Episode 35
Growing Your Video Production Business (ft. Vanguard Creative)
Spencer Stanley registered Vanguard Creative, a Winnipeg video production and photography company, in January 2020, and went full time that May, straight into a pandemic. He gave himself one test: if the business could match an entry-level marketing salary in year one, it made sense to keep going. It did, helped along by a wave of pre-recorded annual general meeting work that handed him starting capital most first-year owners never see. Three full-time years later he runs Vanguard as a deliberate solopreneur, listing only himself on the site and scaling up with trusted contractors per project.
In this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, the first of Season 3 and Spencer’s first podcast appearance ever, he joins Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov to compare notes on growing a video production business: the shocking real cost of full-time employees, why freelancers are often the better talent, breaking into a small market like Winnipeg versus competing in Toronto, running a YouTube channel as a second business, why the retainer model rarely fits specialized B2B video, outgrowing your clients, and where B2B leads actually come from.
Key Takeaways
- Run the real numbers before hiring full time. When Dario and Kyrill priced out what an employee actually costs, the total was shocking. Both companies stay with consistent freelancers until inbound work can genuinely sustain a salary.
- Be transparent about your team size. Spencer finds it shady when a two or three person agency claims a huge team. Vanguard’s site lists only him, and the honesty doubles as a sales point.
- Freelancers are often the better talent. People who are really good tend to freelance because it pays more and they choose their projects. Hiring per job also means a team tailored to that job.
- Grow slowly and hire with purpose. Staffing up around one big contract is dangerous if next year has no equivalent. Over-staffed shops end up chasing volume and pushing the wrong people onto projects.
- The retainer model rarely fits specialized B2B video. A single five to ten thousand dollar video with a month of work behind it does not map to a monthly retainer. Retainers suit agency campaign models and high-volume short-form content.
- Retainers work better for B2C than B2B. Product brands need a constant stream of content to sell at volume. B2B companies need specific messages every now and then, not weekly deliverables.
- Adjacent services make you the single problem solver. Lapse added photography through vetted partners and clients loved it: one face, one relationship, one vendor solving the whole problem, which is exactly how big agencies win big clients.
- Growing means outgrowing clients. Lapse has turned over more than 90 percent of its pre-pandemic client roster. Budgets rise, contacts change jobs, and sometimes those champions bring you along to their next company.
- Small successes lead to bigger ones. Finance clients start with pay-the-bills work like AGMs and quarterly reports, then grow into explainers and brand work. That slow trust-building is how long-term relationships form.
- B2B leads come from search, not social feeds. Spencer’s best inbound channel is Google, via SEO and pay-per-click, plus word of mouth. Instagram eats the most time for the worst ROI, and both companies agree LinkedIn is the B2B platform, especially if you engage instead of just posting.
Timestamps
From Pandemic Graduate to Full-Time Solopreneur
Spencer’s origin story is a stress test of starting lean. He had been shooting for about five years, the first stretch as unprofessional gigs and YouTube videos, when he graduated into the pandemic with a marketing and entrepreneurship degree and no obvious job market. So he went all in on the business he had registered that January, still living at home, and set a concrete first-year benchmark: match an entry-level marketing salary or rethink the plan.
“If in my first year I can have the same salary that I would have as an entry-level marketing job, this makes sense, and I'm gonna go and try and do that. So I did that, I succeeded that, and it's been growing since.”
Spencer Stanley, Vanguard CreativeThe pandemic, strangely, helped. Companies that suddenly needed pre-recorded annual general meetings and corporate videos handed him clients he admits he would never have landed otherwise, and the capital to actually run the business. It also forced the reflection the hosts keep coming back to: when you are buried in the work, you are working in the business, and it takes a slowdown, seasonal for Dario, global for everyone in 2020, to finally work on it.
The Real Cost of Full-Time Employees
All three are in the same boat: a few consistent freelancers, no full-time production staff, and a healthy fear of payroll. When Kyrill and Dario sat down and priced out what one employee would really cost, the number was shocking, and it reframed the fake-team-size problem both companies see constantly: websites claiming 20 employees from shops that clearly run two or three people. As Dario puts it, 20 employees means at least two million dollars a year in revenue just to be plausible, and buyers who know how to choose a video production company learn to see through the inflation.
“I find it kind of shady when people put a thousand employees on their website when you know that it's an agency with maybe two, three people working in the business full time. If you look on our website, it's just myself.”
Spencer Stanley, Vanguard CreativeSpencer flips transparency into a pitch. Every crew member on a Vanguard shoot is a contractor with their own business, tailored to that production, and he says so. The honesty also sidesteps the identity crisis running through the industry, where the line between a production company and a videographer blurs a little more every year.
Freelancers, Purposeful Hiring, and Slow Growth
The freelancer-first model is not a compromise, it is a talent strategy. The best shooters and editors tend to freelance because it pays better and they pick their projects, so hiring per job means assembling a team built for that job. The trade-off shows up in day rates rather than salaries, and in the discipline of vetting and managing talent well enough that the same reliable people keep coming back. Contrast that with over-staffed companies: once you have people who need work, you start chasing volume and pushing employees onto projects they are wrong for, and the end product suffers.
The hiring trap the hosts warn about is scaling around a single job. Some past guests built their foundation by landing one big contract and staffing up fast, but for everyone else the math is scarier: Lapse had a project last year that could have justified a hire on that year’s numbers alone, with no guarantee anything equivalent would come the next. Spencer lives the same cycle, sending proposals on the large projects that would let him bring on an editor or a DP, and shrugging when they do not land. The safer path is the organic, slow-growth route: hire with purpose, when consistent inbound work justifies it, not because one invoice did.
Winnipeg vs Toronto: Two Very Different Markets
Winnipeg is a small pond, maybe 10 to 15 serious production companies by Dario’s guest-scouting count, and Spencer broke in the unglamorous way: networking, building a body of work, and borrowing credibility, landing a large credit union and then leading with that name in the next pitch. The market is too small to niche down, he says. He would love to shoot only commercials, but Manitoba only produces so many, so the revenue reality is agribusiness, government and tourism work, MPI, and a mixed bag of corporate production. It is the same math the show dug into in episode 25 on partnerships and smaller markets, and a theme that continues with fellow Winnipegger Adam Duguay of Coelement in episode 36 on the client experience.
Toronto is the inverse: heavy saturation, but a much bigger economy. Lapse’s staple industries are finance, healthcare, and tech, and the service area is the whole GTA, downtown cores plus the Mississauga, Markham, and Richmond Hill office belts. The freelancer scenes rhyme, though. In both cities the hard part is not finding crew, it is finding the good ones you also want to spend a twelve-hour shoot day with.
A YouTube Channel Is a Second Business
Spencer bought his first camera to make YouTube videos, and the channel is still where his heart is: Sony cameras, lighting, audio, and, unexpectedly, well-performing desk and office product reviews. But running it alongside a full-time production company means the channel gets whatever energy is left, and the upload schedule collapses every time client work spikes. His fix is structural, hiring someone to edit and shoot so he is not the bottleneck on both businesses at once.
“It's hard to stay motivated on making videos about cameras when I'm doing video production all day. The last thing I want to do after getting home from work is touch another camera.”
Spencer Stanley, Vanguard CreativeKyrill’s diagnosis is the one the hosts learned on their own show: define the purpose and the audience first. Creatives Grab Coffee only became consistent once its purpose was locked, and Spencer admits he has never fully defined his target viewer, partly because his interests keep rotating. The advice stands for any channel owner: pick the avatar, commit, and let the YouTube SEO fundamentals compound, because in a lane as crowded as camera content, competing with the Peter McKinnons on charm alone is a losing game.
Why Retainers Rarely Fit B2B Video
Spencer’s biggest 2022 challenge was consistency, the feast-or-famine whiplash between too slow and too busy, and it led him straight to the industry’s favourite mirage: the retainer. The hosts have sat down repeatedly to design one and never made it work, and their explanation is structural. Specialized B2B video is a five-to-ten-thousand-dollar product with a month of work behind it, priced the way any video cost breakdown explains, and B2B clients need specific messages every now and then, not weekly deliverables. Retainers belong to agency models that run ongoing campaigns, and to high-volume short-form work, five to fifteen TikToks a month, where recurring output actually exists to bill against. The mechanics of making one work got a full episode back in episode 19 on creating a retainer.
Spencer has quietly tested the theory: his site carries a packaged short-form content offering aimed at the Winnipeg market, born from past retainer work in the beverage industry, though one-off specialized projects still drive nearly all his revenue. The corollary the hosts land on is that retainers fit B2C better than B2B, because product brands need a constant content stream to sell at volume. Meanwhile the smarter recurring play for a B2B shop may be adjacent services: Lapse started offering photography through vetted partners this year, and clients loved it, not because of the photos alone but because Lapse stayed the single problem solver, one face, one relationship, no new vendors to manage. It is exactly how large agencies keep large clients, and it acknowledges the unglamorous reality that photo and video often have to happen on the same day, with the same people, whether it is ideal or not.
Outgrowing Clients and Pay-the-Bills Work
Growth has a cost nobody advertises: you shed clients. Dario estimates Lapse has turned over more than 90 percent of its pre-pandemic roster, fewer than five clients survived, as budgets and minimums rose past what older clients could pay. Staff turnover cuts the same way, and sometimes in your favour: the marketing manager who loved working with you moves companies and brings you along, though Spencer also had to rebuild a relationship with one of his biggest clients from scratch when his contact left. You cannot cry about every lost sale, the hosts agree. Past a point, it is out of your control.
What sustains the business between wins is repeat, pay-the-bills work, and the finance industry is the model client: annual general meetings, annual and quarterly reports, easy work that pays well and recurs on the calendar. Financial companies also tend to start small, testing video before committing, which is exactly how small successes become bigger ones. Tech clients bring steady explainer work for the same reason. The Winnipeg pattern Spencer fights is the once-and-done SMB that wants two videos and disappears for years, and the fix is vetting: those clients are fine as baseline revenue, but the ones worth pursuing are the ones who treat video as a strategy, not a checkbox.
Finding Leads and Learning to Say No
Spencer’s lead stack is word of mouth first, then Google. An earlier conversation with the hosts lit a fire under his SEO, and inbound search plus pay-per-click now outperforms everything else, while Instagram absorbs his largest marketing time investment for the worst return. Lapse’s version is blunter: zero leads from social media, ever, because B2B buyers are gatekeepers who vet vendors through search engines, not feeds. Instagram is saturated with B2C; the platform both sides keep circling back to is LinkedIn, and the trick there is engagement, commenting on and celebrating your network’s work, not just broadcasting your own. Be genuine, be yourself, and skip the fake-positivity theatre. The lead-generation playbook gets a full workout later with Altitude Media in episode 40 on new ways to generate leads.
“When we get into this feast and famine kind of mindset and things slow down a little bit, that's when I'm a little bit more susceptible to taking on a project that I probably shouldn't.”
Spencer Stanley, Vanguard CreativeThe closing lesson is the discipline of no. When Spencer is busy, he says no easily, or charges what the project is actually worth. When things slow down, the old client asking for a one-person event shoot gets a yes he later regrets, three weeks of pre-production, shooting, and editing that would have been better spent working on the business. The hosts’ fix is structural: set a minimum crew and budget, a producer, a DP, and a PA priced honestly from a real quote upward, and outsource the editing, the single biggest time recovery Lapse ever made. Say no to the wrong work, and the right clients, the ones who can afford the real number, start to fill the space.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the guest on Creatives Grab Coffee episode 35?
Spencer Stanley, Owner of Vanguard Creative, a Winnipeg-based video production and photography company specializing in corporate and commercial films. This episode was his first podcast appearance and the opener of Season 3.
Does the retainer model work for video production companies?
Rarely, for specialized B2B video. A single corporate video can cost five to ten thousand dollars and take a month of work, and B2B clients need specific content occasionally rather than weekly. Retainers work better for agency models running ongoing campaigns, high-volume short-form content, and B2C product brands that need a constant content stream.
Should a video production company hire full-time employees or freelancers?
Run the true cost of an employee first, since it is usually far higher than expected. Freelancers often represent the best talent, since strong shooters and editors freelance for the pay and the choice of projects, and hiring per job gives you a team tailored to it. Hire full time only when consistent inbound work can sustain the salary.
Where do B2B video production leads come from?
Word of mouth and Google. Spencer Stanley’s strongest inbound channel is search, through SEO and pay-per-click ads, while Instagram consumes the most marketing time for the worst return. B2B buyers vet vendors through search engines and LinkedIn, where engaging with your network beats simply posting.
What is the video production market like in Winnipeg?
Small, with roughly 10 to 15 serious companies. The economy leans on agribusiness, government and tourism work, and institutions like MPI, so companies cannot niche down the way they might in Toronto. Breaking in comes through networking and building credibility with recognizable brands.
The Hosts
Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov are the co-founders of Lapse Productions, a Toronto video production company, and the hosts of Creatives Grab Coffee, a weekly show about the business of video production.
About
Creatives Grab Coffee is a podcast about the business behind video production: sales, strategy, pricing, team building, and everything that happens off camera. New episodes every week on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
Lapse Productions is a Toronto-based video production company serving tech, finance, healthcare, and manufacturing clients with corporate, promotional, event, and testimonial video. New to commissioning video? Start with our guide to the types of corporate video.
Vanguard Creative is a Winnipeg-based video production and photography company specializing in commercial and corporate films, founded and led by Owner Spencer Stanley. Registered in January 2020 and full time since the start of the pandemic, the company produces corporate storytelling, commercial spots, social media content, and photography for businesses across Manitoba. Learn more at vanguardcreative.ca.
Full Transcript
Read the full episode transcript
Auto-generated from the episode captions and lightly edited for readability. Paragraphs are timestamped but not speaker-attributed, and it may contain small errors. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.
0:00so this is your first ever podcast episode eh first ever podcast episode what's it feel like it feels good it feels good so far we just started so we'll see how it feels at the end I guess I feel like I feel like I'm just as nervous as you are right now even though this is our 35th one ah it's the first one of the new year though so that's it's new year new new podcast I guess kind of yeah is this the first one of the new season first one first one you're you're I guess number one okay so for 35 we got Vanguard Creative it's exciting we have Spencer Stanley
0:32from Winnipeg Manitoba and uh all right let's start the show let's go let's start I guess with the a lot of people have been saying that we spend too much time on backgrounds but I still think it's kind of important so let's do like a quick you know under five minute intro on who you are yeah I think it's good to get to know the person obviously uh my name is Spencer Stanley I run Vanguard Creative which is a Winnipeg based video production company we specialize primarily in mostly corporate work but a little bit of commercial work and a little bit of Photography kind of here and there
1:04um I've been running that full time for I always forget because I kind of forget what year we're in now with covid but I think it's been three full-time years uh it was pretty much since the start of the pandemic myself I've been doing video for about five years the first two three years were very unprofessional kind of you know gigs here and there making YouTube videos fun stuff learning how to use a camera and then when I was in university I graduated during the pandemic I was there for business I majored in marketing and Entrepreneurship and I thought I was going to go into marketing kind of have a bit of a video background
1:37because that's what I was interested in and you know I had no idea what to do at the time with you know a pandemic starting so I just went full time into this and I've been doing that ever since I haven't looked back and it's been it's been really exciting and fun so you've been doing video for five years but you started the business three years ago five six years started the business the business was registered I think three years ago I think I registered it in January of 2020 I think uh I would say it's a great time to start a business yeah uh especially one where you have to interact with people um I uh I then you know I was still in school so it was kind of I had a few
2:13projects here and there but it was I wasn't doing it full time and then in May I went full time into it and I kind of told myself you know if I can if I can do my first year if in my first year I can have the same salary that I would have as an entry level marketing job or something like that if I could kind of do a similar type of thing this makes sense and I'm gonna go and try and do that so I did that I succeeded that and it's kind of been been not exponential but growing since obviously and during the pandemic to boot that's pretty good yeah I mean we had good growth we had
2:44good growth during the pandemic as well I think a lot of people had positive growth and then some people were in a lot of trouble you did right like I tried to Branch into corporate work and I got some clients that I wouldn't have even had if there wasn't a pandemic so I shot a lot of like annual General meetings pre-recorded videos for that and that gave me when I was starting a lot of you know just Capital to to be able to actually run the business so the pandemic did help me in in kind of a weird way and also I think it helped me go full time and pursue something that I really wanted to do um without any it gave me an excuse to
3:19do it really right I was I was still living at home so it was a nice little uh it was a nice little segue to kind of do this and let me do it and I don't know if I would have done it otherwise so I'm really I'm kind of grateful for the pandemic and what it did in a weird way that makes sense no that makes sense a lot of sense because what it did was it forced a lot of people to really reflect and look at their businesses to see what was working and what wasn't working because when you're in the mode of working in your
3:44business you sometimes forget to work on your business and I think the pandemic really forced everyone to actually look at their businesses as a whole and see what was working and what wasn't yeah yeah and and it's funny that you you mentioned that because I find I saw I find I do that myself a lot of the time when it's really busy I'm just working you know uh how did you phrase it in the business and then when it slows down which it typically for me it gets kind of cyclical around this time of year and it slows down just a little bit and then I start working on the business and I'm like I gotta do this
4:16more during the year um and be a little bit more attentive to um you know marketing and things like that how big is your uh your business or is it just you running it or do you have employees it's just myself so I would consider myself kind of a solopreneur um I do hire out depending on the production obviously so I I have a couple different contractors that I'll work with here in the city and I think we we spoke about earlier I have a freelance editor that I've been been using and looking to hire somebody in the year that's kind of editing and shooting so that I could have somebody
4:48to help with we talked about earlier and kind of going into YouTube a little bit more so help editing and filming there and then BTS and stuff like that depending on you know the production size yeah we're kind of in the same boat right now like uh we have a couple of Freelancers that we use pretty consistently but we're not at the stage where we can hire them on actually when Kyrill and I were going over the number numbers on what it would cost to
5:12like have like an employee it's kind of shocking is there sometimes I say sometimes you see some companies like they say oh we have like 20 employees I'm like when we know that they don't actually have that many they're just trying to boost it boost their numbers up and we go like dude if you have 20 employees that's at least like two mil yeah sorry to interrupt I try and be transparent with that too because I find it really I find it kind of shady when people put a thousand employees on their website when you know that it's an
5:44agency with maybe two three people working in the business full-time it's not really my favorite business practice so if you look on our website it's just myself even though there's different contractors that would almost be on every single shoot that I would bring them to but they're not full-time employees they have their own businesses or they're doing other things so I find it a little disingenu not that it's it's a terrible thing to do but I find it a little somewhat disingenuous I guess it depends on how much they they work for the business I guess I sometimes use that as like a benefit when when I'm doing a like our sales calls or whatever
6:17because I say like hey you know we use Freelancers that we we know that we've shot with a lot that we've done a lot a lot of projects to it and like the secret benefit of that is that when you hire Freelancers you're kind of getting really good people because people that are pretty good tend to just freelance because you make more money that way right you make more money that way and you kind of get a pick and choose what you want to do as well exactly well the other big benefit is that you're hiring for that job so in that job itself you're getting a very tailored uh creative team to help
6:49execute it whereas there are a lot of companies where they have they've hired too many people and then they start taking on jobs in the volume sense and
6:58trying to just push the content out or sorry push their those employees onto the projects when they're not right for the job and sometimes the end product suffers as well yeah I I find a lot of companies that do maybe hire on or have a lot of employees like that tend to maybe disvalue their work a little bit and kind of undercut and try and do economy of scale volume because they have people that need to work right if I hired a DP I wouldn't have worked for him all the time right it just it wouldn't make sense to to run this business in that capacity an editor
7:30yes it would make sense if I had enough work where that editor was going constantly right and focusing on other things maybe focusing on the company and working on the business but um I think I think in our line of work too it's just like how would you have what would you do with 20 employees all the time unless you were on a you had a different production every day right there's a there's a few companies that have it figured out like that we've had as guests on and those ones I always look at and go man that's intense I don't know how they do it it's because
7:56we don't know we just don't know they like when sometimes when a certain job comes in um some of our guests they got their start when they've uh taken on really big contracts yeah and because of that they had to scale up really quickly to help meet the demands of those contracts and that's how they got their Foundation whereas a lot of the rest of us or sorry the rest of us do it slowly slow growth kind of like what you're doing how we're
8:20doing it and slowly trying to introduce more people within the business as well what are some of the needs what are some of the challenges how do we fix that do we need to hire someone or can we still make it work with Freelancers yeah and I think that's a really good point like I've like last year for example this year I haven't had as many large projects that I I would like to have had that would have been able to to help me grow and maybe hire somebody full-time like last year had two projects that I could remember that were were a fairly good size and I was like okay if we could do this every year it's going to be easy to hire an editor maybe I could
8:53hire another AC or you know maybe somebody that can be a shooter role like a DP you have different roles like that but this year just haven't seen that I mean I sent a couple proposals on projects that would be of that size but didn't get any of them sadly but it's just kind of how it rolls in the industry I guess as well right yeah that's the thing I hate is that there's just no consistency year to year you just don't know like even though sometimes like for us it's been pretty consistent the last couple years but I don't know 2023 could be a bad year you
9:24never really know at the end of the day yeah well that's why you have to be careful about hiring based on the jobs because you may get one master like we had a job last year where sure we could
9:34have hired someone based on those numbers for the year you know to help us execute it but then this year would there be a project of that equivalent where we can justify it so you have to make sure that there is at least somewhat of a consistency in the inbound work that can justify it one job can be dangerous because like something like the pandemic can hit and then that one job is gone and I feel like they're in the in the marketing kind of agency world and video world there's a lot of turnover just because companies can't always um maintain the employees that they've taken on for certain roles or campaigns or retainers and then you know that goes because there's a pandemic and people are out of work right
10:15uh let's talk about your uh your your section of the world and Winnipeg it's a pretty small market right like I mean even when I was reaching out there's like there's actually a lot of guests from Winnipeg that are going to be coming on this month but like overall I would like there's like
10:31maybe 10 to 15 companies that are that I that I wanted to bring onto the show there but it's a relatively small market right so you you kind of broke into it recently like how what was that like breaking into like a it's like a you know a fish in a small pond type yeah it's definitely an interesting market and I I don't totally understand what the market would be like at Toronto I know there'd be a lot of you know company saturation but there's also a lot more work because you your economy is a lot bigger right you have a lot more business in Toronto and a lot more
11:01congregation a big business in Canada which is you know exciting to to be in that market Winnipeg's small um it's weird how I broke into it honestly I I think it was just through networking and personal connections um kind of creating a body of work and saying hey this is what I do reaching out to people and then getting jobs with certain companies that had maybe a reputable brand and then saying to other companies hey I've worked with you know this Credit Union this large Credit Union this whatever and I feel like that gives me a little bit of credibility to the to the work that I did um and then I've grown in there I wish I could Niche down a little bit more but I don't think the Market's big
11:41enough to sustain niching down more like I'd love to just do commercial work right but there's only so many commercials that are going to be produced here in Manitoba and there's already a certain amount of uh competition for that work right so it's it's a really weird market and honestly to answer your question I don't think I've figured it out yet uh I know Manitoba in general there's a lot of agribusiness so people that work in that space in terms of marketing maybe less video production but marketing do really well like we have there's a really big marketing agency that is just pretty much agribusiness because that's kind of a big part of our economy but I haven't completely sorry I was just
12:18going to say that's probably the main customer profile because the the one thing that we're always curious about is what are the the biggest customers or the most no what is it no not the biggest customers but uh the most type of uh customer that is within that market you know the agribusiness I think exactly so yeah there's a couple other different businesses in terms of manufacturing and stuff but in the video world there's a lot of uh government uh work as well so tourism work obviously the federal government gives a lot of money to tourism work so that gets pushed out I would say that's a really big part of the video production market and then
12:59also you know different government work like our uh um you know MPI stuff like that they do a lot of work as well so it's kind of a mixed bag I I find I'm sure somebody else might have a better with a little bit more experience in the market might have a better definition of exactly kind of what it is but I'm just kind of still figuring that out but that's pretty much the path that it would be for someone like you and your position where you're trying to break into the industry because that's how it was for us trying to do whatever jobs you could along the way uh start to kind
13:30of figure out what types of work you connect with or the types of clients you're starting to just so happen to get connected with and that's the type of work you're going to end up doing you're almost at the mercy of what opportunities uh come by your way right it's not like you can just say I'm going to be a commercial director tomorrow then all of a sudden that's the only work you're going to do you have to build up to it over time right it'd be nice but it's not feasible exactly yeah um yeah it's interesting you got a lot of uh
14:01agribusiness over there here we have a lot of like for us it's a lot of uh Financial Healthcare Tech we got a lot of that those those are the three main industries yeah we we like at least for us that's what we mainly focus on do you guys primarily work in the Toronto area or do you kind of Branch out uh to Ontario in general uh no no so we do GTA which is like Toronto plus like Mississauga, Markham Richmond Hill surrounding Pickering yeah surrounding areas around Toronto uh a lot of our work is in downtown Toronto but you know it's like there's a lot of companies tend to have offices in Mississauga or whatnot so we tend to drive out there and whatnot yeah
14:42no that makes sense Mississauga is a pretty big uh area as well how's the freelancer scene over there um you know it's it's it's pretty good uh it kind of depends uh I have you know if I find somebody that I like to work with I just tend to work with them um a lot of the time so I don't Branch out too much unless I'm looking for a specific role um but there are quite a bit of Freelancers and kind of Solo videographers in the market as well not as many as I I was aware with kind of before I started doing more you know higher end production work but it's it's there okay for us here it's kind of for us
15:22it's the same there's I mean there's a ton here in Toronto right yeah no actually is always finding finding good ones that's always a tricky part finding good ones and people that you want to work with people that are kind of fun to hang out with and uh that you like you know having a conversation with and then do good work at the same time yeah Kyrill I rudely interrupted you so who are you who are you about to ask uh I was actually uh one one of the
15:45conversations I wanted to kind of get to is uh you mentioned you're also starting a YouTube channel which in a way it's also its own business so in a way as a it's hard enough to run a business by yourself but to also do a YouTube channel that's a business in and of itself and the way Dario and I look at for example uh Lapse Productions and also Creatives Grab Coffee that's two businesses where essentially 100 so how is it how has that been like how long have you been doing it and what have you learned so far so the main reason that I got into video in the first place is because I've always been really interested in YouTube like I I don't watch much Netflix I don't watch much
16:19prime whatever I watch you're not missing much I know there's certain shows that I love like Yellowstone or Jack Ryan or recently The Terminal List, stuff like that but I mostly just watch YouTube videos and when I have a new I find like I have hobbies all the time so when I get a new hobby I just get deep into a YouTube Niche and just watch a bunch of that so been watching YouTube for a long time and originally the reason the reason that I bought my first camera was to start making YouTube videos so I traveled and stuff like that and I did it but I find that at the end of the day like what I'd
16:52really like to do is just focus more on YouTube but it has been hard you know running a full-time production business and then also trying to do this side hustle that doesn't really make a ton of money it makes a little bit of money but it's not enough to be sustainable um and it's it's been a struggle to kind of allocate time and and do that really properly uh I'd like to release a video every week but it rarely happens if I'm really busy with production work so I find that when I'm busy with work I kind of put it to the side and then when work slows down a little bit I focus on that more and it's it's not a great process I would like to to like I said hire
17:29somebody that could help edit and film things so that it's not just myself at the helm of everything right like with the business I'm doing the marketing the accounting the business work then a lot of you know the producing the DPing production work some of the editing so it's hard to kind of to find a balance one thing that can help you with that is I mean you said you mostly are doing kind of like a camera tutorial videos how-to videos and things like that have you thought to yourself who is your target market with that yeah I I've had a tough time kind of defining on what I want to do because I also find I I lose interest in certain hobbies and then I pick them back up and lose interest so it's hard to stay
18:10motivated on making videos about cameras when I'm you know doing video production all day like it's like the last thing I want to do after getting home from work is touch another camera and talk about one right so I I feel like my target market is pretty much people like me who are into video use Sony cameras possibly um and are in a similar kind of stage in their video production Journey maybe a little bit lower kind of starting out as well yeah the reason I ask is because like when you start to define those things it helps you get a little bit more motivated with that like what helped us a lot with Creatives Grab Coffee was really figuring out what the purpose of the show was and just kind of
18:51sticking to that and essentially because of that it allowed us to kind of get into um the habit of creating more more and more more consistent content so once I think you've because you said you still haven't 100 figured out what you want to do with it and that's why it's hard to do things consistently right and it is um yeah and I do need to kind of make those the you know target market or some people call them avatars the people that you you think are watching your content yeah it would be a lot easier but I've just I have so many different interests that it was always hard for me to define a single Niche or a target market and
19:22then make videos specifically to that like I have so many other interests and hobbies outside of cameras that I think it would have almost been smart to start a YouTube channel in a different genre and try and stand out with my camera work in that genre because in in this you know this area there's so many really talented people that are definitely better than me or more experienced in the the kind of video scene as well right like Peter McKinnon you have people like that I want to go back to the video production business
19:53um since we're we're early into the new year I just want to know what were some of your challenges what were some of the challenges that you faced in 2022 that's a good question um I think the biggest challenge and it kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier is just uh consistency in the business it goes from what I would say a little too slow for my liking to way too much for my liking where I can't handle everything on my own so then I kind of hire freelance for that or I would like to hire full-time but then it slows down again so keeping consistency within the business and keeping consistent cash flow would
20:33be um something that I I think every person in this industry struggles with a lot not everybody but some people have kind of cracked the code um I I would say that's one of the biggest hurdles um and I know this this brings me into another topic I was just looking over there that I wanted to bring up and it was kind of the retainer model and seeing if you guys have have looked at that at all I mean it's come up on on
20:56previous episodes we like we haven't I know some people have cracked the code for it personally for us I I think we've set we've sat down a ton of times to try to figure out what we could do in terms of retainer but it just it I don't know it just never worked for us because a lot of our clients kind of have like their own things that they do we would have to really be involved in their business to know like the the we would need to know what their whole plan is on a much higher up level than you know we're normally exposed to to be
21:27able to say hey like let's try to do this and that and I don't think it's just I don't I don't think we ever get that involved with with our clients businesses to be able to to provide something like that the retainer model Works a little bit more with the marketing and uh advertising agency models because they typically as video production um as video creators we come in once the strategy is usually already kind of figured out and um a lot of some of our guests are basically agency model type companies and they're working with the clients consistently where they do website production photo production uh graphic
22:07design video that doesn't mean well they're running the running camp they're running campaigns so they kind of go like okay we're gonna run this type of campaign for you and it's going to include all these other assets and we're like most of the time they're also pushing that stuff in there right but for us like we're very we're highly specialized we're a highly specialized business like yeah like a single video can cost anywhere from five to ten thousand yeah of course involve a ton of work Like A month's worth of work like in terms of retainer it's there's too much too many things that that need to happen for it to be tough
22:41for the type of video production that we're doing I think yeah yeah if we did like something that was more simpler like if we go like you know we're in the business of creating like you know we do about short form videos or something like that five yeah five to Fifteen TikTok videos for each client every month then you could work out some type of retainer model where that makes sense right yeah I actually saw in your website um that you are kind of adopted also the the package content model and that is yeah I was actually curious what made you kind of like go into that direction because it sounds like you also do video
23:12photo yeah um specialized custom packages and then you're having these more specific packages like uh what are what were your thought processes behind that so I would say my my main Revenue model is the exact same as you guys specialized video content um one-off projects but I I did have this problem so I I decided to maybe try and go into this this realm of short form uh content Creation in this on a more retainer level for the Winnipeg market and see if that worked um I've done different retainer work before in like the beverage industry and I found that really interesting um but I haven't I haven't pushed it too much so I just I kind of created that
23:55one day and I haven't uh I haven't gone too deep into that yet as something that I want to push my the most of the revenue comes from one off video
24:02projects same as you guys yeah we we started offering photography Services later this year yeah and um like we try to pitch it with every video project now uh but a lot of our clients have been very happy that we now offer that really yeah yeah because I mean like the people we use are really good and uh they know that we provide good video content so they kind of trusted us yeah and we trusted our photography uh Team yeah and they they delivered on that and so it's been working fine but a lot of them have been very happy about that and it hasn't been kind of like it hasn't been in conjunction with the video project itself it's mostly been like oh okay like
24:41separate from that project we have this other event coming up okay I don't really need video for it but we do need photography or yeah we have headshots that we need to do yeah obviously there's no video component to that so we just need photography for that but it's been an extra service that you know keeps the client happy keeps us happy keeps the other photography studio uh with some more consistent business well the other big thing is that we're we're still being that problem solver in their eyes because even though we're not physically the ones doing the video work we have vetted and found talent that can help on the photo side and solving a big
25:13problem for them which is like hey we need someone on this day in two weeks is there potentially someone you know it's like yes we have about five six different photographers that we can reach out to and we can have one of them come in and just handle that and then we're still um the the face with the with our client so that they don't have to talk to any new people they don't have to try to build new relationships it's a much easier process for them and this is why a lot of bigger agencies typically get a lot of bigger clients because they are those problem solvers for those uh
25:45larger companies because they're still they just want to go to one person yeah they don't want to they don't want to have to deal with a bunch of different Freelancers a bunch of different payment structures Etc they just want to deal with one person and they want to make everything easier I've also offered photography pretty much since the start of the company I would say the main or main business like you is video production I do photography myself but then most of the time I'll hire that out as well uh depending on kind of the production there are some jobs like we recently did a campaign with Porsche Canada and the Porsche Center Winnipeg
26:15here where they wanted video and photo on the same day because they only had the client for one day that we were we were focusing on so I would hired a photographer specifically for that to work with us on the shoot somebody that I work with quite often and he's I work with them a lot as well so he's kind of you know a bit of a director at DP at the same time if you need help yeah that's a common that's a common format as well where sometimes clients
26:39want to try to kill two birds with one stone especially when they have people coming in which are only available for that day and yep we all know it's not the most ideal environment to try to do photo and video side by side but it is what it is you have to make it work and when it comes to like when you were asking about the retainer model I feel the only it really depends on the type of opportunity and the type of business
27:04that it's in I feel more so in the product world that might be a little bit more viable from a video production standpoint because um those clients are constantly needing to pump out content to sell high volume products yeah high volume and products whereas if you're working with B2B companies the retainer model is not going to work for those companies because they have very specific messages and content that they need to produce every now and then yeah but it's not like they need something on a weekly basis no 100 and I was going to ask you too I keep having these things but I don't want to interrupt so I'm holding them go forget them
27:37um would your main clients be a business reaching out to you with a marketing uh Department themselves or do you guys work with a lot of marketing agencies that have a pool of clients no we uh our our main business is uh direct the client yeah okay we don't we we have maybe I would say two um agencies two to three agencies that yeah we work with um not ad agencies just marketing agencies do you find with um those businesses do they generally come back often or they kind of one-offs maybe they need a video once a year and when they need that video they're going to reach back out to you because you've built a relationship we've been going
28:17through a lot of growth lately so in a way it's like we're shedding skin and some of those might be older clients that we've kind of outgrown them in terms of budget or just whatever they need like we've just kind of outgrown that um so it's still kind of early to say I would say that since the I would say that since the start of the pandemic we've we've done like a 90 plus percent client turnover our pre-pandemic clients I would say there's like like a handful like under five that stayed with us and since then we've had like a complete new roster of clients and do those new clients come back or are they coming back for multiple videos a year or is it
28:58kind of yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I would say a good chunk of them are just because like the clients usually don't uh leave you for someone else unless you've either changed your your budget your your pricing but more than what they can pay uh more than what they can afford or your quality has dropped significantly or the experience has just gone downhill or they've just had a turnover of Staff right yeah that happens soon which is not always the worst but it's not always the worst thing though no I would say it's actually pretty good because that person now goes to another company and they'll always remember you so we've had that happen as well where
29:37they go work somewhere else and they bring us along with them yeah uh whether the other company wants to keep us or not it's kind of okay it happens right like you can't really that's kind of out of your control so yeah I had I had that happen with one of my bigger clients and then I had to build a relationship with them again with the new person which worked out fine but it was one of the bigger clients so at first I was a little worried but think of it that's the easiest sell because you've already you already have a track record right there for them to see and they can see the quality of work you did it shouldn't be something too scary of a
30:08thing it's like oh no they changed their head of marketing they're not going to hire me anymore it's like this this is a company that's a reason not to multiple different video production companies and spreads it out though like they do a lot of video work so building a relationship with that one person is really important because I feel like they'll have preferential treatment depending on they're not going to pick the same video production company every time so I feel like that it kind of it makes sense to have a good relationship it's honestly it's honestly out of your control after a certain point that's kind of noticed like I used to get like a little bummed out about that as well
30:39and then you just realize like look they're either gonna like you or not or they have someone else that they want to bring as long as you as long as you did your best like that's it right like you can't cry about every sale you lose yeah well it's good and then what so just to kind of keep going with that what type of yeah Industries or the companies in that they're doing multiple videos per year and what would those videos be like in in genre kind of so I would say let's start with finite the finance industry we're starting to get a lot of you know pay the bills types of projects so like annual meetings I don't mind them they're easy
31:19and they pay well um annual meetings end of year reports uh quarterly reports you know quarterly
31:26reports reports are very common with a lot of companies because also a lot of these Financial businesses they not all of them are experienced in doing video work so they're also trying to dip their toes into it it's going to be a slower process where they're not going to Dive Right In with the biggest possible project uh right off the bat they're gonna start simple and slow and that's how you build long-term relationships you know small successes can lead to bigger successes down the road yeah that makes sense and that would be a really good type of clientele to have somebody that needs multiple videos like in AGM every year maybe they want a corporate explainer and then maybe they want some commercial work as well for you know brand awareness or whatever so
32:05financial industry is definitely a good industry for video yeah and then I would say for the other ones it's typical stuff like for our tech industry it's a lot of explainer stuff like stuff for either Industries yeah yeah I find a lot with clients that I get kind of on a once a year basis or a turnover basis here in Winnipeg they either want a corporate explainer or they're doing some specific thing but then they don't necessarily need video for anything going forward they might use it here and there but it's not going to really benefit them uh they're not going to get a return on their investment a lot of the time for maybe a marketing video or something like that to do it multiple times you
32:48know what I mean it's kind of like a once and done so finding clients like that especially in the financial sector I I find is really interesting well it depends it depends on the type of clients and the size of the business at that point right so this is where you have to also think about what type of clientele you want to work with yeah absolutely at one point we were working with a lot of those types of clients as well where a lot of one-offs they might need just some kind of basic explainer which it's fine to do that once in a while but then there's no sustainability in the long term you know with that like you said
33:19it's a once in a while once a year maybe once every two years this person is going to come to you and so Dario and I what we did was we started to think about what different criteria are we looking for like what type of companies uh or sizes of companies are we trying to to Target and that that's kind of like how our shift kind of went and no that's that's that's not how it went well it's we just mainly looked for no but like the the uh the no what we did was we basically just uh vetted vetted the the lead a bit better that's what I mean yeah that's
33:52what I mean no but we then we don't we don't we don't really choose like who we work like in terms of like okay you have to be of this size or that it's like look as long as you can pay you kind of know what you're doing on the strategy end we can kind of feel out that this is going to be a good experience for both of us we'll take you on we don't kind of like a big size Dario I'm not specifically meaning about the size of the company like how many how many locations or how many employees but in terms of the size of like other things
34:16like you just mentioned the strategy the budget uh the Focus right like some some of those clients uh that are doing one-offs maybe in their eyes they're not
34:25really finding video as that much of an important tool that they need and those are the kind of clients you might want to vet out over time you want to work with people that see video as yeah a need or as something that is valuable and that's where the best work comes out of 100 yeah there are those though that just need like a couple of pieces that's not just because they do it yeah because again there's always like a Baseline line as a business that you need to have yeah sometimes like it's understandable that you're not going to push like 50 pieces of video content out there like you just need the basics you need your your website Landing interview like something else to accompany that and
35:04you're pretty much good as a business yeah that's also fine I find a lot of small to medium-sized businesses here in Winnipeg specifically kind of only look at that they're just like you know they don't think about the strategy as much they think okay we need a video because we need a video and we're going to do these two videos and then leave that for a bit until we want to refresh that right um but I think it is beneficial to find clients uh that are going to be consistently coming back and I've struggled with maybe finding those specifically in this this Market how do you find them what do you do to get your
35:35clients uh I don't do a lot of cold Outreach uh so it would be a lot of word of mouth either good referrals from other you know past people that I've worked with or people in the industry and then inbound via Google is a really big one we talked about SEO before uh I've been since that conversation that put the fire under my butt to kind of you know pay a lot more attention to my SEO so I've been working on that and then Google ads like pay-per-click Google ads a little bit of Instagram I spend probably my most amount of time for marketing in the business on
36:08Instagram yet it does not I don't think it it provides you know the best Roi in terms of the time invested I feel like Google has been my my biggest uh biggest lead of inbound clients but a lot of the clients that I've kind of done repetitive work with I feel like are from Word of Mouth uh just doing a good job kind of building a connection and then being referred to I know that's not marketing but it's it's a good way to to kind of get leads we've had like nothing come in from social media at all like nothing do you guys put a lot of effort into it like obviously this is kind of social media I mean this is a
36:45lot of work right it's this just mainly for ourselves and like for our own personal networking but I don't know like I think a lot of our client our our clients or leads they're kind of they're kind of like the company Gatekeepers they're probably of the generation that aren't going to check out for vendors through social media they're primarily going to use like search engines right so most of our library
37:10comes from there that's why because when you're B2B you're not typically looking for B2B type of uh vendors on social media all the time yeah because a lot of social media is polluted well not polluted but um what's the right word uh saturated versus saturated with b2c exactly selling products um services that are related to products or maybe we should maybe we should focus more on LinkedIn though I was thinking about that I think LinkedIn is a better platform for B2B 100 and I I make all these posts for Instagram and I put all this I don't put a ton of time in I should put more but I put quite a bit of time into Instagram creating specific content for that on the Vanguard account and I don't post it enough onto LinkedIn
37:58so I think one of my New Year's resolutions is trying to to do LinkedIn I've never loved LinkedIn as a platform form like I don't go and scroll on there personally you know like I would on Instagram because it is really a lot of time it's people trying to sell you stuff right and I I don't want to be pushy and salesy with people but I think if you're you kind of have to it but you don't have a certain degree yeah you don't have to be I mean you don't always have to sell something sometimes you could just offer knowledge advice tips yeah add value and then people's lives that's the best way to do it right get
38:28under their radar and then if they're in the market for something they'll reach out to you if you feel like you're the person to go to in that industry well
38:36think of it like this also you said you don't you don't typically find yourself scrolling through LinkedIn or anything like that where a lot of us like to do that on Instagram or TikTok or whatever but your clients they're on LinkedIn and they're scrolling through there you know and because of that I've gotten a little bit in the habit of just going through LinkedIn myself trying to interact with other people within my network to just try to be try to be present sometimes being present is not just posting content it's actually interacting with the other people within your network because you show you're also showing interest in their uh in their work and what they're doing and I think a lot of people tend to overlook that it's that hey here look at me me
39:17look this is what I'm doing but the the people that I see the most consistently on LinkedIn and are getting a lot of Engagement are people that comment and post or sorry comment like other people's posts and just engage them they just simply engage with them yeah no I think that's a really good point I don't know how those people have so much time because I know who you're talking about and they're always on it like I see them commenting liking everything they must be getting a lot of business or something positive from it but I don't understand like there's a lot of people that have maybe a corporate nine to five job and they're on LinkedIn all the time all the time it's not necessarily depending on what
39:54they're doing is that really bringing any value to them in terms of inbound leads or something or do they just love the platform I think they must love it because it's a mix I think it's a mix and I think it's a um I think people also feed off of other people's positive energies that's true they like to see other people within their Network succeeding and then you know being there to celebrate that you know it it makes everybody feel good and I think that's where the community aspect kind of comes out of and that's also a little bit of what we want to do with Creatives Grab Coffee you know we're celebrating everyone that we bring into that we
40:27bring onto the podcast you know there's so much value here and there's so many people that have different experiences let's connect everyone together you know every everyone can learn from each other yeah my Counterpoint to that is that on LinkedIn it just feels like people are very fake that that's the vibe I get out of it some of the time some of them so fake man yeah yeah yeah and that's what I like I I try and not be like I said I like to be kind of open and transparent and I don't want to be super fake and and lie about you know how many employees or this this this but yeah be
40:59genuine be be authentic be yourself don't fake it yeah yeah and I feel like even coming back to YouTube a lot of people that have success on YouTube are the ones that are really just themselves they they act like themselves on I mean maybe that's not totally true you have people that are outlandish as well like the Paul brothers or something like that but a lot of people that are genuinely genuinely themselves and not acting for the camera are the people that have a lot of success because people can kind of relate to them and connect with them on a different level right be the be the MrBeast of LinkedIn that
41:33is that I don't have the answer for that for today or the money that guy is pure energy I I just it's it's wild how much energy that guy has yeah he's doing a lot of crazy things uh okay so what are the challenges that you
41:49have other challenges I would say that that's primarily my main one um so how are you gonna overcome the the consistent I'm not gonna overcome that did you do you have anything planned do you have anything planned like any strategies yeah I have some strategies that I've been trying to implement uh one of them being SEO to to kind of you know just generate more leads there because I found that a really a positive way to to get more leads coming in and then kind of try and put to side some of the things that weren't working on my business like Instagram I just I don't think it's it's my favorite platform but I don't think it's really positive for B2B like we talked about
42:28um I would like to hire somebody to to focus less time on editing so I could focus more on the business and then also just you know structure the company so that maybe I'm dping a lot less and I hire certain people to kind of fill those roles so that again I can work on the business and kind of maybe produce the project instead of just DPing and then editing it um so trying to to hire for more roles and kind of take a step back so that I'm not doing so much I think that's a a way that I'm going to scale the business a little bit more that's that's really
43:00going to change a lot of things for you once we because because we were in the same boat where we would kind of take on the the grunt work in a way right but once you start uh budgeting for that and then just saying Hey listen I like once you figure out your hard costs of saying like look on a project I need to have at least one PA one DP and one producer director which will be you right so three person crew and this is gonna cost me this much right then you can set that as a kind of your minimum budget once you factor in also pre-production and post and that'll
43:33really like change things because then you'll start to get clients that can afford that kind of pricing and then that's how that's how you scale up your business really and I try and do that right now and I've been trying to do that but also I find there is a lot you know I go back into to the market and you know somebody an old client reaches out for something where it's maybe just they want a one-person crew to film an event video or something like this and I say yes to it uh when it's not necessarily what I want to do going forward so I think kind of sifting out
44:03that work and figuring out um you know only taking on work that's going to be really beneficial for the business and growing the business and the work that I'd like to do going forward um be something that I've kind of planned to do you know it makes sense it honestly makes sense because it's hard
44:18to say no it's hard to say past clients yeah um like specifically to pass clients because I know dark but I'm just trying to relate here I'm just saying that like for a lot of people it is hard to say no to past clients where they have certain uh requests and things like that um but as time goes and you and as Dario mentioned before once you start to kind of outgrow that level that you were at many years ago it's time it becomes more and more time to understand when it is when you should start saying no and when you figure that out then you know you're you're starting to actually grow once
44:54once you start saying no to them yeah they'll either say okay cool that's it move on or sometimes they'll actually get more budget and 100 exactly I find that um when I'm busy and when I have work I say no a lot more or I charge a lot more depending or not charge a lot more but charge what the project would be worth right um instead of kind of working within their budget I say no like we're only going to do this with the three to four person crew it's going to be this much that's just the way that this should be um you know handled but then when you know we get into this feast and famine
45:28kind of mind mindset and things slow down a little bit that's when I'm a little bit more susceptible to taking on a project that I probably shouldn't in terms of that right because at the end of the day the business has expenses and you know you have to pay the bills so there has to be Revenue coming in so if I was busy all the time 12 months of the year there was there was work solidly coming in um that it would be a lot easier to say no I'm very okay with saying no it's not like I need to make all of the money you know what I mean I I can easily say no and just work on
46:00what I like to do it just kind of depends on on what's coming in yeah when there's not as much work coming in that's when it's hard is to say no because it's right there yeah and you could say you can say no but um then it's like oh well now I don't have any income but there's no difference being a mature business and knowing uh the opportunities that are coming in even in those slower times you will understand that it's more valuable for you to work on the business yeah instead of taking on that smaller job because it like as you mentioned you're doing a lot of it right now where yeah if you were to take on that smaller
46:33project the pre-production you shot it you edit it before you know it two to three weeks are gone oh yeah and and that that would have been time that would have been more valuable for you to work on the business to bring in more leads that paid a lot more so I totally um yeah and I think the the biggest thing for us was when we just almost a hundred percent outsourced our editing and that freed up the most amount of time start with that editing kills you like it just it sucks up so much time especially if you have a client that needs a lot of revisions and you're kind of going down that Rabbit Hole uh the biggest thing and it I did hire like start uh having somebody edit most of my
47:13work but then also there there's a lot of people don't like kind of giving up uh what makes their project special I've talked to a lot of different people in the you know in the industry and they say I just I can't kind of Outsource that because editing is what makes the project kind of unique to us or whatever right maybe they like color grading or anything but I find that if I could give the project to somebody to just do at least uh cut it up find the best b-roll edit the interviews whatever it is depending on the price project and then you take it to that last thirty percent they do seventy percent you do 30
47:43whatever it is that saves so much time and it just it lets you focus on the business work on the business or be out there filming more yeah I mean it all depends on the type of clients it all depends on the type of clients the types of projects see what works for you it's a it's an ongoing process you're never going to just figure it out right off the bat it's always ongoing yeah okay last two minutes of the Pod okay tell us how you came up with the name Vanguard
48:08creative oh um I I kind of just tried to figure out names for a few weeks couldn't think of anything I hated everything uh nothing really stuck and then I saw Vanguard and I there's a lot of other companies that use Vanguard obviously you probably have seen them in the financial sector uh but I really like that some of their ETFs yeah I do too um no not my own it's a different company but I I really like the name and I liked what it kind of meant and I'd have to Google exactly what it meant but I think it's like a group of people going off and uh A New Path or something like that I don't know but I found it really interesting and I thought it aligned
48:50with what I was doing um I I tried to start the name Stanley and Co but it was too close to Morgan Stanley and co uh should they wouldn't let me register it uh so I wasted like a hundred dollars trying to register the name there but uh so I ended up on Vanguard Creative and I I don't know I like the name I don't like how many other businesses use the name but I'm sure I just noticed that because it's the name that I picked so so I I don't think it's just like I think you just noticed the name it's like if you buy a Civic you see Civics everywhere right yeah one of those things um yeah I I don't really have a process
49:25for anybody coming up with a name it's hard yeah it's everyone has a different way that it happens and yeah the one thing I I would say to that is that the name doesn't really matter as long as it's not something stupid it's more the brand behind the name and you shouldn't Focus as much time on the name you should just pick something that works and then focus on building a brand around that yeah okay well great thank you for coming on Spencer I think this was a pretty cool start to season three it was good thanks for having me on guys and it's the first podcast ever so hopefully I behaved myself and I did well no you were great
49:58okay so what was your what was your YouTube channel so people can check it out it's just my name Spencer Stanley if you're into cameras and stuff check it out I feel like Sony's or whatever whatever else Tech nerds uh I review different Office Products as well like this desk this chair those have been well performing videos so kind of home office desk setup Sony cameras lighting audio all that stuff cool and if a listener has a video project out and uh in Winnipeg sure to reach out to Spencer vanguardcreative.ca what's your website vanguardcreative.ca cool yeah that's it awesome thanks Spencer for jumping on awesome thanks guys
