (38:07)
Yeah.
Damian (38:18)
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Kyrill (38:34)
like word of mouth and reference outreach is always gonna be a big factor in our industry because like there is obviously inbound and leads and there’s also ways to kind of go and generate and meet with other people, but that’s the starting point, right? You wanna build a relationship with someone, you wanna be recommended because when you get recommended to someone that is the biggest.
sign off as to why someone should hire you. You know, there’s already, it’s like a vetting process. It’s like when you’re trying to find new crew, you go to the people that you know, and say, Hey, do you know another editor? Do you know another shooter? And most of our most trustworthy crew have come from recommendations from other people that we have worked with not from randoms. It’s really hard to find random people out of nowhere that could get recommended. And it’s, it’s usually like
Damian (39:08)
Do you know exactly? Yeah.
Kyrill (39:27)
Recommendations are always like a little bit of a, it’s like, okay, we’re good. I can trust this person. You know, they’ve already vouched for them.
Damian (39:33)
Yeah, so exactly. And it just doesn’t work for crew, it works for clients in new jobs as well. You know, if you do a great job, again, we’ve worked, we did, these are some television spots we’re doing for company.
Kyrill (39:41)
Yeah, exactly.
Damian (39:48)
called Zendoo, we did their first spots, we had a great time with them, they really liked what we did, you know, we busted our asses for them. So we just did their second spots, and again, now they brought a friend of theirs who has a completely different company, and you know, you can’t get a better recommendation than that, you know? And so…
And that’s why I think that networking is so important. Like you just… No, no, that’s fine, that’s fine.
Dario (40:20)
What are you doing on the… Oh, sorry, go ahead.
I was wondering, because you mentioned the networking aspect, and you previously also mentioned that you wanted to focus more on marketing. Are you doing anything on the marketing end?
Damian (40:31)
Yeah, yeah we are, we are and I honestly we’re still trying to figure that out but I’ll run you through that. You know I was listening to one of you guys, one of your shows and you were talking about
how our industry is unique, yeah? I don’t think our industry is unique. I used to think our industry was unique. So I’m gonna, a little aside if you guys don’t mind. So I wanna say it was just before the movie, no, it was after we did the movie and we were doing really good, you know? So we’ve been in business for about eight years. I’m…
Dario (40:59)
Go ahead, go ahead.
Damian (41:18)
and this is all shit I learned afterwards I didn’t know this. So Ian, my head of production, very good friend of mine, does our finances and he does the logistics, you know, I’m the creative one, Ian does logistics. But anyway, so Ian Adora’s been our business guy but it’s like
like seven years into running a business that I was a business owner and I’d never thought of myself as a business owner before. And I’ve heard you guys talking about this stuff, you know. And a friend of mine recommended the entrepreneurial organization, it’s called EO. And…
They have an accelerator program for any small business that is doing a quarter of a million or more a year. You can be part of their accelerator program and it’s sort of a, it’s mostly an educational resource and they help you to scale up. So I joined it seven years ago and it’s one of the best things I ever did. And then I realized that, and that was one of the first things they told me, it’s like, businesses are all the same.
saying you’re unique, you’re not unique, you know, you have a product or a service, yeah, you know.
Dario (42:30)
Yeah.
Kyrill (42:32)
Yep.
Damian (42:37)
You need to sell the product or service, you need to manage your cash, and you need to manage your people. So that was an eye-opener for me. And it’s just like, that was a real eye-opener for me. And then it made me, that these guys make you read business books. I’ve never read a business book in my life. And if you guys read Michael Gerber’s, The E-Myth.
Dario (43:01)
Yeah.
Damian (43:02)
Yeah, so that basically the E-Myth is, you know, you’re a filmmaker, you wanna be a filmmaker, so you start a business to be a filmmaker, but as soon as you start a business, you’re no longer a filmmaker, you are a business owner who does films, you know. So, okay, so all that to say, so you’re asking about sales and marketing, you know, and as I joined this organization and watched other entrepreneurs see how they go about it, I more and more understood
Dario (43:14)
business owner.
Kyrill (43:16)
Yeah.
Damian (43:32)
the importance of… once you’ve started a business it’s… your product is already pretty good or you wouldn’t have started the business in the first place you know so once… and I spent the first five years of our business just making the product better and better and better and better and better you know I didn’t have to do that, it was already good you know so…
And again, we didn’t have to do sales and marketing because everything came organically, but now as we want to scale, as we want to grow, we understand the importance of sales and marketing. So that’s in all aspects. So doing this with you guys is part of that, is part of our bigger…
is part of the bigger picture, so the umbrella picture. It’s like, get your name out there, like-minded individuals, you know.
I love what you guys are doing that like now if someone calls you and they need a crew in Boston, you’ve got the guys in Boston, do you know what I mean? So in the same way that if I had something in Toronto, probably first guys I’m gonna call are you guys, do you know what I mean? Yeah, for sure. And you know.
Kyrill (44:37)
Yeah.
Dario (44:44)
Ha ha.
Damian (44:50)
And again, but I’d also say, you know, if you’ve got something down here, I don’t need to be the guy that does it, but like you now know me, and if you need resources, I will give you the resources, you know, and just say, well, reach out to these people, you know? And…
Kyrill (44:58)
Yeah.
Dario (45:05)
Yeah, and we’re inviting like all sorts of different types of video production companies that come on as well. Like you focus a lot like on much bigger stuff, right? So for someone that’s working on like a commercial, for example, or like higher level, higher budget stuff, like you would probably be like the yeah, you’d be like the perfect guy for that. So that’s why we’re trying to find like multiple different types in each major city, just as there is variety.
Kyrill (45:10)
Yeah.
narrative.
Damian (45:22)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kyrill (45:26)
variety.
Damian (45:27)
Yeah, I like that. Yeah, so anyway, strategy is big. So we, as an outfit, my core team, there are four of us, is our core team. We expand and contract depending on what the job. We have a couple of offshore animation teams. We have a whole slew of people that we work with on shoots. And we have about…
Dario (45:47)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (45:56)
four or five part-time editors depending when you know what’s going on. The core team is four of us and we have a whole rhythm so we meet every day at 12 30. We went remote after the pandemic and it’s still working for us so we’re staying on. We meet every day at 12 30 for a 15 minute huddle.
We talk about what our North Star is. Every day we say our North Star is. So I’m gonna drop a F-bomb. So well, we have one North Star. So that’s our, sometimes they call it a b-hag, your big hairy audacious goal. Yeah, it’s like, fucking shoot for the moon, bro. You know what I mean? So our North Star, every day we start our huddle with, our North Star is to win a fucking palm-dough, right? And we drop the F-bomb.
Dario (46:26)
Give us an example of that. Like, what do you mean by?
Kyrill (46:27)
Yeah.
Dario (46:35)
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Kyrill (46:36)
Yeah.
Dario (46:47)
Haha, nice, so good.
Kyrill (46:49)
Nice.
Damian (46:50)
critically and commercially successful filmmakers. So that’s almost all. We start there and then there’s four of us and it takes 10, 15 minutes. We just catch up, make sure we’re okay and then we all go do our different ways. Friday mornings at 11, we meet for an hour and a half. It’s called an L10, it’s a level 10 meeting. So it’s called an L10 because at the end of the meeting you rate it from zero to 10. And once you get dialed in, you should be scoring eight.
Dario (47:15)
Okay, interesting.
Kyrill (47:15)
Ah, okay.
Damian (47:19)
be going to at least need.
And there’s a specific agenda. So we got into that meeting, we talk about good news, you know, personally, and then we talk about good news in business, and then if our clients have said anything nice about us, or not nice about us, you know, we’ll talk about that. Then we’ll look at our issue list, you know, what’s going on, so big issues at the moment is, you know, how do we, how do I keep my network going when I’m on a seven day shoot?
you know, how do we do sales and marketing. So we look at our issue list, we’ll pick two issues, and we spend about an hour seeing if we can identify it. It’s called IDS, identify, discuss, and solve, you know.
Kyrill (48:05)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (48:06)
So, and that’s super helpful. And then once a quarter we meet for a full day and we plan out the next 90 days. So, right now we’ve been planning out, like how do we have a sales and marketing strategy? So, long way to answer your question. So, we understand that in a broader sense, visibility is very important.
out to us we were like we see this as an opportunity you know and I listened to the podcast I like the podcast I thought I want to be on it anyway I think it’s cool I like what you guys are doing you know and that’s enough for me you know but it’s also this has now increased my visibility slightly you know so we look at networking events you know
And again, it’s a process, so I’m tasked, and it’s not a lot, I’m tasked with hitting four networking events a month. A month, no, a quarter, that’s fucking easy. So, I’m going to a networking event on Friday. Someone invited me, it’ll be cool.
But I can also say, yes, that’s one of my networking events. I’ll have a good time. Again, I’m no longer in there going, I’ll get a good old fucking business cards. Fuck that, just go and have a good time. Enjoy it, say hi to some people. Doesn’t matter. So, you know, podcasts, networking events. Then we look at our newsletter. We do a newsletter at least once a quarter. We do, we’re looking at…
Kyrill (49:20)
Nice.
Yeah.
Damian (49:46)
kicking off our blog posts again, all of this stuff is sort of organic sort of marketing. This is getting, this is our brand, you know, this is brave man. And then we’ve now looking at different sales funnels. So we never did Google ads, you know, and I have a good friend of mine who has a video production company in town. He shoots mostly photography, but
Kyrill (49:52)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (50:15)
So a guy called Matt Steggis from 4th Avenue photography, great guy. And he’s been busting my balls for like six years like, dude, you need to do fucking Google AdWords. I’m like, I’m too busy.
Dario (50:27)
But you guys are ranking, you’re ranking pretty well though. I think I found you on the first page.
Damian (50:31)
Yeah, well, and but that’s been because we’ve, we do that, we work at doing that, you know, we’ve worked much hard.
Dario (50:41)
Yeah, no, but I mean like you don’t need Google ads once you’re like on the first page. That’s like if you’re like
Kyrill (50:41)
Right.
Damian (50:45)
I don’t, I don’t, well, I’ll get back to you on that. You know, ask me about that in 12 months time. Yeah, so we’ve spent, yeah, yeah. Ask me about that in 12 months time. So we’ve spent the last six months. Okay, so, you know, ground zero for us was June 2022. We’re like, oh shit, there’s nothing in the pipeline. We fucked up. They’re not doing another TV show. What are we gonna do? And…
Dario (50:50)
Sure.
Kyrill (50:50)
We will. We will.
Damian (51:15)
So we’ve tried a bunch of stuff. So the first thing we tried, we reached out to an outfit that finds leads and works with you to build out an email cadence. And we did that for six months and it was really expensive. And after six months, we still hadn’t, we’d had interviews, but we hadn’t concert.
we hadn’t converted a single opportunity. It’s just like, well, we can’t do that anymore. You know? And then, so the Google Ads is like a lot cheaper, you know? But we’ve spent six months playing around with Google Ads and we don’t spend a lot of money on that. I mean, it’s a couple of hundred bucks a week. It’s not a lot, but we’re just playing with messaging and…
Dario (51:47)
closed.
Damian (52:14)
We’ve been doing it for six months and literally, I think for the first three months, it’s just like, what words work, what words don’t work.
Kyrill (52:24)
I’m right.
Dario (52:26)
Yeah, the keywords.
Damian (52:26)
I feel like, I know now we think our messaging is pretty good and we’re getting people clicking on our website and that we can attribute to Google Ads. I think it’s too early to say if that’s going to work or not. The big one is network.
Kyrill (52:44)
Have you gotten some good leads? Have you gotten some good leads coming through as of yet, or you’re still waiting to kind of see if it’s if it’s there.
Damian (52:51)
We’re still waiting. I think we’re still waiting. And again, the best way I think is networking, or has been for us.
Dario (52:59)
Do you ask your leads how they found you, like the search terms they used? Okay, okay. So you’re finding out if they’re, okay.
Damian (53:03)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, like, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, it’s all a process. Again, back in the day, we didn’t think to ask those kind of questions. Now it’s very important to us to try and collect as much, without your head exploding, to collect as much.
Kyrill (53:26)
You’re thinking like a business owner now. That’s why, and it’s funny, cause you were mentioning how once you become a filmmaker, you start a business to be a filmmaker, but then now you’re a business owner. That’s what most people in our industry wanna create videos, create content, but they start a business to do that. And without them expecting it, they become business owners. And then the whole dynamic shifts. And…
Damian (53:50)
And all of a sudden, yeah, the whole dynamic shifts. And all of a sudden, you know, again, the E-Myth, if you haven’t read it, and you’re starting out a business, it’s an easy read, and especially if you’re about to start a business, you should read that book, you know? And then what happens is, you know, you get busy, and then, you know.
Dario (54:00)
It’s a good book, easy read.
Yeah.
Damian (54:14)
You’re doing the books, you’re accounting, you’re doing the sales, you know, it’s just like, but I wanna be a filmmaker, you know? So.
Kyrill (54:24)
I find it’s like 70, 80% of the work we do now is running the business and 20% is the actual creative and creation work.
Damian (54:32)
Yeah, yeah, same here. Um, you know, Ian and I are always trying to strike that balance.
figure that part out of it because both of us just love making films whether it’s you know I gotta say I mean we’ll do corporate videos you know which like three or four of us and we go do some interviews and shoot some b-roll but like it’s still fun you know we still dig it you know I like
Kyrill (55:01)
Oh yeah.
Damian (55:06)
Obviously, I like when we get to do wacky commercials like we did these ones for the South Florida Fair and We had like the fake superheroes and it was just so much fun and we did some for a HR company and
The gag was that the HR company, that they needed HR because they grew man-eating plants and all of their employees were getting eaten, you know? And they let us run with that, you know? And that was just like, oh my God, it was so much fun. And like, we like, you know, we had people in hazmat suits and we took a bunch of Nerf guns and spray painted them gray and just like, it was just like, that shit was just, that was cool, you know?
Dario (55:37)
Nice.
Kyrill (55:37)
Hahaha
Damian (55:56)
But anyway, June 22, flywheel stop, we’re like, oh crap, what are we gonna do? And we’re just like, you know what, let’s go back to our roots, let’s go back to corporate and commercial. And that’s what we’ve done. And it’s paying off. We’ve worked really hard to get the flywheel back on.
And our goal is still to make commercially and critically successful movies, leveraging my background as a writer. So, sorry, I kicked the table again. I said I wasn’t going to do it, didn’t I? Sorry. So that’s what we’re… We have…
Dario (56:27)
It’s okay.
Kyrill (56:30)
All good.
Damian (56:37)
two scripts right now sort of floating around and we’re kind of committed to the next long form narrative we do is probably going to be something that we wrote and that we raise the money for so that we have the creative control.
Dario (56:53)
Do you have, are you preparing like a strategy for, like avoiding the same type of situation you had where the flywheel would stop if you start doing a narrative project?
Kyrill (56:53)
Right.
Damian (57:00)
Yeah, so yeah.
Kyrill (57:03)
So what I was going to say.
Damian (57:05)
Yes, yeah, we’re actually talking about that right now because we’ve been so busy You know my networking is almost completely fallen off
But at least I’m aware of it. The big step is now I’m aware of it, whereas I wasn’t before. So yeah, we’re very much looking at if we were to do that. And if we were to do it, I’d say in 12 to 18 months, I’m really hoping we’re shooting our second feature film. You know, and I think that’s doable. It’d be a lower budget, I think, because we’ll be raising the money. But we’re just so much more ahead of where we were.
Kyrill (57:18)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (57:44)
I can, we can do it, I know we can do it, you know?
Dario (57:47)
How you raising the money, like what sources are you using?
Damian (57:50)
Well, so there are two strategies that have to go on. One is how do we keep Braveman going while Ian and I are completely occupied on something else? Yeah, so we have an amazing creative producer called Elpida and…
Kyrill (58:00)
Yeah.
Damian (58:08)
You know, Elpida joined us about three, four years ago, three years ago, I think, as a copywriter and is now our creative producer. So…
Alpira is part of our key art team, has really helped us, you know, taken some of the pressure off of Ian and myself. Our creative lead is actually wouldn’t be me, you know, I’m a creative director. Creative lead is a woman called Veronica Delgado, and she’s brilliant. And so, so our core team is starting to mature and, and is,
sort of has a much higher skill set. And so we’re sort of building on that and looking at, you know, looking at how do we expand that team? What is our next, you know, where would our next hire be? That’s hard to say, but we’ve, you know, there’s definitely like three or four people that we know we’d love to bring onto the team to support us.
Kyrill (59:17)
Mm-hmm
Damian (59:20)
We’ll see, I mean that would be ideal. And there’s like two or three people that I would love to bring on today. If we had the money, I’d bring them on today.
when we have the money, they’ll get brought on. That takes the pressure off Ian and myself to, you know. And it’s working, you know. On Tuesday, I have an art show. I started out as a mixed media artist and Brave Man has allowed me to, you know, I write, I’d be lying if I said I wrote every day, because I don’t, but I should write every day. But I write a feature film script every one.
point two years.
Dario (1:00:03)
Wow.
Kyrill (1:00:03)
Nice.
Damian (1:00:05)
because I have brave men and brave men allows me the flexibility and allows me the time to do that and the guys are generously allowing me to spend the next after this I’m editing all day today but tomorrow I’m taking the day off because I got to finish off my art project and then Tuesday I’m having a show because I want to have a show you know because I’m you know my mind’s always
but it’ll be a great networking opportunity because we’re inviting all of our clients. And again, I don’t give a fuck if we get work out of it, but it is a networking event. And so, and I get to have fun. So that’s cool. And so we’re looking to get back to where we were sort of.
Kyrill (1:00:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Damian (1:00:58)
2019, we had a great balance there. I was, pretty much my mornings were for me to work on my creative. And that’s what we’re looking at, seeing hey, can we get back to where we were then? Can Ian and I spend our first two, three hours of the workday looking at how we’re gonna raise money for our next project? You know, look, so right now we’ve…
We’ve got two scripts. I think we’ve decided which script it’s gonna be. So the next, once this show finishes on Tuesday, I will go back in my spare time. I’ll be doing a second draft, third draft. And Ian and I are going to…
book some time off this quarter, in the first 90 days, to just probably do a day, it’s offsite, probably won’t be offsite, but where we switch our phones off and lock ourselves in a room for the day and just what is our strategy. So we’ll figure that out. Figure out what our rough budget is and then how do we go about raising that kind of money.
Kyrill (1:02:05)
Nice.
Damian (1:02:17)
And then there are other things that you can do. So again, I still have a network. It’s not as developed as this is my business, but you know, because I was a writer in the UK, I still have contacts in the UK, you know, when I used to write for the BBC.
So there’s a couple of scripts that are knocking around with old contacts there. And then once the script that I’m on right now is in a good enough shape, we’ll send it out to like screenwriting competitions and screenwriting festivals and see if you can get a little bit of traction there. And then a little further down the line.
we’ll start reaching out to our network here. We have a few people that are producers and we’ll get some feedback and so yeah. Poco a poco.
Kyrill (1:03:21)
Nice. Well, that’s great. It’s a very interesting career you’ve had and like how, how it’s like balancing narrative and creative work with the corporate and the business side and knowing when to give the right amount of attention to one versus the other and just sharing your learning experience from that is definitely a different take that we’ve had on the show, which is great to have you on. I also want to, we also want to be respectful of your time. We know you said like an hour and a half and we’re kind of like around that.
Dario (1:03:22)
Very interesting.
Damian (1:03:37)
Yeah.
Kyrill (1:03:51)
that range. So I guess like one of the last questions that we typically ask is how did you come up with the name brave man? Or why?
Dario (1:04:01)
Hehehe
Damian (1:04:02)
That’s a great question. I’m cool for a little bit longer. I just, I got a three o’clock, so don’t, if it goes a little longer, that’s fine. Okay, I like to tell people that like, The Beatles is a terrible name for a band. It’s awful, The Beatles. It’s like, it’s terrible, fucking awful. I’m from Liverpool, man. I’m just like, it’s like a cheesy pun.
Kyrill (1:04:31)
Yeah
Damian (1:04:31)
But they’re one of the… It’s terrible. It’s spelled The Beatles. The Beatle. It’s terrible. And yet they were one of the greatest bands that ever lived. The Rolling Stones. That’s a great name. You know, that’s an amazing name. So I don’t actually think it matters. Yeah. What your name is, you know, The Beatles are living proof of that. But what happened was…
I had, again, I was, realized that I didn’t want to detail cars at the weekend and that I needed to apply the skills that I had, so I started a company. So I knew I was going to do, I knew I was going to do corporate.
I had done some side work shooting weddings. I mean, a lot of us in this industry, you know, cut our teeth on weddings. And I must have shot 40 plus weddings, and then I edited probably 30 weddings. And you know, 40 hours a week editing a wedding, you know, it’s like, it’s funny, I’ll have friends now go, hey, we’re getting married, you wanna shoot? I’m like, fuck no, nope.
Dario (1:05:46)
Nah. I’m good fam.
Kyrill (1:05:47)
It’s like, nah, I’m good, I’m good.
Damian (1:05:49)
No, I’m good. You’re cool. I occasionally, I’ll say, I’ll shoot some photographs for you, but not on the wedding day, you know, whatever. So, but I looked at, I looked at like, you know, I just, I knew I just needed to make money so that I could support me as an artist. I was thought about shooting weddings to begin with.
Kyrill (1:06:00)
Yeah.
Damian (1:06:14)
but I looked at the most successful wedding photography video guys down here and it’s like.
there’s only so many weddings you can shoot and they’re gonna expect you to be the person that shoots it. So it’s a finite resource I felt. And then plus I just couldn’t stand shooting weddings. It’s just like, still the hardest. Shooting weddings is harder than shooting is, when I was in New York as a grip, I did like worked on a music video, sometimes like 20 hours for a day. And that was still easier than an eight hour wedding.
Kyrill (1:06:31)
Mm-hmm.
Hehehehe
Dario (1:06:50)
Oh come on, it’s not that bad.
Damian (1:06:50)
So, oh, no dude it is, you just can’t, you can never sit down, it’s just like you’re gonna, you know the… Oh, you know I’d say what though, they were a lot of fun, a lot of fun that the um…
Kyrill (1:06:56)
What are they doing Miami weddings? Like what’s the difference there?
Dario (1:06:58)
Yeah, like…
Damian (1:07:05)
Miami weddings would be a lot of fun. Everyone is like an amazing dancer. It’s just like, what? It would be incredible. And everyone’s gorgeous, you know, because it’s Miami. But I don’t, we don’t shoot weddings. But anyway, so I start this company and I’m like, oh. I called it Blue Hour Films originally. We still, still our taxes go through Blue Hour Films. Cause I was like, well, that’s generic. Well, it’s, it’s.
Dario (1:07:31)
You kept it.
Kyrill (1:07:32)
Never changed it, I love it.
Damian (1:07:37)
It’s generic. And then before Ian, me and this one other guy were working together and a guy called Tyler Ford. And Tyler’s like, hey, we’re gonna do this. I wanna feel involved. And I’m like, you know, you pick blue hour films. I want a better name. And I’m like, I don’t, yeah, whatever. So let’s figure out a cool name. So we really liked,
There’s a production company in LA called Hungry Man. Hungry Man Films. Do you know Hungry Man? Yeah, look them up. They do, no, they do like Super Bowl. No, they do Super Bowl commercials. I mean, they do, I think they did, I wanna say Hungry Man did the Miller Lite commercials for the last Super Bowl, but like.
Kyrill (1:08:09)
Heh heh.
Dario (1:08:11)
I don’t, but I’ll see. Maybe.
Kyrill (1:08:13)
Do they do food? They don’t do food
Oh, okay.
Damian (1:08:30)
They’re amazing, they’re next level, you know. So, we’re like, well, that’s cool, something man, you know, what would be man? And we just spent like two weeks just like, you know.
just like throwing out ideas and we thought something with man in it would be cool. Something man, something man, because we liked Hungry Man, that was the only reason was that. And then Brave, Brave Man, well that sounds cool, so we’re like okay let’s do Brave Man. And that was it, you know, it just sounded kind of cool. And then, so it stuck, Tyler actually, Tyler, um…
Kyrill (1:08:50)
Hahaha
Damian (1:09:07)
went off to do other things and Ian joined me. By then we were Brave Man. And it was really just because it sounded like a cool name but it’s funny, I don’t know, do you guys have, what do you call it? Do you have core values? So, yeah, for the business? Yeah?
Dario (1:09:26)
No. No, we should. We’re on the website, do we? Let me double check.
Kyrill (1:09:26)
for the business. You know what, we do. What do you mean, Dario? We have core values. Yeah, we have it on, yeah, we do. He hasn’t been to the about page for a while. Yeah, so you’re saying?
Damian (1:09:39)
Okay. So, you know, as a company we have core values and one of our core values is brave, that we take risks, you know, that we think outside of the box. And so it kind of, we kind of sort of ended up, I think, like…
fitting into our name and as you can see here, like our logo is pink because I didn’t want it to, it’s not, it’s brave man, it felt masculine. So all of our logos are pink to sort of, to appreciate, you know, half of our team are women, you know, it’s just like, sort of feminized it a little bit, you know, but.
Dario (1:10:08)
the pink.
money changes the brave women small-scale
Damian (1:10:21)
Yeah, it’s just longer. It just doesn’t fit on the t-shirt.
Kyrill (1:10:24)
It’s just too- yeah, he has to add like three more letters. He’s gonna be going to his armpit at that point.
Damian (1:10:28)
Exactly, exactly. So that’s where the name came from, but I think you can have a name, keep it short so it fits on a share, exactly. It fits on a share and people can Google you really quickly.
Kyrill (1:10:35)
Nice.
Dario (1:10:40)
on a shirt. Ha.
Kyrill (1:10:46)
We’re in the process of getting some merch for our business now, which is long overdue and…
Damian (1:10:50)
Mugs, I heard mug, you guys just keep talking about mugs. Is that what you’re gonna get? The mugs?
Dario (1:10:54)
Oh my god, the mugs. We have like, I still have like a box, I have a box of mugs that are just sitting.
Kyrill (1:10:56)
Yeah, we need to we need to get mugs
Yeah, we have a box of Laps mugs, but we need to get creatives grab coffee mugs, you know, so we actually, I mean, right now I have, right now I’m just using a different mug, you know, so yeah.
Dario (1:11:04)
Oh my god.
Damian (1:11:08)
OK. Awesome.
Dario (1:11:10)
We’re getting caps. We’re in the process of getting caps right now. Oh my God, they’re crazy expensive. I think it’s going to cost us like six fifty per design. So we’ve got to get two designs. So we’re going to like twelve hundred. Is it? OK, well, it’s a five hundred for twelve hats is a lot of money. OK, that’s all I’m trying to say. Like, it’s a lot of money.
Kyrill (1:11:22)
No, it’s five. It’s 500 per design.
Yeah, yeah, it’s just…
Damian (1:11:26)
Why are you getting… Oh someone…
Kyrill (1:11:29)
Yeah, it is. Yeah.
Damian (1:11:30)
Okay, so my, you know, thinking as a businessman, why are you doing two designs? Why don’t you just do one design and keep the cost down? Are you two different? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dario (1:11:38)
Oh, we have, well, we have the podcast and the, yeah.
Kyrill (1:11:40)
for the two brands.
Yeah, that’s the only reason why. Otherwise we were just gonna standardize.
Dario (1:11:45)
Trust me, it was not out of like, yeah, it wasn’t because we love hats that we wanted to get. I love hats too, but yeah, but not, I wouldn’t spend a thousand dollars on hats unless it was absolutely necessary.
Damian (1:11:50)
Yeah.
Kyrill (1:11:50)
Well, technically I do. I have probably the bigger hat collection.
Damian (1:11:59)
Yeah, we have, this is actually, this is a friend of mine. He has a, you know, I was a cookie company in New York City. Nanny’s dough. So this was his hat, because before we came on, I was saying the only hat I could find was my beater hat with the floor of the sweat stains. I’m like, no, I gotta put on a nice hat, you know. We have cool baseball caps, but they were really expensive. So yeah, I feel your pain.
Kyrill (1:12:00)
Yeah.
Nice.
Hehehehe
Yeah, but you have to, you can’t cheap out on it at the same time because when you cheap out, then you’re not gonna like it. They’re gonna break apart over time. I remember early on, we got lapsed t-shirts years back and that thing faded away so quickly over time that we were just like, okay, we’re gonna avoid shirts for now. But yeah, Dario and I finally settled on a hat brand that we like and we’re like, okay, perfect. Let’s just.
Damian (1:12:52)
Cool.
Kyrill (1:12:54)
Let’s just get our logo printed on it and then call it a day. It’s actually this one right here. 47. That is our favorite. Yeah.
Damian (1:13:00)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know they’re good hearts. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Dario (1:13:05)
We’re going to get shirts too. Like we recently learned that, no, well, what we found out is that they do direct to garment printing. So you can actually find a company and give them your shirts and we’ll just print directly on the shirts. And Kierl, I was reading that it doesn’t wash away as easily as it did with the, uh, that first batch we did. But the cool thing is that at least we can provide like
Kyrill (1:13:07)
Eventually, yeah.
Damian (1:13:18)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Kyrill (1:13:26)
Yeah, yeah.
Dario (1:13:28)
the shirts because I hate the ones that they usually offer. It’s always like Gildan or something low quality. And I don’t like I don’t like I don’t like how it feels. It’s too rough, you know.
Kyrill (1:13:34)
Classic Gildan.
Damian (1:13:38)
Yeah, no, we did a big print run of t-shirts. We did like…
Kyrill (1:13:39)
Yeah.
Damian (1:13:48)
the same logo but like different shirts and then we have a this is the PC one but then all our crew wanted one we have one where it says we’re fucking awesome and we had to put an asterisk over it the U but um
Kyrill (1:13:51)
Mm-hmm.
Dario (1:13:59)
I like that.
Kyrill (1:13:59)
Nice.
Yeah.
Damian (1:14:05)
And we were like, it’s really funny actually. We meant to do just a small batch of those, you know, and then do general ones. And the t-shirt company got the order wrong. So like 75% of the t-shirts said we’re fucking awesome. But all of our crew, crews just want that one. And like a lot of our clients want that one too, so. And.
Kyrill (1:14:27)
Nice.
Dario (1:14:30)
Haha, nice.
Damian (1:14:32)
But occasionally, I volunteer at an after-school program for underprivileged kids here in Delray. And occasionally Ian will come with me and when we do something like that, I’m like, wear the nice t-shirt. Okay, these are 12-year-old kids. So you gotta make sure we’ve got the PC t-shirts on.
Kyrill (1:14:39)
Nice.
Dario (1:14:46)
Hahaha.
Kyrill (1:14:52)
Yeah, no, that’s great. Oh, funny enough, then you then when you get into the class, then you pull out of the guys, this is the underground shirt that I’m going to be wearing now.
Dario (1:14:59)
Heheheheh…
Damian (1:14:59)
Yeah
I’m trying to be a good influence.
Kyrill (1:15:06)
They don’t want good influences these kids these days. You know, they want the edgy companies and business owners like, yeah, let’s do that, you know? But yeah, before we kind of sign off, was there anything that you wanted to ask us even or touch base on as a topic before we head off?
Dario (1:15:08)
Hehehehe
Damian (1:15:12)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, thanks for giving me the platform. Appreciate I did most of the talking.
I would, you know what’s next for you guys? Well actually, it’s a question I ask a lot of people, is where would you like to be in 10 years time from now?
Kyrill (1:15:47)
Yeah, that’s a tough one. Well, yeah. Dario’s biggest is somewhere warm. We get some pretty crazy winters here. Ha ha ha.
Dario (1:15:47)
Somewhere warm. Ha ha, somewhere warm. Ha ha ha.
Damian (1:15:49)
somewhere home.
we always back to you as it should have started
Dario (1:15:57)
I would have mind moving to the US to be honest with you. I would love for us to, yeah, to open up an office down there. Maybe in Florida even, yeah, I would have mind.
Kyrill (1:16:00)
It’s an idea we floated.
Damian (1:16:00)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah, man.
Kyrill (1:16:08)
Yeah, I mean we do see ourselves expanding the business and growing the core team because right now it’s just been Dario and I as the core team for many years and it can get exhausting doing wearing many different hats you know I mean we have to order different hats for every job now at this point right so for the CGC platform for the lapse business and you know and like you said like you’ve brought on people that have been able to make your lives easier and help
Damian (1:16:15)
Mm-hmm.
Kyrill (1:16:37)
make the business run a lot smoother and sometimes bringing in other people can bring in ideas that you probably never would have been able to think of. So that, that is our, that is a, what we do want to end up striving for.
Dario (1:16:50)
Probably in the next five years we’ll probably be at that stage. Like, our main thing is we definitely want to remain skeletal so we can scale up and down easily.
Kyrill (1:16:54)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Damian (1:17:03)
Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate that. I remember listening to you guys talking about like, was it another outfit where they expanded and then had to let everyone go, right?
Dario (1:17:13)
Yeah, yeah, we’re trying to avoid situations like that, especially because in our business, like, and I mean video production in general, especially on the corporate end, nothing is ever guaranteed for the year, because that’s like our biggest fear almost is like, okay, like we had a good year last year, and you know, we have a good couple months coming up, but what about after that? Nothing’s ever like set in stone. That’s the thing I really don’t like about it.
Kyrill (1:17:14)
Yeah.
Damian (1:17:27)
Yeah, of course.
Kyrill (1:17:39)
We’re afraid of the flywheel stopping. That’s that’s the thing. You know, you can’t rely on a flywheel to build the to build a massive business, you know, and.
Damian (1:17:42)
Yeah.
Dario (1:17:43)
Yeah.
And there’s always like random circumstances that affect that too. Like last year was the economy just tanked hard and like, you know, everyone was getting affected by that. Um, so yeah, I guess it’s that, uh, expansion into the U S would definitely be one of our goals in the next five to 10 years. Uh, but again, like we’d still want to be like, uh, like a smaller company. I don’t, I don’t, I think we were going to, Carol and I were going through the numbers and I was like, you know what? We could hit like some. Like.
Damian (1:17:48)
Yeah.
Kyrill (1:17:50)
Yeah.
Damian (1:17:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, of course.
Dario (1:18:18)
We don’t need to be like a $10 million company and have all those headaches. We could be like a 10th of that. And like, we’d still be fine. On the personal end, we’d be pulling some pretty big salaries and like the stresses wouldn’t be that high. Like…
Kyrill (1:18:22)
Yeah.
Damian (1:18:31)
It’s so interesting you should say that. After we did the first feature film, we took everything that we learned and…
We doubled revenue in like a year and a half. And so we doubled revenue because we doubled the amount of work we were doing. But like Ian and I still like made the same salary. It was just like, but now we’re working longer hours. And…
Kyrill (1:18:58)
Yeah.
Dario (1:19:02)
Yeah.
Damian (1:19:03)
And you know, in the organization, Ian’s still in, I stepped out, I’ve been in it for seven years, so EO, which is a great organization, you know they talk about this, do you wanna be, you know, you wanna be a million dollar company where you’ve got a 30% margin, or do you wanna be a 10 million dollar company with a 3% margin, you know? You’re making the same money, you know? Do you know, do you guys know this one, revenue is vanity?
Kyrill (1:19:25)
Yep.
Damian (1:19:34)
Profit is sanity and cash is king. Yeah? Yeah.
Kyrill (1:19:39)
Oh, I love that. That’s great. Hehehehe. Yeah.
Dario (1:19:40)
I always just heard of the last bit, Cassius King, I didn’t know there were other two bits.
Damian (1:19:43)
Cash is king, well cash is king means, okay so revenue is vanity. It says revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, cash is king. Revenue is bullshit. Yeah it’s like, I do it, I do it, it’s like oh yeah, what’s your profit margin? What’s your net?
Kyrill (1:19:47)
Revenue was what, sorry? Vanity, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah.
Dario (1:19:53)
Yeah, I like that.
cause. What’s your cause?
Kyrill (1:19:59)
That’s what they always do in the Shark Tank, you know, whenever people were saying like, what were your sales last year? It’s like, oh yeah, we made like 20 million in sales. Like, what was your profit? Like 500,000. It’s like, what? Yeah, cause it’s like, think of it. Like, would you rather have a business with, like you pretty much nailed it on the head, Damien, is that if you get like $150,000 in revenue, but 50,000 is profit versus 550,000 in revenue, but again, still 50,000 as-
Dario (1:20:08)
Ten dollars.
Kyrill (1:20:28)
profit, it’s like you’re doing a hell of a lot more work and a lot more stress for the same money. So like when you’re scaling, there has to be a relative like growth in that sense as well.
Damian (1:20:33)
Yeah.
Yeah, so if it’s cool, I’ll just touch on a couple of those before we go. So profits is sanity. Profits is about your business. So we…
Dario (1:20:46)
Yeah, go ahead.
Damian (1:20:53)
When we bid on a job, we have a profit margin, and if we can’t make our profit margin, we don’t take the job. And we are now probably just as concerned about what our profit margin is.
Dario (1:21:02)
Mm-hmm.
Damian (1:21:15)
as we are about how much work we’ve got coming in. So we really, and again, we pride ourselves on giving our clients just the best product they’re ever gonna get.
but we’re a business, we need to make money too. So it becomes vitally important. Yeah, and then cash is king means that like, you need, companies need cash flow. You know, you need operating cash on hand. You know, suddenly like you get a brilliant opportunity.
Dario (1:21:34)
It’s just a numbers game.
Damian (1:21:53)
but maybe you need to buy a new piece of equipment or you need to hire an expert and the expert’s like, well, I don’t know you guys, so you gotta pay me upfront. And if you don’t have the cash on hand to do that, then you’re in trouble.
Dario (1:22:05)
Yeah.
Kyrill (1:22:10)
You should never be struggling for cash to the point where you have to figure out a way to supplement that. Like I’ve seen other people in our industry who sometimes their cash flow has gotten so low to the point where they’ve had to take out some loans, which I think is wild to try to maintain your cash flow. It’s like that should be purely for emergency, not for day to day.
Damian (1:22:28)
Yeah, you never want it.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
Dario (1:22:38)
You’re doing something wrong if you got to that point. That’s what I think. Especially if you’re like a smaller company too. Like I can understand with like bigger companies, you might need it. Maybe you have like a big staff and you can’t just tell your staff, I can’t pay your salary this month that the whole thing’s gonna collapse, right? So.
Kyrill (1:22:41)
Yeah, exactly.
Damian (1:22:42)
Yeah.
Kyrill (1:22:50)
Yeah.
Yeah, like if you’re a smaller business and you’re at that stage, it’s good to just revisit your process and see where, how you can improve it so that you don’t have to do that because then yeah, unfortunately you get on the hook and you’re also losing money paying for interest that you didn’t need to do. And yeah.
Damian (1:23:01)
Yeah.
Exactly, exactly. We, yeah, I mean, that’s the stuff we look at all the time.
Kyrill (1:23:16)
Yeah.
Dario (1:23:16)
And also for loans for small businesses, banks are so stingy. So if you’re getting a big loan, it’s on your personal end. The bank’s not giving you that loan. Like for ours, like, oh my God, even for our credit cards, like our business credit cards, they’re so stingy with our credit limits. It’s shocking. Like on our personal end, it’s like 10 times higher. It’s like, what the hell’s going on here?
Kyrill (1:23:22)
Oh yeah.
Damian (1:23:26)
Yeah.
Kyrill (1:23:34)
Yeah.
Damian (1:23:34)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no, I know.
Kyrill (1:23:39)
I was telling Dario that I was thinking is because you know, they look at businesses as you know, they’re not real people so they don’t want to give too much freedom to them, you know, like, because technically a business or a corporation is an individual. What happens if that individual just tanks, you know, they disappear whereas an actual person they give more credit because that person’s real, that’ll chase them. I don’t know if that’s the reason but it’s a theory.
Dario (1:24:04)
Well, I call BS on that because a person can always claim even like a real person can claim bankruptcy and get out of it. But I mean, like, look, there’ll be people selling credit cards, giving random people at a gas station a five thousand dollar credit limit. Yeah, we have to fight tooth and nail and they barely gave us somewhere close. It’s like what like. But yet, but yet here’s the funny thing, like, like our economy is mostly like run by small businesses, yet like.
Kyrill (1:24:26)
Hahaha!
Dario (1:24:34)
like the banks hate them. They’re like so like rough on us.
Damian (1:24:38)
Yeah, no it’s true. It’s totally true. But we’ve, you know, touch wood, we’ve never had to take a loan. That’s not exactly true. I’ve loaned the business money when we’ve been in a pinch. But that’s different.
Kyrill (1:24:57)
Oh, but that’s different. That’s different. That’s you putting your own, yeah. Everyone has to do that. In the beginning, that’s what we had to do. Requiring resources. You’re not necessarily just loaning out, but you’re investing in your business so that it stays afloat. That’s what you have to do early on. You can’t start a business without your own capital. It doesn’t just magically appear.
Dario (1:25:00)
That’s your own money.
Damian (1:25:05)
Yeah.
Dario (1:25:15)
Yeah.
Damian (1:25:16)
Yeah.
Yeah, no, yeah, it doesn’t just magically be, yeah. But but the big one for us is definitely being like, you know, we have a process for everything. We have strategy for everything, you know.
Dario (1:25:23)
Hehehehe Hehe
Kyrill (1:25:27)
Yeah
Damian (1:25:42)
That’s why I asked you about where you want to be in 10 years. I would, this is a, I’m sharing, not giving advice. My share is that I have been more successful personally and as a business when I have planned out where I want to be, you know. So we have a one year plan, we have a three year plan, we have a five year plan, we have a 10 year plan.
Dario (1:26:03)
Hmm.
Damian (1:26:11)
we spend time talking about it. It’s like, okay, well, this is where we wanna be in 10 years, where do we need to be in five years? This is where we need to be in five years, where do we need to be in three years, you know? And then…
Dario (1:26:22)
We should do that, Kero. We normally do it every January, but we kind of did in this year.
Kyrill (1:26:27)
Well, this year you were gone on vacation at the beginning when we usually do that. So, so yeah.
Dario (1:26:30)
That’s true.
Damian (1:26:32)
So I would recommend, oh fuck, what’s his name? There’s a guy who’s written a book called Vivid Vision. It’s a small book, but he has a TED Talk. So if you look up TED Talk, Vivid Vision, it’s a 15 minute TED Talk.
Kyrill (1:26:41)
visions.
Damian (1:26:48)
and he explains, he does it shorter, I think his is, yeah, Cameron Harold. So I highly recommend you listen, if you’re gonna plan out your strategy, go just listen to that. It’s 15 minutes of your time. And it’ll give you an idea of one way, it’s not the only way, of one way of how you write that out. You know? But like, I mean, my 10 year plan, it’s like, I talk about where I am, you know?
Kyrill (1:26:51)
Cameron Harold? Okay.
Dario (1:27:02)
Okay. Check them out.
Kyrill (1:27:04)
Will do.
Damian (1:27:18)
What am I, you know, everything, how am I feeling? Where am I? What am I doing? What does my personal life look like? Everything, you know.
Kyrill (1:27:23)
Yeah.
Damian (1:27:27)
And it’s a goal, you know, but if you haven’t set that goal, you know, that’s why like, okay, you guys want to expand into the US, well, how are you gonna do that? You know, what are the steps that you’re putting in place to do that? I think probably maybe unconsciously or consciously, one of the steps you’re doing is what you’re doing in this podcast and getting a feel for what that would look like if you were in the US and interviewing, you know, companies that are here in the US, you know, so.
Kyrill (1:27:34)
Yeah.
Damian (1:27:55)
But yeah, I think you guys have got a really great head start. Right from the get go, you guys have treated this like a business. It took me like seven years to figure that out. It wasn’t.
Kyrill (1:27:56)
Baby steps, yeah.
Oh, no, no. It wasn’t right from the get go. Let me tell you that. Damien, it was it was up until the pandemic. And we talked about this in our early episodes of the podcast is about how it was like we were just two freelancers working together up until that point. And when the pandemic hit, it all fell apart. So what we realized we had to do and actually we learned it by starting this podcast was, damn, we’ve been doing everything wrong. Tear down the foundation.
Dario (1:28:09)
No, I wasn’t like that was not like that. No, I wish
Kyrill (1:28:33)
And we basically restarted the business in 2021. That’s essentially it. So this is technically year four, technically speaking. But we’ve learned, no, we’re not, we’re not messiahs in the business world. Okay. Yeah. But anyways, like, well, we’ll let you go cause we know you have a meeting in a couple of minutes, Damian, but thanks for jumping on. Honestly, this has been such a great chat and.
Damian (1:28:36)
Okay.
Okay, cool. That’s awesome.
Dario (1:28:39)
Yeah.
Far from it.
Kyrill (1:29:01)
Thank you for being our first guest of 2024.
Damian (1:29:04)
Hey, it’s an absolute pleasure. I love what you guys are doing. I really respect and admire the energy that you’re putting into this. Dario, I really appreciate you for reaching out to me and putting up with me like, counseling on you like a bunch of times. I’m so sorry. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah. So, but you guys rock, keep it up. And I’m definitely…
Dario (1:29:04)
Yeah.
Thank you.
Kyrill (1:29:20)
Hahaha!
Dario (1:29:22)
Well, now we know why. You got like TV shows you’re filming.
Kyrill (1:29:24)
Busy man, busy man.
You too, man.
Damian (1:29:34)
I love now that there’s a resource that I can reach out to if we’ve got stuff in Toronto or wherever in Canada, you know So and let’s stay in touch You know
Kyrill (1:29:44)
For sure, man. Yeah, even in other parts of the States, if you need, like we’ve had a few guests in Seattle, North Carolina, Boston. So there’s…
Damian (1:29:50)
Cool, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was actually talking to my team about that. I’m like, hey, we’ve got these guys are genius. So like, so absolutely. Yeah, it’s good to know.
Dario (1:30:03)
Okay, so before we end off, guys, if you want to find Damien, he’s at braveman.media. So not bravemanmedia.com, it’s braveman.media. And he’s based in Florida, and you said in Delray, correct? What? South… Oh, okay, and which parts do you like service? Because I know on your website you actually had a couple other cities as well. Yeah.
Kyrill (1:30:03)
Awesome.
Okay.
Damian (1:30:17)
South Florida, some Miami, you know.
Kyrill (1:30:23)
I saw New York as well.
Damian (1:30:25)
So we are based in South Florida. Yeah, we shoot all over the United States.
Kyrill (1:30:32)
Right. Cool. Thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time.
Dario (1:30:33)
I got it. Okay, so guys, if you need him for shoots outside of South Florida as well, he’s good for it. Perfect. Okay. Thank you, Damien.
Damian (1:30:38)
Yeah, awesome. All right, you guys rock. Take it easy.
Kyrill (1:30:39)
Awesome. Thanks, Damien.
Thanks for watching!
