How to Find Work in Your Local Community (ft. There Media)

This transcript was auto-generated from the episode’s YouTube captions and lightly edited for readability. It is not speaker-attributed and may contain small errors. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.

0:01King here from There Media based out of St John's Newfoundland yo thanks for having me bro thank you your first guest from uh the East Coast let's go the entirety of the East Coast yeah we finally made it there we've had West Middle Ontario and then congrats man I'm pumped that you guys found me there's there's very few of us out here so I've only been uh to St John's once and it was for a layover I wanted to go explore a little bit but I was just too tired from a 13-hour flight so didn't get the chance I didn't you didn't leave the airport no I had to leave the airport

0:39because it was a very small airport smallest so there wasn't really anywhere for me to stay overnight there yeah that's fair that's fair now Newfoundland's a cool place man um yeah if you ever get the chance you should definitely come here uh it's it's different it's very different like it's like small town Vibes like trying to be a big town kind of thing like it's really really weird but I don't know it's a Cool vibe we'll talk about it we'll talk about it in more detail why don't we just go into it like tell us a little bit about like what the the market is like for video production yeah yeah I feel like the market only just

1:15like came to existence honestly because I was thinking about that too because I was like how am I going to answer that question when they they ask me um but the the market here it's it's different because for a long time in Newfoundland people have kind of relied on like a handful like literally like five or six people who are like you know the goat of like video production and they're they're always like an older people they've been doing it for like 15 20 30 years and these are the people who have like that trusted name and like the word when you think of the word like agency it really doesn't scream St John's doesn't scream

1:52Newfoundland like it's very much like the person who's good at it here um the that guy that guy straight up and dude like that's that's a battle man because like people they don't trust businesses like that here like they there's a couple businesses that are like strictly marketing here like not not so much video production but like people don't really like have an interest in going there because everyone here is like hashtag support local you know what I mean like that's like the biggest thing in Newfoundland so like having that having that like kind of presence about yourself where you're like the guy is really important when you're building a business here

2:30um so I don't know if it's like that in Toronto I guess in a much smaller sense I would say because then there are a lot of a lot of us do do get a ton of referral businesses so I guess in a small circle you might be that guy but as a as a whole it's you don't really rely on it because you do get a lot of like cold inbound leads that do come in uh depending on you know whatever your your sales channels might be like if it's social media or just uh straight up just Google or Bing or whatnot but it's that what you said is like it could be really good but it could also be very bad because again you are relying on Word of Mouth way

3:10more heavily I guess than than we would be when you're starting out here it is kind of like in your circles you are kind of that guy when you're starting out but one thing that kind of intrigues me is what you said about how uh in Newfoundland everyone is very much focused on trying to support the local uh businesses and like the smaller teams does that mean that you guys basically have a cap on how far you can expand your business in terms of size it's like like at what threshold is it you're too big to support under the local Banner you know what I mean I don't think it has really anything to do with like the size of your business but it's like the

3:44way you the way you act in your business you know what I mean like if you're if you're the type of business that's like that exists to help other local businesses so I'm talking like more so in like our realm of like because we're we're a service based business obviously um so like you know if we're if you're reaching out to other local businesses and you're trying to help the community and everything that you do sort of comes back to being like I'm trying to boost new people end up and trying to boost St John's up I'm not just trying to become like this like International agency then that's then that's probably where you're going

4:14to see like more local support and even if your team was to grow as long as you're showing love back I think that's like really important for people in Newfoundland um but yeah that's pretty much it so essentially showing support within the community being active and like even though your team might be expanding if you're helping other smaller businesses in some way shape or form as well pretty much man because dude like everything is is so scaled down here from Toronto you know I mean like there's a hundred there's a hundred thousand people in this city so like everyone knows someone

4:45in some fashion right um so if you're not really trying to contribute to this like it's more of a community it's more of a community than it is like a city you know what I mean um and that's just the Vibes here like if you were to live here for a couple months you'd really get a true understanding of what it's like but like yeah we're really trying to to lift each other up in Newfoundland a lot and you can lean into it man like I've leaned into that a lot and I've seen a lot of success from it um Newfoundland is definitely a very Innovative place in the last couple of years like we have a pretty good University here it's we're known for how

5:17cheap it is and and like we actually have some I don't know some good profs and stuff here all right good curriculum but a lot of people come here in the tech industry now and like it's growing pretty rapidly um which is open in a lot of doors for you know production businesses like us to come in and and help them out which is supporting local yeah Tech clients are really good to have in in your roster because obviously yeah the budgets you'll be dealing with are yeah definitely juicier than a lot of local businesses yeah it's like oh yeah we have 50 000 in funding how do we what can you do for us you're like oh a ton of stuff do some head shots you know I I

5:54thought it was funny where you said uh because of how small the community is in Newfoundland like a hundred thousand people everybody knows somebody or pretty much everybody knows everybody does that it's almost as if like uh there's not the possibility for too many new clients or uh types of customers to come in unless it's like you said Tech or foreign because in Toronto it feels like there could be an endless row of leads that could come in from anywhere right whereas in Newfoundland I'm guessing it's probably a lot more tight-knit so it's kind of like if a

6:25lead is coming in you already know who this person is almost guaranteed yeah or like you either know who they are or they're coming to you because someone you know told you about them kind of thing right um yeah nuts it's a weird it's a weird vibe man for sure so St John's so Newfoundland is essentially the ultimate referral uh environment it is capital in the world the ultimate Word of Mouth market for video production pretty much I'm like yeah if someone like if someone hits me up like a brand or something or a business locally like I'm almost not like oh like this is crazy this brand hit me up it's almost more like oh like about time you know what I mean like

7:07because like it's only a matter of time before everyone just hits you up and then and then it's like what what now you know what I mean how's the how's the freelancer market there um pretty pretty slow man honestly like I have I have like a piece of paper in my living room with like like all the Freelancers that I like I hire with their numbers and and I only need that piece of paper so how big is the piece of paper is it like this or is it like this just like a it's it's like a little one man it doesn't even have lines just a little tiny one that's a cue card it's a cute card it's a cute card wow and it's yeah but like

7:44the people that are here like though there's very few there are some really talented people here and the beauty of like you know this whole like tiny ecosystem that we have here is that they're they're always looking to do something and like they're not being snatched away by 150 different people at the same time um which makes it really convenient as well uh yeah and the fact that everyone knows each other here we have here if you make a post trying to look for I don't know like I mean we know a lot of audio operators but I'm gonna use that as an example looking for an audio operator who posted in the producer Facebook group there's

8:17like 50 replies within 30 minutes and it's like there's too many people five minutes Stephen fair enough man yeah and another thing too like we don't we we don't even have any form of like a film school here like we we have a like our University doesn't offer anything in the way of like film or video production or anything like that we have a college and they do like an audio producer kind of pro everyone's kind of like self-taught is that how it is over there I am that's that's we are too that's that's how we did it we just we just taught ourselves basically exactly yeah that's an

8:55interesting yeah that's that's pretty interesting man like I don't I wouldn't be able to really talk in depth too much about like the benefits of like going to film school and stuff like that too but like I honestly feel like it just has it comes down to like how much effort you want to put into it right like and like I don't know you need to be you kind of need to just do things badly first and be like oh yeah nah that makes sense and then just try again like it's it's like it's like the only way to to grow honestly if you're doing what we're doing you don't really need Film

9:24School you just pretty much need I would I would say you wouldn't even need Business Schools because we went to business school and it didn't really help out in any way yeah it's just it's just but it is business skills it is just business skills that you need to have yeah that's true man the environments the environments essentially can teach you can give you the opportunity to try to learn those business skills you know how you navigated it but in our industry it's not one that you could really be taught by someone else it is the Hustler industry and if you're not hustling in some way shape or form you're not going

9:53to go far in the career that's so true man there's a couple people that I know like just good buddy of like good buddies of mine like that I've literally I've kind of like transformed their outlook on what they want to do like there's that's a big thing in Newfoundland as well and I'm always going to keep saying that because Newfoundland is its own kind of Beast um but that's a big thing here too is that you rub off on people a lot you know what I mean and like when I started doing this like I have an engineer hearing background so like oh yeah like I graduated engineering back in 2020 and I just

10:21didn't want to do it at all you know what I mean like I like when you're going through the engineering program here you have all these work terms and you work for for different corporate businesses and stuff man and like the reason I did engineering was because I wanted to be an inventor like I just wanted to make cool like that's literally all I wanted to do and then as I went through engineering I realized I couldn't actually create anything like there was there were so many restrictions and rules and procedures and like FBD diagrams like I was just like not

10:48not feeling it at all so then I you know I P I've always sort of had cameras on hand because I'm a big like moment capture kind of guy and I've always loved photography like even growing up man like I used to take headshots in my teddy bears and stuff like that like as a kid like like straight up dude that's hilarious that's awesome I could send you some I could send you something I'm good oh damn I shouldn't have said that nobody basically yeah it's like you were wanted to be an inventor but I guess you are kind of inventing or being creative enough to invent stuff visually at least

11:25yeah and I sort of just fell in love with this like with this whole business and everything and and eventually you realize that like okay you got like the the talent to be able to to produce these kind of creative things and like you said then it turns into a hustle game it turns into like a more of a business game and that's where like stuff that you learned in business school was probably super valuable but I sort of had to learn that through network not no it was not at all I can't think of a single thing we used no it's what we learned was basically how we navigated in there because like

11:55we've touched upon this in previous episodes but essentially we built our portfolio within the business school like within the first year where we just went out there and just shot as many videos as we could so we learned a lot of things right in the beginning not only Tech skills but also how to talk to clients how to talk to people and understand their needs and their wants and the the more you could do as soon as you can do the better you have to kind of get started in the in your career essentially for this school pretty much I don't know I don't think it helps you

12:25for much but that's just me maybe it's like a one percent of the whole career yeah like the rest of it is all hard work networking hustle like sure maybe you need that five percent of knowledge but it's all outdated stuff they teach you right by the time they're teaching it to you there it's running out of it's sort of a couple years out of the day but okay so you just you graduated in 2020 and then you went right into the video production because you said you wanted to do engineering right so you're just you're just fresh you're still friends like a fresh company right like

12:54so yeah I'm curious though because you started okay you're you just graduated you're like I want to do video production you're in a market where it's very referral based and were there like any other big players that you had to kind of like navigate around or try to to try to like get to their rank like how was that because like I mean for us like here like when we first started a trip there's like a million companies out here right but there were ways for us to kind of go there I feel like if if we were like little fish in a small pond it would have been even trickier now so how did you get to where you are now then it's only been two years right yeah

13:30about two or three years since I've actually been doing it for clients yeah which is super crazy honestly um because it feels like a long time but like remember what I said about uh like Newfoundland being like the place where it's almost like an individual that's trusted to be like the best in like the industry well you can use that to your advantage because like people love to you know people here do anyway but people love to share information and like and how they do things and they love to network and connect and like and that's why like this whole like local aspect is so much easier to gather information like you can't just pull up

14:00to a company of like 30 and like sit down in a boardroom with them and start asking questions like hey can you teach me this can you teach me that but like you sure as hell can do that with a guy who's been doing it for 30 years be like hey can we meet up at a coffee shop and can you teach me some stuff and I've utilized that so many times man like just like Network thing with different individuals like and learning from them and then adopting new things because people learn in different ways you know what I mean like if someone's doing this for 20 years they don't know things that

14:25I might be able to figure out just because I'm younger I do things differently I'm more connected in social media and other people and seeing different things um so it's a back and forth type of game right like you you learn from people and you give to other people and then eventually you just become so intertwined in it that it's just it just happens right um so like yeah I don't know if there was too much like navigating competition or anything like that but yeah like I definitely saw some like competition like and like discouragement especially when like putting in proposals and stuff like that and then they come back and

14:53they say oh we gave it to someone else and then you realize that it was like one of two agencies in town and you're like what the hell is going on and then like but yeah it's just it just comes down to like practice and experience and like you said like just um like pumping out those videos like like it's just practice practice and like taking what you can get um I do that for a long time and I'm actually at the point now where I'm starting to be able to like refine what type of content I'm doing which is great and get into more things that I'm more passionate about like steering not that

15:24commercial um not that corporate you know videos or or something that I don't like doing but like I'm more selective on which type of companies I can help and stuff like that and I do love support and whether it's not even local but like the up and coming like Hustler you know what I mean like people trying to create like Brands like and sell e-commerce sell on Amazon creating their own like identity through through a brand through a product I think is really inspirational and that's that's the route I want to take um so what about you guys though like so did you guys go into like business school with the mindset of like we're gonna like create a a production company

15:55no not even not even close I I actually uh when uh when I first got into University I at first wanted to be an actor and I tried that for like a year I didn't like it as much so I thought you didn't like it or they didn't like you there's a big difference who knows well the what the one thing I didn't like about about acting was that I didn't like the idea that my entire career would be based on other people's uh bias judgments on me so you could be you could work as hard as you can and and put hundreds of hours of effort and work into it but if someone just even arbitrarily can decide like oh this person's just not right for this then

16:35there goes all your hard work I just didn't like that idea and um so I was still kind of trying to figure things out then I started dabbling in video and then I decided this is what I want to do halfway through University but I was doing marketing so I decided let me just finish it see what see what works out apparently they didn't teach them anything because for a while I had to take over the marketing now he's finally taking the reins on it again and I went to I did the business of knowledge actually it did help us out a little bit because they had this law clinic program so we got all of our league legal papers done there because

17:07we we started the business roughly at the tail end of our University careers so we got all of our partnership agreements our contract our freelancer contracts uh I don't know what else we got from them but I wish we did our starting article articles with them Articles of Incorporation that would have been good I don't think we thought that we would actually make it that far with the company back then you know when you're like we started the business essentially in at the end of 2014 and then start kind of pushing it until like Midway through 2015 because up until that point it was just working as Freelancers essentially right and

17:42although that was fine we realized it would be better to start a company so that there's a chance for it to kind of expand and grow on its own rather than just under one person's name and then as the years kind of went by it was like a very slow burn in our growth and then like as we mentioned before on the on the podcast the pandemic shifted everything forced us to re-adjust and re reposition ourselves focus on the business side of things and now and also the podcast came about I wish we had that happen earlier but I don't know I guess it was like a perfect storm

18:13everything happened at the right time because yeah it did feel like we were just two Freelancers for a long time and then I don't know we just sat down and then everything looked kind of like the stars aligned and uh things click things started to click in our heads as we've talked about it before it's a it's the working in your business versus on your business kind of dilemma and that's always going to be a struggle especially when you work for yourself I find it it's it's it's funny a lot of people say like you know it's not just like one big thing that like it gets you going in your business it's like little things that like add up like over time right which is so true but for

18:46me it is the opposite it was one big thing because it was it was like the biggest project not that I've done today but like it was just the biggest project that I've ever seen at the time and it was it wasn't the fact that it had nothing to do with money had nothing to do with the client but it had to do with the the idea that I could get a project like this like I could I could nail something that's high budget like a big like corporate client at the time and and that kind of put me over to the hump to be like all right you know what I'm going all in on this and I'm quitting my day job because at the time when I

19:18graduated I was like okay don't want to do engineering but I should probably get a job because I got to move out and stuff um and I ended up getting an art director job at an e-commerce supplement company um which is pretty cool it was it was a it was a sick job it paid nothing but I had a lot of creative Direction there it was it was it was a lot of fun really good team but I could I still couldn't help feel like like my creative Direction was a little bit blocked because I had superiors and stuff like that right and and like sometimes I feel like or what I felt like Anyway was that my ideas would get like refined by my

19:55superiors just because they felt like they needed to do something to my ideas you know what I mean like and I'd be like but you don't need to change anything like it's good like it's good like you don't need to change it and I would find myself like working on like my own projects my own like marketing strategy for my own business and stuff and like my core values of like how I want my business there to to be and feel and once I got that that gig they were like oh can you come in on like Thursday afternoon and chat about it and I was like like at that point I was only doing weekend shoots because like I couldn't I had a nine to five and they were like

20:33they told me actually they were gonna pay me and they were really interested in seeing my work and stuff and that just put me over the hump and I was like you know what I'm just gonna quit and do this and and I just haven't looked back since which is great it's it's great when you do that because we did the same thing it's just a a freeing feeling oh it's crazy and then yeah my hands were shaking for like two weeks it was insane I remember I remember I was working at the bank as a teller and I called Kyrill and them like man I'm done with this I can't take it anymore I just let's just do this money's coming in kind of consistently now we're making roughly this it was funny because it's like for

21:05uh we'd get like one small one gig would like be the equivalent of working two weeks at the bank like uh part-time and I was like I don't want to do that anymore I'm tired of it let's just do this full time you do your mind changes when it comes to money when you're in this kind of like I don't think about like hourly wages anymore I think about like oh if I land a gig then this can sustain me for a certain period of time you know that can pay for this you know someone asked me to do headshots for them I'm like sick there's my car payment like I think about things in chunks now I don't think about it though as like hourly rates that's true that's

21:40true yeah because when we talk to some of our friends that are that are employees they always mention it like hourly it's like the equivalent of an hour late this or hourly that for us it's like that project is like okay so Kyrill gets paid I get paid Freelancers get paid and then business gets this chunk that'll go part part of it will go for the light part of it for the storage locker fees part of it for the insurance that's how we think about things suture yeah yeah but it changes it changes though like we kind of like think of it like yeah in chugs but then it's we we're thinking okay we need about three

22:12or four chunks a month to actually live off of it right so it's still the same you think about it you think about it but as an employee think about it hourly as a business owner you think about it in chunks and then once once you become like a big accompany you think about it in percentages I think that's the ranking yeah it's it's it's it's it's value-based uh payments you know it's like your your salary and your earnings are based on the value you put out there versus the hours that you put in put out there but to get the value you also need to put hours into it so it's funny because it's like it's it feels different but when

22:46you start to look at it and break it down it's like damn it's back to the basics again you know what's you know what's funny yeah it does go back to the hourly eventually it always goes back so it's almost like a running away from it but we'll come back to it eventually it's like a circle it just comes right back to the starting point tell us a little bit about your structures right now you're just running the company do you have any other people that uh maybe like full-time or part-time no I know full-time I had a full-time employee one time but she would she was like she wasn't um like she wasn't doing what I was doing

23:20like we weren't she wasn't like out filming with me she was more so on like the marketing social media uh copywriting side of things and I found just like the stress of having like this full-time employee it didn't feel like like it wasn't the fact that she was a full-time employee but it wasn't it didn't feel like a partnership it felt like I was turning into like a boss or something and I was like dude like I hired you to like be like you know 50 not 50 50 with me but like I hired you to be like on my team not like wait for me to give you Direction every single day it's like she didn't have any drive drive to like do something herself

23:53and like build company I don't know if that has to do with like you know because she didn't the the name of the company doesn't mean what it means to her as it does to me or like I don't know so it didn't really work out and then I mean I hear it I listen to like three or four your podcasts and I I'm pretty sure everyone said the exact same thing about how hiring freelance just makes way more sense like when you need it you know what I mean like instead of having like a full-time employee you just like getting paid for certain roles because I mean obviously having like a

24:21full-time audio up doesn't make no sense right but like having like a full-time like uh uh editor marketing or or um assistant producer editor for sure what about the other one it's not a it's not a PA it's a little bit above that but they'll be like handling all it's not really a secretary but it's like production coordination coordination that's the one yeah yeah yeah there's a lot of different roles that would add a lot of value to have them on your team as full-time but I I think maybe what might have happened is you might have not defined like that role too much in

24:52her eyes where she's like oh like I need to maybe go out and do this or do that but the other flip side is that unless unless you're uh unless you have some kind of stake in a business no no one is ever going to be as invested in your business as you will be that's so true I I know that one thing that helps kind of foster that environment is to create like a work culture of you know pushing each other you know like um like it's more so kind of like pushing your the people that work with you to also better themselves because if they feel like they're bettering themselves then that

25:23will also Elevate you in your business so that's that's one thing I want to do down the road uh with with our team like once we start adding people in it's like we want everyone that works with us to all grow together right because if they grow you grow the team grows and hopefully the clientele will grow one thing to keep in mind though and and Kyrill and I have discussed this before but there's no guarantee that you will even if you do have a strong sense of work culture you've like tried to vet out potential um leads and everything there's no guarantee that there'll still be the type of employee that you're looking for but at the end of the day you also have

25:57to realize that it is a employer an employee relationship so it is what it is type of thing and also you have to remember that not everyone is gonna I'm talking like as if we've done this already but I was gonna say like we're talking about this like as if we have experience but I can kind of I can kind of get it but we can see I can I can already sense it that I can already sense that like you know at the end of the day it is a paycheck to that person and you know they might have different aspirations or dreams and at the same time you don't want to have the same person for like I mean it'd be great to have the same person for 30 years but having that revolving door

26:34every couple years at least allows for new talent to three to five three to five which I don't know Kyrill today's environment maybe two to three is more accurate are you kidding me it's three to six months now six months three to six months I'm being a little optimistic but uh at least it allows for a revolving door people to come in you you might learn something off them they'll learn they'll they'll be like an exchange of information because I don't know I feel like companies where it's like they've stayed there too long it's almost it becomes too static nothing changes in a way it could be

27:04great but at the same time like it's like you watch this Scorsese movie and after the sixth one you're like I'm tired of seeing De Niro I want to see someone else right and then he puts in the camera like all right good I've seen enough DiCaprio now show me someone else right and you know that being said too like some of the Freelancers because the network is so small here like I have worked with them to the point where it almost feels like you know we're kind of like full-time collaboration all the time you know how it is with video production too it's not like it's not like every single day nine to five you're out like on a set

27:32somewhere you know what I mean so there's always that like down time where you're like either making like strategy you're doing strategy sessions or you're you're editing or what have you but and there's different people that I hire for different parts of that um so you know just like doing it every single week with all these different people and like having meetings with the same people it feels like they're on your team and in a way like you like with that sense of fulfillment you know what I mean like how how you said like they feel like they're just getting like a paid to them it's just a paycheck like a full-time employee would think that but like when you're meeting

28:06with these like Freelancers they're just as motivated because like when they're they're a freelancer they're trying to build their own personal brand too right like through your brand right now so they want to do a really good job for you so that they can get recommended to someone else you know what I mean absolutely but they always keep coming back anyway um because there's only because there's only three of them so sorry the reason also is uh that Freelancers they have the luxury of also choosing their jobs um you know obviously most of them is how busy they are yeah like but a lot of

28:37really good Freelancers like say for example DPS they also have the luxury of choosing their jobs so uh they're not going to choose to do like someone's not going to choose to do like a corporate video if they have the chance to do some kind of like really engaging creative type of commercial project you know for a relatively similar pay or something like that so they get to choose their job whereas an employee unfortunately sometimes like you can work on some really cool projects but at the same time there's always going to be that work that you don't really want to do but you have to do and as a business

29:08owner there's so much work that you don't want to be doing but you have to do it I would say it's like probably like 60 70 percent of the work you do is probably work you don't want to be doing but needs to be done so that you can actually grow the business and expand it right what's number one on that list for you of things you don't want to be at uh taxes taxes hurt I think it was talking about in terms of projects no in terms of projects are attacked I mean I'm no no I'm talking in general I'm talking to General okay yeah taxes are annoying it's not always creative work man like it's always sometimes you got to just do the things that keep you a part of

29:43society um you know luckily like you guys use like in a kit like a CPA or anything like that or you know what we just Incorporated the uh early this month and um yeah like we got all the documents ready for for our previous guy for Howard Howard is still with us guys Howard's been mentioned a couple of times Howard Silverberg if you need an a CPA or accountant in Toronto that's the guy to go to um but yeah no he's taking care of that like before we were doing our bookkeeping ourselves and everything then just giving him the finals and everything but uh but yeah no going back

30:17to the the free the employee freelancer thing like again like as a business owner it's uh it's kind of like Tony Soprano said it's Lonely at the Top you know yeah no matter what at the end of the day like you're you're the the captain of your ship but it's just you at the end of the day the crew can always leave as soon as we land on uh at a port that's right you're the only one who's gonna be making website edits at 4am on a Wednesday one thing you mentioned like for example like sometimes uh like you might be working with people who yeah they need a little bit more Direction uh and being shown what to do is because they also may not necessarily know where

30:53where to go with in certain situations you shouldn't always see that as like a bad thing because then they're at least willing to learn and willing to kind of listen to see like what should be done right and then once you work with that person over and over and over again then they can kind of get a sense of like uh how you work and how you don't work great and you know what you could do because this is what we started to do recently I I don't know where it'll go but we're thinking it might take off as well um you could always Mentor someone like maybe they could start out as a PA

31:21like right now we're mentoring two of our Pas and like because we asked them we're like what do you want to do and everything and then they're like I want to get more into video production everything and we told them like look if you're interested we could Mentor you to be just like us we could teach you like the whole 360 of video production so now we're bringing them out to like every shoot like in on the back end we're teaching them like how a project is made um the eight is out of that we're also teach like some of them are also editing this podcast as well so we're getting them uh used to like to to

31:58everything right so that's one thing you could do as well that's true man and I've actually I've I've done that before um and it was kind of a little bit of a failure I think I don't know I don't think it was my fault but I I um you know there was like a behind the scenes photographer that I I used to hire all the time and he was super into you know super into photography he saw what I was doing loved it and wanted to get into it you know so I took him out shooting some random times then I would take him on projects I'd be like hey man if you can capture like some BTS for me like I'll show you what I'm doing and all this

32:29stuff you can get a sense of like how I'm operating with like clients and stuff like that how I'm talking to people my setups um you know that was going pretty good and then we'd always have discussions about like my gear and stuff like that what I'm using and all that stuff and then and then he ghosted me and he started his own production company based off all the knowledge that I gave him which like I don't know if I if I don't know if I like disrespect that or admire it it's really hard thing to say but like I was I was kind of shocked that he didn't kind of just like lean into it with me a little

33:00bit more and just like went off and did his own thing which is like I feel like it would have been a lot more scalable if he kind of just like brought that up to me or something and was like Hey man like maybe we could like do this together but it was probably it was probably nervous like what I told her Pas it's like look I will if you want I'll teach you how to become like me in terms of skills and everything but I also don't care if you eventually go start your own thing I'm like I said I'm actually that's a good disclaimer yeah I said yeah like go ahead even if you feel like at the end you you've had enough you want to start

33:29your own thing go for it and then if you need any help like I can help you on that end as well right so he probably got he probably got scared he didn't want to disrespect you or something that's probably what happened well people are also not good with confrontation and that is a very uh that is like a type of situation where it could be kind of confrontational and some people want to try want to try to avoid that and like yeah it sucks that like the thing that sucks mainly is that you feel like you've worked with this person for so long they didn't have the courtesy to to just let you know that

33:58that's what they were doing but you know at the same time take it as a compliment if he's doing well with off the knowledge that you've taught him that's almost like a case study for you to know that what you're doing is right dude that's that's always just about to say man like when you're like mentoring someone on a low level or a high level or whatever like it feels good man like it actually feels really good because you realize how much you've learned throughout the years and like how much you're able to actually like give someone and like like dude sometimes it blows my mind then like for either if

34:28I'm talking to a client or I'm talking to someone who's going to be on my team for a project like and I'm talking and then I'll like catch myself talking or something and like I'm just like dude they are so engaged to what I'm saying right now and I'm like this is crazy like where did I even learn how to do this you know what I mean like that's amazing and like I love that especially with the client experience when you pull up and you and you create this like either like a strategy or a brief or like an overview or a shot list or something for them you go through and they're like this is so good like you

34:57know and like like that's that kind of brings you back to like why you're doing it in the first place like you know like number one you got to get paid and live but like number two man it just feels so goddamn good to help someone when a client trusts your expertise it is the most rewarding feeling and and I I love when they go like when they say we're so glad we picked you guys that's that's the best that's the best compliment a video producer can ever get yeah and then that's that that motivates you as well to also go the extra mile too you're like okay now I'm gonna really wow them with this next part big time it's it's a it's showing

35:33appreciation and uh and when you when you see that a client can show their appreciation you also show your appreciation for them by putting in even more work right it's kind of like a feeding off of each other type of energy you know there's obviously a lot of situations with certain clients and leads where it's very transactional and you know they're like not every client you're gonna have is gonna be the creme de La Creme of relationships that you connect with and click with and sometimes you have those other ones where it's a little bit more transactional but you still have good

36:03experiences but to Dario's point when you have those experiences where things just kind of click and it's almost like you're talking with a friend you know it it makes the work a lot more fun no matter what it is yeah I think yeah like helping a new client for the first time and having it be a success is amazing and then there's a whole different feeling you kind of get with like repeat clients like I think like when someone comes back to you and they're like hey man like it's been a couple months but we're doing something else now can you help us out it's like whoa these people like are really vibing with what I I do

36:34which is great um yeah I would say getting that repeat client experience is like definitely one of my favorite feelings yeah like you just start you're two years in but I feel like you've done more in those two years than we've done and all the time that we've been around it's just interesting to see because we've already tried the the mentoring the employee I wish we did all this stuff when we were starting I mean like you like again how I for for those that don't know how I choose uh Our Guest is basically I go to that City and then I filter out like a ton of people just to see who has a really good website good portfolio how the ranking and everything that's

37:10basically how I choose our guests like like out of out of all the people in uh in St John's it was you and then uh altitude media who's coming on next week so it's it's impressive in two years you've made like I'm talking right now our first two years in you couldn't even load up our website because our hosting partner was so bad it would take 20 seconds oh my God to load up the website so I mean your website was like on the first page or something so it's congratulations you have no idea how long I've like how many hours I put into like making that happen like like you said before man like it's it's either oh I know or

37:48you're doing nothing man like yeah it's it's not gonna just happen like it just it will never just happen and like dude I've spent so long dude like literally like there's been like relationships that I've almost had to like part ways with like there's there's things I've missed out on there's there's I don't know family events I couldn't make it to there's there's so much that's changed like different parts of my personality have changed like my my ability to this sounds pretty negative but it's it's just the way it is but like my ability to like enjoy free time has changed

38:19because like I love like working you know what I mean because I'm not working anymore like I'm doing what I'm meant to be doing which is really rare and a lot of people don't understand it but if you do understand it you know what I mean um you live and breathe it that's essentially it and it it's funny because like like the free time people think that our a lot of people probably think that our free time is when we're not shooting and like shooting is probably only like like 30 percent of the time of the work that we're doing there's so much that goes into the back end like

38:50you said no one really realizes just how much goes into just even trying to get the website to be functioning in a way that it can be found easily on Google there's so much work that goes into the back end and uh it's not like you just like make a website it's like Boop there we go we're good to go there's so much more that goes into into it just on that side alone even it's funny actually how we were talking about like agency versus like word of mouth and Newfoundland like back in like it's not so much the case anymore but like you said like my website ranks pretty high which is great but to in order for me to have done that

39:22like like I don't know like a year or two ago like my SEO was very directed around like my name because like there was a couple connections that I had where like oh like Braeden King he's like a videographer he's really good um but I had this business I was like I want There Media to be like the business like I don't want to just be a name because it just doesn't feel scalable to me um so all my SEO was like around like my name like I wanted people to search up my name and get to my website and then I had to like my website has changed so much too like the first thing that used to be on my website was a picture of me because I needed people to understand that I was the one behind it and stuff

39:54and like I didn't want people to be like who is this like random agency how many employees do they have you know what I mean but like it had to be more centered around like operate and he's a really passionate like videographer and now it's starting to get to the point where it's like people are hitting me up and they're like can you get me 50 000 followers on TikTok and I'm like what are you doing why people actually people actually make those uh requests weird things on my email apart from getting like SEO Solutions I don't know how oh my God I don't even dude like where are these people in the world honestly like who

40:28does you know what my top top three most annoying emails are the SEO guys uh the voice over people just won't leave me alone they keep coming after me here's my and the uh and the AI of writing now it's lately it's been AI uh Solutions you know like oh we'll write your articles everywhere interesting that's like 100 that's like most of them actually on my end right now it's it's mostly like oh yeah you need an AI tool here's a random sketchy AI tool pay us 50 a week to use it let's talk about AI let's talk about chat let's talk about chat GTP have you guys use chat GTV at all

41:11they couldn't have called it they could not have called it something more complicated I know like something simple just chat AI done done leave it at that jet GPT like Jesus it's it's tpg tpg okay see see what I know I'm just I'm messing with you um have you guys utilized that at all for anything I I tested it I was like these are Wikipedia articles it's spitting out I don't know like that's the weird part about it because you don't know where the references are coming yeah right it's just like okay it just spit facts but like you know am I like copying this from someone's like essay that they

41:47wrote for their PHD or something you know what I mean like like where is this coming from but you could there is a there's another app that open AI open AI is the one that owns it so they open mid-year yeah you heard of Midjourney at all yeah that's like the photo video version of chat yeah that one and like you can you can put in what it spits out and it tells you sort of where it came from um but man it's it's an interesting tool like I find it's just it's been cool for a couple different things for me right now and I try not to utilize it too much for like creative copywriting because I feel like if I sit down enough I have enough like passion

42:26in my brain to write something that's like more true to me and I don't believe in kind of like copying other people's work or anything but like for for questions and stuff man like it's it's really interesting like for for instance uh we're we're traveling overseas later this year to uh film for a TV series um and we're going we're going to India and in order to go to India we have to register like all your gear because they check it at Customs you gotta get like an India carnet yes exactly exactly and in order to do that you got to like make a spreadsheet with like the weight of every single piece of equipment the

43:04serial number all this stuff where the country of origin like where it was made and stuff and dude I was just like searching stuff up and chat GTP I was like tell me everything about the Sigma lens how much does it weigh where is it from and it just spits it out like that it was insane yeah but is it accurate what if it's picking up the the wrong one from the wrong gear you know I I proof I checked a couple of them but and it was okay so I I don't know I trust it honestly it in a weird way I don't know like I I I I've uh there's the SEO subreddit the the main one is called Big

43:34SEO and uh a lot I see posts all the time of people using it trying to write articles with it and they're like man it's like it's not doing a good job of that like there's it's missing a lot of things I actually just heard that this week or last week Google invested like 400 million dollars in their competitor so we'll see where it goes but I know the main critique of it is that you can't tell the references and sometimes like it just spits out like like extremely wrong information so I don't think it's there yet it'll get there eventually but I don't think it's there right now I think the concept is the future but I heard more so though that I

44:11heard that a lot of uh YouTubers especially and a lot of other content creators they actually utilize it to help um uh rephrase certain titles and different kind of like uh key sections of like the topics that they're talking about in their videos which I thought was interesting like say for example if you had a title that was like 10 words and uh you can like literally write in chat GPT it's like hey can you turn this title uh and say the same message in five words or something like that sometimes it would not work but sometimes it would actually rephrase things a little bit easier especially especially sometimes when you have a very long day and your brain is fried

44:47but you need to get this done that could be a helpful tool but who knows how advanced it'll get right if it doesn't do it right if it doesn't do it right on the first or second try and you have to do it like five times how long would it have taken you to just do it manually versus like waiting 10 times to get it to get it right plus also there's also the fact that like it does leave traces of the the pattern of the way it spits that information and search engines like Google especially if they consider it their competitor they could just the downrank all content created by AI

45:22platforms right which they already did before right so it's like why risk it I feel like I'm also someone who really cares about like my my brain health especially when it comes to like I don't know like dopamine consumption and stuff like that like random things like it's just like certain things make you think man like there's so much like like I'll catch myself sometimes like being on my laptop for like 16 hours a day and I'm like holy crap man like this is insane like like it's not really how humans are like meant to live like maybe it is in society right now but as like a biological species it's definitely not how we're meant to live right so like

45:57with these these chat Bots and stuff like that spitting out answers although it's like super it could be eventually super valuable for business and like copywriting and marketing and speeding up process is like crazy it's like you're not using your brain anymore man like have you ever seen the movie Wall-E back in the day like the Pixar movie Wall-E man we're all just sitting in the chairs man like dude like I got like nightmares about that man like I don't want I don't want to become that and like I heard someone say I don't even I think it was in a fictional movie but it's like true and it was like

46:26um it's like I was like when are when are we gonna turn into uh like cyborgs and then like I don't know the the father talking to the son or something was like dude like we all literally already are like if you think about it it's just the computer is not attached to us it's just in our hand right like like we are literally cyborgs like we like we wouldn't be able to have this conversation without you know being connected with with uh you know just like Electronics around us like it's crazy man but but on the flip side though like like if we're going to talk

46:57about also like obviously it's unfortunate but there's also that benefit where it's like I don't think we would have had this opportunity to have this conversation if it wasn't for this Tech at the same time so it's always like a balancing act and that's that's what people forget to do it's not that you need to like like stop using certain Tech or anything like that that's not what I mean it's just awareness I think exactly be self-aware it's it's almost like it's almost like uh it's almost like an alcoholic being aware of how much alcohol they're consuming you know it's like all right I've I've been on I've been on the computer for six hours

47:28for work two hours for enjoyment I need to have at least four or five hours minimum a day where i'm not glued to a screen you just have to like especially for us in our industry because our whole work is revolved around a screen we all forget to just D um disconnect even for like a second it's like even take 10 minutes get up go to the kitchen or or walk away from your screen and just give your eyes a break you know and we all forget to do that and I don't know how editors do it I have to say do you guys have TikTok like do you use TikTok only for creatives grab coffee we gotta start

48:03using it for uh for our main business actually we're trying to plan out our whole content like a marketing strategy this week because uh we are focusing a lot on the podcast but not enough on our on our business so we gotta gotta get to it girl but you know what's interesting the views for this podcast on TikTok are very consistent compared to like yeah YouTube shorts or uh Instagram reels Instagram reels or YouTube shorts It's So Random like one of these they fluctuate like crazy yeah one of them will get like 94 and then the other one's like 2 000 you're like so where's the consistency yeah it's odd yeah I

48:36don't really understand the algorithms man and they're always changing and stuff like I find like the the biggest things that get views over time which I I just I don't know I don't even understand it sometimes is and it's hard as a creative business who's working for a lot of different companies doing a lot of different things but consistency on Instagram reels is like the biggest thing like I follow a couple people there's one guy I follow and he's his Instagram reels every single day are always just his desk setup and his desk setup doesn't change like he might just

49:04like put like a PlayStation controller like on the top shelf or something but he's always just making videos all that same thing every single day for a year and he gets like you know 50 60 000 views on every video and always like the same people commented on it bro this is fire love your desk setup oh I love where you put your keyboard you know what I mean like and that kind of consistency I think is where it's where it's at to get followers but like the thing that I question is like to what end you know what's your end goal there you know what I mean like are you marketing to your audience right now

49:35trying to sell desk setups are you trying to like I don't really that's what I don't really understand like these creators Out There Our audience is basically like business owner or you know um Gatekeepers or business owners so for us our target market is on LinkedIn so our plan is to create stuff for LinkedIn and then just cross-pollinated and in other social media platforms that's that's what we're gonna go for basically because again like we've never had a lead come in from Instagram or Facebook or uh or TikTok and you know what to be honest with you if we do have someone from there it's probably not a good lead

50:12anyways right because the type of work that we focus on is completely different and again that's that's how it is for us at least I don't know how it is for others well it's because most of the the clients that we work with a lot of them are very much B2B or they have been historically and B2B clients are not typically looking for their vendors and partners on Instagram or uh or on or on uh YouTube maybe LinkedIn but I I feel like a lot of people who have very specific needs they go they go right to Google for it so like no matter what business you're in especially in video you have to know who your clients are what type of people you're working with

50:48and if most of them are on Instagram and that's where a lot of them are looking for work then yeah by all means focus on that but you have to Define that for yourself yeah I work with a lot of uh like e-commerce Brands like people just selling Niche products online right and like that is very much an Instagram game right and by by posting kind of like quirkier fun like you know Carousel posts on my my Instagram like I I attract a lot of attention there because they're like oh I want like I want my Instagram page to look like that as well because that's exactly what they're marketing on is Instagram they're trying

51:21to get like more organic reach and stuff like that um but like you said like when it comes to corporate clients man like I don't know if LinkedIn would help at all but like it's always just like it's not even it's not they're not even filling out the form that's like I have like a brief Builder on my website which is just like budget and what type of project and helps helps me out a lot more um but they're just sending me a direct email or they're calling me like just straight up calling me up hey do you or like we're looking to have a corporate video for done before Christmas or something is

51:52that something you guys do and it's always like old school kind of you know what it is I'm looking at your website now and do you have it at the bottom of the page oh yeah that's like that's like a quick quick contact but if you go in the top corner and you say get started then there's more of a brief Builder there you know what it is it's because you see your email first oh that message us directly exactly it yeah you're probably right man it's interesting because most people stay on our home page because I've made it in a way where you could easily scroll to the bottom without having too

52:23much in the middle and very few go to the contact page and the only people that tend to go to the contact page are people with rfps or or marketing people that's what I've noticed marketing people will go there to try to Source out my my email right most people though they'll just go to the contact form and that's that's the way we vet our people out because I I like I know what you're doing and we we did the same thing we did it it increases uh the amount of bad leads you get interesting yeah just it's sometimes not even bad leads it's also people trying to sell things to you and

52:59that's even more annoying because they're not even people you could potentially sell to like these people were trying to solicit services that are irrelevant to us they still even do it through the contact form they would actually even like put it in saying like oh yeah this is the project it's this budget this budget they're like oh do you need an AI service for your things like you do realize what this form is this isn't for you this is for people who are looking for for uh for specific needs so yeah like if you take out your email and even uh mention it in a you

53:31know what you know it started interrupt you here but one thing I'm noticing is basically you're directing them actually to your email first that's that's what I mean below that you have saved time with our brief Builder where you're saying and the brief Builder doesn't sound like what what I would need if I was a uh a client I'd be more interested in getting uh messaging you directly right okay so are you guys against forms like or no no I'm no we're for it I think the way your wording is off because I said save time with our brief Builder they don't know what a brief Builder is

54:05that's true and uh I wouldn't have known like the only reason we would have known it is because we're kind of in the industry but if you had it like say let's start creating together fill out our contact uh form that that is a it's like a step one step two and they won't even have to even email you or call you directly or anything like that they'll immediately go to it the way it's worded is basically like oh okay if I have extra time I should do that yeah that's that's true man yeah that is actually a really good point I needed to hear that that is super helpful advice one thing that's really helped us out is for the website

54:41at least and all the other things as well but uh always try to think about things from the perspective of the client and the client doesn't know your business so I find that a lot of the times when I'm looking up other companies to bring on the show a lot of times they'll have a lot of information on their website that the client doesn't need to know and doesn't have to know and doesn't care about like a lot of people list you know we do pre-production production post-production if I'm not in the industry I don't know what the hell pre-production is and I don't care what it is I need to create my testimonial

55:17video because my manager is hounding me about it and I put it off till last minute and I really need to find some people right now yeah that information is good to explain to the client when you already are talking to them you don't want to bombard your web your website and potential leads with literally your entire thesaurus of knowledge that you have in the bank on your website that you're essentially the website is meant to spark curiosity and get them interested to reach out to you so that when they do reach out and you talk to them you can explain a lot of these things because sometimes explaining something verbally is much

55:53more understandable than if you write it out as well yeah most people aren't going to go to the I don't know like if you look at your uh look at your analytics it might be different for other people but for us at least it's like uh out of a hundred uh 70 are gonna only go to the home page and 15 are going to go to the contact page and then one will go to the portfolio page one will go to the about us page that's how it is normally like I don't know how it is for other people for us it's like that most people stick with the home page because if you don't see everything you need to see right on the home page like there's only so much

56:30you're gonna find that's extra in those other pages that are gonna sway your decisions it's like think of it like when you're if you're looking for some kind of like product or service you know the next time you're looking for like say a plumber or anything like that think to yourself about what you look for and then it's like oh this is why I clicked on this maybe I should do that for my own website makes sense man you're just basically trying to create like a high converting landing page as a home page basically yeah again like just try to think about it from the the leads perspective right if they're going

57:00through and again they they probably just go through the first page of businesses sometimes dipping into the second right maybe the first half of the second page uh and again the this they've probably left it to last minute too so they got to quickly figure out like at least three to five people and uh that's why we've we've made a big effort to simplify our home page make it super fast to load because there's some people you go to their website it takes a couple seconds to load yeah I have the attention span of a goldfish nowadays like if it takes that long I'm out even when I try to find guests it's like if

57:37it doesn't load quick buy you it means you don't care about your website right knees okay yeah Dario already forgot who he's talking to right yeah I don't know who this guy is who's this guy yeah that's interesting don't be uh don't be shocked if my website is completely different next week your website is pretty much fine it was just if I was to change it it would be the contact page and then I would improve the uh I would improve the um uh the contact form on the home page and I would use specific keywords for that and then I would also I know you don't have a like if I go to the the con the get started page or portfolio page I wouldn't I would have probably a home

58:18button up there just so I know you can obviously click the logo and go back but some people might not know that right you gotta you gotta you gotta dummy proof the whole website yeah that's true I'm big on I'm a big like aesthetic person and like I hate having the home button there because I'm like to me I'm like oh it's so obvious like you just click the logo and goes back but I know what you mean man that is uh that is true you know what I gotta do you know what I can do I gotta put this in chat ETP and see what it says yeah there we go yeah let's do it um I got one more

58:48question for you guys I was gonna ask you guys earlier back when we were trying to me and Dario were back and forth on who should be talking first um just go we were talking about budgets and stuff like how do you guys um well hey how do you do it and how do you guys feel about like giving uh quotes to your customers like not on paper like if you're in a meeting and like this happens to me all the time man like I'll be in a meeting and the person will be like all right like this sounds great like how much do you think it's gonna cost and like they just put me on the spot like how do you guys feel about a situation like that personally I'm I'm

59:20totally fine with that because during if you're talking to them you should have already gone through your whole funnel we we have an itemization of every of all of our line items right so I know exactly how much they're going to cost and I know how much I can I can quickly create it in a rough range a rough estimate for At Any project right so as you go through your sales funnel I I'll just quickly add those up and then if they're asking me I always ask for a range so by the time we're having an in-depth conversation or even an intro call I've already figured out

59:52what their budget is via our contact form and then from the contact form in our first call right in the first five minutes I always confirm that the budget option they selected is what they selected on the website so if they selected uh 10 to 12 and a half K I go like I just want to confirm this is what you selected on the website is that still true and then I always I follow that up but also like is it flexible like do you have some wiggle room can I go a little bit above and then if they say yes okay I have a frame of reference now and uh I I have it broken down so as they tell me all the details I even break it down to them like near the end I go okay so you need

1:00:33a rough number let's see okay so I have my project management fee it's going to be this the pre-production for this type of project is this okay so for protection I need this type of crew and I say it out loud I'm writing it down as I'm saying it to them okay I need well producer direct is going to be this much I need a DP we're capturing sound there is there's interviews right okay so let me put in an audio off because we got to capture sound I need a gaffer he's going to help the DP and then I need a makeup you want makeup no okay no makeup okay PA we gotta have I add all that up production at post-production we're doing this and that okay so that's gonna be this roughly this is gonna be that then I

1:01:10tell them total you're looking at about this sometimes it might even be below what their budget is because I for us like you can you can always just try to match their their budget but sometimes I find like look this is what I need to make anyway so I did I tell them I'm like I'm I'm a bad uh I'm a bad liar which it's true I am I'm very bad at poker so uh we just telling the whole I just found the whole number there like a rough estimate because I don't care I don't need to like hide it from them right because once I have all my inputs I can just craft like a quick estimate uh but that's the informal one

1:01:45I tell them straight up too this is like informally like just talking like this it's this amount and then they'll let me know okay yeah it's roughly good or Not Right But then uh if it's good then it's like okay next step is let's get more people in this call and then we'll I'll go through everything because by just giving them a number you're just giving them a number but you don't know what kind of vision I'm gonna have for this what kind of reference projects and everything so you gotta always set up the actual summary meeting right so the last part in your sales funnel

1:02:14before they signed a contract and the other good flip side is that when you're when you give them this rough range this is actually more of a filter for you rather than a filter for them so just kind of flip your mindset on that because essentially when you're giving them these numbers um even if it's rough you can kind of gauge to see kind of what they're able to potentially do in that call then versus send just a random email it's like hey this is roughly what it's going to cost because if they have an objection in that call as to like oh I don't know if we can kind of do that and then you're just like oh why do you think you can't do that uh is it is it

1:02:47like a means of like you just don't have the budget or is there like a timeline issue or something like that and there's always ways you can kind of adjust it and figure that out later as Dario mentioned in the call like you're essentially just giving them something rough to kind of get a sense if that will work for them and if it'll work for you and if it and if they say oh I it's going to be 15 000 oh I was I I thought it was only going to be like 3 000 I we can't do more than that it's like okay then if they start giving you objections right off the bat of that magnitude you just say that's it no that's actually actually no no no no no no no you won't

1:03:22get objections of that magnitude because you've already filtered them out because then if they say that you're like so why did you lie to me earlier I thought you said you had this much budget yeah you're beyond that's true yeah that's true you're at the stage when you when exactly Dario's right you're actually at the stage where you've already filtered them out and it's just going to be like very minor fluctuations I think Braeden what you got to do is you got to filter them out because I know what you're doing um you you got to add more filters because by the time you get to the numbers question you you should already know okay this

1:03:52guy is worth this guy or girl is worth my time cool yeah because of future if you don't know yet by that point then it's like I'm sorry I'm sort of talking about the situations where like it's great when someone uses my website contact form and clicks a button and I'm like okay this is going to be a ten thousand dollar gig great like I know what's going on here I know that they're willing to spend some money which is good but like I'm talking more about like the cold calls that people call you up like hey you asked them right away you asked them right ask them right away you know what I say you know what I say and it always works I always ask them what kind of budget am I

1:04:23working with okay yeah that's what you asked yeah tell them and it's like oh I don't know how much it is I don't know how much of it how much a video costs like yeah but you said something aside what did you just set aside and then if they still don't know where you're like okay give me some rough details and then I'll give you a rough angle and that's that's the point that's the point where I'm at with certain clients like I'm just like give me as much information as you possibly can and I'll give you the same same structure line items like I think doing that is the best possible structure because you can at least delete things but don't don't get stuck in the but if you ask for too

1:04:58many details you might waste maybe half an hour of your time so you gotta go like okay give me some rough rough details and I'll tell you in a couple minutes if this is worth it for either of us right because if you go too in depth into it then it's like oh if you just burn 30 minutes I don't know about you I don't have 30 minutes to kill okay for each leader yeah if you spent 30 minutes with every lead that comes that that sends you or calls you or sends you a message that's that's uh that's basically your whole day is going to be gone in an eight hour day that's a good chunk of it right there all all these you know what actually I

1:05:34take that back you got to tell them you gotta figure you gotta let them tell you right away before they even start giving you details because when they start outreaching they already know what their budget is yeah exactly if they don't know then they're amateurs and you don't want to deal with that that type of person yeah that's right yeah that's actually one of our filters where if they have no idea what the budget is and have no idea what the purpose of the content is that means that they're too too early on they don't even know what their their goals are for

1:06:02the project as it is because if they don't know what the goals are no matter what you do for them they're not going to be happy with it and we're you're essentially trying to look for the people who have a better understanding of what they want this content to achieve for them you know like you're not the marketing agency you're the video production company cool they have like a product or something like not even to sell but like if someone came to you and approached you and said like like you just said don't really know what I want don't know what the budget is and you're like okay I don't want to waste my time on this but give them like a document that they could fill out

1:06:32to get a better understanding of what they want and they give it back to you to save you time I think that would be really valuable yeah but it'll almost it'll rarely work because we have a uh we tried this I I we created a a briefing form right with a ton of questions enough to go like once I read that I know the eight is that of this guy right and uh I can't tell you how hard it is for them to fill that out because you'll have what we were testing out was an intro we were testing out doing an intro call and then saying we will I'll send you a briefing form fill that up fill that out let me know when you filled it out and then we'll have a follow-up call

1:07:08oh my God man it was like pulling in too many steps so then what we tried was we're filling it out as they're talking uh that worked too but now we're at the point where like we could just do it in our hand in our head anyway so I don't I don't really need to do that anymore I basically what I do really now is I have my my Apple pen and I'm writing on the iPad as they're talking and then I'll just uh send them a follow-up email after I get if I filter them out and they're good to go uh the I'll schedule a follow-up call with them and then I'll just uh summarize what we talked about

1:07:42and then I'll use that as my reference point uh for the next call right so it's like I'll take a look at the email I sent with all the details and everything because I'll say like this is what we talked about and then uh I'll let you know if I need anything else that's basically what we do you got to simplify your process as much as you can you know like only add steps if they provide actual value for you to get to the next stage of signing them as a client like as Dario mentioned the main reason why that briefing form system didn't work is because there were

1:08:12two or three extra steps that if that were just completely unnecessary and every step in your process is another point where you could lose a potential lead it was too much of a commitment it was too much of a commitment and it was too much it was like again I was seeing it from my point of view my point of view is like this is what I need and this is what I want them to do but from their point of view they're busy they they don't have time to go through that and I I know how it is on there and they're just busy and it got pushed the back of their the to the end of their

1:08:42item item list and everything so again you gotta try to make the entire process for your lead and client as easy as one two three right that's it that's all you have to do at the end of the day make make their life so easy when it comes to creating a video that they'll want to come back to you or they'll sign you one of the two right both maybe exactly cool that was a that was a great answer a lot of a lot of good information in there I appreciate that well we've already kind of hit past the one hour mark a little while but I think uh this is like a good point to kind of uh stop it off but uh one last thing how did you

1:09:18come up with the name for uh There Media um okay so it's right there it was right there in front of me man it has to do with sort of two two it's two different kind of paths um the first being it has to do with me kind of hustling back in the day and always kind of telling people like okay I'll be there like don't worry kind of thing like literally as dumb as it sounds like people would say like oh like uh I need a headshot or I want to do this I would take any project I possibly could back in the like a couple years ago just because I needed it and I would always send the same text message to them and

1:09:53be like I'll be there like I'll be there don't worry about it like all the time and it just kind of like it was one of those obvious words that I was like you know what nobody's taking it and I'm gonna take that right now and then I looked into it more when I actually named it There Media I was like if you look at the definition this is on my website too so the definition over there from Oxford dictionary is uh there is used in attracting someone's attention or calling attention to someone or something that's the definition of there that's what it means and I was like that's that's so cool because that

1:10:23actually makes sense in the video business right so it's kind of just one of those things that started off to be very like philosophical and turned into just an obvious thing which is great and it's easy to remember so a lot of people call me the media which I'm like all right like the media yeah yeah like that's oh damn that media so but yeah pretty funny I haven't really said that out loud in a long time so it's interesting where that came from cool well guys I really appreciate you guys have me on here it was a really good chat really informative uh I like that you guys take the time to to answer

1:10:59my questions in detail and and give me some some honest facts so I appreciate that and it was great to talk to you guys yeah yeah and to our listeners if you have uh if you have a shoot in uh St John's Newfoundland be sure to reach out to Braeden his website is uh There Media so theremedia.ca t-h-e-r-e let's be clear thank you thank you for clarifying that yeah all right all right all right well thank you thanks for joining us Braeden