How to Adapt and Evolve Your Business (ft. Agency NineSix)

This transcript was auto-generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. Speakers are not individually labeled, and it may contain small errors. Sections follow the episode chapters. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.

Intros0:00

Okay well hello everyone welcome back to Creatives Grab Coffee today we have Michael and Matt from Agency NineSix. normally I'd give a intro for our guests but these guys do so many things I'm just gonna throw the ball in their court so Michael welcome to the show and tell us a bit about yourself thanks for having us man um yeah so so uh our little intro I guess about us is uh we've been in the the production scene I guess you'd say industry for the last seven years uh we started off well I start off as Deep Rock Productions Matt Starr office Matthew Smith films and uh since then we've built a studio space we're now Agency NineSix is now a production agency we also do media buying um so anything and everything pretty much inside of

The uh uh production sphere I guess you could say yeah Mike Mike is uh Mike has been uh in the in the world I think might give give a bit of background on yourself then I'll kind of give a background on me and then we can talk about how we came together to kind of form this this thing that's bigger than us and how we form this agency sure yeah so like about five years ago started uh Deep Rock Productions uh with a buddy of mine uh and um we just started off by doing like little small music videos progressively started doing uh more corporate and more commercial work uh and then eventually uh when covet hit we actually decided we're like well we got to start building a studio space here uh because our main client which is uh Sleep Country

During who um they were needing like a lot more photography more video stuff uh and we needed a space to accommodate that so uh built the studio and then thought hey let's try and rent it out so one of my obvious thoughts was hey let me call Matt and see if he's interested inside the studio space and before that we hadn't actually even worked together um so I said hey are you interested in studio space he said no I just built my house actually and I have an office space inside of my house now so I don't really need it uh but then one thing led to another and uh uh uh we needed each other on different projects here and there and that's how we kind of met and now we're we're starting a whole new agency together yeah that kind of explains

It all pretty much yeah that's how briefly I'm Mike Mike's a great producer I've known him for quite some time and and I think I needed a lot of help on my projects I worked mainly as a director and I've worked a lot here in Canada but as well in the North American Market as far as the U.S so I have a lot of clientele as far as like Formula One and the NBA and stuff like that that I work with in the states um we do a lot of music festivals and stuff like that so um I think I've needed a support on a lot of productions here in Montreal and makes uh such a great businessman in a sense where he knows how to you know put the pizza pieces together and if you have a budget he'll he'll manage to make everything work and so uh it just felt

Like a natural forming relationship after the year of working together on different projects that you know what we had was was something and we wanted to build something different something new so we're not necessarily creative agency we are production at heart with production first so that I think what makes us different because when you know these creative agencies come to us we we know how to execute because you can put anything on paper but it's it's down to the bones of how can we actually make this happen and how can we bring this to life so I think us all having dipped our toes in production in some sort people really like that people like that we you know uh know how to produce something and bring those ideas to life so it's

Been a few few months of Agency NineSix in full effect so um I think we're we're on to some big things we recently did a a big print campaign for Michael Jordan and his tequila company um a billboard campaign so that's right now in La uh Chicago New York Miami so um we uh we're on to some some things and and we're excited for what the future holds that's for sure but that's incredible like working with the Michael I mean like it's it's really up there and you guys just started this recently too so you guys partnered up uh during the pandemic like early on later on yeah so we started working together probably over over a year ago we've worked together since and uh it's been a few months uh we've been working behind the scenes but it's

Pretty much since I think late 2021 to now 2022 is when we're we're making a push outwards to to make the brand aware and go public with it as far as a Persona not as a company but um I think uh yeah it's fairly new but we're excited for what the future holds and uh just being able to give clients everything they need in a One-Stop shop and I think that's where the studio comes into effect as well in the office space that we have here in Montreal and at the end goal we do have Ambitions to push out to the United States and have a headquarters there so right now we just want to make make our footprint here in Montreal in our home and I think Mike can talk about the studio space because that's been a huge benefit as well or absolutely

I mean yeah I think that's that's kind of one of the uh the big values that we're able to kind of push to a lot of clientele coming in um is being able to uh provide that space that that is kind of just that that creative like playground where you can kind of come in come up with an idea and a concept and every single time we have some new client come in the door we tell them that there's no such thing as too big of a project uh because the space is can accommodate it the studio can accommodate it we get cars in here we do uh we've done some stuff with Lamborghini we've done some stuff with like McLarens in here we've done some stuff with uh uh Kia did a commercial here uh Chevrolet so anything and everything can really come in here

We even had someone come in with like those big uh like uh Skyjack like like those really big ones you see on the constructions just inside the studio I didn't even know that that was happening but it was kind of interesting so I mean sky's the limit what we can kind of do uh inside the space it's just that uh that kind of space to to do stuff in Jesus what kind of space you guys have you know like a warehouse sized yeah pretty much yeah exactly yeah so do that like right over Mike's like left shoulder there's that door and then it has like how many square feet it's about got about six thousand square feet in the back uh with a full cycle wall uh we've got full uh lighting grid up top as well so everything's lit with uh aperture novas

And I think that was kind of one of the reasons that it's actually still surviving to this day because uh without those guys coming up with such great lights uh we have a lot of music videos that also come through here because they love the lights they love the setup they know that it's already set up where a lot of times I don't know if you guys have have had that yourselves but a lot of times you have to go and book a pre-lighting day to come in run your cables put everything over get the Skyjack rent a Skyjack uh put the cables through and then figure out make sure everything's gonna be able to get plugged in properly know what your lighting is for us it's like we needed it so we said screw it let's just keep everything as simple

As possible for future clients as well um so when people rent out the studio lights are already there so we already got given that that ease of um of use um and they can come in shoot their video maybe they're there for two hours maybe there for 10 hours maybe they're there for five days uh but everything's like super built to be as customer oriented as possible that's amazing how like you guys are basically running an agency and a Production Studio at the same time obviously you built it as a tool not only for yourselves but you're also managing like managing it like it's on its own business it's almost as if you guys are also booking your agency time in it within the business as well 100 that kind of how you uh uh manage those two

At the same time because they're two completely not necessarily completely different businesses but they have a lot of different needs compared to the other one right and how do you guys typically go about uh uh sharing the responsibility or kind of uh managing that aspect so so in terms of responsibility side I'm it's myself and actually my dad who owned the the studio space um so in terms of the responsibility on that end uh the guys who also work with us on our team is kind of it's kind of like a helping back and forth whenever somebody's possibly renting something uh on a day if we're also if the other half of the team is all on a shoot then uh we'll ask somebody else in the team to kind of cover during then but yeah the the aspects

And like the advertising and the the clientele for are two almost completely different worlds but they're also the same world so what we love about having a studio and and having everyone here is that not only are we able to on a on a whim go out and start shooting something but also the people come through the door excuse me when they come to the door uh you're also sometimes getting like these big agencies like um like in in Montreal you got like a cassette or maybe an Ogilvy uh that's coming through the door so you're already meeting that manager or that uh producer right away and then you make that that relationship with them uh make this their Studio of choice and then come in and say hey by the way we also do production um so

It also is kind of that little tool to be able to meet new people speak with new people Network and do stuff like this exactly like this uh to just meet new people in the industry it's it's just been a huge tool not only for ourselves to be able to produce our own content but also uh for meeting people that's incredible it's just like kind of uh use that as an intention as well for networking because I feel any any business owner has to

Think of New Ways to Network9:33

Find other ways to network that is a little bit different from how most people would typically do it everyone thinks oh you need to go to events you need to cold Outreach sometimes but no sometimes you need to create a resource or a tool that provides value to people that actually bring them to you in a way and that is a a very a very smart way to go about it and I'm actually I've always been curious about how how to go about starting up a studio like what is the first thing that you where do you even start when it comes to that well for for us when we started the studio the the biggest thing was we we knew we knew what we wanted we just didn't know how to execute it so for us it was kind of like learning you're going on to YouTube

You're like literally the same way that we started our our own ourselves because uh I didn't actually even go to film school I just kind of I was I hadn't uh I was in economics in uh University and then said I wanted to take my love for video and turn that into a business um but starting the studio was kind of like just trying to figure out exactly what we needed and then how could we also service that and and sell that to the public kind of idea uh when we're not using it uh so the first thing we had to do was was find a space and that took us about a year and a half to actually find the space that one worked with all of our locations and where we all lived to be as close as possible and then also to be as close as possible to other

Uh production companies agencies creative agencies so there's a lot of in I don't know if you guys have been downtown or working downtown Montreal um but there's a big sector of it that is uh like all the creative agencies work downtown Montreal

Elevators and Parking Are the Most Important Studio Assets11:22

Um but the the problem is that a lot of Production Studios they build ourselves close to them as well but there's no parking they're on the eighth floor they're really small they have uh like no elevator no elevators my God if there's no elevator then screw it I'm not I'm canceling the shoot I'm going home uh so so the biggest the biggest complaint not the complaint but the biggest thing that I've heard was the parking thing oh yeah parking is always a nightmare bring like a grip truck or like even like cast crew like everyone just trying to find parking that's a huge problem so the fact that we have a parking lot and like loading dock that that makes and like the same level loading dock I think that's a huge plus definitely absolutely

So it was it was all about kind of finding that that like sweet spot in between everything where it's like you're not too close to to there that you can't get parking uh but you're also not too far away that no one wants to come to you uh as well as having a space it's big enough to actually accommodate for the stuff that we need to do um so you can find that space and then once you're given the space and we're not really giving it your you have to pay for it uh you know you you know what that that's like um when you got to pay for that then uh

How to Set Up a Studio12:27

You start to figure out okay well now how do we uh like how do we populate this whole Space to make it uh look the way we want to do it so we started with uh coming up with plans and trying to figure out where to put uh different pieces and we really want to be like I said we're customer oriented so we want to make sure that there's a space that was big enough for people to be able to either read scripts or uh go over uh the the storyboards or the ideas Concepts on the day of excuse me with the actors away from set so that set can be its own thing things can happen over there the crew can just take care of things instead of everybody mingling and walking over each other and um and all kind of stuff so we started with building the the

Whole um client Lounge area so we have uh our dressing rooms makeup area a little kitchenette space uh couch space so that was a TV that we can also set up uh Wireless viewing on it so that the client can just sit there uh and see everything instead of being over the shoulder of the camera operator and then from there went into all right so now we have this nice space what are we going to film inside of it uh or what are we going to shoot inside of it so we we ultimately thought of what are the the biggest things that normally happen you normally see big psych wall uh with with a lighting grid and that's pretty much it so then our our first thing was where we put it how do we put it there and we had to hire a whole crew a whole team

To come and actually build the the psych wall because we had no idea how to build it and what to do uh so they built a psych wall got that done and then once we were done with that we had this big issue which was sound because when you have a 6 000 square foot space and it's just empty uh they're you've got a lot of Echoes so then we have to install curtains building the curtains putting those guys in so we have to get those imported from I think actually from Toronto uh a big sound curtain so that the whole thing is completely insulated we insulated the ceiling so the whole thing is completely insulated uh for sound being able to record audio no problems and then from there it was just kind of the last problem is getting clients and

Then it was just kind of how do we advertise the space and and be different from anybody else outside of uh uh uh our own space um and that was just another challenge it just uh it still is a challenge but uh it's still going it's still been a about almost a year and a half I think now of just trying to figure things out and hoping hoping that something works do you find it to be a little easier though because I feel like with when

Competition in the Studio World15:19

You're running a video production company you're dealing with a a bigger pool where there's more competitors versus when you're dealing with Studios rental spaces there's not that many compared to how many video production companies there are and also a lot of people need to shoot and oftentimes a lot of rental a lot of uh a lot of uh rental spots are are booked right so I I don't know I think Matt you can also attest this too uh I don't know if you guys have this issue in Toronto but there's no lack of of Studio spaces here in Montreal there's so many spaces it's it's crazy oh yeah yeah it's like everywhere you look somebody else is creating a new studio and building like literally we built our studio about a year and a half ago and

Now there's three other ones that are being built up near near us and actually we're past clients of ours that that uh said oh screw it well if you guys can do it we can do it too so they're building really inside their own offices so they're not direct competition in that way but you lose use clientele that way where they start to look at it and say okay if this guy can do it then so can we but um there's definitely not a lack of of Studio space in Montreal there's uh if anything I think it's more competitive in the studio world uh that it is actually in the production world because there's so much to go around production wise and and creativity and Concepts can always change and you can and you can make it so you don't have to work

Inside of a studio or you can work it outside or you can work it in your basement if you have to um whereas if you need the studio space it's it's almost the cheapest and the the one that has the most value that wins uh at the end of the day they're just looking to make sure that they can keep themselves inside a budget so that's why we try to kind of make sure knowing that our studio is mainly built for us and then the other everything else is kind of added on top the pricing on our side was we know what what we can charge for it and said you know what let's completely like cut that that margin down um and and be that space I can add value and also be at a reasonable price so that people do want to actually come into us so it's it's

Kind of competing that way but it is a very competitive space here in Montreal for sure let's talk about your partnership for a moment like you guys were both solo solopreneurs right how do you go from

Why You Need to Find a Partner17:45

That to a partner after you know being in the industry for so long like because normally not a lot of people do that they're very hesitant right so what were some of the what was some of the resistance you were both facing and how did you overcome that I think uh uh so when when I uh so I went to I didn't want to be in the art field for until I I stopped playing football so when I was young I I was super invested in playing football and long story short got a scholarship to play in the NCAA got hurt came back to film School Montreal and that's only when I started discovering uh my love for like film and directing and the creative world and so I worked about for five five six years as kind of a freelance uh you know run and Gun operating

Guy with a camera and I would just kind of go to my own shoes and like pack my car with lights and like just try to like make it happen you know and I realized like that's not sustainable from like a business aspect and you know if I wanted to scale and like I did weddings at the beginning so I really wanted to like narrow down my my dream of being kind of this business owner so um and a lot of these Brands I was working with and still am um I would go do stuff like say like Formula One like I would do stuff with them or the NBA um but to be able to kind of contribute more um they're less likely to invest in like just one guy you know so we put together you know this plan that okay well if we're a production company and we have employees

And we have a office space and we have um the room and scope to grow and support these big media mandates by these big clients then it's a lot easier to trust people like that if we build like a sustainable business plan to prove people hey we're growing I have a partner now we have employees that we pay and we have things that we're doing uh we have big projects that we're working on and we can take on this large workload so um I think I say this all the time but Mike and I are such a great yin and yang he's a great people person he's a great relationship guy he's an incredible producer and myself I believe that um really creative I can edit I go in there I'm I'm a director so that kind of creative world I get in very well so I think

We work that perfectly and we kind of realized that pretty quickly in our relationship that not only do we get along as people uh very well but also in that kind of business world that yin yang I think it works perfectly so um it was it was kind of a no-brainer for me that I needed an expansion he had the tools to do that and I think it was a perfect matching point at that point so I thought um yeah it was a no-brainer for me at least to get together and see where we could take this together and how large we can scale so since we've been together I think it's it's been pretty great and and just add to that I mean on our side um so so before actually working with Matt deeprock Productions was myself and and two other guys um and we

Were always coming with our own creative and we're not creative like we're we are the opposite side of creative we're the very I'm more the technical like you give me the creative and then I will figure out how to get it done um same thing with uh my editor Terrence and my my DP uh Eric they're they're creative in their own way they're not creative in terms of coming up with Concepts and I remember us about it like two years ago saying my God we got to figure out we gotta figure out creative or we're gonna or we're just gonna sink and then it just magically out of Out of the Dust Matthew came in and and uh and really pulled us out uh from from that rut of just kind of figuring out like how do we move forward and he was able to come

In um and and kind of take those reins from us and kind of figure out all this creative kind of going forward and really uh adding that extra like amazingness because I guess you could say to to a lot of the uh the videos and a lot of work that we've we're uh we've been producing ever since we started working together so how many partners are are there in total four then so the agency it's just Mike and I correct yeah and the the other two like I said Terence and Eric so the way we we work is is a lot of uh freelance work so technically they're on they're on contract with us uh they all work inside of the office here um because they're 98 of their their work comes from both of us um so we invest in buying the the desks and buying and

Building computers for the inside of the studio uh to allow for them to kind of come in and not have to really worry about where am I going to do this work and how am I get this job this stuff done um so they're they're kind of like a in between an employee and and a freelancer uh they come in and they do the work that we have to get done um pretty much right next to us uh while at the same time we give the the studio space to them to be able to kind of build different projects and and uh right now like Terence our editor he's also producing excuse me the series called uh Deep Rock Originals uh which is a uh a music series where you have artists come in do a couple songs and then we can we create like a uh a video a live session video

For them so Terence is able to kind of because of having the space being able to kind of take that creativity um and be able to turn it into an actual project that's tangible and I actually could possibly lead to something so so now that you guys are oh sorry

How to Find a Good Partnership23:18

Girl go ahead I was just gonna say that the way you guys went about uh finding yourselves as partners was definitely the right way to go you guys were looking for you guys identified problems and challenges that you guys were facing that you knew that would be very difficult for your uh to fix yourselves uh so you looked elsewhere to see who you could work with that can fill that Gap and that is that is a sign of a good partnership a lot of the time people get into Partnerships because you know for superficial reasons or things like that and they were just at the beginning maybe just at the very beginning probably because of an experience too right exactly exactly but when people typically get into Partnerships later on in their careers

It's because they've obviously matured enough in their careers that they know what they uh what skills they lack and they want to surround themselves with people that not only uh Elevate them but are also better than them in those um uh in those specific uh gaps so that everybody can work together and succeed together so that's great absolutely I I always uh looked up to actually like like I remember we would always be I I treated Matt actually at the beginning as more competition than I did as because I didn't really never really work together so I'd always see him in doing something I was like God damn it I wish we could do that why is he able to do what we can't uh and then it just kind of like I said it just kind of worked together

That we were able to uh uh to come together and make this partnership it's I'm a big believer in like working with people that I enjoy working with um and I think in this space like if you're on set all day and things are going to get tough and it's gonna get tight and it's gonna get stressful but at the end of the day like if you're with your friends and you're with the people that you care about and you're having a good time like you can stop and say like oh this is incredible like I wouldn't be rather doing anything else like we're lucky enough to be creating you know commercial video content or photos or campaigns for these clients that we love doing what we love all day so the key part of Mike was like getting to know him first

As a person and knowing like his core values business aside like am I going to hang out with this guy on the weekend like the answer was like yes definitely um he's a great person so um and then I'm on top of that um just everything from a business aspect everything he's done with the studio and and with his production company and just seeing what we can do together and buying in on that vision and knowing that we can make big waves and not only here in Montreal but uh in the US and and worldwide as we're doing I think it's it's a testament to to how well we work together so it's been exciting so I guess on the production side of things you guys found a pretty good way to work with each other you guys have a good working relationship

But on the business side of things like in terms of growing the company how do you guys um go about that yeah so I think um we we we try to uh do things at a slow rate right now I think the the thing you have to be careful about when growing companies expanding too quickly um so I'm a big firm believer in having

Be Careful Not to Expand Too Quickly26:08

You know Swiss Army knives as your initial employees like people who can do a lot of things so the fact that Mike can be on set as a producer but also have that back-end business sense and myself as well like be on set do the Creative do the pre-production and then also at the end of the day we can you know wash our hands and then get into like the growth of the business and how we're going to expand and how we're going to Target new clients and how we're going to offer different Services what makes it separate then every other competitor and you know what value we're going to bring and how we're going to do it and all those questions and to be able to bounce those off each other so um it's a definitely a 50 50 relationship when it

Comes to business growth I think we both have a great business sense so being able to bounce ideas off each other and using you know organizational apps like asanas like our go-to for task delegation and what we have to do we started using that yeah we started using that the other week it's amazing yeah it's incredible like just the how in-depth it goes so we all you know we're always assigning each other tasks on what to do and how we're gonna take the next step and uh we're just super excited about growing and we see where we can be and we see what's happening and we just know we can compete with the best so um I think yeah it's hard after a long day because you're we're not so many employees right now like we're wearing many hats

But um I think as we grow we'll we'll meticulously um delegate certain tasks to new employees as they come in and make sure that we we always kind of have the reins on the direction and where we're going to go for sure so since it's so early days it's only the two of you at the moment right I mean we have uh like as ownership we're just working in within the company like right like do you mean like it's just the two of us in ownership or so the two of you as the core team uh it's because it's the way dark and I for example operate it's the two of us as the court lapse team members and then we have a bunch of freelance answers that we hire out depending on the needs of the project so I I guess that's similar to where you guys are since

You're just launching the new agency now do you have an idea of probably what the first uh hire will be

Who Will Be the First Hire?28:24

Down the road in terms of helping you guys alleviate a lot of your tasks as well yeah Mike do you want to comment yeah so so on our side we are the core like the two owners would be Matthew and myself and then uh like I was saying there before DP as well as uh we have a graphic designer and we also have our editor who are also core members of the team uh not owners but core members or guys that I've been working with last five years um so those guys would be I guess you could say once we go into to hiring employees it'd be the first employees but beyond that right now what we're what we're actually looking for and we're trying to to find is just more people in general like we're just looking for more editors we're looking for more

Graphic designers looking for more crew members like people on set um just because of the fact that in the future we know that that we're going to have overlapping shoots we we have overlapping shoots that are happening this week like like things are happening where I can't be on set Matt's going to have to be on set I have to go to a different project he's going to be on another one um we want to be able to have those A and B Teams those maybe even c teams that can go out and do the smaller projects while the bigger project can get done so we're not losing out on on those one those clients and two obviously the money uh but uh on those opportunities because sometimes yeah there's a small budget but that opportunity can be super super

Big and it can be a really cool uh project to work on that could then lead to a whole different world so we don't we like to never say no to anything uh it's usually just yes yes yes and then figure it out later um so so for us it's really finding kind of that uh just just continuously looking for different people that that have the same mindset same value same goals same ideas uh as we do and obviously you'll never find excuse me somebody who wants to to work as hard as you to building your business but somebody who still has those kinds of uh values and those ideas and and that that that workability I guess you would say um is what we're looking for just people you want that you want that you want that leadership within the role

Of that person right so we have uh you know a lead Graphics designer that is eventually going to have a team under him like we want him to be as independent and be able to do that so it's like it's difficult like this is our first time building a company together so I think there's a lot of trials and tribulations that come with it and everything is a learning experience and we'll continue to learn for years to come so um it's it's a joy when we see things go through ruinous it's definitely hard work but it's constant problem solving but having like a great guy next to you to be able to do that and grow with makes it a thousand times better because you know um that he's got your back throughout the whole thing I forgot who said this

But uh I think it was another guest they said your first hire is always going to be the hardest one yeah yeah it always is but it sounds like you guys already have an idea of the your first three hires essentially it's just a matter of getting enough of that business so that it becomes more of a permanent uh type role at the end of the day as as time goes right that's it exactly one thing I like that you guys mentioned was you want to be able to expand your team and uh your your the

Do Not Let Smaller Budgets Make You Overlook Opportunity31:42

People that you work with so that you can service all types of clients uh however big or small because you're absolutely right sometimes those smaller budgets it's just because that's what the budget is for that client at that moment there have been times where Daria and I have worked with clients where they've only had budgets of maybe three thousand four thousand for example which wouldn't be considered uh really big for uh for a big agency or production company but at that time they only had very small need and we help them out we help them out with that and then eventually maybe half a year to a year later they had more and more projects coming in that were much higher budget that actually would be the ones that we would be looking

For as well and yeah if you guys are working on a bigger project sometimes you need to be able to send off people to help out on those smaller ones because you never know you really never know what opportunities are going to come your way and from where from whom that's it that's that's why the answer is always yes it's just it's even we we uh Matt and I actually didn't work on this but uh at the beginning of the production the Deep Rock Productions uh we had heard on the radio someone was looking for a production company for a TV show and we said wow let's just let's just try let's just see reply to it no problem come for a meeting go into the meeting uh uh everything goes well and then the next day he calls us back he says okay you

Guys are hired we're going to start next week I'm like all right sounds good so you like we had no idea we just were fresh out of out of University had no idea what we were going to do uh they said yes I guess we we were able to uh to persuade them enough uh they said yes and then it led to it led to a pretty weird story but uh I mean that's for a different podcast um I'm curious yeah uh there's and it's I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk to the show that's a problem after the show I don't know a lot to talk about it but either way it went on to see TV it was it was an actual like a real real show at the end of the day and uh we were a bunch of barely 20 year olds uh producing a TV show so I think we're I think we're still doing

That now like in some of the products that we do like we meet people or I go somewhere and I meet someone and then we're like all of a sudden in the middle of this thing like you know be able to create a massive billboard campaign for say Michael Jordan um that is going to be like we we had never done billboard prints before and that was our first big campaign and to be able to do that and execute that in the studio and then you're like in it and you're like how did we get in this but let's just do it um and then all of a sudden you're learning a bunch of things and we we learned how to composite and and how do we shoot uh bottle photography how do we shoot liquid like Eric our DP like actually putting in the time to learn that and

Learn how to shoot liquid and executing that on like a super tight timeline and then sending it to print and then finally like seeing your images like in like Billboards like on the highways of Miami and like in Los Angeles it's like really exciting and then finally we like all sit down and go like wow that just happened so I think if we didn't say yes to that because we were scared of if we could deliver if we could execute then we would have never had that experience so um you know obviously you have to be you can't over promise and under deliver you have to have some confidence in yourself in that sense but um to always you know we always take on projects and just figure it out like that's the main thing we'll just figure it out

And I think we have the core team right now where we can do that and we're at a point now where it's like okay anything is possible we know how to execute it we know how to execute it at a high level so it's just about you know how we're going to do that you have to be a problem solver not just on the business side of things but also on the technical video production side of things too right because yeah a lot of times we go on shoots we don't know exactly how that shoot is going to go we have a rough idea and then as soon as we get there we kind of just figure it out and you know if you get this far you've always been able to figure it out yeah at least 90 accuracy yeah yeah we're yeah we're at a point now where you know we're going

Through things right now where we have a budget and uh since I'm the creative guy I'll just shoot out all these ideas um you know the effects this and that and then you know Michael talked me off the ledge like okay it's we need to kind of be in this world so maybe if we do this maybe we can do that so like it's a constant negotiation between the two of us because like I'm I just want to blow the whole Budget on VFX and he's like well we can't do that so we need to like dial it down because we have like all these other things that we have to do so um yeah it's it's fun and it's it's a constant uh you know constant Balancing Act of of budgets and creative work and how we can do things so right now we're in a space where we we I think

We the more planning we do pre-production the easier everything goes so there's a very like clear idea on what we're doing and when we're doing it so um but it's fun yeah it's definitely a definitely a fun process I'm amazed you guys are able to run not just like a video production agency but also like

Running a Video Production Company and a Rental Studio36:30

The studio rental company at the same time like I was just trying to process that early on like man that's and it's just you guys as the core team obviously you have other people that are working helping you on the production side of things but to run both companies at the same time like Kyrill and I are struggling to run one well I think might uh become pretty self-sufficient right correct yeah at this point so so we we have obviously like like you know like Facebook ads uh Instagram ads uh Google search all that kind of fun stuff that's that's really leading our our charge in terms of of uh letting people know about the studio and I think that's something that not too many studios in Montreal are are doing or if they are doing it

They're not doing it very well because I think a lot of the owners of of studios are older guys who have who already have these networks of people who aren't who aren't like worried about the future they're just kind of like whatever uh we're gonna get our our clients are gonna come in they're going to love us they're going to always be here they're always going to be there right for us it was like it's like no we we've got to be able to come in here and and try and steal that away advertise more tell more people about it so the more people who know about it the more frequency the more times they come in they then become our our new clients uh once the older guys Fade Out And they're they're younger uh the younger guys come into to

Take over uh from the bigger agencies uh across Toronto Montreal everyone even the us as well uh once they start to see that there's there's better value here than there is somewhere else because they're just not they're just they they know that they can charge certain prices because they'll just they'll just pay it uh or they'll they'll just cut corners on certain things because they know that they can uh for us it's coming in kind of being that like I should say disruptor uh and trying to to put ourselves in and just kind of shove ourselves into the the first in line kind of idea foreign it's it's just always the constant back and forth it's not it's there's no plan for it like we said there like you were saying before like like

There's no plan

Keep Evolving With New Technology and Pivot38:40

It's just kind of as things come and you know how how crazy this industry is and how much it changes every single every week every week There's a new camera that comes out there's a new light that comes out there's a new lens that comes out uh that completely changes the game or revolutionizes like I I as soon as that Pro Blends came out uh from lauwa I think or well yeah every single video you saw after that every commercial was used with that that law the the lens and those probe lenses all over the place uh you couldn't I couldn't scroll through my feed without seeing someone doing something with that lens uh so you always have to be kind of just changing with the with the game and kind of uh just working like Mike said there's

No plan but there's definitely a big plan but the plan is to be able to adjust you know right yeah you know your team's a Swiss Army and your business plan has to be a Swiss army knife as well and I think having you know Five Fingers of touch points through your business you know I mean every company says they offer you know uh creative Direction photography um video production graphic design but to be able to actually execute and have that in-house and to be able to offer those Services um is like huge so I think to be able to go different directions and have multiple sources of income to be able to support uh when the market goes somewhere because you know if the Market's not offering 10 15 25 100 000 for a video at this moment then

Okay then that's just not the market and you have to adjust to it and you have to be able to to still to still produce you know yeah that's exactly like you yeah sorry go ahead I was just gonna say

We Have to Adapt Because Our Clients Are Adapting40:23

Exactly because um the reason we have to be so adapt is because as you said the market is is changing constantly and our clients especially are the ones adapting when they're adapting we have to adapt with them if they realize that they need to change their business model uh their marketing goals shift we can't stay in the exact same way uh that we were working before that and this is why probably also your studio is doing so well compared to some of those other ones because they're really set in their own ways they're not willing to adapt or change and that is why they're set up for failure down the road and it's the adaptability is survivability at this point of the game 100 like I mean uh just seeing even during like the beginning

Of it like like I I remember when clients just would like literally call me and be like we're not doing like canceling shoots canceling Productions and you have to be able to adapt to that and kind of be like oh my God okay these guys are like where's my source of income going to come in from right you know and and uh trying to figure that kind of stuff out and and when the market and you also have to really look at the economy in general as a whole because see how things are going are people buying things are people wanting to buy more expensive things or less expensive things are are companies willing to start to spend this money on Advertising because the economy is is super low or we're going to recession we're going to uh all

These kinds of things it really does affect and comes back to you because then if a company doesn't want to advertise because they've got to save money to be able to pay their their actual employees for working day to day uh you don't get that money you don't get to to do that job right no matter no matter how much you you uh keep pitching them and trying to sell them if they don't got the money they don't got the money that's pretty much it

Systems Are Key: You Need to Be Organized42:07

It doesn't appear out of nowhere yeah what kind of systems are you guys uh setting in place now to ensure like future success um what do you mean like you guys mentioned the sauna right because like one thing Kyrill and I from what we learned from other guests is that you need to have systems in place to be able to to scale to grow and just have like you know proper um like uh processes and preparations yeah yeah yeah so I think I mean uh from a back-end standpoint Assad has been a big help because um we have now the Productions that we're doing uh are so involved in pre-production like pre-production is a production in itself so um we'll have on a Santa we'll have the client because and we have a full list of our clients and then

We have within that client we have different campaigns uh so April or May 2022 campaign and then within that may campaign we have whether it's a static campaign so photos we have their video campaign like it's all our video ads that are in that campaign that are being made and then we have within the video campaign we have that specific production and then we have pre-production production post-production so in pre-production we'll have like seven or eight categories of locations scouting shot lists mood boards um art Direction you know whether we need props so all the pickups stuff like that and then within like say location scouting we have like all our work back schedules so when you know we need to scale locations when we need

To get them approved and that goes on to like the production so make sure we have our pre-production checklist and then post-production we have all our Cuts revisions notes that we put on frame uh Frame.io to get the client just to review them right there so yeah I can can make those changes so that's also huge just being as organized as possible I think sets your framework so when you have new people coming in uh to work they can be easily integrated into the program and be able to see their tasks super easily whether it's on a daily schedule or a weekly schedule and they can be able to just take care of that and then they can put updates there and we can be notified when we need to review their work or when things are submitted and

Just be able to keep track of that because right now there's so many things happening and you don't want to say no so then like we have to be organized to a TV or else things are going to be best deadlines aren't going to be made clients aren't going to be happy and we're just going to be like walking in mud going backwards and the last thing we want to do is take on too much and not be able to deliver so we've been really working hard on being organized and being efficient yeah you have to be efficient yeah you have to be efficient to the point where

Efficiency Equals Good Client Experiences44:50

You're able to give your clients a good experience because think about about it when you're hiring a service for whatever you might want you want is something that is easy to use a simple process straightforward people that are very forthcoming if sometimes if if they they'll however make you jump through so many different Hoops to get what you eventually need then you're thinking to yourself what was the point of even hiring you at the end of the day right and something as simple as Frame.io for example completely shifted the way we were doing all of our post-production uh note revisions and everything like that because we all know those Microsoft Word documents that we've all had to deal with in the past or the email chains or the

Email changed from 10 different people from the same client where nothing's Consolidated to the point where it was just a complete mess of a nightmare and so Frame.io made it a lot

A Frame.io Tip for a Common Challenge45:45

Easier although we did notice one other challenge that came by really quickly which allowed us to also adapt and shift which was that letting them know that they can comment or whoever has that link can comment whatever their notes are can also be a challenge in and of itself if they have 10 different people commenting and arguing with each other in those comments about what should be done yeah exactly you even need some even more granular where you have to be like okay there's only we're only going to accept the the comments from these five people nobody else can say this I don't care who like you almost have to go down to that level even more you do too there you go exactly that's it we do too maximum too that's it exactly you have

To because uh definitely everyone then and that's what this world is it's it's subjective uh and and it's just one person's mind can can think okay I want to go down I want to go right and the other one's saying no we have to go left uh eventually exactly eventually everyone comes back down to the same spot at the end but but the amount of left and right turns that you're doing because somebody else says go this way go that way go this way go that way uh it's just it's it's not an objective world and something you just kind of have to uh understand and and unless you're unless you're you're producing

It Is About Making the Clients Happy47:05

Funding and directing the work it's just about making the clients happy and giving them anything like you can you don't want to have a relationship or it's constant pushback and you're just unless they give you a mandate where it's like okay create all this but even when you do there's going to be revisions so I think it's about just um you know taking care of that relationship providing them what they want and and putting your ego at the door and just saying like Okay Services what you want then we're going to give you exactly what you want and delivering on that and they're they're paying you at the end of the day right so yep there's only so much uh demanding you can do in terms of the creative for that project if they're the ones

Footing the bill to right 100 absolutely I mean uh yeah if if they're paying for it then uh that's how I think about it at least is is whatever whatever the client says goes at the end of the day I mean if they're not happy with it it doesn't matter it doesn't matter how much you beg scream yell and cry if they don't like it they're not paying you so uh make sure they like it I mean I mean at the end of the day you can still you still want to work with them and try to help them because sometimes they may not necessarily know what they're asking for as well so it's also your job to make sure that it doesn't get to that point where they're very set on a certain thing that you know is not going to work you got to try to help them throughout

The whole production process especially in Brie let them know what will work what won't work and then usually that those challenges don't come later on in post and you know you get that with experience it takes it takes years to develop that type of communication skills and working and collaborating with clients and other people and eventually eventually we all figure it out right eventually and imagine even after eventually you still don't figure it out then something else changes and then you got to read your client comes in that's it exactly with a completely different completely different industry I wonder what the next generation will be before sorry before we get like once we get older if we get into our 40s and then we're dealing

With clients that are in their 20s I can only imagine people who are in their like 50s 60s now that were in this space 20 30 years ago there's no way that they they thought that this was going to come come around and uh they were going to have the same problems that we're having today exactly it's good that at least we know that this industry changes on a whim so we're we're always uh ready to adapt to the next big thing we grew on adaptability that's essentially it and you need to do that you need to grow on adaptability 100 I think in every industry honestly not even just this industry uh everything's got to be able to adapt and I think I think covet definitely uh gave everybody a little wake up wake-up call that uh not even big

Corporations are not uh invincible little gut pots exactly yeah okay well we're at the one hour mark so I I think this is a good place to end it off so guys thank you so much for coming actually before we end off yeah uh why

How They Came Up With the Name Agency NineSix50:01

Don't you tell us how you guys come up with came up with the name Agency NineSix. oh my God that was that was days and days of sitting inside of this very office uh with actually you know the the guys were talking about there before uh Terence Mike and Eric uh as well as me and Matt sitting in here and just kind of throwing a name at the beginning the name was agency X because I was just I would just say oh you know agency X will do like just the unknown it was just a placeholder name and then we were kind of like that's kind of cool maybe we'll do that and then we started noticing that there's like five hundred dollars that exist in the world um I was prepared to spend like I'm like a very like task guy so I was like I have a like

One hour task on this on like a Tuesday and let's just do it then and it was like week two and we're still talking about this stupid name and I was like it's a thing that matters because it's the first you know first impressions exist and like yeah I mean it you know Eric our DP said it like it it can't it doesn't have to be great it doesn't have to be incredible it just can't be terrible like so it has to be a name that is like okay no problem um so we you tried a bunch of things but at the end of the day um where Mike and I are both born in 1996 Eric's 96.

All of us are leaders guy is 96 our editor's 96 are like all right we're just the 96 gang so let's just go with uh our core route and so we went with that nice that actually has a nice little story to it there's always little stories that come behind it like for ours uh the the name came from uh a script that we were uh well specifically Dario was writing uh titled laughs and then when we were when we decided to work together we were trying to think of a name and he said why don't we just do laps and I said no we're not going with the first option that we that we choose and like that doesn't happen you don't go with the very first one because you've tried hundreds of names and nothing sounded as good or was available compared to the

First one we're like all right that's it that's that's the name there you go is we literally just chose it because it sounded cool and now we actually developed something uh pretty cool whatever we turned it into an acronym so it stands for lasting amazing sounds pictures and experiences I was like okay this is like the story we tell our clients yeah there you go that's good awesome yeah actually you spelled it as last Dario just now so oh you did picture sounds and experiences it's it's nine in the morning okay I I need my second tea before I function at 100 exactly there we go all right guys well we'll leave it at that but thanks again for joining us on creators grab coffee and uh you know hopefully uh we continue all growing and

Adapting uh with this crazy market right absolutely hopefully our our paths actually cross in in the production world I mean I don't know about you guys but uh we see the same people over and over again so uh we're always in Toronto we're always in Montreal we're all over the place so maybe we'll our paths will cross someday yeah absolutely if we gotta shoot in Montreal we need a studio now we know who to reach out to you know how to call exactly exactly or even if you guys are in uh in town and just want to grab a drink you know and just connect in person we're open to that as well love it awesome guys okay let me take care guys appreciate it