Episode 44
How to be a Fully Remote Producer (ft. Rubicon Story)
Remote work reshaped almost every desk job, but video production was supposed to be the exception. You need cameras in a room, crew on a set, a client to meet in person. Jeremy Thibodeau has spent the last few years proving that a producer can run a real video business from a laptop, anywhere, by owning the parts of the work that travel: the concept, the client experience, and the edit. He joins Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov to explain how the model actually holds together.
Jeremy is a co-founder and creative producer at Rubicon Story, a lean Montreal shop he cheerfully describes as three guys with laptops. The conversation covers the niche he built the business around, elevated internal and employee-engagement video, how he won two anchor clients by displacing vendors ten and fifteen years deep, the unglamorous mechanics of getting paid across borders, and the reason a company that helps people stay committed to their work is named after a river.
Key Takeaways
- Remote works when you own the durable parts. Jeremy keeps the concept, the client relationship, and the edit; execution on the ground gets outsourced to local crews. A remote shoot often comes down to a materials list and a schedule.
- Internal video is an underrated niche. Marketing budgets are bigger, but a company with tens of thousands of employees will pay for town halls, anniversaries, farewells, and training, because engagement and retention are hard problems and video is one of the few things that moves them.
- You can displace a fifteen-year vendor with one small job. Both anchor clients started with a tiny, fast-turnaround piece (one was a 700 dollar Christmas video on a 48 hour deadline) where Jeremy went far above what the incumbent would have. Timing plus over-delivery beats tenure.
- Cold outreach is a numbers game most solo shops cannot staff. The honest objection is that a prospect already has a team, and claiming you would do it better rarely lands. Content and a clear niche do the convincing over time instead of a pitch on day one.
- A narrow, productized niche ranks; a broad one does not. A single-product funnel converts because the SEO is tight, but it traps you in one kind of work. The workaround is several landing pages and funnels, one per work type, all feeding a core brand.
- Retainers are the lever every sales course sells. The 1,000 dollars a video to 30,000 a month hook always resolves to the same answer: get clients on retainer. It is a cliche because it works.
- Foreign-exchange fees are a silent tax on cross-border work. Jeremy’s accountant showed that bank conversion fees had cost roughly a full-time salary over two years. Fintech rails like Wise, and a negotiated rate on large transfers, claw most of that back.
- Employee engagement is a North America phenomenon. New York offices love the internal videos that Paris and Milan head offices find faintly ridiculous. Attempts to sell the idea in Europe and the Gulf went nowhere, so Jeremy stopped trying to globalize it.
- Build the ladder before you climb it. Rather than grind as an assistant in Los Angeles, Jeremy is building production infrastructure and relationships now, developing entertainment projects on the side, on a deliberate ten-year runway.
Timestamps
Three guys with laptops
Jeremy has been making videos since he was eight or nine, and Rubicon Story is about seven years old. It started the way most shops do, with music videos, then small product pieces, then corporate work, then bigger opportunities. A couple of years ago, right as the pandemic scrambled how companies operated, one interesting remote lead turned into another, and Jeremy landed where he is now: the single point of contact for all employee-facing video at two anchor clients, working entirely remotely.
The company is deliberately small. Jeremy is one of three producers, two client-facing and one who acts as a safety net when an outsourced piece slips, alongside a software side of the business. He describes the whole thing as three guys with laptops who mostly talk and email, then bring in partners to execute. His own work is almost all post: creative conceptualization, the client experience, and the edit. When a shoot is needed he coordinates a local crew, Zooms into talking-head setups to direct remotely, or simply hands an event team a materials list and a schedule.
That lean structure is the pitch, not a limitation. Being one nimble operator rather than a full agency is exactly what lets Rubicon Story move fast and price competitively, and Jeremy leans into it: always creative, always responsive, always competitively priced, and built specifically for internal corporate engagement.
“We're three guys with laptops and we just talk and email pretty much. I'm here to make sure everything goes super smoothly, that we always deliver on time, and that it's always creative.”
Jeremy ThibodeauThe niche nobody fights for
Rubicon Story does not chase the marketing department. Jeremy works with internal communications, employee development, and training, the elevated internal content most people never picture when they think video. Think a town-hall piece commemorating eight employees who each hit twenty years with the company, one that cannot be dry and has to make the room feel something. Or a farewell video that recaps a departing executive’s decade at the company and plays at their send-off. There is plenty of animation and motion work in the mix too, alongside the elevated slideshows and event recaps.
Internal budgets run lower than marketing budgets, because the work is not customer-facing and the return is hard to measure. But for an organization with five, ten, or fifty thousand employees, it matters a great deal. Engagement, brand affinity, and retention are exactly the problems the great resignation made urgent, and internal corporate video is one of the few levers that visibly moves them. Historically that content has been boring, which is Jeremy’s whole opening: you can do it the dull way, or the fun and trusting way.
Picking a lane this specific is what makes a small shop legible to buyers. It is the same lesson Lift Video Production unpacked when we talked about unlocking growth through niching: the narrower your positioning, the easier it is for the right client to understand exactly why they should hire you.
“Historically internal corporate videos have been known to be pretty boring, and that's kind of my pitch. You can do it the boring way, or you can do it the fun and trusting way.”
Jeremy ThibodeauWinning clients you are not supposed to win
Both anchor relationships began as jobs Jeremy technically had no business landing. One high-end fashion client needed a small Christmas video on a 48 hour turnaround for about 700 dollars, and their vendor of fifteen years happened to be unavailable. Jeremy went far above what a quick holiday edit called for, they noticed, and they do not work with that old vendor anymore. The other anchor client left a firm with 170 employees and offices in Santa Monica, New York, and Dallas after a ten-year relationship. A remote operator in Montreal displaced an established agency, twice, on the strength of care and creativity.
That is the leverage a small shop actually has. When the playing field levels out, the differentiator is a wow factor and a client experience the incumbent stopped bothering to deliver. Choosing who to trust with this work is a real decision for buyers, and the honest version of how to choose a video production company rewards exactly the responsiveness and craft Jeremy competes on. It is the client-relationship muscle Great Things Studios dug into with us on the art of client relationships.
“You have to find a way to make it creative and engaging. Especially now that the playing field is leveling out, you always have to find a way to create some kind of wow factor if you can.”
Jeremy ThibodeauOutreach is a numbers game, content is the long game
Growing past two anchor clients is the hard part. Direct outreach runs straight into we already have a team, and I think I could do it better invites who do you think you are. Dario and Kyrill know the terrain: Lapse runs on inbound and word of mouth, with only a couple of cold approaches ever turning into real work. Outreach can work as a pure numbers game, but it needs a dedicated person and a long fuse, because the lead who ignores you today might convert two and a half years from now, when their current vendor finally lets them down.
Jeremy’s answer is the same one this show is built on: publish consistently, position yourself as the expert in a niche, and let the right buyers come to you. The productized version of that, making one narrow kind of video, building a tight funnel, and ranking for it, converts well but sacrifices creative range. A broad niche ranks worse, so the workaround is several funnels, one landing page per work type, all feeding a core brand. The mechanics of ranking that content are their own discipline, from keyword targeting to optimizing video to rank on YouTube and in search. It is the adaptability-plus-SEO playbook Pickle Pictures walked through on growing a video business, and it pairs naturally with the craft we covered on pitching as a producer.
“That's why I think content marketing is the way to go. Put out content on a regular basis, position yourself as an expert in some niche, and just keep putting out content.”
Jeremy ThibodeauThe money mechanics nobody teaches
Running a lean, cross-border shop surfaces problems the sales gurus skip. Most of those courses are aimed at beginners and resolve to the same punchline, the one Kyrill can recite: are you only making 1,000 dollars a video, here is how to make 30,000 a month. The answer is always retainers, which is a cliche precisely because it works. That recurring-revenue shift is the one Innovate Media unpacked in detail on video strategy and retainers, and it starts with getting honest about what a video actually costs to produce and what your time is worth.
Then there is the plumbing. Jeremy does a high volume of lower-budget projects for US clients, and his accountant showed that sticking with a traditional bank had quietly cost roughly a full-time salary in foreign-exchange fees over two years. The fix is fintech rails like Wise that shave most of the bank’s conversion margin, plus a simple negotiation tactic Dario learned as a former teller: on a large enough transfer, in the tens of thousands, you can call and ask for a better rate. US-client revenue also is not taxed the way domestic work is. None of this is glamorous, but it is the difference between a rate card that looks fine and one that actually holds up as a day rate.
“He gave us the figure of what we would have saved over the last two years, and it was a full-time salary for somebody. It was purely transaction fees.”
Jeremy ThibodeauBuilding the ladder before climbing it
The remote-producer business is not the dream; it is the infrastructure for it. Jeremy caught the bug at eleven watching the making-of documentary on a Pirates of the Caribbean DVD, produced and directed his first feature at twenty (fifty festival submissions, four acceptances, none that mattered), and spent a year and a half in Los Angeles before his visa ran out. What he saw there was people in their forties still stuck at assistant desks. So he came home to build a production infrastructure first, develop entertainment projects on the side, and give himself a deliberate ten-year runway, the marathon version of a film career rather than the lottery version.
That philosophy shapes how he thinks about teams and tools. He is drawn to many small, interconnected two-to-five-person groups over big firms, betting that platforms and a boom in solo operators are democratizing who gets the work. It is also why Rubicon Story is building a client-experience toolkit for video creators, purpose-built software meant to recreate the Mad Men effect (the scotch, the cigar, the corner office) over a remote connection, so a lean operator can deliver an elevated experience across the whole client journey. The same care that goes into a well-run corporate video production is what the product is trying to systematize.
And the name? Rubicon comes from Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon River, the moment he declared the die is cast and committed his army past the point of no return. Jeremy’s read is that to make it in this industry you need a plan A with no plan B, the same laser focus Shonda Rhimes describes when she says that if there is anything else you would even want to do, you should go do that instead.
“Rubicon means to pass the point of no return. If you're going to be successful in this industry, you cannot have a plan B. You have to have nothing but a plan A.”
Jeremy ThibodeauFrequently Asked Questions
Who is Jeremy Thibodeau?
Jeremy Thibodeau is a co-founder and creative producer at Rubicon Story, a Montreal-based creative shop specializing in internal communications and employee-engagement video for large organizations. He works largely on a fully remote basis, owning the concept, client relationship, and edit while outsourcing on-the-ground production to local crews.
What is Rubicon Story?
Rubicon Story is a lean video and creative-media company that Jeremy Thibodeau co-founded around 2016. It focuses on elevated internal corporate video (town halls, anniversaries, farewells, and training) for companies with large employee bases, and is also developing a client-experience software toolkit for video creators. The name references Caesar crossing the Rubicon, the point of no return.
How does a video producer work fully remotely?
By owning the parts of the job that do not require being on set: concept development, client experience, and post-production. Shoots are handled by local crews working from a detailed materials list and schedule, with the producer directing talking-head setups remotely over video when needed. It works best for internal and event-recap content rather than complex live productions.
Why is internal and employee-engagement video a good niche?
Internal budgets are smaller than marketing budgets, but for organizations with thousands of employees the work is valuable because engagement, brand affinity, and retention are difficult, high-stakes problems. Video is one of the few tools that visibly moves them, and the space is underserved because internal content has a reputation for being boring.
How did Rubicon Story win clients from established agencies?
By starting small and over-delivering at the right moment. Both anchor clients came in through tiny, fast-turnaround jobs (one was a 700 dollar Christmas video on a 48 hour deadline) at times when their long-standing vendors were unavailable. Going far above expectations on those first jobs displaced incumbents who had held the relationships for ten and fifteen years.
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.
Jeremy Thibodeau is a co-founder and creative producer at Rubicon Story, a lean, Montreal-based creative shop that produces internal communications, employee-engagement, and training video for large organizations, largely on a fully remote basis. He has been making videos since childhood, produced and directed his first feature film at twenty, and spent time in Los Angeles pursuing entertainment before returning to Canada to build Rubicon Story with two partners. Alongside the production business, the company is developing a client-experience software product for professional video creators.
Full Transcript
Read the full episode transcript
Auto-generated and lightly edited for readability. It may contain small errors. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.
Jeremy Thibodeau00:00And since then I started following and I've just been basically anytime it comes across like sometimes I put it on just like on the side while I do other things like the longer versions and then obviously like I don't know if you've noticed but I'm I like and comment on pretty much every time you guys post on LinkedIn. So yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not my fault. It's the algorithm. It's the algorithm. Yeah. Well, I mean.
Dario Nouri00:10Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov00:16Yeah, no, we have…
Dario Nouri00:16Yeah, you stalk us constantly. I always see Jeremy like your stuff.
Kyrill Lazarov00:24We appreciate the support.
Jeremy Thibodeau00:25Yeah, for sure. I mean, obviously, it's motivated by my own self-interest too. Like I'm trying to create more of a presence on LinkedIn. So yeah, so I'm just engaging with everyone who's kind of in my field, hoping that others see it and so on and so forth, yeah. So.
Dario Nouri00:41Jeremy what do you do? Because I really don't, I've been out of the loop. Kyril's been doing outreach with you.
Kyrill Lazarov00:41Well, it's definitely working.
Jeremy Thibodeau00:45Yeah. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov00:48Yeah, so just kind of give us a little bit of a backstory and who you are and what is Rubicon Story.
Jeremy Thibodeau00:55Sure, so I'm Jeremy. I've been making videos since, well, since I was about eight, eight or nine. So I've done a lot of different, done a lot of different things over the course of my career. Rubicon Story is seven years old, and we kind of just started off like everyone. Music videos, moved into little product videos, moved into corporate videos, started. getting opportunities to do a little bit bigger things. And then a couple of years ago, we got a pretty cool opportunity to start working with some clients fully remote. And then, I mean, I got the opportunity, COVID came along basically. And yeah, it's just a lot of companies were shuffling around and then we ended up getting one really interesting lead. And then that led to another thing. So now I basically have like two main clients that I work with. It's all remote. And I'm kind of like there. their touch point for all things employee-facing video. And then I have two partners, one who's more on the production. Well, it's two things. So there's a software product that we're developing, so he kind of oversees that. And then he also, he's the safety net, let's put it that way. So like I outsource everything, but sometimes when things don't go according to plan. He kind of makes sure that we deliver. So he's kind of like the, yeah, the fallback, the safety net. And then my other partner, he's more on the marketing side for SMBs. So he's got same thing, like two or three flagship clients. We're trying to get others, but yeah, we're really more like a part of our client's team. And then we sort of, well, we… work on the creativity with them and then we outsource to all kinds of different partners for execution.
Kyrill Lazarov02:59You mentioned that right now, pretty much all the work and all the video content that you produce is all remote based for you guys. Was it forced into that because of the pandemic or were you less remote beforehand?
Jeremy Thibodeau03:13So I'm pretty much fully remote. My partner's not, like he does, his clients are in Montreal and Toronto, minor in New York, and I basically just, yeah, most of it's post. Like I do coordinate some shoots and stuff with different teams depending, but most of it is all post. So just kind of landed that way, and I like the… I like the flexibility, I like being able to do my job from pretty much anywhere and not be tied down to a specific spot. So I'm trying to grow this as opposed to, you know, obviously like if a great project came along and we have to, I mean I did do a couple shoots last year but it was like it's not the money maker really. Yeah, so.
Dario Nouri04:05So you're handling a lot of just the post-production work from your clients out of New York?
Jeremy Thibodeau04:11Yeah, well, it's both. It's like creative conceptualization, client experience. And then, yeah, so it's kind of like, you know, sometimes they'll have an idea for something and then we'll work on it together. Other times they have a very specific idea and it's just on me to guarantee the delivery by a certain date. And then other times they just have an objective and then I've got to pitch concepts. So yeah, I mean,
Kyrill Lazarov04:19Oh.
Jeremy Thibodeau04:42The capabilities for execution are like we, a lot of people can do that. I'm trying to sort of differentiate as a creative expert for employee engagement and this kind of thing.
Kyrill Lazarov04:47Ahem.
Kyrill Lazarov04:54So you're kind of like trying to become part of like different companies, like marketing teams, developing a lot of the pre-production and kind of like basically the idea development. They kind of film and produce it, and then you kind of handle the post side of things in that kind of sense.
Jeremy Thibodeau05:10Yeah, yes and no. I mean, we do a lot of animation too, a lot of CG. We do, there's a lot of slideshows, but elevated slideshows, like I have to buy, like my clients are on the, well, high-end fashions, and one is high-end fashion, and the other one is eyewear and eyecare, so optical. And yeah, it's stuff like… We have eight people this quarter who are celebrating their 20th anniversary with the company. We need to make a video for our upcoming town hall that commemorates them, and it has to be different than the last one, and it can't be dry. And we want to make people feel something. So I have to continuously find ways to do interesting internal corporate stuff. And sometimes it's like an event that we work with a team. oversee and coordinate a team that's local and then they shoot it and then they ship everything to us and then same thing.
Dario Nouri06:14What are your methods for overseeing a remote shoot? Like what are some of the key things you're thinking of or watching out for?
Jeremy Thibodeau06:23to be honest, it's just a list of the materials that we need. So it's teams that are used to doing event recaps and stuff. So I mean, sometimes it's.
Dario Nouri06:34Oh, it's mostly event recaps then for when you're doing remote.
Jeremy Thibodeau06:36Yeah, yeah, if there's a shoot, yeah. And then the other one would be talking heads. So if it's a talking head, then sometimes I'll zoom into the actual shoot and even direct remotely. But for event recaps, you can't really do that. So you just kind of, I mean, also, yeah, that's it. Exactly. It's just kind of like, this is going to happen, this is going to happen, this is going to happen. This is what the schedule. I mean, yeah. Like the.
Dario Nouri06:56Yeah, it's pretty straightforward.
Kyrill Lazarov07:01Yeah.
Dario Nouri07:03Just make sure you get it.
Jeremy Thibodeau07:06So I don't work with the marketing side, I work with the internal comms side and the employee development and training side. So a lot of the videos I do are also employee training.
Kyrill Lazarov07:09Right.
Kyrill Lazarov07:16It's the elevated internal content nowadays and that's a big part of the video business that a lot of people don't really think of right off the bat when they think video. A lot of the time it's social media content, promotional material, but there's, with a lot of big companies, they have a lot of activities that are internal between different team members that they need to communicate things and internal video production is a big part of the business, right?
Jeremy Thibodeau07:41Yeah, the budgets aren't very high compared to the marketing side because it's not customer-facing. For a company that's got even a couple hundred employees, it's somewhat worth it. But when you start to talk about companies that have five to ten to fifty thousand employees, it's a big part of it because that's one of the most effective ways that they can engage. It's one of the most effective ways that they can build an affinity with the brand.
Kyrill Lazarov07:46Mm-hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov08:05Ahem.
Jeremy Thibodeau08:11Retention is a huge part of, is a huge issue for a lot of companies these days. You know, they're calling it like the great resignation. This is a couple years old now, but it's like, it's really like a new, it's a new niche, honestly. Like I think historically internal corporate videos have been known to be pretty boring and that's kind of like my pitch. It's like, you know, you can do it the boring way or you can do it the fun and trusting way.
Kyrill Lazarov08:26Ha!
Jeremy Thibodeau08:37you're probably going to want to do it the fun, interesting way as long as it's cost effective enough. But it's always a question of, again, it doesn't drive sales. So there's no way to really measure the ROI. It's more just like they're sitting there in the audience and they can see that the people are responding positively. Or it's based on positive comments. I mean, a lot of stuff, too, is like,
Jeremy Thibodeau09:05Even things like, oh, this person just left the company. Goodbye, farewell, we're having like a farewell dinner and we're gonna play this video at the dinner. Or it's gonna like, it's gonna be a recap of their entire experience working with the company for the last 10 years and it's gonna be like a parting gift because they wanna maintain good relationships with high level execs and other companies and so on and so forth. So yeah, it's, I just kind of fell into it, honestly. It's just like a person who knew someone that we knew just like needed a little Christmas video for like 700 bucks And it was like a 48 hour turnaround and we and their their existing vendor that they had been working with for 15 years Just like wasn't available. So they were just like, oh, can you edit this thing? And they they you know, we obviously because we We are not like a big established New York firm And so they were happy with how above and beyond we went for a simple little Christmas video It was a lot more than they were used to. And then they had another little one, and so they gave us a chance, and so on and so forth, and they don't work with that vendor anymore. They work exclusively with us. And then the same thing happened with the other client. Yeah, the other client in particular, they used to work with a firm that had like 170 employees in like offices in Santa Monica, and New York, and Dallas, and all that. Yeah, it was a, yeah, and it was a long, like 10 year long relationship.
Dario Nouri10:09Nice.
Kyrill Lazarov10:19Oh wow.
Jeremy Thibodeau10:26And that's the thing is like you, you know, you, I always believe you have to find a way to make it creative and engaging. Like you, I feel like, especially nowadays with the playing field becoming as leveled out as it's becoming, you always have to find a way to create some kind of wow factor if you can. If you can.
Kyrill Lazarov10:52It's amazing how the industry has gotten to the point now where a big time agency that has developed long term relationship with a client can still be under threat of losing out to even, let's say, someone who's remotely working out of their home in Montreal, where are you based right now? Montreal, yeah, just out of Montreal. It's like one guy versus a company of like 100 employees. It's amazing how level the playing field is nowadays as you put it.
Jeremy Thibodeau11:11Montreal yeah, yeah Yeah Yeah, cuz we're we're we're we're three guys with laptops and we just talk and email pretty much yeah Yeah, so I'm trying but here's here Huh? Well, no, but I tell them I mean I tell like that's what I say It's like I'm just a guy with a laptop and I'm here to make sure that
Kyrill Lazarov11:27Hahaha
Dario Nouri11:30Don't let your clients hear that.
Jeremy Thibodeau11:39everything goes super smoothly and that we always deliver on time and that it's always cool. Always creative, always… wait, what is it? It's always creative, always responsive, always competitive. So competitive meaning competitively priced. So it's like the best bang for your buck. And the reason is because we're super lean and we're designed for internal corporate engagement. That's kind of like what we're built for. So that's the…
Kyrill Lazarov11:52Okay.
Kyrill Lazarov12:07That's your niche at this point. Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau12:08Yeah, that's it. And so I'm trying to find new clients. And it's not easy. It's not easy to just like do direct outreach to clients and try to try to get them to give you a shot.
Kyrill Lazarov12:15Oh.
Kyrill Lazarov12:21It's because it's like certain departments.
Dario Nouri12:22What's your biggest hurdle? What's your biggest hurdle right now with that?
Jeremy Thibodeau12:26The biggest hurdle is, oh, we already have a team. We already have a team that does video. And my only argument is like, yeah, but I think I could do a better job. And they're like, what, you think I'm stupid? You think I didn't hire a good team? You think you're so much better? And what am I supposed to say? The only thing I can say is like, yes, we do a better job. But that's like, well, okay, well, who do you think you are? I don't have like, where it's like.
Kyrill Lazarov12:43Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov12:48Ye-
Jeremy Thibodeau12:55I don't know, in… Yeah, we can do a better job and we do it for these guys, pretty much. It's like, I don't know, how do you guys, how do you guys approach a new client and differentiate from the hundreds of thousands of video production companies? It's like…
Dario Nouri13:10I mean, we don't really do a lot of outreach. It's more inbound leads that come to us. And then by then we just go through our own like pitch that we've developed. Right. And then, I don't know.
Kyrill Lazarov13:14At the moment, yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau13:19That's it. Like I don't think we've, I can't think of more than two instances where we've reached out to someone and it turned into an actual gig. It's like 98% is just word of mouth. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov13:23Ahem.
Kyrill Lazarov13:35It's like knocking on the door as a salesman asking, do you need a new vacuum cleaner? You know, most of the time people are gonna be like, I have a vacuum cleaner. It's like, yeah, but this is better. He's like, yeah, but I have one. I don't need to spend the money to change the vacuum because it's like, the thing is like…
Jeremy Thibodeau13:43Well, that's it. Yeah. Yeah.
Dario Nouri13:52Well statistically you'll get the numbers, if you do it like that it's just a numbers game but you need to have someone dedicated to it Because yeah it'll work, like out of a hundred you'll get like maybe ten that might be interested and out of ten maybe like three But those three will keep you, they'll give you good numbers in return so
Kyrill Lazarov13:57It's a numbers game at that point.
Jeremy Thibodeau13:58That's it.
Jeremy Thibodeau14:09Ideally, yeah, and they won't be interested now, they'll be interested in two and a half years. So it's not only about hitting, if you happen to get them at exactly the right time where they're feeling the pain of not having a good vendor for what it is that they have in mind and you happen to have the portfolio that proves that you can pull it off, but it's just like, it's such a crap shoot. So actually, that's why I think that content marketing is the way to go. I think LinkedIn content, I mean exactly what you guys are doing. Put out content on a regular basis and position yourself as an expert in some kind of niche and just invite a bunch of people that are your target customer. Just invite them on LinkedIn and just keep putting out content.
Kyrill Lazarov14:54Yeah, and with those internal teams, I found that anytime in the past that Dario and I have worked with a corporation that's specifically for internal content, it was always either a referral from someone within our network, or it was just, and actually, that was pretty much 100% of the time how it was, or someone we worked with in the past moved into that company and needed a video partner, but that's like one part of it.
Jeremy Thibodeau15:19That's it.
Kyrill Lazarov15:22The second part of it is a timing aspect. It has to be a good transitionary period, like how you managed to land that fashion client you mentioned, right? It just happened to be a timing aspect of when they needed something on a crunch basis, someone wasn't available, or their previous one wasn't available, and then you kind of stepped in. So that's really the only way to kind of do that, right?
Jeremy Thibodeau15:30Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau15:37That's it.
Jeremy Thibodeau15:43Yeah, you got to be like a crocodile just kind of like lying in wait and then pounce when there's an opportunity. But I mean, that's yeah, and it's it's scary because it's I mean, you see all kinds of gurus that are selling you these systems for for generating leads and build your five figure video business in four weeks by using my three simple techniques. It may be like the way to go the way that they do it is position your again a niche,
Kyrill Lazarov16:04Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau16:14I make videos for early stage startups in the smart city technology space and then you set up your landing page so that you, anyone who is of that profile, who's searching Google for whatever, you find the right combination of keywords and then you find the right message and you try to get the best click through rate that you can and then you try to get the landing page with the best conversion and you, that's how you do it. But I really like the idea of being able to leverage your Your creativity Not leverage a message that is you know we we only do this kind of video I it's not really why I got into video like I know I'm saying that I only do internal internal engagement stuff But like it's still like very still very broad. I mean there's there's There there are all kinds of different things that you can do like it's it's a niche, but it's it's broad enough, but A lot of people just say, okay, we do Kickstarter videos for this kind of product. That's the easier way to build a funnel that will generate consistent leads on your behalf, but you kind of have to sacrifice the whole reason why you got into it in the first place a little bit. In my opinion anyway.
Kyrill Lazarov17:15Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov17:35Yeah, because you're kind of more so only dealing with one type of content, which is productized in a way, and you don't get to deviate too much in terms of how you're gonna produce it because they're looking for that specific type. Whereas if you picked a broad niche, say you do only corporate clients, or you only do music videos, or you only do, as you said, internal, it's a type of content, but there's still different types of content within that that you can.
Jeremy Thibodeau17:38That's it. There you go, yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau17:58Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov18:04kind of get creative so you offer different types of solutions and things like that.
Jeremy Thibodeau18:04That's it. That's it. But then your SEO is not gonna be as good. Because it's too broad, you know? So it's like you sacrifice the whole point of kind of like branding your, I mean I suppose what you could do is create like four or five different funnels. So you could look at your own portfolio and say okay, well we tend to do this kind of work. Now let's create an SEO funnel or whatever for this and so on and so forth. And then I guess it all leads back to like your core website. You'd have like multiple landing pages, multiple websites essentially, and you kind of put…
Dario Nouri18:44As people do, they do it with cities. Like I see it all the time. Like Video Production Toronto, Video Production Montreal, all these different cities. And then it always leads just to one website. And they're based in like, I don't know, New York, for example.
Jeremy Thibodeau18:54Yeah. Hong Kong. Yeah, or, yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov18:57Does that, does that work? Does that work though, in terms of like getting those leads? Do you know if.
Dario Nouri19:02They rank, they rank, so I guess it does work, Kyrill.
Jeremy Thibodeau19:04Yeah, that's it. That's it. Yeah, it's like, yeah, that's it. It's like if I mean, I see so many ads for so much shit that I'm, I can't believe that this ad is still running. It's I've seen it running for like six weeks now, eight weeks. How can they afford to run this ad with with such a generic offering or such a like, obviously, I don't know. But there's if it's if it's there, if there's spending on ad spend.
Kyrill Lazarov19:06Yeah.
Dario Nouri19:28Have you, uh…
Jeremy Thibodeau19:31they must get some kind of ROI. Like it's, you know, unless, yeah, so I don't know.
Dario Nouri19:34Yeah. Have you, have you checked out, you mentioned those sales gurus. Have you like checked out any other stuff?
Jeremy Thibodeau19:41Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's, like most of it is, most of it is geared towards people that are just starting out. So it's, or people that are just, I mean, yeah, like having a video production business is really tough. Like you, first of all, you have to be able to make good videos and tell a good story. But then there's the whole other side of it, which is like the client relations side and the client development side. And like, just a lot of people aren't that good at doing that. So that's what they do. They say, hey, are you having a hard time making money? I did.
Dario Nouri19:58Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau20:10so-and-so project for ex-client and I'm gonna tell you, oh yeah, and here are all these testimonials of my students and this is the process. And they're good, I mean, that's how you do it. Like that is how you do it, it's just like, that's not what I got into it for. I didn't get into it to productize.
Kyrill Lazarov20:18Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov20:26The funny, the funny thing though is that they all say it with like the same kind of a hook to kind of get people's attention. I guess it does work, which is, are you only making like $1,000 per video project? Here's how you can make $30,000 plus a month at a minimum, right? And it's.
Jeremy Thibodeau20:40Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau20:44Yeah, that's it. Retainer. Get your clients on retainer. Retainer?
Kyrill Lazarov20:49Yeah, the zero to 100 marketing tactic, right?
Jeremy Thibodeau20:53Yeah, well, yeah, what is it? It's Full Time Filmmaker is the big one. With, I forget his name. You know who I'm talking about? He's the…
Dario Nouri20:59Which one's that guy?
Kyrill Lazarov20:59Oh, I know who you're talking about, yeah. But he worked with this other creator back in like the early 2010s, and that's where he kind of like built his like knowledge. And then I guess a few years back, he started that full-time filmmaker thing. And I think that one is definitely the biggest one, biggest resource out there, and they have a lot of marketing money behind it. Yeah, it's like an academy.
Jeremy Thibodeau21:10Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau21:21Yeah. It's huge. It's huge. Yeah, it's huge.
Dario Nouri21:27We had Ryan Correll on the last episode. I forget his company. But his was Grow Your Video Business.
Kyrill Lazarov21:34Grow your video business. Yeah. And it's something similar to that, but he also does a podcast show, similar in a way kind of like to what we do, but he's by himself. So if you're also curious about another format just with one person, maybe if you want, you could check him out as well.
Jeremy Thibodeau21:50Yeah, absolutely. Did you just record the episode or did you just release it?
Dario Nouri21:54I would just be recorded at last week so it'll be another week or so for its released
Kyrill Lazarov21:54We just recorded.
Jeremy Thibodeau21:56Uh, got it, okay cool. Yeah, so how often do you guys do this?
Dario Nouri22:02Eh, infrequently, like…
Kyrill Lazarov22:04Yeah, it depends on how many people we get lined up, but sometimes we get like, we try to do it on a weekly basis, have like maybe one guest per week. We've been thinking about maybe trying to do maybe more than that here and there, but it really depends on how busy we are, who's available, who we've gotten in touch with, and we're trying to reach out to people in different countries too now, so that's kind of.
Jeremy Thibodeau22:25Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau22:30Okay, so like what percentage reach out to you to be on? Like I reached out to you to be on, but how, what percentage is actually? Are you serious? What is it with people? Like, but that's the other thing, no, but actually like that, you're.
Dario Nouri22:35As of now, 1% you. Hahaha. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov22:39Yeah.
Dario Nouri22:45i was fine if anyone when i outreach in some of them say no like it's free stream marketing material though i wouldn't share
Jeremy Thibodeau22:50Yeah, exactly. It's free marketing material. It's a cool experience. Like why I like, yeah, people don't help themselves either. Like I don't want to, I don't like, I don't want to be like pretentious, but I'll just say it like on my, on my bio, it says like right at the top, like preferred partner to Louis Vuitton across the Americas. And I add video post-production editors and motion designers. Like I invite them to like join my network. and they ignore me. They go on my page and they don't accept my invite. And I'm just like, I'm looking for people to hire, I'm looking to build, why wouldn't you accept the LinkedIn invite? Do you think it's fake or what's the, people don't help themselves. And like, you.
Dario Nouri23:30Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov23:40I guess it depends. Honestly, I think it depends. Sometimes people might be either thinking like, oh, this isn't the type of work that I wanna do so I don't see any value in it. Or like in our case, when we reach out to guests to join onto the show, I think it's probably just a simple thing where it's just like they're not interested in it or they might not be comfortable talking about their story on camera as well. I think Dario, you and I have like jokes, he's like, oh, maybe they have something to hide, you know? What is your shady business practice?
Dario Nouri24:12That's what I always think. I was like, I was like, what shady thing are you hiding?
Jeremy Thibodeau24:12Yeah, well, do they… Are they com- Yeah. Yeah, well, a lot of- actually in Montreal a lot of companies started off with some pretty shady kind of content. There's quite a few studi- Yeah, there's quite a few studios here. Well, just like adult content. A lot of studios that have all the get- all the- Oh, Maf- Maf- I don't know, Mafia related stuff too. Those two things are completely intertwined. Oh, yeah, I- there's a couple-
Dario Nouri24:23Oh really? Hold on, story time?
Kyrill Lazarov24:24Really?
Dario Nouri24:31Oh, I was thinking of like mafia related stuff. I don't know why I immediately went to that
Kyrill Lazarov24:37Oh wow.
Dario Nouri24:39So any videos for like the construction business that was like 100%
Jeremy Thibodeau24:43Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's, but, well, I mean, like, I even know some people that are super open about it. They're like, yeah, we got, we got started doing this kind of content and we built up our studio. We were able to afford all kinds of cool gear. And then we leveraged that gear to move over into another kind of, another kind of video. Yeah.
Dario Nouri25:01everyone everyone we know started out in weddings no one no one we know started out on only fans and moved on from that but that
Jeremy Thibodeau25:04Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov25:08What is this like a Montreal only trend or something because we've never heard about this before
Jeremy Thibodeau25:11It must really it might be because you know, Mind Geek. I it's funny that we're talking about this on your podcast. So Mind Geek is the they own and control about 90 percent of pornographic content in North America. And it's a Montreal it's a Montreal based company. There's like a thousand five hundred employees down the street that like work in this in this firm. And so there's just a lot of that. There is just a lot of that here. And so you've got. All kinds of.
Dario Nouri25:11I wonder now.
Dario Nouri25:26Oh really?
Dario Nouri25:31Oh wow.
Jeremy Thibodeau25:39companies that kind of work for them or know them. Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, it's funny.
Dario Nouri25:42Oh, okay, interesting. That's hilarious. Yeah. Heh.
Kyrill Lazarov25:45Oh, that's an entirely different world there. Like, yeah, like. Ha ha ha ha.
Jeremy Thibodeau25:48Yeah, I know. Yeah, it was just funny because like, like I even see some people who like put it on their LinkedIn, like that's like video editor at mind geek. Yeah, or like, yeah, it's
Dario Nouri25:56good.
Kyrill Lazarov25:56Yeah Well, when you think about it, when people put that kind of stuff on LinkedIn, when you say video editor at MindGeek, that's not the first thing that you think their business is gonna be about when you think about it.
Jeremy Thibodeau26:06Yeah.
Dario Nouri26:09Thank God they named it Mind Geek, because it's very… You know what I was thinking when you… As soon as you said that, I was thinking Geek Squad at Best Buy. I'm like, oh, okay, it must be Geek Squad or whatever.
Jeremy Thibodeau26:10Yeah, yeah, that's it.
Kyrill Lazarov26:15Some tech company.
Jeremy Thibodeau26:16Of course, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well that's it. No, they're very crafty. Different type of mind. Different type of geek. So yeah, it's anyway, but it reminds me of a few conversations that I've had. And then also, yeah, of course, there's mob kids who get these great opportunities just like right out the gate because, yeah, exactly.
Kyrill Lazarov26:20Nope, it's a different type of geek. Different type of geek. Ha ha ha.
Dario Nouri26:37AJ Soprano. Hehehehe.
Kyrill Lazarov26:40AJ Soprano, oh my god, imagine, it's like, I was like, dad, I wanna start a video production company.
Jeremy Thibodeau26:47Yeah, well, yeah, that kind of thing. Or, yeah, pretty much. Or…
Dario Nouri26:50and they go then they go rob the rental houses and they get started that way
Kyrill Lazarov26:53Oh my God. Yeah, you know, there's actually, there was actually this like string of, a string of like thefts that have been happening in Toronto where a lot of different rental companies have been targeted by like the same people and have all been, well, kind of robbed, but it was mostly, like you could tell it was like a sabotage thing. And it's a crazy thing that's happening here right now. I wonder what the next place is gonna be hit.
Jeremy Thibodeau26:54No, they own the rental houses.
Jeremy Thibodeau27:18Well, there's insurance, so. Yeah, well yeah, but I'm saying like, I'm saying like if you have a bunch of equipment, and anyway, that's, well that's what it is, right? It's like you run the rental house and then someone comes and robs your rental house and then you make a claim with the insurance, but really like you're in on it with your, might be something like that also. Like a.
Kyrill Lazarov27:21Thank God for that, right?
Dario Nouri27:40No, no, no, they've been doing it. They've been doing it to too many people. It's definitely not that.
Kyrill Lazarov27:40Well, no, no, that's not like that. Yeah. Yeah, it was.
Jeremy Thibodeau27:45Really, just like gear thieves?
Dario Nouri27:47Yeah, yeah, it's like they're targeting one after the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau27:49That's amazing. Wow, that's amazing.
Kyrill Lazarov27:51Yeah, that could maybe have been the case if it was just like a single production company, but seven production, seven rental houses, yeah. And the funny thing is the same people's faces are on every single camera. So it's not like their identities are hidden or anything like that, but.
Dario Nouri27:55One or two, yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau27:56Right. Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau28:08Oh wow, okay, so they're like fugitives on the run. Have you guys?
Kyrill Lazarov28:11I like that.
Dario Nouri28:12I don't know about that, it's Canada, even if they get caught they'll be out by like 9am the next day. We have like the weakest laws in the world.
Jeremy Thibodeau28:16Heh heh. Heh heh.
Kyrill Lazarov28:17Yep, that's true. What was the question you were gonna ask?
Jeremy Thibodeau28:22I was just going to say about insurance claims. Have you guys ever had to do an insurance claim? Have you ever like busted up some? Yeah.
Dario Nouri28:26No, God forbid, God forbid none of that.
Kyrill Lazarov28:29Fortunately not, yeah. Why have you?
Jeremy Thibodeau28:30I'm yeah, well, I told you I'm like not a gear guy, but I do like operate sometimes. So when we were, this was back in the day where we were in Nicaragua for like not even like a paid project. It was like a, we got like, we got like the, the travel and the accommodations covered for us in exchange for like, you know, so anyway, I had my C 300 Mark two and I wanted to get a shot that was like really close to the water and a wave, a wave.
Kyrill Lazarov28:55Oh no!
Dario Nouri28:57Top handle.
Jeremy Thibodeau28:58Yeah, exactly. Top handle. And I was like, oh, this is so epic. You know, the closer you get to the horizon, the more the more dramatic it is. And yeah, there's just this huge, huge like a rogue wave, not a rogue wave, just a wave. So stupid. And it just it just came in. It was like, yeah, exactly. It was just I was like, yeah. And it's just like, and that was it. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov29:09It's just like, it's not even a wave. It's like, plop. Yeah, it's like a little raise.
Kyrill Lazarov29:17Yeah, when I traveled, I had my DSLRs and I've done the same thing, similar. I never got caught by that wave, but I've seen them coming. And then I would raise it and it would be like, it's like a little splash almost. It's not even a wave. It's like a little extra splash that just catches the camera like this, but with a C300, oh, that's brutal.
Jeremy Thibodeau29:27Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau29:31Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's saltwater. And so it was the worst part of it. Yeah, it's saltwater. The worst part of it was that it was like early in the week too. So we just like, oh yeah, well, we got one like, whatever, like a, so I think it was like a, so whatever, a Sony, um, alpha. No. What are those? Uh, what are those little Sony? Yeah. It's like
Kyrill Lazarov29:41Oh.
Dario Nouri29:48What do you do now?
Kyrill Lazarov29:58A7S.
Jeremy Thibodeau30:01Like not the good one, it was just like a backup. So we ended up just shooting, yeah, we just shot the whole thing like that and nobody, yeah, we had something, but like nobody was happy.
Dario Nouri30:03Probably two.
Kyrill Lazarov30:07Yet something. Honestly.
Dario Nouri30:08I hope you had like I hope you had like 30 batteries. I hope you had like 30 batteries for the trip those things Well, if it was if I mean the it Definitely wasn't the third one. So it must have been either one or two and the battery life on those stunk
Kyrill Lazarov30:13Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau30:14Why? Because they run out quick?
Jeremy Thibodeau30:19See ya.
Kyrill Lazarov30:23Yeah, they were terrible. Like you would need it at least like eight to 10 batteries a day just to get through the day.
Jeremy Thibodeau30:24Oh.
Dario Nouri30:31and you'd have to keep charging them. As soon as they die, they go back in the charger.
Jeremy Thibodeau30:32Oh yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. I was not handling that camera at all. I was not allowed to go anywhere near that camera. That was our final remaining camera. As it turns out, where we were, the air was so salty that it eroded. So it's a known thing in that area. Electronics just get eroded with the salty air. So
Kyrill Lazarov30:35They were so little, they were like this big.
Kyrill Lazarov30:42Hahaha!
Dario Nouri30:46Jesus.
Dario Nouri31:01Really?
Jeremy Thibodeau31:02Yeah, so it turns out that like had we had the camera there the whole time by the end of the week and a half, it would have severely damaged the camera, like probably not, probably not to the point where it wasn't working anymore, but it would have definitely like made it a lot more like rusty and like not rely. Let's put it that way. So so the fact that we just went ahead and just like broke it means that we were able to get like a brand new one. I mean, the deductible was like 1500 bucks or whatever. So obviously that was terrible. But
Kyrill Lazarov31:04Whoa.
Dario Nouri31:29It's not too bad for a mark two though. It was pretty good.
Jeremy Thibodeau31:31No, that's it. Yeah, yeah. It was like a $9,000 repair. Yeah, it was, yeah. So like, this was four years ago now. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov31:33And at that time, what year was this? What year was this?
Dario Nouri31:35Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov31:40Yeah, Mark II I think was still there. I don't think the Mark III of that camera came out at that point, but yeah, that was, it await.
Jeremy Thibodeau31:46No, that's it.
Dario Nouri31:48Isn't it a documentary camera? Shouldn't it have been able to withstand like salty air?
Jeremy Thibodeau31:53That's what you'd think, right? But apparently it's, yeah, it's just men.
Kyrill Lazarov31:56Maybe it's just the materials, like some materials, like maybe like the handles or like the.
Jeremy Thibodeau32:00No, it's the internal circuitry. It's the internal circuitry. It's like all electronics get eroded. It's known for that. It's like when we arrived there, they were like, yeah, your electronics are screwed. We didn't know until we arrived, so like a lot of our stuff got all screwed up. Yeah, the crazy the things you have to think about, huh? Like you can only know after having gone through it. Like no one's… Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, well that was an amazing experience. Like that was also like… that was also… I mean…
Dario Nouri32:00Handle's plastic. It's like all plastic on the outside.
Kyrill Lazarov32:04Oh.
Dario Nouri32:14Jesus.
Kyrill Lazarov32:14Jesus. Oh yeah.
Dario Nouri32:20thank god we just do corporate we don't have to worry about going to nicaragua like on a river
Jeremy Thibodeau32:29We didn't get paid, but we didn't. I mean, it ended up costing 1,500 bucks. And honestly, the project didn't go anywhere either. We didn't even. We finished it, and no one really cared about it. It was just like a non-result. Yeah, exactly. Right?
Kyrill Lazarov32:32Well, you'll learn.
Kyrill Lazarov32:36I- I-
Kyrill Lazarov32:46Oh, that's…
Dario Nouri32:47Join the club. That happens too often.
Kyrill Lazarov32:50It that sometimes happens, but you know at the very least what you were in Nicaragua for a week you at least got to Enjoy a little bit, right?
Jeremy Thibodeau32:54That's it, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was fun. Exactly. Yeah, it was fun. Well, it was like a hostel. So it was like a it was called the Free Spirit Hostel. So it was like a very like hippie kind of free spirited kind of experience.
Dario Nouri32:56The cigars.
Kyrill Lazarov33:04Hehehehe
Dario Nouri33:06I'm curious, was it by any chance owned by a Canadian? Okay, so my buddy was right. Okay, my buddy was talking about how he did a big Mexico trip and then he went to some other surrounding countries like Belize and whatever and he's like, all the hostels are owned by Canadians. He was trying to pitch to the group, like, let's just pool like 120K together, just buy a hostel down there as an investment property. It's all Canadians that own them.
Jeremy Thibodeau33:09Yes, yes, on by a Quebecois.
Jeremy Thibodeau33:22Yeah. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov33:23What?
Jeremy Thibodeau33:29That's what they did. And they're just, yeah, and they're doing great. Yeah, yeah. And it just, they live there and their whole cost is covered plus they make money and they just hang out on the beach and serve drinks and they cook a meal per day and that's their life. Yeah, yeah, that's it. Well, yeah, that's part of the experience you get. Everyone sits around the table and we all eat together. Yeah, it was cool.
Kyrill Lazarov33:45A meal per day, wow.
Kyrill Lazarov33:56Jeremy, one thing I wanted to also quickly touch upon was because you do a lot of your projects remotely and you're dealing with clients in the US essentially, or even in other cases, how do you go about vetting other crew and team members when you're kind of like trying to work on a certain project? Because since you're remote, you have to rely on other people to kind of execute the production for you, right? So how do you go about that?
Jeremy Thibodeau34:21Yeah, the production and the post-production. Yeah, so I mean, to be honest, these companies they have their list of vendors most of the time. So often we're just working with the vendor. If not, then it's just a gut feeling. You search online, you look at the website, you talk to a few people, and you just kind of make a gamble. So far, it's been OK.
Kyrill Lazarov34:38Mmm.
Jeremy Thibodeau34:51But yeah, there's not really much you can do. But I mean, even people that we've been working with for like four or five years, they screw up sometimes. They forget the battery. They didn't, you know, they forgot the, what happens so often is, oh shit, I don't have any media. Forgot the media and the card reader at home. That happens, that happens like, yeah, it happens way too often. Yeah, and then everyone's, like, you don't have your card. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, that happens so often. It's just.
Kyrill Lazarov34:51Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov35:09Really?
Dario Nouri35:13wait to meet like that the cards they've got the how okay
Kyrill Lazarov35:15The cards.
Jeremy Thibodeau35:18It boggles my mind, but like this keeps happening. It's like missing a cable, missing this, missing that. Oh crap, we can't do this. We have to rush home. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That doesn't happen to you guys? Well, that's good. So I know that if we're doing shoots in Toronto, then I'll know that you guys have a perfect track record with not forgetting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's your niche.
Dario Nouri35:25I can understand a cable but the card? That's crazy.
Kyrill Lazarov35:31I…
Dario Nouri35:37Yeah, the cards at least you gotta have the cards ready
Kyrill Lazarov35:40Now we're gonna be, now we're gonna, Daria and I are gonna have to be like double checking like lists with our team now. It's like, okay, make sure everything, like look, sometimes reliable.
Jeremy Thibodeau35:47There's your niche on the landing page. You just like, you say like, we do not forget. Yeah, exactly. We don't forget our media. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov35:53Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, sometimes a cable might be forgotten, but then you're able to figure out solutions on set, as if it's not a big deal. But memory cards, that is, that I've never seen happen with anyone we've worked with.
Jeremy Thibodeau35:59Yeah, yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau36:05Yeah. That's happened. You drive home.
Dario Nouri36:07I have a question on the like a more technical question in terms of like, okay, you're dealing with a US client What's your? Financial process for that like do you have like a US? Account set up at like TD or whatever and just have them pay. Oh, so you have them convert Like what are they you do you get like let's say a thousand US from them You just go to your bank and they just converted over there. Like how does that work?
Jeremy Thibodeau36:20We should. We should.
Jeremy Thibodeau36:25it converts.
Jeremy Thibodeau36:31Yeah, it's I just we spoke to our accountants earlier this year and I'm switching the way we're doing things We're gonna start working. We're gonna start using wise because TD is just I Made me sick to know how much we lost on conversion fees Huh? Forex. Oh, what is it? Oh, yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah it it
Dario Nouri36:504X. yeah the foreign exchange fees the the foreign exchange here
Kyrill Lazarov36:54foreign exchange fees. Oh my God.
Jeremy Thibodeau36:58Yeah, yeah, because basically like we, yeah, like he told us the figure that if we had been using wise and not be not not going with TD, he gave us the figure of what we would have saved over the last two years. Yeah. And it was it was a it was a it was a full time salary for somebody for for a year. Yeah, it was it was it was it was in the lower the lower mid five figure range of just a purely of of transaction fees.
Kyrill Lazarov37:10Oh no.
Dario Nouri37:17Why don't you, uh, why don't you-
Kyrill Lazarov37:18Oh my god.
Dario Nouri37:23Jesus.
Kyrill Lazarov37:26Interest.
Jeremy Thibodeau37:27yeah no just transaction fees just like yeah exactly Forex yeah so uh…
Kyrill Lazarov37:31Wow.
Dario Nouri37:31watch open up a u.s. account and then you could just pull the money out of them if you go to a uh… foreign currency exchange place in this converted there
Jeremy Thibodeau37:39So apparently the good setup is WISE, apparently. So yeah, so the WISE is just like an internet, it's a fintech, it's like a new fintech thing that's just essentially, I mean, it's for foreign transactions. Or it's a bank account, pretty much. So, because that's the thing is like, so apparently there's like the exchange rates that the banks charge.
Dario Nouri37:42Wise?
Kyrill Lazarov37:43Witcheswise.
Kyrill Lazarov37:55Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Thibodeau38:08And then there's the actual exchange rate, right? So the bank charges you a certain amount, then that's the difference and that's their margin. So Wise basically just like cuts out like 95% of that. And that's their, so they'll still take a little bit, but it's like way, way less. That's literally all it is. And so apparently it's becoming, but the problem is is that because it's a new platform, like it's not super reliable, like I've heard some pretty bad things about it. But…
Dario Nouri38:11Mm-hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov38:11Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov38:32Oof.
Dario Nouri38:34You know if the amount they're sending is pretty high, like over 20-50k, then you can actually ask the bank to give you a better rate on it.
Jeremy Thibodeau38:47Yeah. Yeah, probably.
Kyrill Lazarov38:48You mean like reach out?
Dario Nouri38:50Now you can tell like, well I remember when I was working as a teller at CIBC, like they made like one of the guys that get a better rate. So I had to call corporate and then, or one of the foreign exchange guys, and they gave me a better rate for the guy. But it can't be like a thousand bucks, 5,000. It's got to be like a sizeable amount.
Jeremy Thibodeau39:04Yeah. No, that's it. So yeah, so actually like, so we do a very high volume of lower budget projects. That's actually the thing. Like it's very rare that I get into the, I mean, it's very rare that I get into the, let's say like the mid five figures. Like I'd say that doesn't happen often. Like if I get into the five figures, like I'm pretty happy, honestly. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov39:04Hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov39:13Uh…
Kyrill Lazarov39:27Right.
Dario Nouri39:27well then you might as well just open up a u.s. bank account and then just do it through there
Jeremy Thibodeau39:31I know we're we're working on it. It's like it's not really like it's not really me who looks after this. So we we just started up with some new accountants like two years ago. And like it was such a hassle to like switch everything over. Apparently we'd been doing everything wrong for years. And so we had to like fix all of that and like backtrack over the last three years. So like so then now this year we just found, you know, I started thinking about how to expense more through the company as opposed to paying, you know, higher salaries. And because there's I mean, what do you guys do? Or how do you approach expensing through your company? Like there's all kinds of stuff like I like my home my I work out of my my my apartment for example So I was not expensing my rent and I should have been so there's just it's a learning curve So the first step was to like actually do the books properly second is to start to actually benefit from owning your own business in Canada and Then now the next thing will be to optimize how we're dealing with foreign payments. So That'll probably be once we just finished tax season now. So that'll be the next step. So either we'll do a US bank account or I think, I think wise is gonna be the solution.
Kyrill Lazarov40:39Yeah, because we're having like some projects that might be involved with like different countries coming up soon. And that's something that Dara and I are trying to kind of figure out and try to set up soon.
Dario Nouri40:49Oh, actually on that note, on that, sorry, Kyrill, on that note, I have another question for you. If your client is in the US, are you still charging them, is it 13% tax they have in Quebec? What do they have?
Jeremy Thibodeau41:03US clients you don't charge tax. No, no you don't charge tax. Yeah you don't charge tax and you don't you don't pay tax on you on revenues that come from American clients.
Dario Nouri41:05You don't charge tax, right? OK.
Kyrill Lazarov41:06Yeah.
Dario Nouri41:16What about from other countries, like let's say the UK?
Jeremy Thibodeau41:19I don't know. I don't know. I don't. No, I haven't. I'm actually really focused on North America because it turns out that North America is the only place that really values employee engagement. I've tried to expand a little bit and it doesn't seem like it's nearly as much of a thing. I guess North Americans are more…
Kyrill Lazarov41:22You haven't gotten to that point yet.
Dario Nouri41:22Okay.
Kyrill Lazarov41:34Really?
Jeremy Thibodeau41:44entitled than most or I don't know what it is but it seems to be like like staying with the company getting employees to stay with the company and to be motivated seems to be a maybe it's because we don't take very many vacations as opposed to Europe that's it that's it exactly that's it well that's it right so like I'm actually like I'm like North America focused really yeah
Dario Nouri41:58They get like three months in Europe, they don't need to do, give them anything else, they have enough rights and benefits over there.
Kyrill Lazarov42:01Well, yeah, and…
Kyrill Lazarov42:08Well, it's also because most of the, a lot of the headquarters for a lot of major companies are based in North America, at least a good majority of them. And if there are any in other countries, it's probably with like more local teams. Like, I mean, like if you were going to like say France, Germany, or any of those countries in Europe, for example, those are smaller based markets, right? There's only so much external that they can bring in. Whereas like they're,
Jeremy Thibodeau42:32Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau42:36Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov42:37companies in the US that are headquartered there, but they have offices all over the world in all these other countries too. So that's probably why there's a lot more of a focus on employee and talent acquisition and engagement in North America.
Jeremy Thibodeau42:50Yeah, somewhat. I mean, actually, both my clients, their head offices are in Paris and Milan. Yeah, so I actually know, I'm going to say that it's really, it's because I think just because North Americans just like work a lot more hours and are less healthy in general when it comes to our culture around work and, you know, the pressures are higher.
Kyrill Lazarov42:59Oh right.
Dario Nouri43:14less benefits
Jeremy Thibodeau43:20So like, cause I've tried to, they don't like the, what like the New York office does a lot of stuff that the Paris office just doesn't do. They think it's like, they think it's ridiculous almost. They're just like, you know, you guys, yeah. Like you, it's crazy to us that you guys do that. Yeah, but the New York offices love it. Yeah, so it's.
Kyrill Lazarov43:41Gotta make, you know why? Cause you gotta make the employees happy that they're working so much. You know, it's like, oh, we appreciate you. We appreciate you guys going over time and missing out on family occasions. Ha ha.
Jeremy Thibodeau43:49That's it. Yeah, that's it.
Dario Nouri43:56anything but actually improving the situation.
Jeremy Thibodeau43:58Yeah, exactly. No, but that's kind of that's kind of the thing. It's just like it's the it's the culture. Yeah. So because I've tried to, you know, I've tried to I've tried to push that angle of like, hey, like, you know, it's working really well here. Like, why don't we go global? Like we can we can do translation. We can do all kinds of things. And they're just like, yeah, I brought it up and like, absolutely not. Not going to happen. So and like I've also like spoken to some people that are based in like Abu Dhabi and Dubai. And they're just like, huh? Employee employee engagement.
Dario Nouri44:02That's fucking-
Kyrill Lazarov44:13Yeah
Kyrill Lazarov44:27Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Jeremy Thibodeau44:28What? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just, it's not even, it's not, it's like not even an option. So I'm just, I kind of gave up on that, on that track.
Kyrill Lazarov44:36And was that a conversation over like this, over like say a Zoom call, or was it through email where they're like, huh? Ha ha ha.
Jeremy Thibodeau44:43No, no, it's, so my dad has some Lebanese friends. So I actually went over to Lebanon a few months back and I just, I, you know, met with some, met some people that are in, they're, you know, they're either like high level consultants or like they run companies or whatever. They're back and forth, like around the Arab world, just doing all kinds of whatever it is that they do. But when they would ask me like, what do you do? I just like I do employee engagement content. What is that? It's stuff like this. They're like, huh. So, uh, good, uh, good falafel! Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe
Kyrill Lazarov45:17You gotta show them the cool stuff. You gotta… Heheheheh…
Dario Nouri45:19That's exactly how that conversation went. So, uh, how about the Mets?
Kyrill Lazarov45:24How about those meds? You got to show them the cool stuff, you know, like the the high high-end event videos and everything that's what you got to show
Jeremy Thibodeau45:33I showed them the cool stuff. I showed them the… Trust me, I dropped the coolest ammo. And they're just like, that's cool. But what… Yeah, anyway. So, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. That's it. Exactly, that's it. It's like, no, let's talk about the food or something. Yeah. So, anyway. So, that's that. But, you know, I mean, it's like my dream is not this. Like my dream is to, you know…
Kyrill Lazarov45:43You lost them at employee engagement. That's what it was. Anything else after that? They're like, no, no, you've already lost me.
Dario Nouri45:52That's hilarious.
Jeremy Thibodeau46:00I always wanted to do, I always wanted to direct TV shows. Like I got into TV shows and movies. Like I got into this kind of thing because I first saw the making of documentary of Pirates of the Caribbean when I was like 11, right? You know when the DVDs started coming out with those behind the scenes featurettes? I feel like that inspired a whole wave of people who wanted to make movies. Is when those DVDs came out with the behind the scenes featurettes and people actually saw the process behind movies. I think there's just a lot of people.
Kyrill Lazarov46:14Oh nice. Yep.
Kyrill Lazarov46:23Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau46:29in our age group that just kind of got bitten by the bug at, you know, the age of like 10, 11, 12 or whatever. And that's always what I wanted to get into it for. Like I even moved to LA for a year and a half and tried to, because I did my school in the States. So I had like a year of a student visa and I moved out there and I wanted to be like in that entertainment world and Obviously my visa expired, I wasn't able to stick around. And I'm happy I didn't, but I'm still kind of going after it. I'm still developing entertainment IPs on the side when I can and trying to put a bit of a portfolio together. And then when I have a slate of projects, then I'll start to invest in actually going to these events and film festivals and markets and stuff. Because I think you've got to do it for a couple of years consistently.
Kyrill Lazarov47:11I-
Jeremy Thibodeau47:21So you gotta travel to all of the places and meet people and so on and so forth. And then maybe something will happen at some point. But you can't just go once, you gotta, yeah. So different, so different, yeah.
Dario Nouri47:31That world is so different from ours. It's like a complete different world.
Kyrill Lazarov47:33Very different, yeah. But I did see, like when I was looking at some of your work and I think I came across this on Facebook, like a BTS shot of this entire team that you guys had, where you guys shot an entire feature film, but you did it all remotely in a way. Was that the case or was there another story behind that?
Jeremy Thibodeau47:54So, when I say like I'm fully remote, like that's pretty recent. It's only since COVID started and this is kind of like my, this is the way that I make money, right? But when we started out, we were doing like, we were doing all kinds of local shoots. And I mean, my partner still does local shoots. But I guess maybe you saw a shot from, like we have, I have done features in the past and I have done, we did a TV pilot.
Kyrill Lazarov48:05Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Thibodeau48:21where we got all kinds of gear sponsorships and it was like a three and a half week shoot and we were working with actors and everything. I was pursuing that very adamantly early on. I produced and directed my first feature when I was 20 and did the whole film festival circuit and submitted to 50 and only got into 4 and none of them were really that relevant. I did learn a lot about that side of the business.
Kyrill Lazarov48:35Mm-hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov48:39Oh wow.
Jeremy Thibodeau48:51But yeah, it's just really, really hard to break into. And so I figured that's it, right? So either you go and you work in that field, but I find that if you work in the field, there's a lot of chance that you just kind of plateau, forever an assistant kind of thing. When I was out there, I met so many people in their early 40s, mid 40s that were still at assistance desks trying to push different projects. It's very much a crapshoot. So.
Kyrill Lazarov48:58and make money out of it.
Jeremy Thibodeau49:20That's why I said, I'll come back here, I'll build a production infrastructure. I'll kind of build the latter instead, and we'll develop projects on the side, and then we'll try to do the whole financing distribution thing, and do the production and the development. But it's a long, long road. When I was 24, I left and started the thing, Rubicon, with the idea that I was gonna put 10 years into it. just put my head down and just hustle and see how far I can go in 10 years, and then I'll kind of reevaluate if this is the right path. But yeah, it's just, the entertainment industry is a marathon for sure. And I'm certainly not going about it in the way that most people go about it. So fingers crossed, hope that it pays off. But at least also building a business that does this more client-based work. So, and it overlaps, you know? If you want to make a short, it helps to have worked with all kinds of professionals for the last four or five years. You can get good people on your project and you can make something really good for not very expensive because you have all these cool relationships. So there is overlap. Where there is no overlap is the financing and distribution side. There's no overlap at all.
Kyrill Lazarov50:27Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov50:39I heard that's like an entire business in terms of like how you go about that. It's not even like the creation of the product necessarily. It's like, how do you get that in front of eyeballs? Who do you have to grease to get into those film festivals and everything, right? It's, yeah. But at this point, like it's kind of like what Dario and I are right now aiming to do is like build our own business. A good foundation and base where, you know, like there's consistent work coming in.
Jeremy Thibodeau50:50Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau50:55Yeah, exactly.
Kyrill Lazarov51:09network with a lot of different creatives and other professionals such as yourself and grow a network and see what opportunities come down the road and yeah, that's really the modern way to go about it now, I guess in a way.
Jeremy Thibodeau51:19That, yeah. I think so. I really love the concept of like two to five person teams that trust one another and grow together and, and you know, like, cause I, like if you're just on your own, you're not really like people kind of glorify the whole freelancer approach to career, but because you have that freedom, but it's like, you can't really like say no to your client. Like if you're, if you're busy and you, and you pass like once even like they may not come back. And so like you're kind of like a slave to the yes a little bit. And then on the other side, it's like going and working for a bigger firm. Like you don't have the autonomy and you don't really, um, you know, you got to do what your employer asks of you, but what you guys are doing and what we're doing this, how many full time are you?
Kyrill Lazarov51:53Mm.
Kyrill Lazarov52:02Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov52:07We're just the two of us and then we hired the rest. I was gonna ask you how you, you have a team of five people, right? Or was it three?
Jeremy Thibodeau52:08Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau52:14So we're three producers, like two kind of client-facing producers and one back safety net guy. Then there's another side of our business, which is the software product that we're developing. And so we hired two developers about a year and a half ago. And now one of them is down to part-time, because they've kind of completed their tasks.
Kyrill Lazarov52:24Okay.
Jeremy Thibodeau52:41We just don't need them as much. So we have one full-time and one part-time who are software developers. So they're not making any money right now. They're just costing money. But we're going to be taking our product to market pretty soon. And then we'll see how that goes. So it's a client experience toolkit, pretty much, so for professional video creators. So.
Kyrill Lazarov52:56what what kind of product is is this uh…
Jeremy Thibodeau53:10The idea is, the idea basically is that, especially now that the playing field is leveling out with all kinds of, I mean, you know, remote work, AI tools, all this kind of stuff, the relationships that you're able to build with your clients and the trust that you're able to build and the essentially, you know, like in Mad Men, right? It's like you would… You bring someone into the corner conference room overlooking New York and you hand them a glass of scotch and you give them a cigar and then you make them feel good, right? That's a big part of our business is just making clients feel good and making clients like building that trust, right? But remotely, it's not the same, right? When you think about the tools that you use to interface with clients like just like the standard media sharing portals, proposal templates, whatever it might be.
Kyrill Lazarov53:50Mm-hmm.
Jeremy Thibodeau54:04Those tools are kind of like blank canvas tools. They're designed to be used by a lot of different people for a lot of different things, but they're not purpose-built or specifically focused. They're not designed to make it easier for video professionals to communicate their vision, their pricing, their process, in a kind of seamless way with an elevated client experience, like through an elevated client experience. So it's kind of like… How do you get the madman effect, but remote? Just by improving the way that you communicate and deliver client experience around your project, all the way from the first touch point to the very end and so on and so forth. So we bring a lot of different, it's just like a lot of different gadgets that we kind of, it's like a Swiss army knife a little bit, like with all kinds of interconnected gadgets that help you avoid all kinds of issues around misalignment, miscommunication.
Kyrill Lazarov54:46Mm-hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov54:54Right.
Jeremy Thibodeau55:02these kinds of things because I just felt like there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to be able to do and a lot of ways that I wanted to be able to communicate that I couldn't using the existing tools. So that's where the idea came from. And then we put some FIGMAs together. We did about 75 customer interviews. We kind of honed in on what features people thought were particularly innovative or could be potentially useful. And we believed in it enough to start developing the thing. So we actually raised money from, well, we got a bunch of public financing for it. And yeah, it's been working on this thing for like two and a half years now. So it's.
Kyrill Lazarov55:42Nice, I'm sure this will be a useful tool for a lot of creators, especially people who are just trying to learn the business side of things. So, I mean, yeah, we'll look forward to seeing it as it comes out.
Jeremy Thibodeau55:53Yeah, it's for client facing, basically. It's a client experience toolkit, yeah, exactly. So, and you know, I've been using it myself for the last six months, like it's buggy, and it's like, you know, we're getting it to the point where it's ready to take to market, but it's like, yeah, it's, I've made more money just in the way that I'm able to present things. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov55:57Yep. Yep. Nice.
Kyrill Lazarov56:17Yeah, it's all client experience, and that's essentially what we're all doing. Anytime Dario or myself jump on a call with a client, that is an experienced touch point with a client or anyone that you're working with. You have to make it good, and you gotta try to use and find other tools that can help you, but that's cool. We'll see, looking forward to seeing the finished product.
Jeremy Thibodeau56:29Yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau56:39Yeah, I'm looking forward to seeing how people respond, for sure. We've been building it according to what we want. It's not really the way you're supposed to go about it. You're supposed to make something and then iterate based on customer feedback. But yeah, there's something… Yeah, that's it.
Kyrill Lazarov56:51Mm-hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov56:59It's a long process. It's a long process. You can't get it done all at once. It's like you launch and then you improve over time. But yeah.
Jeremy Thibodeau57:06Yeah, that's it. So that's where the two other employees are. Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov57:10Cool. Nice, yeah, nimble teams are really the way to go when you're starting out, so that's, it makes sense.
Jeremy Thibodeau57:17Well, I mean, even just the idea of having full-time employees in your studio, I really like the idea of two to five person teams, many different two to five person teams, and they're all kind of interconnected in a smart way and smart collaboration. That's all tech enabled. I think that's really the future. I think big firms are not really…
Jeremy Thibodeau57:48I think it just costs a lot more to get the same level of innovation and dedication and care. And I understand why big firms exist. It's because of trust, right? So it's like, once you earn the trust, then you get more opportunities and then you get to build trust more and more as the opportunities that you've gotten, then allow you to attract new opportunities and so on and so forth. And eventually, these opportunities all kind of consolidate around a few. Right. It's like it's like 90 percent of the budget goes to like 10 percent of the of the agencies and like 90 percent of the spend goes to 10 percent of the agencies is because it's because the stakes get high and the and there's only a certain amount of firms that have the trust. Right. So I understand why it is the way it is. But I think given what's possible now with platforms and everything I feel like I mean just yeah there's a lot of there's a huge boom in solopreneurship and you know and and everybody's able to. become an expert in their own niche or their own field, and everyone's able to produce content and get it out there. And so I'm hoping that more and more the opportunity distribution becomes a little bit more democratized. And I think you get more out of creative people when they have some kind of ownership in the, they have like an ownership stake in their own brand, right? Yeah.
Kyrill Lazarov58:59Yeah, it.
Kyrill Lazarov59:11Yeah, yeah, it things will change over time. But, you know, like we'll see kind of where it goes. But anyways, we're actually kind of hitting the one hour mark already at this point. Jeremy, so it's just one last one last question was, how did you come up with the name Rubicon Story?
Dario Nouri59:21yep
Jeremy Thibodeau59:21Sounds good guys, for sure.
Jeremy Thibodeau59:27Oh, that's a good question. Thank you. So the, the, okay, so it's based on the, uh, it's based on a story from antiquity. So there was a moment where Caesar was kind of, uh, while he was off, you know, conquering all the barbarians and stuff. And then at one point Rome started to sort of collapse in a pool of debauchery. And so he brought part of his army back.
Jeremy Thibodeau59:56purged the city and kind of clean up basically. So it was just this like big, like internal massacre of his own people. And there's a very famous moment where his army was crossing the Rubicon River, which is a very small little nothing river. But as they were crossing the river, he famously said, the die is cast. The die is cast means. we've passed the point of no return. We've committed to doing this and there's no going back and come hell or high water, we will see this through. And so that really, that's what the idea of Rubicon, I mean, and the Rubicon Story is a known story. Like this, Rubicon means to pass the point of no return. So I believe that if you're going to be successful in this industry, you cannot have a plan B, you have to have nothing but a plan A and you need to… be ready to put yourself in a situation where you're really feeling the pressure because otherwise you will not have the fortitude to break through the barriers and actually reach the promised land. So one of the, one person who I really look up to is Shonda Rhimes. And Shonda Rhimes, basically she said, if there's anything else that you even kind of want to do, do that.
Kyrill Lazarov01:01:19Yeah, so just focus on the one goal and then that's it, right? Now that's cool.
Jeremy Thibodeau01:01:22Yeah. Yeah, and even if you kind of are interested in something else, that means that you don't have what it takes to actually make it in this thing. You have to be laser focused, nothing else is an option, and don't give up because you have nowhere else to go. And I like that. Of course, it's extreme. So I'm not saying that. practically speaking this is the right way for everybody. But there's something to be said about that deep, deep, deep commitment and not giving yourself an out. That cutting ties to, yeah. I like that. That's it, yeah. So that's Rubicon. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. So look.
Kyrill Lazarov01:01:46Mm-hmm.
Kyrill Lazarov01:01:56Yeah, it's the idea behind it, which is interesting. So cool. Thanks for sharing. That's awesome, man. Well, Jeremy, thanks for joining us on the show, man. That's been great.
Dario Nouri01:02:02i like it nice
Jeremy Thibodeau01:02:08Of course, thanks so much for having me and it was really, really nice to meet you guys. And also I'm going to keep engaging with what you guys are doing. I think it's awesome. And I would love to have an opportunity to work together at some point. I'm always kind of keeping my ear to the floor for opportunities to work with people. And I think you guys would be pretty high on the list. Let's put it that way because I think, yeah, I just I think.
Kyrill Lazarov01:02:29Wuh! Hehehehe! Yeah! Hehehehe!
Dario Nouri01:02:32Just keep it on your head.
Jeremy Thibodeau01:02:35I think anyway, just say it's cool. Like I love it when people take initiative to actually do something different. And yeah, I think you guys are fantastic. So yeah, thanks so much. Yeah, cool. All right. You got it. Thank you. Bye bye.
Kyrill Lazarov01:02:48Appreciate it man. Thanks. All right. We'll keep in touch and take care
Dario Nouri01:02:50Thank you, Jeremy.
