Growing and Investing in Your Team (ft. Perspective Pictures)

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Kyrill Lazarov00:05looks okay.

Rupert Rixon00:10Sweet. Yeah, good luck.

Dario Nouri00:14Cool. All right, everyone's good to go.

Kyrill Lazarov00:18Yes, sir.

Dario Nouri00:18All right, great. All right, well, everyone, welcome to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, episode 45. And today we have our very first guest from the UK. We finally made it across the pond. We have Rupert Rixon, Rupert Rixon from Perspective Pictures here with us. Rupert, thank you for coming on.

Kyrill Lazarov00:30Woo!

Rupert Rixon00:37Thanks for having me, it's great to make it across the pond as well.

Dario Nouri00:43So let's just get the background out of the way first. So just tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry and a little bit about Perspective Pictures.

Rupert Rixon00:57Yeah, for sure. So I run a video production company called Perspective, or Perspective Pictures. We've been going for something like seven years now. We make all sorts of video content. We're a team of 26, 27 people. We work with big clients like Red Bull and Deliveroo and, you know, people like that, and then kind of small companies as well. We produce all sorts of stuff from big Red Bull stunts on their YouTube channel with, you know, landing planes on helipads and things like that, right down to kind of crowdfunding videos and startup social. and you know things like that. My background initially was I kind of started loads of different businesses when I was like from the age of 12 and I started a business renting out Nerf guns for kids parties and started a YouTube channel to promote that and those videos started to go viral and I was like Oh, this is it, filmmaking is super fun. And sort of followed that path, made a documentary where I skateboarded across America from LA to New York. And that was just kind of, you know, kept going from there.

Dario Nouri01:59Nice, nice. So you've been operating the business for, you said, seven years, right?

Rupert Rixon02:03Yeah, now yeah. It was our seventh birthday last week. Thanks. Thank you. It's a big one. It's a big one.

Dario Nouri02:07Nice, congrats!

Kyrill Lazarov02:08Wow. Happy birthday.

Dario Nouri02:12Yeah, we've been doing it for roughly same amount of time, I think, Kyrill. When do we start? 2015 or something, right?

Kyrill Lazarov02:17Uh, like the end of 2014, 2015, so about eight, nine years or so. But like we've covered in the past where essentially the first few years we didn't really treat it like a business. It was more so like two freelancers hanging out, but we consider now LAPS more so in year three at this point, since we've actually started to focus on it as a business itself.

Rupert Rixon02:43Yeah, so what was the big like change for you guys?

Dario Nouri02:43We're going by the pandemic year, so pandemic year zero, year one, year two, year three.

Kyrill Lazarov02:51Sorry, what did you say, Rupert?

Rupert Rixon02:52I said, what was the transition for you guys, if you've been working together kind of like five, six years, what was the, like, right, we're a company now, what like caused that and what actual difference in practicality was that?

Dario Nouri03:06It was really just when the pandemic happened, like before the pandemic happened, actually, we noticed that we were plateauing at whatever stage we were at. And as soon as the pandemic happened, we just we had a couple of months of just, you know, we were in a weird mindset of like, there's no work coming in. What do we do? Whatever. And then we just sat down one day and we started to think about laps as a business and how we could grow it and what we should do to it. Like. turn it into like a growing business, right? So like Joel said on other episodes, like the pandemic really forced us to rethink our whole business process. And then from there, we started networking with other businesses and it got us really thinking outside of the box. And then we started applying like all the knowledge, we started learning two laps. And like I would say, 2021 was like our first. I can like we both consider it as like our first year as a business, right? Like we mentioned in the past, it felt like before that we were really just two freelancers collaborating on projects. Uh, but if even when we weren't like two freelancers, it just felt like we didn't have the business knowledge that we needed to have to run a business. But then. After the pandemic or during the pandemic, we kind of figured that stuff out. And every year has just been compounding our, our, our, our knowledge and expertise. year after year. So I think that was the thing that really transitioned us from being a freelancer to being a business. Right, Kero?

Kyrill Lazarov04:37Yeah, and the one thing that we notice, you know, with every year, just to kind of like start planning and trying to see what kind of milestones we could reach towards, you know, like one of the first things we're trying to aim for is to get like maybe our first one or two full-time employees to join. Whereas you in seven years have managed to bring your team up to about 26, 27 people, which I'm very curious about. Like, what was it like going from just you?

Dario Nouri05:00Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov05:04to one person, to three, to then what, 26?

Rupert Rixon05:09Yeah, so, um… It's tough. Like, you know, the more people you hire, the more problems you're gonna have. Like, if every person in your team has like a really difficult issue once a year that you have to deal with, you know, for me as a manager director now, that's every two weeks, so that's like a big problem that you've gotta kinda take on. And sometimes those are all at the same time. So, you know, the more people you get, like it's one of the disadvantages for sure of like the agency model, like your problems in terms of process and structure and everything it breaks every time you sort of double in size. But from the beginning, I had like one team member started from the very start who I sort of brought on because I just knew that I wasn't going to be someone that could sit in a room by myself and just kind of get through it. I had a friend of mine who was working in a garage and I was like, hey, do you want to go and like, earn £300 a month or like, I don't know, $500 a month or whatever, you know, I'm trying to build this business. And then it sort of scaled from there, like, and then there were different pain points. So like, For instance, when we got to 11 people, that was probably the worst period of time, because that was when I still sort of managed everybody. So there wasn't this kind of clear structure of communication. Everything was still very open. Everything was like turn around in the office and speak. And when you get to about seven, eight people, that's where that starts to become a real problem. And 11 was the peak where I was like, fuck, like this is horrendous to manage this company like this. And for me to sit down every quarter and do everyone's reviews, everything else.

Dario Nouri06:10Oh, okay.

Dario Nouri06:23Interesting.

Rupert Rixon06:34people, we sort of introduced middle management, it got so much easier because ultimately you start breaking people up into teams and now although we're a team of you know 26, we're what kind of four teams of you know seven or whatever it might be. So now it's much easier to manage as heads of department and yeah so it's kind of a bit more straightforward not to say there's not still problems and things that still don't get harder as you grow but your processes and everything just break every time you sort of double. When you first get to seven people it breaks, then 14 it breaks.

Dario Nouri06:48Okay.

Rupert Rixon07:04and you know, et cetera.

Dario Nouri07:06That's pretty interesting because I think a lot of the businesses we've spoken to, they're very skeletal in a way. But I think that they're either skeletal to the point where it's under, I'm guessing under eight people, or they're like past like 15 people. So there's like no in between. So it's interesting to hear that at a certain point it just becomes too hard to manage. If you're just like you were saying, like you were managing everyone.

Kyrill Lazarov07:27Yeah.

Dario Nouri07:36Versus like when you get to a certain point, then you gotta bring in other people to manage other people, right?

Rupert Rixon07:41Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many variables for that. Like there's two of you guys, so, you know, that might change that number that that looks like. And then there's also a book I'm reading at the moment by the founder of Netflix called No Rules Rules. And it's about how you need way less structure and way less structured process if you have a higher talent density. So like the more capable and the higher quality your team are, like the less intervention and the less structure and process you're going to have to apply to them. they talk about how like even one under performer on their team is like is a huge problem because that massively brings that entire team down there's a lot of research that one poor performer isn't like just proportional to like the amount of work they have that kind of bad behavior and stuff spreads so even just things like talent density can have a huge impact on where you're going to feel those kind of like squeezes and pains and things like that.

Kyrill Lazarov08:36Yeah, I've heard from some friends that some of the organizations they work at, they love almost everyone on their team and everyone pulls their weight and they're doing really well, but there's always that one person that just brings everything down a little bit. And then if there's that little bit of negativity there or lack of morale from them, it just brings everybody's morale down. So it's really key to bring in people that actually all pull their own weight and everybody's pushing together for the same common goal, right? The thing that I'm curious about also is like, what made you go the route of growing like to a full-time team? Because as Dario mentioned, a lot of production companies keep to a skeletal team because it allows them to be a little bit more nimble depending on the projects that come in. Like, what was the part that made you realize, okay, from…

Dario Nouri09:23Well, it's also, well, it's sorry, Carol, to add onto that. It's also because there's a lot of uncertainty in our year to years as well, right? Like, so I guess after your question, Carol, maybe we can ask, like, how did you get to the point where your cash inflow was so stable at the scale you're at, right? Like, that would be an interesting topic to explore. But yeah, Carol, go ahead.

Kyrill Lazarov09:30Yeah, exactly.

Kyrill Lazarov09:46Yeah, I think that kind of, you're kind of like pretty much asking the question where I was gonna say like, what was the thing that made you realize you needed to go from the freelancer model to the full-time employee model, which I guess is that in terms of like more certainty aspect.

Rupert Rixon10:01Absolutely. So we can talk about cash flow because cash flow is still painful at times, but is a horrendous beast that every business owner at some point probably has to wrestle with. And you know, we've had some, a lot of rough times with cash flow, but generally, you know, we're still here, we're still going and we've grown a lot and now we're profitable. But when it comes to why in house, for me, there's a huge competitive advantage there, because one, you're able to make higher margin if you're able to consistently bring in work, which is kind of displaces the problem somewhere else. to the like reliability of people that are in-house, but also being able to train them up a lot. So we provide a huge amount of training for our team in terms of digital platforms and you know. yeah, basically digital and online in areas that maybe a lot of filmmakers or editors or whatever wouldn't have as kind of stronger knowledge. So we're able to output better stuff. And it also then means we can be much more collaborative with our clients. So like, you know, clients get to know our team, they kind of grow, they build good relationships with them. They know that we're all in-house, it's part of what we pitch. And we bring the clients into every stage of the process. So the creative team that do the pitching and the ideation, that work with them, obviously they'll

Rupert Rixon11:13them into the edit session once we have like a v1 we then like really bring them into the process and don't try and like shut them out and try and get them to just leave us alone. So we really bring them in and get them really involved and that's been a massive part as to what's made our product more addictive. It's made it more interesting, it's made it more exciting, people like working with the same people and it just it means that we can turn things around quickly, we can do it reliably, you know when there's phases where there's not enough like the industry gets really busy and there's not enough freelancers and people have kind of squabbling over things or whatever, like we can turn stuff, if a client calls us up, like if we have the capability, the capacity, we can turn it around tomorrow, do you know what I mean? Which means we can do things quickly, collaboratively, at a higher margin. So there's so many benefits to it, but there is this one massive problem, which is maintaining like a consistent flow of work and you know, and to do that you have to really nail the mark.

Kyrill Lazarov11:44Yeah.

Dario Nouri11:45Yeah.

Rupert Rixon12:08of the kind of production company, the branding, and the product to make sure that you're just consistently firing out, you know, baggans basically.

Kyrill Lazarov12:16Yeah, like that's always like a big challenge when you're operating in the freelancer model where sometimes a client would say like, hey, so this is the project we have, this is the deadline, is it doable? It says, and then we always have to say, okay, sure, let's see who we can bring in for that. So then that's like a whole.

Dario Nouri12:32I actually, you know what, Karel? I actually don't find that to be such a big issue for us. I think it's more so the fact that, do you know what I noticed being a big issue now is that we've developed this good relationship with the client and then they're like, okay, we have this smaller project, the budget is smaller and timeline is whatever, can you do it? And then I start to look at the details and I'm like, ooh, I know they can't afford it at this because when we get brought on, it's more so for like,

Kyrill Lazarov12:38Maybe not anymore.

Dario Nouri13:01the big budget stuff, right? Versus this is like, okay, like we have an upcoming project they were asking, like, because we've started doing more manufacturing work and they're like, oh yeah, we just acquired this new company. Can you come in for a half day? We just need a 60 second video just outlining what this is so the sales team would know what it is, right? And it's like, okay, well, something like that we would normally charge, you know.

Kyrill Lazarov13:03Yeah.

Dario Nouri13:24seven or ten thousand for but I know I can tell that they budgeted a couple thousand for this and if we had like in-house people I would just go like yeah sure just go grab half of the footage come back and we'll just edit it for us the cost would be like Half of that if we had them in house, right? Like we could make a pretty still pretty good margin at whatever and we don't lose them to someone else that would take that on. So that's, that's the trouble I'm finding out. And the benefit that I guess someone like Rupert has with that big in-house team is that, okay, if a client just needs like two hours of footage capture, and then we just go edit like quick 30 second thing, he can do it for us. It's like, okay, well, I can't hire a DP at like 1500 a day just to shoot like two hours of stuff. Right. I'm not going to, I don't need him for the whole day, but he would

Kyrill Lazarov13:38Minuscule.

Kyrill Lazarov14:07Ahem.

Dario Nouri14:07goal he would just pick up the project if it is a full day gig right so it's it's getting tricky now I'm noticing

Kyrill Lazarov14:14You're talking more so about the long-term relationships that we've developed with clients where we've done a lot of projects for them in the past, like big and medium, and then sometimes they just have very small needs that you would like to help them out with because you're their trusted video partner at that point. I was more so kind of also talking about sometimes when newer people come in, say we're already busy with a lot of people, a lot of clients, all of our resources are tied up, and then another lead comes in asking for a project. okay, let's see who might potentially be available. Not everyone is always available. Whereas Rupert, you said because of your own in-house team, almost all the time you're gonna be able to take on more work depending on the needs, right?

Rupert Rixon14:58Yeah, there's a cap to that of course, like with anything, but generally speaking, you know, we try and almost never say no to content, we always try and make it happen, like you say, because there's that, like you sort of mentioned, there's that kind of opportunity cost as to, you know, if you say no, then it's not that, oh, no, you miss out on that small piece of work, whatever, it might not be the end of the world. But that means that then they're going and speaking to other suppliers, they're building relationships with other suppliers and that can be problematic. So yeah, we absolutely try our best not to say no and to be as accommodating as we can be, while also not fucking ourselves over.

Dario Nouri15:33What was the inciting incident for you guys to go from just starting out production company to getting to the point where you're like, okay, now we're on the scene. We can take on bigger projects, more projects. I can hire more staff. What was that moment for you guys?

Kyrill Lazarov15:33Yeah.

Rupert Rixon15:55So we raised investment a few years ago, well like four or five years ago now actually the first round of investment. So we raised £150,000. There's a scheme in the UK called SEIS, which is a seed enterprise investment scheme, something like that. And it basically is like obscene tax incentives for investors to invest in high-risk startups.

Dario Nouri16:20Oh, okay.

Rupert Rixon16:25like straight away, and if the business failed you get 30k on top. So you only risk 20% of your capital and if we pay dividends, if we're profitable, you don't pay any taxes on those dividends. So it's like a scheme that the British government has to encourage high-risk investment and we raised 150k like that on that scheme and it was super straightforward and it was phenomenal. So that was a huge moment for us to be like…

Dario Nouri16:27Oh, wow.

Rupert Rixon16:50Yeah, fucking hell, we've got 150 grand here. Like, what can we do with that? What does that mean for us? Like, we didn't want to spend it on kit. We wanted to scale a team, scale our marketing efforts, all that kind of thing.

Dario Nouri16:52Yeah, okay nice.

Kyrill Lazarov17:03It's funny, you say the word scheme, but here in Canada, the word scheme usually kind of like coincides with the word scam, but you were talking about it in such a positive way. It's like, I would love to be schemed and scammed a little bit, you know?

Dario Nouri17:06I was just thinking that…

Rupert Rixon17:13Hahaha

Rupert Rixon17:20Well maybe it is a scam, who knows? But no, in our context not. But you know, also scheming is a thing in the UK. Like we say that as well, like I feel like scheming your…

Kyrill Lazarov17:22Yeah

Kyrill Lazarov17:28Well that's what I mean, right?

Dario Nouri17:29Ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, ehh, e

Dario Nouri17:34Did you guys use any of that money on your website? Because I got to say, I really, really loved your website. When I first came across it, it's funny, because a couple months, when we were first getting into redesigning our website, your website was exactly what I had in mind. But I have nowhere close to the amount of skill you would need to pull that off.

Rupert Rixon17:55Yeah, well, most of that we built in-house, to be honest. It's one of the beauties of having the talent in-house is you end up working on internal tasks and working on our own stuff when we have that availability. And after we had this big push, well, during COVID.

Dario Nouri17:57Nice.

Rupert Rixon18:14I was like, right, well, we're going to struggle to scale our revenue. We maybe grow our revenues like 30% during COVID, but it was like, it was rough. So I was like, cool, what can we do during this period of time? Because this is going to be over and then there's going to be a big boom again, I'm sure. And whatever. So how can we scale for that? So first of all, we hired really like key people. We were like, cool, let's go out and hire some like bigger players, head of creative, those kinds of roles that are traditionally a lot more expensive. And they were a lot cheaper and we got much better kind of applicants because people were looking for jobs. So we did that. Two, we took on an office, which is like a 5,000 square foot office that can see everyone. We have our own studio here and everything else. And again, we signed a five year lease during Covid, like when the rates were so, so, so much lower. And then we spent the time during Covid renovating the office and stripping it out and building.

Dario Nouri18:48Wow.

Rupert Rixon19:00ourselves. And then the final thing is we rebranded. So we read our website, we read our showreels, we read our logo, like everything. So the idea being we did a new like company ad, which is this like main ad with me like speaking, we run on like Facebook and Instagram and stuff. And we, we then sort of like as we were coming out of COVID then relaunched the brand with this kind of like new team, new processes, new branding, new office, and just went off hard at it and we doubled our revenue that year, year on year, which was like crazy for us.

Dario Nouri19:29Thanks for watching. Bye. Yeah, your branding is on point. Kyrill, I don't know if you saw his branding, but it's on point. It perfectly encapsulates like who you guys are. Like the vibe I get is like, OK, creative, fun, high quality. That's like the vibe I get from watching it. And it's it's really well done. I got to give you props on that front.

Kyrill Lazarov19:33That's a great plan. Yeah. I saw it, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov19:53It's very hard to hit a lot of those points as a production company, because a lot of companies always try to focus on the quality. That is usually what the biggest thing that people are pushing for is, look at the quality of our work, the quality of our work, the quality of our work. But it's really hard to kind of showcase the people behind it, and what kind of energy and vibe everything is, because creating videos should be fun, right? It's not always a super serious thing at times. Obviously, yeah, everyone wants to be serious and get good professional work,

Rupert Rixon19:53Thanks very much, man. Thank you.

Kyrill Lazarov20:23Why not have fun at the same time while doing it? And that's what we got is a vibe with your branding, especially that video that you guys put out, like kind of encompassing your business.

Rupert Rixon20:33Absolutely. And like…

Dario Nouri20:33I love the Last Supper picture they have.

Kyrill Lazarov20:35Yeah, that was so good. It's so funny. I love it.

Rupert Rixon20:39I get a lot of shit for that for making myself Jesus obviously, but that wasn't actually my choice, that was the producer that sent me there. I think it's super important, you guys mentioned you're a manufacturing client, right? We work with a lot of industries, as I'm sure you guys do, that aren't super, super exciting, that aren't super creative, and everyone is creative, I really believe that, everyone's born creative and then we kind of lose it a little bit as time goes on. So I see like…

Dario Nouri20:42Oh, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Kyrill Lazarov20:44Oh my god.

Rupert Rixon21:07Working with us should be a really enjoyable experience that you might pay for just as an experience. We need to be super communicative, super friendly. Everyone you work with needs to be really energetic, positive, and fun. It should be a creative exploration where they get really involved, they get to explore. Whatever, it should be the best part of all of the things that that person has at the time on their list of responsibilities. Working with us should be the most fun thing. That should be the number one thing they look forward to. They wanna get into the office now. I'm excited to hop on an email with Perspective today. Like we're gonna have a bit of a laugh like I'm gonna come up some ideas with them like it's gonna be like fun Whereas like there's a lot of narrative sometimes in the industry That's like about clients that can be a bit snooty in my opinion where it's like let's shut them out Like what do they know whatever like for sure? They're not fluent in like the design language or the creative language of like video like for sure But we're meant to enable them in that sense. So I think that it should be like super fun. That's like the number one thing for me because Like how many video production companies are there? There's literally millions of us around the world that people that watch YouTube, went out and bought a camera, got a bit better and better and better at it and could shoot cinematic nice footage and kind of structure a narrative together. So yeah, it's gotta be fun, right?

Kyrill Lazarov22:22Yeah, the key is to figure out how to stand out from the rest of the crowd. Like you said, everyone can shoot good quality videos now at this point. The barriers to entry are almost non-existent at this point. Now, how do you make yourself stand out? Like one of the simplest ways is figure out a way to be enjoyable to work with.

Rupert Rixon22:40Yeah, 100%.

Dario Nouri22:43I want to talk about the bulk shooting thing you offer. Can you tell us a bit more about that? Cause as soon as I saw that on your website, I'm like, how do you shoot a hundred pieces of content in like a day? Like, for those of you that don't know, like Rupert, actually, you know what Rupert, why don't you tell the audience like what it is.

Kyrill Lazarov22:55Yeah, I was curious about that too.

Rupert Rixon22:58It's a myth, it's all a lie.

Rupert Rixon23:04Yeah, for sure, our bulk shooting scheme. So basically, basically we have this thing where we offer to clients where we might set up a shoot, there might be two to three days, we'll.

Dario Nouri23:07Hehehehe

Rupert Rixon23:18just shoot a absolute metric ton of content. That might be like social ads, retargeting ads, brand videos, we'll take the top stills, like brand photos, whatever. And sometimes with some clients we'll output like well over 300 deliverables with them. They might be translated into different languages, there might be part animation, there might be different versions where we're running different introductions to split tests and run across socials. You know, there might be like, sometimes it's just like, there might be like 30 different pieces of four or five different formats, well that's like 120 pieces of content there and then this being split into four different languages, well that's like 500 pieces of content. So yeah, so that's kind of how it tends to work, it's like maximising, because the shoot days are like a pretty expensive bit right, once you're hiring like an actor in locations and everything else.

Dario Nouri23:57Okay

Dario Nouri24:08Yeah.

Rupert Rixon24:09And to me, it always felt so wasteful, like turning up, spending hours perfecting a shot, like getting it right and then being like, cool, now we'll move on to the next scene. And it's like you film like three or four scenes in a day. Whereas like for some clients, you know, for some stuff like the high end stuff, that's super important. Sometimes we might spend five days filming one 60 second advert. But for some clients, it's just not necessary that level of like finesse and production value and time. And it's like, cool, well actually we could shoot like… 50 times the number of deliverables in like three days if we just if we if we kind of smash out structure a certain way So that's something we do for specific clients and you know Which means they they might spend 20 30k and fill up their content calendar for the year

Kyrill Lazarov24:54Yeah, that's definitely an interesting way to kind of maximizing the value from certain aspects. Cause you're right. Like a lot of the times we're planning for maybe say like a one video deliverable, you know, that's going to be like a 60 second ad that they're going to promote on their social media channels. But now the question is starting to become, as you said, like how do we create more content for the client also where it also works within budget, you know, it's also, you're not getting screwed over on doing too much work at the end of the day.

Dario Nouri24:56Yes, it's really good.

Kyrill Lazarov25:22And sometimes it is as simple as just creating the same piece of content, but maybe even in different formats. Or the one I was curious about was all the different languages that you do. Like are you doing like voiceover or just like subtitles that you're getting translated?

Rupert Rixon25:35depends, depends on the client. Sometimes, yeah, sometimes it's videos, sometimes subtitles, sometimes it might be an animated video with dynamic text that then just gets translated. So it really depends.

Kyrill Lazarov25:47Oh, wow. And do you guys outsource for that or is that all internal?

Dario Nouri25:49Oh no, they got a big they got a oh for the different languages, right?

Kyrill Lazarov25:53Yeah, yeah.

Rupert Rixon25:53Yeah, every person on the team speaks a different language so we can cover 26. We're not very good at talking to each other but it's fine, it works out. It depends, so we do have some different people that speak different languages here and people that work on the team might speak Spanish, German, whatever else. But generally speaking it depends on, yeah, if there's a language we don't have in house we'll outsource it to a freelancer who'll do the translation for us. Or sometimes a client translates it for us, so that's happened.

Dario Nouri25:56That was…

Kyrill Lazarov25:58That's what I was curious about.

Kyrill Lazarov26:14Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov26:22Yeah, we've had that happen in the past where they've needed like for different languages. Mostly like here in Canada we get the need for English and French at the very most, but even French not as often. So most of the time we just get English. But it makes sense for you because you're in Europe and a lot of the companies that are based there need to be able to hit different targets based on what's close by.

Dario Nouri26:43in Europe. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov26:45Yeah, like every country is basically like a three hour drive distance where if we drive three hours, we'll still won't get to Ottawa or Montreal in our area.

Dario Nouri26:52Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Rupert Rixon26:55Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. But yeah, we do a lot, our two biggest clients are both outside of the UK. So, I'll see you in a minute.

Kyrill Lazarov27:05How do you manage like with different countries like that, like all the time?

Rupert Rixon27:11Well, so sometimes we'll work with local teams. So we're doing a project around sustainability that's all over the world. We're producing hundreds of films a year for them. And they're literally North America, South America, Japan, all across Asia, all across Europe. And a lot of the times we'll work with local teams where we might find a local videographer to film something if it's relatively straightforward, or we'll fly out. But it just depends on the budget and everything else. Obviously doing a sustainability project and flying all over the world doesn't seem like the smartest thing to do. Exactly, so promoting sustainable values. But we do offset our carbon emissions and stuff like that, but it's not the same. It's just hiring a local team, just not going there, right? So, yeah, so it kind of varies, depends on the project and the needs and how difficult it is that we're filming. Because if we can avoid going there, then cool, it's going to be a bit easier.

Kyrill Lazarov27:46Yeah, that's kind of counterintuitive there.

Dario Nouri27:46Hehehehe…

Kyrill Lazarov27:59A lot easier.

Kyrill Lazarov28:09For sure.

Dario Nouri28:11Let's talk a bit about what the market is like in London, because we're here in Toronto, we've spoken to other people in different cities across Toronto, North Carolina, Seattle, but you're the first from London, so what's the scene like over there?

Kyrill Lazarov28:27first peek into that world.

Rupert Rixon28:31Yeah, it's good. I think London is like, obviously there's a lot of really amazing creative generally that comes out of London. There's a lot of big creative agencies here. There's a lot of like music, like music artists that come from London and from the UK and stuff. So for us like internationally having that London back. I just like people are keen to work with us still if that makes sense going internationally and that that's kind of helped us again with international clients. In terms of the market here like immediately like I think it's I think it's pretty good at the moment you know we're in we're definitely we're in a recession or whatever that means but the thing that I have noticed and I don't know if you guys have this in Canada or

Kyrill Lazarov28:56Hmm.

Rupert Rixon29:10the kind of main macro factors of it. Now we're getting a bit bigger. When stuff is happening in the news, we are feeling that happen. Like COVID was the first time that happened where we were like. You know, you see something on the news and it's like, business is a disaster and we actually feel like that. Whereas before it'd be like, because we were tripling in size every year, it's like, well, we might grow 10% less because the economy hasn't grown as much. We're not really noticing the changes in the economy. Whereas now, the thing that I'm really noticing is that whenever there's uncertainty in the market, everyone holds back their budgets to the last possible moment. So they're like, oh shit, like the recession's coming, things aren't looking good, blah, blah, blah, and then they just like, hold on, and then they're like, ah, and then they all,

Kyrill Lazarov29:34Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov29:43Yeah.

Rupert Rixon29:50at the same time go, shit, our financial year's about to end, we need to spend some money on video because we've not spent any money and we're going to lose our budget next year and it turns out everything was fine anyway. And all the clients run all buy stuff at the same time, which is a bit nuts. So, or some of them will just pay us for a project, they'll just pay us like an invoice and then they'll just want us to hold on to it and then later on then they'll ring us up six months later and be like, yo, you know that 50k we sent, can we do something with that now?

Kyrill Lazarov30:17I've come to collect.

Dario Nouri30:17Hehehehehehe

Rupert Rixon30:18which is a dream for cash flow, it's like, great times. But yeah, so I think the market's pretty good. We're at a size now where we're certainly feeling like the impacts of macroeconomics, which is something I've already thought I'd have to think about in my life. And. generally it's pretty good. Talent is great here, it's really easy to get like great editors, great videographers, you know all that sort of stuff. You know while in China like the number one thing that kids want to be when they grow up as an astronaut still and there's all the you know people are so many people going to engineering. In the UK the number one, or I believe it's the US even, the number one thing kids want to be when they grow up is youtubers. So lots of people that learn how to video edit and film, albeit to the detriment of our

Rupert Rixon31:06So generally pretty good. You know, how was that compared to Canada? Does that sound pretty familiar or are things different there?

Dario Nouri31:13It's similar. I think what you were saying about being affected by the macroeconomic changes, I think we're starting to notice that ourselves as well. Like, because up until now, like we're… even if the economy was bad, like we were still growing because we were small, but I've noticed, for example, in like the last month and a half, like the amount of leads that came in decreased drastically. And that's obviously due to all the layoffs, due to the, and the interest rate hikes and everything. And like several other production companies I've spoken to in Canada have said the same thing as well. Cause at first I was like, ooh, I wonder if it's just us, maybe like something, I don't know, like, cause we're like.

Kyrill Lazarov31:40Yeah.

Dario Nouri31:56It's like on page two right now. That's why people are still staying at page one at Google. That's the reason. But everyone else I spoke to, they're like, yeah, the amount of leads that came down, that would come in has decreased. But we still have a lot of work with our current clients. And the other guys I spoke to, they're in the same boat too. So we're in the same boat. But in terms of the scene here, like,

Kyrill Lazarov32:17What?

Dario Nouri32:21There's a lot of work to go around because there's a lot of a lot of companies, a lot of different industries. I would say like there's not too many like like it's not like if you go to like the middle of Canada, it'd be more like agricultural industry or whatnot. Well, I guess here it's it's very diversified. I would say I mean, maybe leaning a bit more on financial maybe, but not even like against pretty diversified here in Toronto. There's a ton of different industries like and there's a ton of work out there, too.

Kyrill Lazarov32:28Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov32:35Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov32:49there's not any like one dominant industry, I would say in Toronto, it really depends and it really depends on the circle that you're in. That like what might be dominant for you, might be what might be very minuscule for another organization. The one thing you did mention that kind of, I think will give everybody hope on this front was that, you were mentioning that a lot of companies are holding on to their marketing budgets because, they don't know what's going on right now with the world. But… they all have fiscal years that end and they need to spend those eventually. So if they're not spending it this month or next month, they're gonna do it later. And one thing we noticed that's always been like the trend here in Toronto, year over year, is that everyone comes in to do video work in August, September, October. Like those three months are massively busy all the time. Like, and I think a lot of companies have their fiscal years ending around that time.

Dario Nouri33:20Yeah.

Dario Nouri33:41February February 2 February 2

Kyrill Lazarov33:44February 2, February 2 is when a lot are like recently I noticed this but I noticed At least even when we were working like from the very beginning like August September. That's when it got really busy constantly So, you know if they're not spending as much now, there's gonna be more they come eventually. So everyone there Keep the hope alive, you know, like the money will come eventually

Dario Nouri34:05Hehehehe

Rupert Rixon34:06Also now, it might seem counterintuitive, but now's a great time to scale, right? Like if there's a lot of people, whenever the demand for work drops in the industry, then loads of freelancers decide, oh shit, I've gotta go get a job now. something more stable or whatever and then suddenly the labor market massively increases and like the cost of labor goes down and the quality of labor goes up. So like if you know that you're going to be suddenly getting really busy in August, hire somebody in June, spend a month training them making sure you're sure you're super happy with them and then when the tide comes back in you've built like a massive fucking sandcastle. Whereas like if you don't do that and then then you suddenly try and hire people for instance for us because we whenever the demand increases we have to hire people in-house. Like that's a nice

Kyrill Lazarov34:21Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov34:37Yeah.

Dario Nouri34:37That's smart.

Rupert Rixon34:50We've then got to spend like a month training someone and that takes extra effort to train them in the first place So initially you have even less time and if you've done that when there's a massive hike in in required output Then you're really gonna struggle. So yeah when the tides out like build all those stuff build those shit And then when the tide comes back in then you'll be you'll have the sickest sandcast on the beach I don't know that's that's that I'm so proud of the metaphor. It's changed my whole life. I'm gonna use that again Literally

Kyrill Lazarov35:13It's like the buy low, sell high approach. The buy low, sell high approach of hiring talent. Ha ha ha.

Dario Nouri35:15Thank you.

Rupert Rixon35:19Literally, it is the viola, 100%, 100%. It's exactly the same thing.

Kyrill Lazarov35:24Yeah, I can imagine during those busy times, when all that output is coming in, you won't have the time to sit down with a new employee and really train them. You have to try to probably put them through the ringer and just let them get the work done. But yeah, it's a very smart move that you mentioned that it's good when these smaller times where it's not as busy, that would be the time to hire. But then there's also that paradox, but you're not having as much cashflow at that point. Are you gonna be able to afford to hire people at that point? You know, it's like a paradox that you just have to kind of, I guess, over time, you will figure out how to kind of swallow it a little bit, right?

Dario Nouri35:52Hehehehehehehehe

Rupert Rixon36:01Yeah, it's scary. It's really scary. Like, I, um, I, most of our growth, a lot of our growth in the early days, I would attribute to just how aggressive I was with cashflow. Like we would operate with like a two to three week runway. And I'd be like, sometimes I'd be like, shit, like, if we don't sell something in the next week, like, I'm not going to be able to pay salaries at the end of the month. Like whenever we hit zero on the bank account, I'd be like, cool, let's go spend some money. We've got an eight grand overdraft. That means we've got like the fact we're on zero means we've got money to go spend and like invest in the company. And I was just putting everything, I was earning like very little money. I was just putting everything that we earn back into the business as aggressively as possible. Like during the worst periods of time, like I'd be waking up at like one o'clock in the morning. I'd be looking at my cash flow spreadsheet, like, oh my God. Oh, this is so stressful, like I'm so worried about.

Dario Nouri36:45Oh my god.

Rupert Rixon36:46how we're going to get through the next few weeks. But we always managed it. Sometimes I would have to sit down and be like, cool, we've not got any work for later this month. I'm going to do two weeks of tele sales. And I would just sit on the phone for two weeks all day every day, ringing companies to generate the business. So yeah, it's really difficult to have that mindset, I think, and it causes challenges and stress elsewhere. And I think that just being the age I was and as naive as I was, it made me a lot more capable dealing with the situation, I'm not sure I could do it now, but yeah, I think it's a really good thing to do if you can kind of like sail the sea, if you can kind of weather the storm, that's what I'm looking for, if you can kind of weather the storm.

Dario Nouri37:17Ha!

Dario Nouri37:28That's a mindset you got to have if you want to do like aggressive growth, like how you did. Cause for me, like just thinking about that had me stressed. Like I like to know I have a backup. So I even told Kieran, I'm like, look, if we want to grow, we got to make sure we got the cash in the account there. So that, but what you're doing is like that people like you tend to grow massive companies because it's like that. That's what you got to do, right? You got to take those, those risks. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov37:40Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov37:50They're taking the risk. Yeah. We're trying to be a little bit on the safer side, but because of that, it's a slow, slow burn, slow growth. But actually I was curious, because you mentioned that you did a lot of aggressive, like outbound lead generation, like trying to call up companies and things like that. Like, do you find a lot of success with that, in that approach, or like how do you go about finding new business?

Dario Nouri37:55conservative.

Rupert Rixon38:15So at the time it was okay, it was just more so that strategising back in the day would be like, right, does this thing cost money? One side would be like, yes, and it'd be like, cool, we can't do it then because we don't have any money. And the other side would be no, and it'd be like, cool, well we can do that. So like one of the things I did is I spent like two days ringing up every single like marketing conference that was happening that year. And I went around and I said, look, if you don't sell all of your conference booths,

Dario Nouri38:33Heh heh.

Rupert Rixon38:45like it always looks really shit when you sell out a conference and then you don't sell all of your booths and there's just an empty booth like we're a super fun company like we're already young we've got absolutely no money but we've got some kind of fancy looking camera equipment that we can come put down in the booth and all you have to do is just give me 24 hours notice like if you ring me up 24 hours before and say i have an empty booth you can have it i'll make your free video for the conference so it's like win win win win for you and cool we get free booth and then lo and behold like

Dario Nouri39:06Okay

Rupert Rixon39:10four days after we moved to London, one of these conferences rang me up and was like, we've got an 8,000 pound booth for you, you can have it for free, we'd love a video, and just someone to fill the space, and I was like, sick. And we got our first big, we only got one client from that conference of like three days of collecting like 200 business cards, but that client was really significant for us, and they were like a FTSE 100 company in the UK, you know, and they had sort of proper budgets and all the rest of it, and they were a big part of that kind

Rupert Rixon39:41So it's little things like that, like running out to networking events, like doing a lot of outbound sales calls, all that sort of stuff. Like that worked, but it's so hours and hours intensive. And it's something that, in my opinion, only really works well if you're the founder or if you're one of the people running the business. Because people want to speak to you and are excited to speak to you. But if so-and-so sales exec calls you and they're like, hey, I just want to grab five minutes of your time and just whatever, like people just aren't nearly as interested, I

Dario Nouri39:59Hmm.

Rupert Rixon40:11There are companies that build off the back of that approach, and I'm sure that you could have great success with it. But for us, the more time went on, the only sort of scalable option was paid advertising, and SEO, and more organic stuff. So that's what we sort of focus on, and that's what generates most of our new businesses, Facebook and Instagram advertising.

Dario Nouri40:35Oh, Facebook too, huh?

Rupert Rixon40:37Yeah, I mean, I would think it was dead, but apparently not.

Kyrill Lazarov40:38Is it b-

Dario Nouri40:41Interesting.

Kyrill Lazarov40:41Is it also, it must be big then in the UK still. Cause basically here, I mean, I don't know, like it's gone.

Dario Nouri40:48What kind of businesses, what kind of leads are you getting through there? Like what are the type of businesses?

Kyrill Lazarov40:51That's true, yeah.

Rupert Rixon40:54We won Red Bull through like a Facebook, Instagram advert. We've won like Buzzfeed, like big clients through, yeah, big clients and small companies as well. So we've won huge budget stuff that's like 150k plus and you know, but most of it is like five to six k budget stuff.

Dario Nouri40:58Really?

Dario Nouri41:04Interesting.

Kyrill Lazarov41:13Yeah, and it's all inbound. Like, and it's, like you said, it's not as time intensive on the front end, more so on the back end, that it's time, how do you say, time intensive, but it kind of is a snowball effect. Like once you've put in some of the work, you can kind of sit back and then it'll kind of continue to do the work essentially at that point. Whereas if you have to do things in person, you know, it's kind of like,

Dario Nouri41:13Interesting.

Dario Nouri41:25time. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov41:40selling your time for hour, and then selling your time for money, in a sense versus like creating the value with your time, right? But that was.

Rupert Rixon41:47Yeah, absolutely. And it sets a different precedent because it's like if you go knock on someone's door and you said, I want to sell you some video content, they are going to know that you've come to them. So immediately they want a great deal. They want to back you down on price, everything else. But if a company rings us up and they just saw our Facebook, Instagram ad, a lot of the time we're not competing or pitching against other companies because they've come to us and we tell them like, this is the price, the price of the price. This is how we work. And they're way more excited to work. with us because they've seen us from afar, they've chosen us, whatever, rather than us like all the work that's involved going to all these doors, knocking on the doors, getting in the house, like building that relationship, trying not to be fucked over too much in the process and and battered down on price too much and yeah it's so much and then you have to chase them all the time in terms of as leads, whereas like leads will come to us like they'll chase us and then they'll be keen to close really quickly sometimes within like two days so yeah it's different.

Dario Nouri42:25Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov42:25Yeah.

Dario Nouri42:43How do you, how, would you say that like comparing SEO to like paid advertising, which one would you say brings in more leads for you? The SEO or the paid advertising?

Rupert Rixon42:58paid advertising but I don't think that… I think we are the best at…

Dario Nouri43:01Oh, okay.

Rupert Rixon43:04paid advertising of any of our competitors in the country. And the type of ads we run perform at a very high level. Whereas SEO, we do, okay, we do well, we're front page and everything else. We're not the number one on SEO. Our site isn't all about the SEO. So I think that it would be hard to say. I think that if we were the best in the UK at SEO and we were best in the UK at paid ads,

Dario Nouri43:07competitors.

Rupert Rixon43:34compare them more, but it's just that we've performed well as a business at the paid ad side. What about you guys? You mentioned SEO before.

Dario Nouri43:41You guys are on page one, right? For London? Okay. I think so, yeah. I think you guys are one of the top ones. I mean, I'll double check, but I think you guys are on page one. Yeah, for us… Yeah, you guys are ranking pretty well. Interesting. Yeah, for us, we haven't done paid advertising on meta platforms. We've done it on Google AdWords, and then I also…

Rupert Rixon43:45Yeah, yeah, that's how you found us, right?

Rupert Rixon43:53Yeah, I think we're third. Yeah, depends on the key time.

Kyrill Lazarov43:59Mm-hmm.

Dario Nouri44:09paid for us on those directory websites like Clutch and Upsity, but I noticed that we weren't really getting leads coming in through there. It was still through Google, so I stopped it on Upsity and Clutch, but on Google AdWords, I don't know if we were getting a lot coming through there. I think we were just getting them more so organically, because every time I'd ask them how they found us, it was always for some odd search term.

Rupert Rixon44:15Mmm.

Kyrill Lazarov44:37search terms most of the time.

Dario Nouri44:37Something completely unrelated. Yeah, it was completely unrelated to what like they should have been looking for. And somehow we were always ranking number one. Like I don't have the list of them in front of me, but most of our stuff was, we did a big, so once we relaunched the business in 2021, I'd say we went from like 90% referrals to like probably 90% SEO and then 10% referrals. That's how it switched for us.

Kyrill Lazarov44:46That's good.

Kyrill Lazarov45:05Yeah. Yeah, most of our work is, like a lot of the work that we have now is like from current clients and retained clients. And that's the one thing I like about this industry is that every new client or lead, every client that you sign has the potential to be something more long-term, you know? And like, obviously like sometimes you have to change through clients over time, you know, so that not only they can grow and then move on to something else, but also you can grow. You know? It's funny because I think most of our clients are all new from like post 2021. Like I don't think we have any clients currently that are from some smaller stragglers. A lot of it is actually like people that worked at different companies and then moved on to other organizations. So it's kind of like new client, but same people. And that's where I think that 10% referral that Dario was talking about kind of comes in. But

Dario Nouri45:42some stragglers.

Dario Nouri45:48moved over, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov45:58I don't think, I think if you're growing as a company, you shouldn't be having the same clients from like five to 10 years ago, because you're not that same company anymore. And they're also not that same client.

Dario Nouri46:10Maybe after you get to a certain stage, like that graph where it's like, you exponentially go up, yeah, then you're like, but probably after a certain point, because by then you've already established your style and who you are and your branding, so yeah. Oh, I forgot to mention also, I also stopped our Google AdWords lately, because I was like, I didn't think we were getting too many leads through that, because everyone I spoke to, that was a lead like,

Kyrill Lazarov46:15It's like a curve.

Kyrill Lazarov46:22Yep.

Dario Nouri46:37it was never like oh we clicked on an ad it was always like more so organic so what

Kyrill Lazarov46:43Wait a minute, you said that for about a month or two months we haven't been getting any leads coming in. Is that because you quit the Google Ads? No, no, no, I'm just joking. I'm just joking.

Dario Nouri46:52No, no, no, it was after that. It was after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, our thing now is we're focusing more on SEO, creating more content. And I think I like your idea of the Facebook and Instagram ads, so that's giving me an idea that I will discuss with Carol later today. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Kyrill Lazarov47:12Oh, same here. Same here.

Rupert Rixon47:15The problem is that Google AdWords is the lowest. like there's no barrier to entry whatsoever. It's like video production London, like oh 60, 70 pounds a click, fine. Like any video production company in the country that wants leads has thought to maybe put themselves to the top of Google via paying for it. And it's like, and I just think that the, how competitive it is to be there and the amount you have to pay to get into that slot versus like how much you can actually showcase as a brand.

Kyrill Lazarov47:23Yeah.

Dario Nouri47:45Yeah.

Rupert Rixon47:50We make high quality videos like like what can you really put in like a log line that no one's ever put before when it comes to video production like

Dario Nouri47:58The only benefit of it is that Google puts it in such a way where you almost confuse it with inorganic link at times. They're very good at tricking you into going like, oh, wait a minute, that's a paid ad. But yeah, I agree. The barriers to the edge.

Rupert Rixon48:06Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov48:06Yeah, that's the weird thing.

Dario Nouri48:21Do you guys hear that noise?

Kyrill Lazarov48:23a little bit.

Rupert Rixon48:25It's like a soothing ocean noise. All right.

Dario Nouri48:26Okay, sorry, hold on a sec.

Kyrill Lazarov48:29Something soothing.

Dario Nouri48:30Hehehehe Hold on, hold on You sure, you sure?

Rupert Rixon48:32Nice relaxing, a bit of white noise. I'm just gonna triple check my camera's all still going, okay?

Kyrill Lazarov48:37Yeah, no worries.

Dario Nouri48:40i might have to go tell the the worker that the chill for a second

Kyrill Lazarov48:44Yeah, yeah. I mean, we're like another like 15 minutes probably. So like you could probably just let him know if you need to.

Rupert Rixon48:44There we go, all gears.

Dario Nouri48:51Yeah, let me go thumb. Sorry guys. Give me two seconds.

Kyrill Lazarov48:54Yeah. Dario's place has, they're renovating, they're renovating like the basement area. So every day there's always going to be like some kind of noises. So anytime we have a podcast episode, he has to like double check, make sure that nothing noisy is happening at that moment. Cause I mean, it's only an hour, right?

Rupert Rixon48:54Yeah, no worries.

Rupert Rixon49:13Yeah, fine. He's got the sneakers in the back there.

Kyrill Lazarov49:16Yep. Yeah, he's the sneaker guy, I'm the hat guy. That's the difference. How about you?

Dario Nouri49:17I'm the speaker guy, I'm the…

Rupert Rixon49:21Are you guys in the same building right now? Are you guys in the same house?

Kyrill Lazarov49:25Nope, our own places. Yeah, we started the podcast show during the pandemic when there was absolutely no work. Like for six months, you know, there was absolutely no work coming in for us at that point. So we needed something to kind of keep ourselves sane, you know, something to do on a weekly basis. And then until work started kind of coming in. And that's when we started CGC and then we interviewed a lot of different companies, learned a lot and then…

Dario Nouri49:29started the podcast show during the pandemic. six months, you know, there was absolutely no work coming in for us at that point, so we needed something to kind of keep ourselves sane, you know, something to do with.

Dario Nouri49:49That's when we started the CDC and then we…

Kyrill Lazarov49:53it just became like a tool of ours now, just to kind of connect with new people and yeah.

Rupert Rixon50:01Yeah, nice. Too good.

Kyrill Lazarov50:04Yeah. And now, like the area that you're in, is that like your office or is that like a like a creative space for you guys?

Dario Nouri50:05And now…

Rupert Rixon50:12Yeah, so this is just one of the meeting rooms. This is the meeting, yeah, just one of the guys set up for me while I was out, I had a meeting over lunch, so he set up for me and we just sat in this little corner. So, nice and easy.

Kyrill Lazarov50:15Oh, just one of the meeting rooms.

Kyrill Lazarov50:26Nice. And I can't imagine like how to fill up a 5,000 square foot space right now with just Dario and myself, right?

Dario Nouri50:27I can't imagine how to fill up a 5,000 square foot space right now with just Dario and myself.

Rupert Rixon50:34You'd have so much room for activities. You could play badminton, like Nerf wars, so much, so much you could do. You could get those little electric go-karts.

Kyrill Lazarov50:37So much.

Dario Nouri50:37So much.

Kyrill Lazarov50:45Did you set it up like a classic ad agency, you know, ping pong tables, pool tables, and stuff like that?

Dario Nouri50:45Did you set it up like a classic ad agency, you know, ping pong tables, pool tables and stuff like that?

Rupert Rixon50:51Ours is more, ours is kind of like that, but it's more like kids bedroom style, like a bit of like inspiration from Casey Neistat's studio from like back in the day. So there's a lot of like little pieces of things all over the wall, like memorabilia, big pictures of like us with tanks and skiing behind horses and shit like that.

Kyrill Lazarov51:00Oh nice.

Rupert Rixon51:11But yeah, at the end of the interview, I'll flip the camera around and show you guys the main space. Yeah, it's good. It's been nice to build our own, like, and customise our own space.

Kyrill Lazarov51:18Love you It'll be definitely cool to check that out. Yeah, because we, I think a few months ago, Darin and I, we were talking about getting our own space as well. But it's like one, it costs a lot in Toronto. Like I don't know how the rent is in London, but like in Toronto, it's ridiculous for like, okay spaces. You know, sometimes it's like very noisy and creaky because we thought about having a space where we could also do the podcast there. But like we're doing it right now, kind of like this remote,

Dario Nouri51:21It would be definitely cool to check that out. Yeah, because we, I think a few months ago, Darren and I, we were talking about getting our own space as well. But it's like one, it costs a lot in Toronto. Like I don't know how the rent is in London, but like in Toronto, it's ridiculous for like okay spaces. You know, sometimes it's like very noisy and creaky because we thought about having a space where we could also do the podcast there. But like we're doing it right now, kind of like this remote.

Kyrill Lazarov51:50the format that we kind of created for it. I mean, it's a lot easier than having you kind of fly all the way in for an interview in Toronto versus just doing it virtually.

Dario Nouri51:52I mean, it's a lot easier than having you kind of fly all the way in for an interview in Toronto versus just doing it virtually.

Rupert Rixon51:59I mean if you want to fly me out for an interview, I'd do it. It'd be a great time. I'd love to go to Canada. No, no, I've never been to Canada.

Kyrill Lazarov52:04Yeah. Have you never been?

Dario Nouri52:04Yeah, have you never been?

Kyrill Lazarov52:08Oh wow. Do you feel like you might want to go visit eventually or?

Dario Nouri52:09Oh wow. Do you feel like you might want to go visit eventually?

Rupert Rixon52:13Yeah, for sure, for sure. It's definitely on my list of like places to go. I really want to ski as well in Canada. I've only skied in Europe so I'd love to go to Lightbamph and do a little road trip around Canada and kind of like the more acceptable version of America to me but I've seen so much of the US so it'd be nice to do Canada and I'd like to do more of South America as well.

Kyrill Lazarov52:36Oh yeah. Yeah. I've done a, I haven't gone through all of Canada myself yet actually. Like Banff, Alberta is on my, also on my list. Like, I mean, I've done a lot in Ontario. I've gone to Vancouver, I've gone to Quebec. And then, you know, depending on what shoots I've needed to go into different cities, but usually just kind of stick to the cities. But doing a road trip like that would be fun. Maybe in the U.S. as well. My girlfriend wants to do a road trip on Route 66.

Dario Nouri52:38So yeah, I haven't gone through all of Canada myself yet actually. Like, Manif, Alberta is also on my list. I mean, I've done a lot in Ontario. I've gone to Vancouver. I've gone to Quebec. And then, you know, depending on what shoots I've needed to go into different cities, but usually just kind of stick to the cities. But doing a road trip like that would be fun. Maybe in the US as well. My girlfriend wants to do a road trip on Route 66.

Kyrill Lazarov53:06Got to see the Grand Canyon as well. That's also on the list. Have you been?

Dario Nouri53:06You've got to see the Grand Canyon as well. That's also on the list. Have you been?

Rupert Rixon53:10I've not been to the Grand Canyon. I've done, I skated a lot on Route 66 when I did the longboarding thing. I've driven a lot on it, so I've seen a lot of it. And I've been to Vegas but I didn't get to Grand Canyon.

Kyrill Lazarov53:22Yeah, you longboard as well?

Dario Nouri53:23Yeah, you longboard as well?

Rupert Rixon53:25Yeah, so I long boarded from LA to New York and we made like a documentary about it. We saw it on Netflix like last year.

Kyrill Lazarov53:31Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. Like, did you do that recently? You said last year?

Rupert Rixon53:37No, no, so we sold it to Netflix last year, but I did it when I was… I did it eight years ago when I was 20.

Kyrill Lazarov53:43Wow, that must've been a blast to longboard through the States. Like it's, that's a lot of fun.

Dario Nouri53:43Sorry guys.

Rupert Rixon53:49Yeah, it was sick. It was very tiring, but it was sick. Yeah, no worries.

Dario Nouri53:51Sorry about that guys

Kyrill Lazarov53:53I can't imagine. He was just kind of like mentioning about his time, like longboarding and skateboarding through the US and creating a whole documentary out of it. Like the furthest I've gone is like into Toronto, like going into the city and all around the city, but to do it like cross country, like how long did that take you?

Dario Nouri54:02Nice.

Rupert Rixon54:12It took two and a half months. So yeah, 3,000 miles, all of it on, you know, pushing with my left leg or my right leg, on a little matchstick with some wheels.

Kyrill Lazarov54:15Wow.

Kyrill Lazarov54:24Yeah. Did you do it by yourself or was it with like a few people doing it together?

Rupert Rixon54:30No, yes, we had a support crew. So we flew out four Brits, two dropped out within the first few days, because we basically went out of LA and just straightened to the Mojave Desert. And it was horrendous skating the Mojave Desert in June. Like I got these really violent nosebleeds where I would wake up in the night just covered in blood and would constantly have these huge nosebleeds because it was so dry and hot in the air.

Dario Nouri54:53Oh my God.

Rupert Rixon54:59in all up my like inside my nostrils so that happened for a few weeks and I was googling and I found out she's putting Vaseline up your nose so if you ever happen to have that it actually solves the problem weirdly. Just smother it up there. But yeah so and then we had like some crew that looked after us as well so so yeah everyone just obviously sure I was really into drugs or some shit because I was just getting those beats all the time.

Dario Nouri55:00Jesus.

Kyrill Lazarov55:10I've heard about that, yeah.

Dario Nouri55:14You should put Vaseline up something else.

Dario Nouri55:24i was gonna make a i was gonna go can joke at one point but uh… uh… let's let's the gilbert louis just quickly finish up yes so

Kyrill Lazarov55:25Hehehehe

Rupert Rixon55:29Well it was LA, do you know what I mean? You had to try their local cuisine.

Kyrill Lazarov55:30So you-

Kyrill Lazarov55:36Yeah, I was just gonna say, you said you were gonna send it to, you sold it to Netflix, when is it gonna be out?

Rupert Rixon55:43So it's out but only in Europe, they only bought the rights for Europe So if you download yourself a VPN, not that I would ever advocate that Then yeah, you can watch it in the European version of Netflix But we sold it to them last year, so it's been live for a little while And it's like, I hate watching it, it's horrendous Because imagine something you made like 8 years ago I'm sure as you guys do what you do you will totally understand this Being like the thing all of a sudden that you've done and it being like, no no honestly I'm so much better now, I really hate watching this. Like this is so shit. I literally like, I had like a real thing where like we sat down as a family and like watched it on like holiday together with my parents and my brother and my sister and my girlfriend and everything else.

Kyrill Lazarov56:17So much better than that.

Rupert Rixon56:34I had the worst time sat there watching it. I was like, oh my God, this just makes me want to cry the fact that this is live to the public. But it was also very of its time. I think I'm just very harsh on that, as you would be your own work. And it's very genuine. It is literally like five or six, seven 20 year olds out in the middle of the desert with no idea what they're doing, no real training, no proper planning. And it is like the danger is very real. So that's kind of fun.

Kyrill Lazarov57:01Nice. Cool. Um.

Dario Nouri57:04Do you guys want to continue from the the AdWords thing or I don't know what you guys are chatting about while I was gone

Kyrill Lazarov57:12Yeah, we can kind of like dive right back to it. And I think one thing we could probably touch upon is like, since you now, Rupert, have focused a lot on like paid advertising for a lot of your content, like how did you go about finding the right type of content to create for that type of, those types of advertisements? Like how did, what was like the process for you?

Rupert Rixon57:34Sure, so we were, so years ago we were running out of money again, we spent a lot of this investment money and we were trying to work out how to generate business at scale. I went for lunch with one of my investors and I said, look, have you tried Facebook ads? And I was like, no, that seems mental. And he was like, well, honestly, like give it a go, I'll teach you how to do it. And I was like, well, okay, sick, I'll give it a go. It's your money, I suppose, in a weird way. So I did that and we just smashed together like a really crappy ad in like two hours, me speaking directly to camera.

Kyrill Lazarov57:55Hehehe

Rupert Rixon58:11basically just bitching about like the production industry and how we're different and why we're different and why everything just doesn't, isn't optimized for digital and social and everything else. So I just had a mini rant on camera, uh, posted that to Facebook and ran that as an ad and very quickly we started to get leads and I was like, Oh my God, this is so sick. Like overnight we're generating a load of leads. So I was like, well, imagine if we like put real effort in and we like made like a really cool artsy ad. So then we made this really artistic ad. Um,

Dario Nouri58:32It works.

Rupert Rixon58:41Facebook and that did terribly that cost like three times the amount and the leads were awful so I was like okay right well it's clear that like me speaking directly has hit a nerve and the way in which I'm presenting this problem and the way in which I'm speaking about really works for us so I was like cool what if I do this but in a much more interesting setting and we really go out of our way so we rented a tank and I sit on top of a tank while it was like running over a car like we did all like I sat in like a drift car as

Dario Nouri58:48Okay.

Rupert Rixon59:11spinning around like all this kind of stuff and I basically just said the same thing and that flew like and the better the advert got the better the quality of the lead that would come to us and the better the kind of projects we were getting in the higher budgets we were getting so since then just every single year we've re-done that advert or every other year we sort of redo that advert and the most recent one like we rented two planes and I stand on top of one of the other one of the planes and then the videographer stands on the other plane and they fly together in unison and then the videographer is filming me like ranting on top of a plane. There's like a whole…

Dario Nouri59:47He's the Tom Cruise of video production. Every year he tops it off with a new stunt.

Kyrill Lazarov59:50Yeah.

Rupert Rixon59:53taller I'm really scared of heights so it's like this is kind of you know and ugly yeah sorry

Kyrill Lazarov59:56Hahaha

Dario Nouri59:57Next time it's at the Burj Khalifa, right? Next year you're gonna do it at the Burj Khalifa.

Rupert Rixon01:00:04100%. I'd love every second of that being set on top of that really tall building.

Dario Nouri01:00:08Hehehe

Rupert Rixon01:00:08But yeah, so that works really well for us. So that's kind of the main thing. And like other video production companies have tried to do similar stuff here, and then all the comments are like, oh, nice idea from Perspective Pictures you got here. So like, you know, so we've really like owned that space. And like I said, just the longer the ads have gone on, the weirder they've got from like me being pulled behind a horse while the horse gallops in snow, and I'm like skiing behind it, and just like the weirder shit, like the better, basically.

Dario Nouri01:00:21Ha, nice.

Dario Nouri01:00:25Yeah.

Rupert Rixon01:00:37There's like a scene that's like… Very true. One of my favorite scenes in the most recent ad is me like pregnant, and I'm like sat in a hospital ward pregnant, and I'm holding hands with someone that's the client, and the ultrasound is a video exporting. Like that's like one of my favorite recent ones.

Dario Nouri01:00:37Imitation is the greatest form of flattery.

Kyrill Lazarov01:00:42But what's great?

Kyrill Lazarov01:00:54Hahaha!

Dario Nouri01:00:57What was that Schwarzenegger movie where he gets pregnant?

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:00Oh man, damn, what was it called? I forget, but yeah, I know what you mean. It's really great what you've done. You've basically found your idea and you're kind of like brand in a way and then you're just basically re-executing it and finding new ideas for the same kind of core skeleton at the end of the day. It's not like you're creating new idea, like, sorry, that's maybe not the right word. It's like…

Dario Nouri01:01:04I'm pregnant.

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:25It's not like you're trying to create with completely new concepts for your ads all the time, but you basically have the structured concept and you're just finding new ways to interpret it and then kind of improve on it and one up it in a way every year. So I think that's like a key thing for a lot of companies to think about is like, what makes you guys you? Yeah, what makes your signature concept, your signature story, and then how do you just simply keep retelling it and keep executing on it?

Dario Nouri01:01:43Signature style, that's what he found. Signature style.

Rupert Rixon01:01:53Yeah, it's just refining. You don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. The script is almost still, even five years later, almost unchanged from that initial thing. It's like, hey, we're digital first. We can do things quickly. Our team are on at house, blah, blah, blah. But it's the execution that's changed.

Dario Nouri01:02:13Have you tried LinkedIn advertising?

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:13Nice.

Rupert Rixon01:02:16Yeah, we've tried LinkedIn. It just doesn't work quite as well as Facebook and Instagram. The traffic's just more expensive. But again, I think it's well worth giving it a go. LinkedIn is a much easier platform, I think, to run ads on because it's like, again, it's so simple. But I think that's part of the problem is that the easier it is to execute well on that platform, the more other companies like us are already operating on that. And then, the bidding higher and it makes it more competitive and you less memorable when you market people but yeah LinkedIn is yeah the traffic is like five times the cost of what it costs us on Facebook Instagram and cost per lead is like twice as much and the quality is probably about the same if not a little bit

Dario Nouri01:02:47It's crazy expensive on there.

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:01Yeah. Well, definitely something for everyone to think about. Ha ha.

Dario Nouri01:03:02Oh. Yeah, well, I guess one last thing before we we we end slate it is I just like you mentioned a lot about like you've been in a lot of high stress situations throughout the growth of your company, a lot of sleepless nights. I just want to know, like, how did you get through those moments? Like, what tips do you have for that?

Rupert Rixon01:03:26Yeah, for sure. I think if it's not difficult then you're not moving forward, you're not like growing, right? Like, if it was easy then everyone would do it and everyone would be millionaires and everyone would have… house is not that's what drives me but you know that it's it's super super competitive what we do right isn't that everybody has a May at a company that runs a video production company or does video so it is hard it's a hard industry like I think when I start another company I'm gonna go into like a way less sexy industry that's like I'm gonna go into like cleaning products or something and just like fucking kill it in that because like it's so competitive to want to run a video production company as I'm sure you guys know and

Dario Nouri01:04:00Hehehehe

Rupert Rixon01:04:11I think that the most difficult thing for me was like when you see success stories you don't see how many times that was close to being a disaster story, as it were. Like there are so many times that we literally nearly collapsed as a business or we thought maybe it wasn't gonna work or I thought maybe I was gonna give up. And I think the thing that I would say to people is like, just because you feel like that doesn't mean you should give up and doesn't mean it won't be a success, right? It's like, and that was a thing for me is I was like, I remember sitting there like, oh, do you think like Mark Zuckerberg in the early days had like cashflow problems? And like, actually is my business because it's struggling now and that's absolutely not the case I'm sure he has all sorts of problems with Lizard Man but like you know it's definitely like not it doesn't say the fact that your business is you're struggling with it it just means you might have gotten it right yet it doesn't mean that it's never going to be right and I think just perseverance is like the number one thing resilience and perseverance just keeping on trying and trying and trying and refining for as long as you can

Dario Nouri01:04:59Yeah. Yeah. Heh heh heh.

Rupert Rixon01:05:20you know, until it starts to kind of get a little bit easier and a little bit easier and then it gets harder again and then it gets a bit easier again and you know, then you earn more money and you're like, oh this is mental and then it gets harder again. So yeah, that's kind of my thoughts on it. What about you guys?

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:30Some, it's funny cause it's funny that you mentioned that cause it's like that saying where you never know just how close you are to just kind of getting it just right, you know, you can try 985 times and you may quit, but maybe it was the 986th time that is like kind of like the breakthrough for you. So like you said, you have to keep pushing no matter what and then it'll come eventually, right?

Rupert Rixon01:05:55Yeah, absolutely. But if you're refining and creating something which is worthwhile and eventually it will become good enough that people will pay you for that thing or that skill or that product, you just have to keep working at it to make something better and listen to that kind of client feedback and what people think of it, how people are interpreting it and pick up on those little nuggets of someone like you saying earlier, like, oh, you guys seem really fun. And it's like, oh, cool, maybe we're like the fun ones. Maybe something really double down on whatever. So it's just like refining, iterating, listening to that feedback, keep pushing through it. Worst comes to worst, you could always go get a normal job at the end of it, but it's like, throw everything you can at trying it, and then if it works out amazing, and if it doesn't, well, you gave it everything. So that's kind of my… feeling on it. But I mean, for you guys in terms of the journey, what's been the most difficult period you've had? Was it sort of like COVID? Was that the hardest period of time to get going? Like when were you closest to like giving up?

Dario Nouri01:06:58Never. We never really gave up. I don't think we've had like a moment like that just yet. I think we're still in the process of that rapid growth. And again, we consider our True True launch back in 2021. So if we're only in the third year in considering. So I don't think we've been tested.

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:59Uh, yeah, I mean like-

Dario Nouri01:07:24to that to like your extent just yet, but I think we're getting close to the point where those moments will probably come up in our future. What do you think, Kero?

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:32Yeah. I think we haven't gotten to the point where we've been so stretched thin that things might collapse because of how nimble we've kept it. And I think that's kind of been, in a way, the one thing that's kind of kept us going so that if difficult times have come around, we haven't felt it as a result. Whereas you, Rupert, have an office, you have a team, you have more responsibilities than…

Dario Nouri01:08:00More overhead.

Kyrill Lazarov01:08:01than Dario and I have, right? So that's probably why we haven't gotten to that kind of point. I mean, I would say that the pandemic definitely was a period of like uncertainty because up until that point, as we mentioned, we only treated the business like as if it was just two freelancers working together. We had no idea what was really going on. We had no idea where things were gonna go from that point. And… I think as we started to reevaluate things, as we started the podcast and started to talk to more people and understand what it really meant to be a business, it kind of shifted our mindset. And I think our next biggest thing is to make a big risky leap into something, but we're trying to be smart about it. And I think that's where we'll start to kind of feel those points of pain. But I think we'll have to wait till that point before we could really feel something. The more Darren and I keep it lean like we are now, I feel like we won't feel as many of those challenges and pains that other companies might do. But I think the second we get an office or a space for ourselves, the second we start hiring people, that's when these potential challenges are gonna start arising. So we're just, we're trying to prepare. And I'm worried that we might be trying to over-prepare a little bit too, but you know, it takes.

Dario Nouri01:09:16Yeah, I agree.

Kyrill Lazarov01:09:18I think there's gonna be a period where Daria and I realize that it's time to make some big leaps, because like you said, Rupert, if it's not easy, if it's too easy, you're not gonna be growing. If you don't take those risks at some point in your business, you're not gonna be able to move up. Actually, the funny thing is, remember Daria, when we invested in 360 video back in the day, I would say that was a pretty risky move back then, but it wasn't to the scale of a business.

Dario Nouri01:09:45You know, you know what I just remembered, we did have actually like a moment of like big self doubt. Like I think it must have been around 2017 or so because again, we were like still we didn't know what the hell we were doing. OK, so we were just literally just two freelancers running this business at the time. And I remember like you were the one that was you were really stressed out at the time because like we'd meet like pretty often. And

Kyrill Lazarov01:10:07business.

Dario Nouri01:10:14I remember you at one point where like you're like, we got to figure this out. Like we're not getting anything. Like we had a very slow period. It was a couple of months, like basically no work. And you were getting very stressed out and me like, I was just goofy saying like, whatever it'll like sort itself out. But like, then I started to think about it too. I'm like, Ooh, what if this thing doesn't, doesn't work out? Should I go back to the bank? Work at the bank again? Do you remember that night?

Kyrill Lazarov01:10:34Yeah, because we…

Rupert Rixon01:10:37Thanks for watching!

Kyrill Lazarov01:10:38Yeah, because we had just graduated from university and, what sorry? Yeah, yeah, I remember. I remember what you're talking about, yeah.

Dario Nouri01:10:42Do you remember, because we had several nights where we had like some very serious discussions, like what is gonna happen, like, because just things weren't advancing well enough, right? Like I can be honest and say maybe the business was making maybe 40 to 50K a year for a couple of years. Do you remember?

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:01The only thing that was keeping things, yeah, and the only thing that was keeping us personally afloat was the fact that we were freelancing, doing other things, and also not having as many of our own personal costs. So that's why, to be honest, Rupert, lapses of business technically shouldn't really exist if you look at everything by the numbers and face value, because it was never sustainable until maybe last year, it actually began to be sustained.

Dario Nouri01:11:22Hehehe

Dario Nouri01:11:2621, no, no, 21, 21, you know what I would say, 20, 21, 22, 23, like from the year zero to like, no, but even 2020, remember like September to November, we basically made more than we did in 2019 because every business opened up. I don't know how it was in the UK, but over here they like, well, they shut everything down. It was brutal. So like we had like no, how was it over there actually?

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:34Well, that's when we started focusing on it.

Kyrill Lazarov01:11:44Yeah, that's true.

Rupert Rixon01:11:52Yeah, I am.

Dario Nouri01:11:56That was the government over there. They completely botched everything like they did here.

Rupert Rixon01:12:01Oh yeah, I mean, you know, in fairness, I think to any government, it was no one really knew what was going on and was just throwing shit around, weren't they? But yeah, I mean, it was pretty chaotic here.

Dario Nouri01:12:10Hey, we were the longest closed province in the world, do you remember? Like everyone else, yeah, everyone else was open, Ontario still had up its ass, like it was wild, man.

Rupert Rixon01:12:14Really?

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:16Yeah, I remember that.

Rupert Rixon01:12:22That's nuts.

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:22Yeah, and like they opened up briefly from like September to November in 2020. So we got a lot of work in at that point and then they closed everything down again. And then they opened up in like mid 2021 was when we were able to actually start working again. And that's why I was saying, Dario, is that I feel like 2022 was actually where the sustainable aspect of the business where cashflow was actually starting to come in consistently leads, we're starting to be more consistent. We did a lot of the legwork and groundwork in 2020 and 2021 to kind of get it to that point. So now…

Dario Nouri01:12:31Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:12:52after maybe a year or two years of sustainability, this is where we can actually start making calculated risks within the business and figuring out how to push and grow. But I think it's like we take it month by month and see where it goes. Any advice you would maybe say, I would say actually?

Rupert Rixon01:13:08What's your guys' main… Well, I was gonna say, what's your… What is it that you guys wanna… Where do you wanna get to? What's the… Let me just double check my laptop charge, because I run eternally on not having enough battery. That's fine, it's 8% and I've got loads, 8% and this is so much about me. So…

Dario Nouri01:13:10Hahaha

Dario Nouri01:13:24If it's a Mac you got a lot of time, if it's a PC you don't have any time. Hehehe Hehehe

Rupert Rixon01:13:28Oh yeah exactly, but thank this Mac but Pro will be checked on 2am on 8%. So what do you, well the question is what do you guys want to achieve? Because I suppose that then sets up the response, right? What's like, do you want to build a company and sell it? Do you want to like build a company and maximize profits? Do you want to just like keep the team relatively small and make stuff that you guys are really passionate about? Like what's the, what is it you guys want to achieve?

Dario Nouri01:13:33Yeah.

Dario Nouri01:13:54I think our goal right now is keep the team pretty skeletal and also maximize profit. I think that'll probably change as you know, we speak to more people, get different takes on it and also like we experience different stages of the business. We might decide to go in a different direction, but I think probably Kjell and I should sit down. one of these days and plan things out. But yeah, what would you say in that case then? Keeping things skeletal and trying to maximize profit?

Kyrill Lazarov01:14:18It changes, over time it changes. Yeah, that's kind of like the main point right now just to kind of like get us to that consistent sustainable level is what we're trying to kind of get and then we can evolve to the next one.

Rupert Rixon01:14:24Yes, it's…

Dario Nouri01:14:29Next stage.

Dario Nouri01:14:34yeah what do you think

Rupert Rixon01:14:34Yeah, so I think that in terms of… The problem is profit in these earlier stages is the enemy of growth. Like the more, if somebody gives you a thousand pounds, right? What could you guys do with that? Could it be spending money on marketing? Could it be spending money on equipment? Could it be investing in new team members that you train? Could it be getting office space? Like there's still so much stuff that's uncharted in terms of what you can invest in and by, like, if you really believe that you're going to build like a scale, like a growing business and you have a growing business, like every time you take of that business you're taking £2,000 away from yourself next year and £4,000 a year after and £8,000 a year after that. So it's like if you want to build like a skeletal team and just like maximise profit I think that's great. There's other production companies that I have like relationships with in London who will be like a team of four producers, five producers, they'll do like X number of projects and they'll make like a big profit each year and they're just

Dario Nouri01:15:16Mm.

Rupert Rixon01:15:38that they have and their overheads are pretty low right so they've got the flexibility like they want to go off and like traveling for three months or whatever they can just kind of close their doors and go do that and then come back if they really want to. Whereas if you want to build something higher margin in the longer term something that might be saleable something that's going to run if you guys don't turn up to work if I didn't come into work all next week like stuff would still happen we would still scale like there'll still be new business coming in there would be a team behind that like you know and if you stage where something sort of runs itself and you have something that might be saleable as a business and something that you know, going to that sort of stage, then investing, reinvesting money, so maximizing profit, I might be misappropriating what you mean by that, but like taking profit and then reinvesting it constantly in the business is gonna be the way to do that, but it just depends on what you guys want. But now it's like a good time, I think, anyway, to take risks because there's a lot of, like I said, there's a lot of people in the market, there's a lot of employment, like, and if it all goes, like, tits up and you guys fuck it, you can always just go back to where you are now, right? you can strip it right back again. You know, it'd be very stressful, but there's nothing stopping you doing that and refining it down to these clients you have. But yeah, I'm a big believer in investing.

Dario Nouri01:16:47Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:16:54Yeah, I think…

Dario Nouri01:16:57What's your, like, long, like, I look at you and I go, man, that guy's already, like, in a really good spot. Like, what are your, like, next steps? Like, where do you want to go from there, from where you're at right now?

Kyrill Lazarov01:17:05Yeah.

Rupert Rixon01:17:09So we're looking at like, there's a few things. One, we're looking at diversifying a little bit into other products and other things in the space that we'll be in. So, we're looking at diversifying a little bit into other products and other things in the space that we'll be in. So, we're looking at diversifying a little bit into other products and other things in the space that we'll be in. So, we're looking at diversifying a little bit into other products and other things in the space that we'll be in. So, we're looking at diversifying a little bit into other products and other things in the space at some stage but I think there are some big opportunities that aren't just in production but also I don't want to become like an agency that does like paid social and stuff like that I very much want to stay in like production and like own the space and do this really well. Two is just like bringing on bigger and better more exciting clients and like continuing to do that like you know we're not a bolts factory where we just make bolts and then whoever buys them it doesn't matter like we become our clients that's an unavoidable reality Win is what employees are going to spend all day, every day working on here. So winning and holding onto the best, the most exciting clients, the clients have the budget and the drive to do exciting stuff, continuing to grow on that. That's really, really important. And then for me, I want to spend the next two, three years continuing to scale the business and then look at some stage at selling it. And that's something I'm very open with in terms of the team. The team will have like… in the business or promised equity so they're part of like a profit share scheme so they would all benefit from that as well. And I'd like to look at an exit further on down the line where we might sell to like an ad agency or you know whoever and then I'll go do something else for a bit. Don't know.

Dario Nouri01:18:36Oh, like something separate from video or what's still in the video field?

Kyrill Lazarov01:18:36other pens.

Rupert Rixon01:18:41Maybe, yeah, I don't really know to be honest. There's a few areas that interest me. Like I'm really interested generally in like entrepreneurship and like starting another business and I've got like a property business on the side that I do. So I'm interested in sort of scaling that and the commercials involved in that. But also I like love like the craft, like I love filmmaking. I love making documentaries and I would quite like to, you know, look at just doing that full time and just becoming like a director and focusing on that. So. It really kind of depends, I'm pretty open. I'm very much like about the path of least resistance. So I know that there's like a thousand things I could probably really enjoy doing, but it just depends on how things unravel and come together and then I'll choose the path of least resistance for what I think I can kind of get furthest in or will enjoy the most based on what opportunities it offered to me or whatever. So yeah, I'm kind of down for anything really. I'll come work at your guys' company in Canada, that'd be nice. Real okay.

Kyrill Lazarov01:19:21Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:19:37Yeah, maybe he'll be one of our next hires, yeah.

Dario Nouri01:19:37We're hiring.

Rupert Rixon01:19:41There you go, that'd be nice, I'd have a great time. I could be your CFO or something. No, I'd be a terrible CFO. I could be your commercial, I'd be a head of sales. I'd be us, I'd be a good head of sales.

Kyrill Lazarov01:19:46Hahaha

Dario Nouri01:19:47i don't know about that uh… it was if you come on sales of people feel it will probably sell the company on like a year or two after that

Rupert Rixon01:19:56Hahaha

Kyrill Lazarov01:19:56Yeah. Amazing.

Rupert Rixon01:20:00That's it really. That's um.

Dario Nouri01:20:00Okay, last question. How did you come up with the name? Oh, what does the name mean or whatnot?

Rupert Rixon01:20:06So awful the name So I made a video I was like so still running these notice like I had this business renting out nerf guns for kids parties my mom One of the things we did to provide that sort said earlier was like make YouTube videos and some of these YouTube videos went viral And I made a video called like nerf war the movie which is huge and so we made that and and I was sat on the sofa and I was like oh like I professional production and have like a movie intro like you know Fox entertainment, whatever. And I thought like, ah, like, first of all, perspective. Like I love perspective. Like I was like obsessed with like, whoa, everybody sees the world differently. We all have different perspectives. Like the world isn't black and white. Like it's gray. Like we all live different realities, whatever. You know, classic like 16 year old existential crisis kind of vibes. And I thought, cool, right, perspective is a great point. And then I also just really liked Martin Scorsese.

Dario Nouri01:20:43Hehehehe

Rupert Rixon01:21:10you say with an accent, and I saw him speaking about like, oh, my next picture, I was like, oh, that's so cool, why don't I say legend? So I just thought I'd put the two together, like Perspective Pictures, but fucking disaster of a name, like it's so pointless, it makes everybody think we do stills, like, oh, like I actually almost hate the name. I'd quite like to drop pictures and maybe just be perspective, like that cool moment in the, in…

Dario Nouri01:21:22Yeah

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:23Hehehehe Cough cough cough

Dario Nouri01:21:26I like it, I like it, it's not bad.

Dario Nouri01:21:36No, it's good, I like it.

Rupert Rixon01:21:38Yeah, well thank you. I'm glad you like it. I've come round to it but it's definitely a bit misleading given that we're not a photography company. Yeah, that's the name.

Dario Nouri01:21:41Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:41Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:47No, not necessarily, but…

Dario Nouri01:21:48maybe cuz like maybe it may because i watch a lot of movies like pictures for be like works also as a production company

Kyrill Lazarov01:21:55Yeah, but all photography businesses, all photography businesses don't use the word pictures in it. So I think you have that going for you. They always say so-and-so photography, this and this photography. No one says so-and-so pictures, right? It almost sounds amateur for a photographer though, which is funny. For video, for video, your boutique, if your name is with the word pictures in it. If it's photography, yeah, you're just a schmo.

Rupert Rixon01:21:55Yeah, there you go.

Rupert Rixon01:22:02I'm sorry.

Dario Nouri01:22:02Yeah.

Dario Nouri01:22:06Interesting, yeah you're right.

Rupert Rixon01:22:09Yeah, it's true. It's very true.

Dario Nouri01:22:16Hehehe

Rupert Rixon01:22:18Hahaha! Alright, what about your guys name? How did you come up with yours?

Dario Nouri01:22:19Yeah, that's hilarious.

Kyrill Lazarov01:22:26Oh yeah, we have a funny story on that too.

Dario Nouri01:22:26Oh God. Ours, ours we don't like. So we came up with it because at the time I was working on this very dumb short film. And the name for that was Laps because I thought it looked cool. And we needed to start up the company. I was like, oh, you know, it sounds cool. And then we could just add productions at the end because media doesn't work and all the other film, Laps films doesn't work either. Just sounds odd. But last productions worked. And then for years we were like. We were like, we got to figure out a meaning to this because everyone's going to ask us. And then we won't have a good answer. And almost no one asked us. And then just recently we came up with, we turned it into an acronym. So it stands for Lasting Amazing Pictures, Sounds, and Experiences. So if a client or lead asks us what it is, that's the story. That's the story we give them. You know?

Kyrill Lazarov01:23:08Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:23:13It almost like worked too well.

Kyrill Lazarov01:23:19Yeah. And even like some of the marketing material that we like created for it. And I'm like, oh my God, that actually looks so legit. Like what?

Dario Nouri01:23:27Yeah. Do you want to know? Do you want to know how I came up with that one? We was it was I distinctly remember was a with twenty twenty one like January 1st, like I got home from girls party drunk. I'm about I'm lying in bed. I'm about to pass out. And then it just came to me. I'm like, what could it stand for? I'm like, oh, what if it's an acronym? I'm like, what could I put for that? Last thing, last thing. Amazing pictures, sounds and experiences. I was like, oh, that's really good. I was like, I'll tell Carol tomorrow morning. And I'm like, will I remember this tomorrow morning? Probably not. I got I got the memory. I was like, I haven't got a memory of a goldfish. This is a bad idea. I should write it down. And thank God I did.

Kyrill Lazarov01:23:49Drunk thoughts. Ha ha ha. Ha ha.

Kyrill Lazarov01:23:58Oh no, you're gonna forget, write it down. Drunk thoughts need to be written down.

Kyrill Lazarov01:24:08Yeah. And then I'm like, Oh my God, it just makes sense.

Rupert Rixon01:24:09Did you write it down on an app or did you write it down on a piece of paper?

Dario Nouri01:24:14the either on google keep but uh… thank god for phones otherwise we would have still been uh… back at square one with that name

Rupert Rixon01:24:21you should screenshot that keep and put that on the wall in the office. That's a nice moment.

Kyrill Lazarov01:24:26Yeah, I like that, yeah. Do that, do that. I like what you said that you do with your office, with your space where you basically put a lot of pictures, memories and milestones and things like that on the walls. And I've thought about what our ideal space would be eventually and I've thought about doing things like that too. It's like you gotta make the space your own and that's kind of like the fun of having your own space. So yeah, that screenshot will definitely be framed and put up there as well.

Dario Nouri01:24:28I should. Oh, that's not a bad idea.

Rupert Rixon01:24:55There you go. It works great because it's like as well like a client will come in You'll like meet and greet them chat to them and you'd be like cool Do you want a cup of tea or whatever you guys would say in Canada? Maybe tea as well and Then like then they'll be like yeah cool and then you have to leave them, right? You have to like there's a person we have to leave them for a bit So you then either disappear and make them tea or whatever and then they're stood somewhere But if they're stood next to a wall that's like covered in like little memories and like moments by the time you come back without a doubt

Dario Nouri01:24:55Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:25:21they'll look at it.

Rupert Rixon01:25:25thing you did over here, like what was that about? And then you've got like a talking point and it kind of helps break the ice further and they get to know you a little bit more and whatever. So it's like there's a nice like moment there when you have like a wall with memories. But ours has got like newspaper clippings from a long border across America, like old posters, old currency, like like passes when we got into buildings, like there's a note on the wall where I was drunk in Thailand and I like, similar to you, was like oh I want to write down my… for next year for the business and I wrote all the goals like I want us to do a hundred thousand pounds in revenue that would be crazy and I wrote it all down on like this like little hotel notepad and I've got that stuck on the wall and that's like a so it's like nodes of nice little like moments and stuff that you can kind of look back on like oh that's that's a nice that was nice and you can talk to someone about that yeah

Dario Nouri01:25:54Hehehehe

Dario Nouri01:25:59Hehehe

Kyrill Lazarov01:26:11Display your stories, essentially. Display and frame your stories, you know, it's always gonna be a talking point. Because it also shows your growth, and I feel like clients like to resonate with companies that have a story too.

Dario Nouri01:26:13Ha ha ha.

Rupert Rixon01:26:23Yeah, absolutely. Building like culture and building narrative. Like it's something that's hard to do when you're only like a few years old. But I think it's really important to, to try and do that because it creates like you're trying to create almost like heritage, right? Around like you as a brand, which when you're, you know, you've existed for six months, might be McDonald's wrappers from like a big night out, but you know, that was a good night nonetheless. So enjoy it.

Dario Nouri01:26:45Hehehehe

Kyrill Lazarov01:26:49Well Rupert, thanks for joining us on the show man. Like we really appreciate you sharing your perspective on the industry and see it works. It works for you guys.

Dario Nouri01:26:56Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Rupert Rixon01:27:03No, well thank you very much for having me. It was a good time. Hopefully you'll be able to cut something together from all my ramblings.

Dario Nouri01:27:11for sure.

Kyrill Lazarov01:27:11Oh, they're good ramblings, don't worry. Ha ha ha ha ha. Cool. Alright, thanks Rupert.

Rupert Rixon01:27:13Good, good. Sweet.

Dario Nouri01:27:16but but but alright i thank you rupert

Rupert Rixon01:27:20Thanks so much guys, I'll chat soon, I'll hit you up when I'm in Canada and hit me up if you come to London.

Kyrill Lazarov01:27:25100%. I'll definitely be there eventually. Like I have family that lives in London, so I'll definitely hit you up there.

Rupert Rixon01:27:31Oh perfect, well I'll give you an office tour and we'll go out and get pissed. Get drinks. You guys don't say pissed do you? That's not a Canadian thing. Yeah, yeah. Getting pissed is just being angry.

Kyrill Lazarov01:27:36down for that. We don't but I understand the UK lingo.

Dario Nouri01:27:41We use it in a different context.

Kyrill Lazarov01:27:44Yeah. Exactly. Angry. Getting angry. Yeah, just getting angry. Yep.