Episode 36
How to Improve the Client Experience (ft. Coelement)
Adam Duguay has been running Coelement, a Winnipeg video production and creative agency, for the better part of two decades. He started it with two partners as Elemental Motion Media, rebranded it, and then bought his partners out about seven years before this conversation, paying a premium largely to keep a name he did not even like. The phone kept ringing, so it was worth it. Today Coelement positions itself as a strategic storytelling partner for purpose-driven businesses and organizations, runs a deliberately small core team, and freelances out roughly 90 percent of its production work.
In this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, Adam joins Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov for the show’s longest conversation to date: how to value a service business built on relationships, why he keeps the company small on purpose, how to sell expertise instead of price in a small market, the contingency budget strategy that kills scope-creep surprises, agreements in principle as a way out of speculative proposal writing, and why time has overtaken money as his number one currency.
Key Takeaways
- Brand equity is real, even in a service business. Adam paid a premium in his partner buyout largely to keep the Coelement name, and the phone kept ringing. He lost only about 2 percent of clients in the transition.
- Clients follow relationships, not logos. The clients stayed because they liked working with Adam. There is no such thing as a 100 percent loyal client, so the human connection is the real asset being valued.
- Stay small on purpose. Coelement runs a small full-time core and freelances out about 90 percent of the work, scaling up and down per project instead of carrying a big payroll through slow months.
- Sell expertise, not a number. Adam walks every lead through a diagram of the full process, from where they will be involved to where the team disappears and returns. Clients who have been burned before respond immediately.
- Tailor the conversation to the client. An agency with a creative director, project manager, and art director needs a completely different sales conversation than a startup or nonprofit that has never bought video before.
- Contingency budgets kill bad surprises. Pre-approve a contingency up front, keep the client updated as costs move, and never charge it if you come in under. Borrowed from architecture, it works nine times out of ten with the right client.
- An agreement in principle beats a speculative proposal. Align on budget and approach first, let the client circulate that internally, and only write the full proposal once they come back ready. Blair Enns estimates it dramatically improves the win rate.
- Know when to walk away from RFPs. Most RFP issuers already know who they are going to pick. Weigh two or three weeks of unpaid proposal writing against using that time to drum up real business.
- Differentiate by changing the conversation. Inspired by StrawberryFrog, Coelement markets itself as a strategic storytelling partner for purpose-driven organizations rather than leading with cameras and gear.
- Buy back your time. Snow removal, cleaning, a studio property rented to the business: as Adam puts it, even money now takes a back seat to time.
Timestamps
Paying a Premium to Keep the Name
Coelement began almost 18 years before this recording as Elemental Motion Media, a three-person shop and, by Adam’s telling, probably the first small production company in Winnipeg at a time when the market was dominated by one big shop. A marketing-minded partner drove the rebrand to Coelement, a play on collaboration and creativity. Years later, when his partners wanted out, Adam faced the classic service-business valuation problem: no product, no inventory, and no retainer book to sell, just perceived value and relationships. He calls the valuation a total guessing game, ultimately grounded in year-over-year projections and how much market penetration the name had earned.
“It was worth it because when I bought it the phone kept ringing. People knew us as Coelement, so I just kept it.”
Adam Duguay, CoelementThe buyout also taught him the industry’s hardest lesson: this business runs on human relationships. Clients kept calling because they liked working with Adam, not because of the brand alone. Dario and Kyrill push on the same point from the buyer’s side: there is no such thing as a fully loyal client, because leadership changes, job-hopping, and shifting budgets can move accounts overnight. It is a theme the show has dug into before with another two-time guest who also bought out a partner, Doug Darling of Tripwire Media, back in episode 32 on strategy and building teams.
Small on Purpose: The Scale-Up, Scale-Down Model
When Adam bought the company he made a conscious decision not to build a 10-person shop. Winnipeg had gone from one small production company to more than 20, part of the wider micro-agency trend of three-to-ten-person video companies, and that saturation commoditizes the work and drives down prices. His answer is a small full-time core, with roughly 90 percent of production freelanced out, scaling up and down per project. The production company versus videographer line gets blurrier every year as freelancers flood in chasing flexibility, so the structural question is how to stay nimble without hollowing out quality.
The model has a painful edge. When Agriculture in the Classroom Canada arrived with a five-episode animated e-learning series, 15 minutes per episode, Adam’s first reaction was gravy train and his second was panic about resourcing a five-to-six-month commitment that freelancers are reluctant to lock into. The e-learning video niche rewards teams who can sustain long animation pipelines, and his answer was simply: take it and make it work. Dario shares Lapse’s version of the same insurance policy, a standby editor sold to the client as a pre-paid backup for a deadline-critical quarterly video, half rate to sit on the bench, full rate if activated.
Selling Expertise in a Small Market
Winnipeg is a one-to-one market: the same handful of serious production companies chasing the same proposals, plus constant discount pressure from price shoppers. Adam’s response was to draw a hard floor, telling prospects Coelement does not really take projects under ten thousand dollars, which ends the wrong conversations immediately, the kind of small-market discipline the show first dug into in episode 25 on partnerships and smaller markets. From there the pitch is expertise. Rather than throwing numbers at a lead, he lays out the entire engagement with a process diagram, close to the walkthrough Lapse runs from its own quote form budget ranges onward, and close to the full arc mapped in Lapse’s guide to the corporate video production process.
The other half of the skill is tailoring the room. With a large agency, Adam is navigating a creative director who needs his vision executed, a project manager who lives on timelines, and an art director who wants to be on set. With a startup or nonprofit, he is teaching them what a producer even does. Agency work is about half of Coelement’s revenue, the highest paying and most labour-intensive work they do, where Lapse sits under 10 percent and works mostly direct. Both sides agree that over-systematizing the sales process breaks it: there is a skeleton, but every conversation has to flex, a producer craft the show first unpacked in episode 14 on producer qualities.
The Client Experience Is the Brand
The episode’s core thesis is that the experience, from the first sales call to final delivery, is the differentiator. Adam gets a striking amount of business from clients opening with a story about a bad past experience, usually a vendor who threw a number at them and shut them out of the process. Enthusiasm is part of the job description: a producer who is not excited in the pre-production meeting will not produce a good experience or a good video. Knowing how to choose a video production company is exactly the education most first-time buyers never got, and the burned ones remember it.
“Every touch point, every time the client has an interaction with you, it should feel good and positive and organized.”
Adam Duguay, CoelementThe payoff is word of mouth. When a client tells the where-did-you-get-your-video-done story, that story is the brand. Adam admits self-promotion is the thing Coelement has done worst, and the hosts offer the counterweight from Lapse’s playbook: treat yourself like a client, invest in your own marketing, and let search do the heavy lifting, the same SEO-driven lead engine thinking that keeps inbound flowing when you rank for the searches buyers actually run. The relationship mechanics behind all of this get a deeper treatment in episode 41 on building relationships and managing budgets.
Contingency Budgets and Honest Overruns
Adam’s most immediately stealable tactic is the contingency budget, borrowed from architecture. On a larger job, say a 45 thousand dollar target for a client he knows can afford more, he pre-approves a contingency on top, framed plainly: our goal is not to touch this, but if revisions or changes push us over, it is already approved. It gives the marketing manager something concrete to take to finance, and with the right size of client it lands nine times out of ten. The discipline is the honest half: update the client on where the budget stands throughout, and if you come in under, do not charge it.
“Do the contingency budget, work it in as a strategy, but be honest with it. Don't create a bad experience by gouging.”
Adam Duguay, CoelementDario is sold on the spot, noting it scales down too: even a modest 8K project can carry a few hundred dollars of pre-approved contingency for a last-minute makeup artist or an extra revision round. Both companies already anchor scope conversations in transparent budget ranges, and a client-side primer like how much a video costs does the same expectation-setting work before the first call. The alternative, surprising a client with a 20 or 30 percent increase mid-project, burns the two things buyers value most: their budget approval process and their timeline.
Agreements in Principle, RFPs, and Walking Away
On proposals, Adam channels Blair Enns of the 2Bobs podcast: you are not in the business of writing free proposals. The move is the agreement in principle, aligning on rough budget and approach in a document the client can circulate through their departments, and only writing the real proposal once they return ready to move. Kyrill and Dario describe their own version, a post-call summary document assembled from templates, with zero speculative creative, a system they broke down back in episode 18 on proposals and sales strategies.
RFPs are the exception that proves the rule. Government-heavy Winnipeg drags Coelement into standard-form RFPs where your process does not matter to them, and the dirty secret is that most issuers already know who they are going to choose. Adam’s caveat lands hard, though: walking away is easy advice when there are two of you and cash flow, and very different when a slow month meets a 30 thousand dollar monthly payroll, or when a proposal eats two weeks of a project manager’s paid time. Lapse’s rule is to dive in only when the ask is reasonable and the calendar allows, and their near-miss FedEx RFP, down to us and one other company, became the template that tightened the rest of their sales funnel. Rejection, in other words, can be a free audit.
Changing the Conversation to Stand Out
How do you differentiate in a market where everyone owns the same cameras? Adam’s answer came from studying StrawberryFrog, the American agency that staked itself entirely on purpose-driven brands. During the pandemic he rebranded Coelement’s positioning the same way: the website barely says video, leading instead with strategic storytelling for purpose-driven brands and organizations. When every competitor talks gear and shoot days, and Adam talks creative approach, goals, and writing, the sales conversation itself becomes the differentiator. The hosts note it is the same instinct behind Lapse pitching strategy-first video marketing conversations rather than deliverables, giving the client the gas for the car while being clear they still have to drive.
The craft underneath is what Kyrill calls being technically creative: taking the 20-minute brochure script the marketing team wrote and reshaping it, in a nurturing way, into the two-minute story the budget and the audience can actually carry. Real creativity lives inside constraints, timing a script to the second, trading 16 interviews for a voiceover, and guiding the client to those decisions without making them feel overruled. In a small market where the same buyers see every vendor, that intuition for how an audience will receive something is worth more than any spec sheet.
Time, Property, and Playing the Long Game
The closing stretch turns personal. In 2019 Adam moved Coelement out of the Exchange District and bought an infill property personally, converted the bedrooms into edit suites, and rents it to the business: the company pays the mortgage and writes off the rent, and Adam builds a retirement asset in an industry with no pensions. For a 50/50 partnership like Lapse, who incorporated the week before this recording with the same studio-house dream, he suggests the corporation may want to own it directly, looping the property into company assets and making the business itself more sellable, with insurance, and a good broker, covering the lawsuit-risk downside.
“Time constantly becomes my number one priority. Even money takes a back seat to time now.”
Adam Duguay, CoelementThe same logic drives his outsourcing of snow removal and cleaning: expensive, and the smartest money he spends, because a morning of shovelling is a morning not running the business. It extends to people, too. Coelement pays outright for training like School of Motion for its young motion designers, runs weekly all-hands where everyone speaks, and treats mentorship as the retention strategy, ground the show covered in episode 31 on vetting and managing talent. And on the loneliness of the buyout path, Adam is candid: he misses having partners to bounce ideas off, it is tough at the top, and watching Dario and Kyrill argue like an old married couple is, he insists, a compliment.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is the guest on Creatives Grab Coffee episode 36?
Adam Duguay, Owner and Principal of Coelement, a Winnipeg-based video production and creative agency that positions itself as a strategic storytelling partner for purpose-driven businesses and organizations.
How does a contingency budget work in video production?
The client pre-approves a contingency amount on top of the target budget before the project starts. The producer keeps them updated on costs throughout, only dips into the contingency if scope genuinely grows, and never charges it if the project comes in under. It prevents mid-project sticker shock and re-approval delays.
What is an agreement in principle in the sales process?
A short alignment on rough budget and general approach, documented so the client can circulate it internally, before any full proposal is written. Popularized by Blair Enns, it filters out non-serious buyers and dramatically raises the win rate on the proposals you do write.
Should video production companies respond to every RFP?
No. Most RFP issuers already have a preferred vendor, and a detailed response can consume weeks of unpaid time. Respond when the ask is reasonable and the timing works, and treat losses as free feedback on your sales process.
How do you value a video production company with no retainer clients?
Mostly on perceived value: year-over-year revenue projections, brand recognition in the market, and the strength of client relationships. Adam Duguay’s partner buyout was priced largely on the Coelement name, and the phone kept ringing after the sale.
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.
Coelement is a Winnipeg-based video production and creative agency, a strategic storytelling partner for purpose-driven businesses and organizations led by Owner and Principal Adam Duguay. Founded in 2005, the team produces corporate films, commercial campaigns, animation, and motion design for clients across Manitoba and beyond. Learn more at thecoelement.com.
Full Transcript
Read the full episode transcript
Auto-generated from the episode captions and lightly edited for readability. Paragraphs are timestamped but not speaker-attributed, and it may contain small errors. For chapter deep-links into the video, use the Timestamps section above.
0:01foreign welcome back to Creatives Grab Coffee this is episode where we at now 36 35 36 we got Adam from Coelement on with us another person from Winnipeg we're slowly going through our our Winnipegians it's actually it's actually Winnipeggers that's what we prefer but I'll take I'll take Winnipeg and whatever you put it I'm not picky I applied to Torontonians spoken like a true Torontonian so Adam I guess let's start off with something easy just tell us how you got you came up with the name Coelement I it's it's a it's a weird question it's sorry
0:42it's a weird name isn't it yeah um so when I started when I started the company with uh two other partners this is almost 18 years ago now I'm dating myself one of the other owners one of my other partners was a real marketing guy and so he wanted to uh there was a play on words So Co was all about like collaboration uh it was about creativity it was about there was all these words that he had and so there was this methodology behind it um and I think there was a magazine at the time as an advertising magazine and they had this sort of section called Co and it was like Co underscore Co underscore
1:21and so we sort of played off that and then we came up with Coelement actually the first name of our company was actually Elemental motion media and that's why that's why we rebranded because it was like man no one wants to type this in their email address right so it's like yeah it was it was it's a funny story but that's how it was and I had really nothing to do with the name at all and then as years went on um I had the opportunity to buy my business partners out because I they didn't want to continue with it and I wanted to continue with the business and that was probably like almost seven years ago now and
1:59um we just had brand recognition in the market and I didn't really want to change the name because everybody knew our name uh we had a pretty big Client List at the time and and a growing Client List and people were getting to know us so part of the reason why I paid so much was to keep the name and I think it was worth it it was a huge gamble at the time when I was gonna buy the company I'm like oh my God I'm paying all this money just to keep this name and I don't even like it but it was worth it it was worth it
2:31because when I bought it the phone kept ringing people knew us as Coelement so I just kept it so that's kind of the backstory behind it you had two other partners one of them was focusing more on the marketing what was the other person focusing on she was more web and interactive and they're two super talented people uh I still know them yeah they both just sort of wanted to go in a different direction and um my my background which you're probably gonna ask about uh I I'm not sure if you're gonna ask about it but uh it was always production so it it you know it made
3:02sense sense for me to keep it and just continue on with it so I've always been curious how like how it would be when you're starting a business with several
3:10Partners it's usually a little bit easier to buy other people out when there's a business that deals with like a lot of product a lot of a lot of um a lot of employees and it's a little bit easier to quantify that but when you're doing something that's like a service that's very it's harder to Quant uh to quantify like that like how would how did that process go for you guys in terms of like like defining the assets of Coelement was it just the name or was there some what else was there behind it yeah I mean you're exactly right and I mean this um uh do you guys know who Blair Enns is oh yeah yeah from
3:47uh 2Bobs 2Bobs podcast right they talk about this all the time and it's really interesting it's an interesting conversation because really what it is in marketing is it's sort of um or creative companies like us where our value is like our creativity right rate it's it's really about perceived value it's perceived value or sometimes it's a book right so advertising agencies uh traditionally if they're going to sell they'll have a big book of clients right and they'll sell that book of clients right um and typical you know in the way that you know the agencies work is that they have a roster of of retainer clients so it's guaranteed business over you know year after year
4:28and it's easy to sell something like that because you go well you know X client is 30 million dollars a year and then you add it all up over a year you say well my business is worth this buy me right but how do you do that with a company like back to your question how do you do that with a company like ours and yours as well right where it's like project to project you don't know what next month looks like I mean if you got if you guys have retainer clients I would love to hear about that because I want more of them but it just doesn't seem to exist it just doesn't seem to exist anymore in
4:59in what we do so it's it's month to month it makes so yeah how did we figure that out I don't know it was a guessing game it was a total guessing game like it was yeah well I figured you probably you guys probably looked at your year over year and said okay we roughly make this much every year it's probably kind of consistent once you get past a certain level anyways right yeah projection based yep yep and I mean there's some slow growth in there um and you know the the opportunity to grow how much I guess uh Market penetration did our uh did our name have in the market right so I was like basically for me it was like
5:40there was no guarantees like all those clients if he wanted to just go you know start his own business and say wanted to just he didn't want me in it and he wanted to start another production company he could have pulled all those clients with him if he had If he if he had better relationships so it was really all based on kind of relationships what was fortunate for me in my case is that he went to a totally different industry so a lot of those clients were kind of left going you know well we still still need service and we still work with you so
6:10we'll call Coelement and and it just seemed to work out like that and actually I maybe lost like two percent of the clients you know they went to other production companies but yeah but but if it was like that you could have kind of started your own company totally different company and actually that was a that's a really good point because that was a huge lesson I think I Learned was like this business or the business that we're in anyway is just so reliant
6:33on relationships like the relationships the the human Human Relationships that you had with those clients and they enjoyed working with me and that's why they kept working with me right it really wasn't about the whole company or or what the brand was it really was about if they liked me or not yeah yeah that's why I was always curious about how some service-based companies like you mentioned would be selling the book of clients of like say 30 clients that they're going to be transferring as part of a part of the value of the business because clients are not yours to give really to someone that often because there is no the one thing Dario and I have learned is that there's no such thing as a 100 loyal client that will
7:16always be there because circumstances always change for them imagine that one Ad Agency you were saying like had like a list of 30 clients if all of a sudden the change in leadership is there for the for the organization maybe that client doesn't like that leader immediately that value goes out the window it turns into today's world where people stay at their jobs for like six years to a year then they dip when they job hop like how that wouldn't work at all when you get into big agency work you know a company is typically invested in millions of dollars with that company and they're really really like attached
7:49in like a lot of different departments so actually moving something on that level of that scale probably would cost more in BS or you know inefficiencies right than to actually transfer it's a big deal to change agencies for a big you know for like a multi-million dollar company but but yeah you're right like what's I think with the small I think the big agency um seems to be like there's still a lot in the US still a lot in in Toronto but you know you're starting to see it's so fragmented now I mean if you're
8:22starting to see these microagencies pop up with three people I mean video companies are really popular for having you know you know three to ten employees that's like sort of seems to be that magic number right um yeah it's it's interesting how it's all changed but but we we've stayed quite small actually like that that actually there's a conscious decision that I made when I bought the company that I wanted to keep it I wanted to keep it small and change the model I didn't want to I didn't want to be a 10 person company I mean there's there's competition in the city um you know and God bless them I love them all they're all awesome guys and I
9:00know them but they just want to build a different company they is you know some of these guys um you know they want to have a big team they want to build teams around that and they want to have people come full time I've built mine completely different than that my model is very different we're kind of trying to lay the the foundation for that as well because the the same as you when you're dealing with the companies such as ours I feel like a small Nimble skeletal like team of people is probably better than than when you when you expand and you you have a
9:33much bigger team because again you're dealing with in an industry where the I mean we still we also haven't cracked the retainer model and almost nobody's spoken to have figured it out so it leaves a lot of uncertainty right like I mean we're in the Pro process of like this year we hope to hire our first employee and like we're kind of scared shitless about that because it's like it's a big responsibility like what happens like if you can't pay them like that's that's the terrifying idea if it's Kyrill and I it's like We'll always figure something out worst case we go freelance somewhere to make a little extra money but like if you have some
10:03one else you're responsible for them too right and like especially with the types of projects we always end up with it it just feels like a smaller team just works a lot better compared to like having a ton of people because again the bigger you get the more bureaucracy gets involved the more inefficiency start to happen and and again in Industry like ours where it's like project the project a lot of uncertainty uncertainty you got to be very yeah you gotta be nimble and be able to adapt right just what you're saying I feel like I identified that when I bought the company and I was like I kind of saw that's where it was going I mean when when we started like over 17 18 years ago
10:42we were probably the first like small production company of three people in the whole city I mean it was only it was only the big production companies where they had everybody went to that one production company and there was like 20 people that worked there and it was like now I mean from that time until now we we must have like 20 here now or or more I mean every time I'm on uh on on social I mean a new one pops up and and they're all doing really really great work which is great but it makes it you're right it makes it really tough to scale because in a way it's almost it's like turns our our work or our type of work into like a commodity
11:23like there's so much Choice which drives down prices which like you know it's uh it's it's really interesting I don't know if you guys have noticed that in
11:32your Market there's a there's a ton of companies in in our Market oh yeah then Winnipeg but Dario it's funny because he was saying like oh it started from like one and now that is 20. and that's for him that's a lot hey man yeah yeah 20 years like 20 within a block like we're we're a very small Market I can imagine Toronto so you can imagine the competition that that brings in like you know your proposals I I find you have to be so competitive now and so many add-ons and so many discounts and like oh my gosh it's uh it's crazy the discounts right oh even at your level
12:11still you're getting uh requests you know this other company is doing it for this and they're giving us this oh they're Price shopping they try to play The Bargain oh yeah yeah price buyers so yeah I mean there we can get into that that's a really interesting conversation versus value pricing or Price buying have you guys ever got into that conversation before this is a Blair Enns thing uh We've touched upon it on the podcast but yeah we deal with that but I I whenever I get into those conversations I always go like yeah so what am I working with I always ask them what am I working with
12:40what's your budget what am I working with and then from there I kind of assembled the menu it's like well you know it's like at a restaurant well you know with that money you could get the this dish yeah yeah yeah a little extra so it's not like you're it's not like you're offering the same service at a discount you're offering the service that is afforded by the client you know basically a customized solution you know
13:02you're not gonna push on them um 8K video content when they can only afford the resources for the 4K Crews or the I mean totally this analogy is not 100 accurate but I'm just trying to be I'm just trying to be relatable with it you know I always like to pitch them more so yeah there's a pricing element as well uh there's a price in koel and everything but uh I like I like to pitch them more so on like uh they're really
13:28buying our expertise there's obviously the value part of it as well but it's like and I I really push for the expertise part of it and I I go into like listen like this is what I like down to like the questions I asked them and they recognize that right away because a lot of the other people that they say they talk to just give them numbers and that's it but I like to drive them through my sales funnel and make sure they they know what they're getting into and I mean I guess luckily we're in a market like Toronto where there's a lot more maybe there's a lot more leads coming in and even though
14:00there's a lot more competition in terms of video vendors here as well I feel like realistically like our company is not actually dealing with let's say there's like 50 here we're probably dealing with I would say maybe five when we pitch for our projects compared to maybe what you it might be different but because it they gotta narrow it down and usually they only go through like the first two maybe three pages of Google anyway so from there you can kind of nail down and say I know they're probably not going to go for that guys and they're not gonna go for these other guys because they're way
14:34past their budget we follow it in this range so I know I'm dealing with these other guys it's very interesting to talk to hear this because your Market is obviously a lot bigger than ours because we're we're probably more like and I tell clients this like we're not
14:48for everybody like we're probably a more expensive option like I gave them a base I say we don't really do anything for less than ten thousand dollars I made like that's that's that's it you know so right now for having the sales conversation you know if if they're thinking well you know the last guy did it for 2400 bucks it's like immediately that conversation ends so I I made a commitment a while back to say we're not going to take on any projects less than ten thousand dollars and then um there's only a few uh probably a handful of these production companies been telling you about that really probably do projects at that level right so whenever we put in a proposal here
15:29locally it's always you're always competing against the same people right it's the same people right so yeah yeah it's it's very interesting in a small Market how how that's been kind of challenging and but um yeah like the you know the value the value uh uh conversation is interesting like when when getting on those sales calls I'm glad this is going in a sales conversation because it's probably most of what I do and most of what I can really talk about like my background actually when I in TV I was a motion designer actually like uh I worked for I worked for uh AOL Time Warner actually uh down in the states uh for about two years I worked for CanWest Global I don't know if you
16:10remember specialty channels the global specialty channels do you remember Fox Sports well Canada mystery Deja Vu do you ever remember those like how how old are you guys [Laughter] [Laughter] so yeah I mean that's where I cut my teeth in the industry I started as a motion designer and then uh I was brought on by CanWest global to help
16:50with uh branding for six digital TV stations so we got actually got to do all the station IDs and branding and motion design branding for all those stations so I was able to sort of oversee that as a designer I worked with a lot of Outsourcing uh outsourced production companies and I work for Global for some time and then I and then I did a stint down in AOL for about two years which is a really cool experience actually to go down there it was actually right when uh AOL like uh do you remember you got mail it's probably before your time you got mail yeah
17:23um it's uh I worked down there for a while and it's right when everything was transitioning to digital which is an interesting time uh and then I got really lonely down there uh because I was a lonely Canadian that's what they called me they called me the lonely Canadian so I was the only Canadian that worked there there was there was like guys from like the uh like Brazil and like China all these amazing motion designers that were brought in from all over the world it was an amazing experience um you couldn't make friends he's the only one yeah that's exactly yeah they're all like what is this like they were like they had no idea even oh and Canada is just cold there
18:03and you live in igloos and stuff and I'm like man really okay [Laughter] maybe it Winnipeg but not in Toronto I I moved back and I I got engaged to my wife uh that I married to now and um we went out to Edmonton I worked for Teletoon and Family Channel out there they're now in Toronto actually they moved to Toronto and I did motion design there and then I did freelance and then I ended up starting the company um from there but where was I going before that whole stint telling you about where I was uh where I came from wait well first you wanted to kind of give a little bit of background you were talking about how yeah yeah because that's what I do yes the sales and
18:44business side of things uh yeah yeah exactly yeah because that's that's what's uh that's what Creatives Grab Coffee is mostly for is like the business side of things because there are so many resources there are so many resources online about technicals and gear is constantly brilliant so Dario and I didn't want to get into the habit of talking about oh what what light do you want to use what camera do you want to use but nobody ever talks about the business of video production no one ever talks about it so that's what the that's what the goal of the podcast is so let's talk about the let's focus on the value side of of selling because that's kind of what you you looked a little excited about that so let's go into that
19:23um yeah I mean I I think bringing up this company growing this company um I've really had to become a really really good producer and really really understand how to work with a client and how to hold hold their hand through the process really really well and do it in a charismatic way do it in a creative way and and just really a nurturing way right that's something that I've worked really really hard on is is getting that down properly because I think this can be a little bit intimidating to people right and and there are companies that these businesses need a video done and they'll go to a company and they'll
20:04just throw numbers at them or or whatever but what we really try to do or what I try to do on the sales side is really say listen this whole process I'm going to lay it out to you right now this is how the whole process is going to go and I'm going to walk you through the whole thing and I and I actually have a a diagram that we've actually designed that I bring up that I kind of articulate how the flow is going to be right and you know where they'll be involved and where will sort of disappear for a while and then where we'll come back and I when I I find that I I articulate that all the way through
20:36it's such an awesome response from clients we have the we have the same same thing on our end not a diagram we have a couple slides to to kind of go through everything but I think the way you described it is that's almost identical to what we do and again you just want to make sure that they understand that you're you're going to be there and just like you said guide them through the whole process but also show them that look you're not gonna because a lot of times I've actually found that a lot of people that come to us might have had bad experiences actually because a lot
21:08of the questions they ask me it's stuff that I I was like a slide or two away from answering right in terms of like am I going to be there to kind of uh for for that particular stage just to go over that with them how do they get to input their ideas like what's the revision process like I feel like a lot of other companies might have actually created a negative experiences for a lot of clients right and that might be due to just not knowing how to be a good producer or just not being good at it entirely right like uh because like you said being a producer is a is a lot you gotta like that interaction that you have with the client because I find that
21:48like when I produce I really get excited I love I love talking to them about the whole the whole video stage is I love talking about that stuff I had a meeting before this one where we we were having our first pre-production meeting I was having a blast I was late to this
22:03because that went over a little bit right but if you don't have that as a producer you're just not gonna you're not gonna provide a good experience and you're most likely not going to provide a good video because that's integral to that rule yeah if you don't if you're not excited about the work you're creating with your client how do you expect your client to have any enthusiasm as well and to your point Dario unfortunately like a lot of clients they have bad experiences because they firstly they didn't know what the video production process was like beforehand so their first experience with a company was essentially someone who didn't do it right didn't explain it properly to them and because of that the client felt like
22:41it was they were completely shut out of it I sometimes think to myself if I wanted to go and say get a website done and I had no knowledge of it and you go to a company's like hey I need a website what is the process and then someone just says yeah it's going to cost you ten thousand dollars I don't I I just I don't know what the pro what is the process how does it work you just throw a number at me you know and that's what a lot of leads must feel like when they come to a video production company you know they want to understand and in you as a producer and a business owner it's
23:13your responsibility to explain it probably you know I think we could actually tie this back earlier in terms of uh there's a lot of companies that have popped up and I think
23:22the reason for all these experiences is because a lot of these companies are actually not companies they're just Freelancers right so I mean we see them often there's a ton of people here where it's like they're they mostly are a wedding company and they're trying to get into corporate but they can't and you could kind of see based on the work that they get nothing against them it's just corporate is a different animal entirely but the type of work that they get is very yep it's okay it's nothing special it's not a big client or whatnot but I sometimes hear this with with those people where they kind of complain and not just not just them but even
23:57let's say for example someone that it's a that is in another creative industry if they're a freelancer a lot of times they complain about the client and they complain about a lot of things that they really shouldn't be complaining about because you kind of gotta be that person for them that kind of guides them in the right direction and I think a lot of the time they just don't know oh yeah I mean I think right A lot of times like with I get I'll say less sophisticated clients that meaning less sophisticated with their understanding of production a lot of times they they don't really want to know about this whole process I actually find I have to I have to
24:37change my conversation so if I'm working with a digital like an agency of like say a 30 to 80 agency
24:45my conversation with them is is a completely different conversation than saying not for profit or you know like a startup or something and I think really really good sales in what we do is about knowing how to approach those different clients because they're all different and you really can't it's not it's not a one-size-fits-all when it comes to that so you know for an example like an agency you know when I work with the large agency here in the city uh we're sort of their go-to production company I mean I'm always talking the creative director there's a project manager there uh you know there there might be an art director there right so I have to be
25:30able to navigate and understand what each of these people needs from this project right project manager is going to be all about deadlines it's going to be all about timelines how long is it going to take you what do you need from us things like that you know the art directors wants to be on set they want to understand that we can sort of execute that the creative director wants to know as a producer that I can execute his vision right so with say smaller companies like startups that have never done a video before or like a not-for-profit what you're really doing in that sense is you're teaching
26:03them what like how to work with a producer what a producer actually does so when I talk to them I'm like okay so I'm going to be your producer on this project this is what my role is going to be this is how I'm going to take care of you like I'm gonna come up with these creative ideas on how to get your message across so that that's these are the conversations you're going to have so I think knowing knowing and I think that just comes with years years of experience because I've I've been able to work with you know um some of the larger agencies I've worked with agencies out of the city that have 200 or sorry
26:36um in in the states that have like 200 people before so I've been able to navigate some of those and have those experiences right and that just comes with experience but knowing knowing how to tailor your conversation in the sales conversation is super important because I what I what I do find is that some of these production companies they want to systematize right when they start because they think that they have to have systems in place so we have to we have to formulate this whole thing right and then they just start throwing that thing out at every single client and it's not you sometimes have to be a little bit Nimble there but that's just
27:10me that's just how I do business so it has to have a there has to be a skeletal structure to your process where you know obviously in the video production world it's pre-production production in post but those are Broad and like you said you have to tailor it to every every client every lead that comes through because their situation is always going to be different there's you can go into the one-size-fits all category if you want but that's usually in volume based selling when you're just trying to get hundreds of clients coming in for the that one specific service but if you're but that's only for like that type of
27:43video for example like if it's a product video you need a 30 second ad you can productize that whereas in our situation with value based pitching we're like sometimes a client needs a social media video sometimes a client needs a web ad sometimes they need an internal video you can't have a one-size-fits-all solution for a different deliverable and for different clients so it like 100 you nailed it 100 on the head you have to be able to be nimble how to talk in those different circles and and how to how to guide them and and um you know some groups are going to be overwhelmed by certain things some people are going to be turned off by that right agencies are going to be a lot more
28:25sophisticated way more layers to what's happening there they want all the details right they want to know your crisp and all that stuff but the agency work is the highest paying work that we do so it demands probably the most amount of Labor right but what's what's
28:40the percentage breakdown between uh direct the client and and and agency work for you almost right down right down the middle yeah really yeah okay that's pretty high like normally a lot of people we've spoken to I think it was under 10 for us I think we're down to maybe two percent for that very little under 10 under 10 for agencies under 10 of their work is agency work I think it varies though like it I think some because I know some companies uh here in Toronto that are also trying to set themselves up as only agency partners so there are some that are trying to kind of go with that's like a model that they're that they're building around yeah yeah yeah I've noticed that which
29:21it can work potentially but I feel like that will also be like a slow burn it being able to talk to clients directly gives you potential for more longevity that way you're also not relying on agencies as well because yeah if you're if you're relying a lot on agency work if for example that agency doesn't have any clients coming for you where is your next work going to be coming in and if there's only two agencies in your city you're kind of limited at that point that's why he's stuck with a smaller skeletal team right because exactly exactly there we go yeah you know we we
29:53rely on a very small core team here full-time but then like 90 of the work we freelance out now yeah and so it's just it's it seems to be getting easier and easier there seems to be more Freelancers flooding into the market people want more flexibility with their work they want more you know diversity in the in the in the type of it pays more for them too right I mean it always it pays to be a freelancer compared to a salary an employee you just you got to have that the challenge to be able to do that the challenge comes I find and and because of the
30:25stamina a lot of motion design work you know we just we just got a big project for an organization called agriculture
30:32in the classroom uh Canada and they're a national uh organization they go into schools and they teach kids about um agriculture really cool organization um you know but they they just came to us and they're like we need an e-learning animated series done and it's five episodes and each One's Gonna Be 15 minutes long right and I look at that and I go oh wow that's gravy train like that's going to be an awesome project and then I actually start looking at how I'm going to manage resources on that and go oh my God what's I don't I I don't have the team to handle this right you know but but I mean you gotta scramble and you got to make it work you
31:10got to build you got that that's the model that we've built we've said listen we're just going to scale up and scale down that's what we're gonna have to do so we this is this is the pain of being Nimble right it's it's having to scale that up and build a team around that but when you're talking about a project that could potentially go five six months Freelancers are like what no that's that's not how I work it's like you give me the project I do the project right you'd think that a lot of Freelancers like would you know be licking their chops at a project like that but they're like well I I do work for 20 different clients I can't just commit
31:44all my time to you so so there's there's challenges that happen with that right right so what do you do in that case like how do you handle a situation can you even take a project online let's take it and you just make it work baby you should make it work just make it work baby that's what I just figure it out my senior producer that works with me I'm like hey we are producers well he's a motion designer he's got that background so where's that oh and that's something my friend that's a slippery slope we don't want to do that but you're right you're right I mean uh you know just a few months ago actually we went through a busy time and I'm like I'm sitting
32:16here you know editing this thing and I'm like why am I editing this thing I I should not be doing this this is not the model right but yeah you know we have we have a couple projects coming up and they're the timeline is a little intense it's these uh uh quarterly videos but the the due date is like a couple days later and we actually we tried to cover our asses with this one and we'd pitched to the client we're like look just in case one of the editors ends up with covid that's a good backup guy just in case right and they they bought it we're like okay thank God and then we're like you
32:49know we'll also get them to help out somehow with the with the thing like because we're paying for them to be on you know in the on the bleachers for a second so the bench warmer yeah I think that was like that was probably the first time that I'd ever realized that someone has tried to I mean they probably do this in other like other companies have probably done this to have editors on standby usually you have Shooters on standby but no one's ever said can I get a yeah hey if you know a guy that wants to be a standby editor you let me know because that would be lovely to have no I mean we're gonna we're gonna pay them because I was like they're not gonna do it for free they
33:23might get oh oh so you're gonna actually pay them and keep them on like keep them paying just to make sure he's there oh yeah yeah yeah yeah as as a yeah yeah it
33:32might not it might be I mean we haven't done like I mean we've we've we've sold it to the client the idea um and then I just gotta ask and see how much it would cost because it's like it'll be a couple of days like it's like look worse case you you get involved and then I'll pay you the full rate for that project but the best case you don't and you make half of what you would make on that so it's like do you want to take it on it's like guaranteed work like hey that's actually really that's a good way of thinking about that I've learned something here today yeah because we were we were thinking about yeah I was talking to Kyrill I'm like Kyrill you know
34:04what we got a really lucky last year when we did it because it was a four hour uh quarterly video or AGM it was four hours right and uh yeah we delivered it in like under a week and I was like oh my and they needed a major revision yeah that took even longer but but I was like Kyrill imagine if God forbid our editor caught covid what the hell would we have done we would have had to do it right to find someone that last minute and you know we're a little rusty with the editors like an all-day thing that you that you recorded and you had to package it all
34:38up so we it was like a four hour four hour thing and then they wanted the full thing and like our editor is good for it we have a couple editors that can do it as well but we used our primary but but this year we even told the client we're like look people get this people people get sick so randomly nowadays why take a chance it's gonna make everyone look bad because we're gonna miss that deadline and they're like yeah you're right especially with those types of projects where if there needs to be like a next day edit or a same day or or something where they need within a few days that's
35:12very time sensitive when you have projects that for example you have like two weeks for a rough draft delivery then a week for a fine cut and then another week for the actual full one there is some flexibility if someone gets sick for a few days like there's like the time has been built in there so that you know we can still do things properly for the client right but as I pointed out nowadays yeah things happen you never know what happens it's not just covet people get sick for anything it's it's so common for people to call in sick now for all sorts of reasons yeah yeah have you guys
35:44uh interviewed anybody about like um differentiating at all as a production company do you mean like adding like niching down how
35:52to differentiate yourself in in your Market because like okay so how many production companies are you know maybe two three four person companies are in Toronto like a hundred probably thousands not thousands yeah lots though there's lots there's lots so how do you eight thousand dollars so lots like how do you uh it's frustrating because like how do you stand out what we did was uh I mean I knew our quality was good and we just focused more on marketing ourselves like focused on SEO and that helped us climb the ranks it brought more inbound leads and then this year we have a bunch of content marketing that we have uh that we have
36:32planned but in terms of standing out you do that based on the quality of your work and also how we publicize yourself online I guess like it's it depends like I mean if you want to do like if you want to do say like okay we focus more on like car commercials or whatever then obviously that's that's different you're niching down on your thing and you can specialize in that but if you're kind of like us where it's more General stuff you just do it based on your popularity I guess I mean you get to a certain point where you get comfortable with the amount of work that's coming in anyway so it doesn't really matter after a certain point like I know a lot of the
37:05top a lot of the top companies that we brought on board for the Toronto scene at least they're they're all pretty comfortable they're bringing in enough work where it's like they're fine they're doing fantastic and they don't even really need to think they don't even really need to think about brand branding or differentiation at that point because you're happy not really no no and and again like you're always going to get certain amount of clients that you or leads that you get along with anyways and a certain amount that you're not going to get along and those ones will probably go to the next company and they'll get along with them so that's such an interesting
37:36thing to hear because that that clearly is that's a result of of your Market because you have so much competition there it's just a totally different world where and it's in a smaller City where there's only so many eyeballs it's pretty easy to get known here right so our our challenge is a little different yeah were you guys uh pretty much nailed it on the head uh earlier you answered your own question where how do you differentiate yourself from all the other companies around you it's you yourself as the expert because your experiences are unique to you and how you approach a problem a business problem for a client or a challenge and how to solve it the next company might have very similar service offerings but
38:19the way you do it is not going to be the same or even if it is even if it is like it's just a lot of a lot of our work is person to person so they might just click better with you than with the other person or they might not click with you at all but they might that's whatever person even though you might be
38:34better right totally and it's a lot of human human dynamics at the end of the day right the human element is so key it's the human Coelement right it's the second time that human element is always going to be at the end of the day the ultimate differentiating Factor you can have everything else done right but if the client or the lead does not connect with you or does not like you you could have you could be Spielberg but if someone if you if you don't like Spielberg they're not going to work with Spielberg obviously word of mouth is is huge for us it's been huge for us and just the experience I think really concentrating
39:12on the experience that your clients have from sales to product delivery to final video delivery is a great experience it was positive if something they remembered as long as you focus really really hard on that and don't take it for granted we have I have never ever taken that for granted and and it's been one of the successes that we've had and we get we get calls all the time from other other like from from new clients to say listen we had this really bad experience this is what it was like we don't want that to happen again and that's that's a really that's interesting and we go okay absolutely here and then I you know I lay out how how it's all going to go it's interesting how much
39:53business we actually get that way but I I think that you know that's to highlight that is like experience everything that you do every every touch point every time the client has an interaction with you it should feel good and positive and and organized you know what I mean and and you know in a way like like you're saying that's you're branding yourself through that because other people are going to tell that story you know oh you guys were doing a video we did where'd you guys get your video done oh this company did it they were awesome this is what they were like you want other clients to you want your clients to tell those stories right and those stories spread like that and
40:34the one thing that we haven't done very good a very good job at is promoting ourselves and like like I don't do a whole lot of this but that's what I was gonna say is uh if you wanna you said how do I how do I make myself how do I differentiate myself in a smaller more content right there's there's the internal stuff where it's like you know what you're in with your inbound clients and everything you can provide the experience and then that that brings on more referral business but like you gotta view yourself like if you your client in a way right if they come to you and say I need a differentiate myself it's like okay well are you doing any video content how are you marketing
41:05your stuff you you got to treat yourself like a client in a way and kind of see what works out well for you right like that's that's that's kind of what we focused on a bit we haven't done too much of it unfortunately but this year we're hoping to change that a bit uh but yeah like it's uh there's a lot of stuff like I mean I think number one thing for us has obviously been SEO that's helped us a ton oh that's crazy wow I don't know much about that it's basically just helping yourself rank higher on Google because if you think about it you got to think about the client the the leads Journey
41:37how did how do they usually find companies and it's usually by Google right Google or Bing or whatever the hell they use um and then searching certain key search words and then from there it depends on how how well you rank like if you're on the first page for most of the key Search terms and chances are like you don't need to do too much marketing on other areas right like you don't need to Market yourself too much on LinkedIn obviously it's very helpful right but if you're getting enough incoming leads from Google where you're busy enough then sure you can kind of just focus on that a bit more and not worry about it because the money's coming in right in our Market it was just different like it's it's always
42:15it's so much like one-to-one like competition right like either you know it's it's your competition or you and it comes down to well who are we gonna go with right and I've thought a lot about how to solve that problem in in a small market like this and one of the things that I did um uh during the pandemic actually this was a a branding exercise that we did there's a there's a agency out of the States they're called StrawberryFrog have you ever heard of them what do they do an advertising agency marketing agency just like any other but the way they've differentiated themselves you might have seen this with
42:56some other other companies is they focus on purpose-driven brands purpose Purpose Driven so what what I mean by Purpose Driven purpose you know uh you know any corporate company can be a purpose-driven organization right whether that's an offer profit or uh just having a higher purpose that they they brand themselves and they see themselves as a company that has a higher purpose all their employees buy into that higher purpose right um and StrawberryFrog made a conscious decision they were probably one of the ones that first did this in the whole industry is that we said that we we are only going to do this type of work we're
43:35only going to be doing purpose-driven work right and as the purpose-driven uh sort of culture phenomenon came and made its way through business and industry in the states they were the ones that were connecting with those clients on that level so so I was like you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna try that I'm gonna try that here in Winnipeg so when you go to our website I don't I don't really say video anywhere really I think maybe it's like a couple small prints in there I actually say that we do video but what I S what I do say on there is I think it's uh I have to remember it now
44:12uh strategic storytelling um what is it again it's storytelling for ground Breakers and then movement makers you have it alternating we're a strategic storytelling partner for purpose-driven Brands and organizations I think that's what it is yeah so I don't I I really Market us as yes we do video but we also do Motion Graphics we also can do print like like you know assets that might go along with that or or web or things like that right so we're kind of like bridging agency digital agency a little bit but more just on the content creation side right creative development but uh but yeah when I have a conversation with a client and they're like oh we heard you do video I'm like yes but actually this
44:57is what we are and when you're having sort of when you're changing the conversation you're starting to you're starting to look different right one the video production company that you're dealing with yeah yeah we do video and production they talk about all production production everything technical right I don't talk about anything technical with the client I don't know first first off actually throughout the whole process they I barely talk about technical it's really about creative approach it's about understanding what their goals are you know it's a it's it's saying like yes I'm a I'm a I'm a video producer but I'm also a Storyteller I'm also a writer I'm an accomplished you know I consider
45:37myself a pretty accomplished writer and all those things come together into what into the value conversation of what what we're going to provide back so when you're talking about all that stuff and your competition is talking about yeah we just we schedule shoots and we we shoot we shoot we edit we make Motion Graphics that's also a really really good way to differentiate differentiate yourself in the sales process but also on a on a on a wider level just like on your website and how and how people talk to you so that's one thing that I've worked really hard at in differentiating us just changing the conversation and I think it's worked I
46:15think it's worked really well for us that's a great way to have a similar thing we focus more so on I mean I think it's identical we just phrased it differently when we do it when like we talk about how we like to get involved more so on like the strategy side we want to know exactly what they have planned for the for their whole marketing campaign and how this piece fits into that part of their vision and then we've gotten we've started doing that since 2021 and the reception to that type of approach has been has been really good so yeah we pitch strategic video as well just but we're also very limited in how far we get along with that so we also let them know it's like listen it's like
46:54we're giving you the gas for the car yeah but like ultimately it's you have to have to drive up right I think the best analogy is bringing a horse to water but they have to drink yeah and I I don't know maybe it's just the experience that I've had just like like writing and you know doing a lot doing a lot of reading too is just having an intuition of how how an audience will perceive something or how someone will
47:19react to something is such a sometimes what in what we do is such an emotional response right and I think coming at it from that angle where you're maybe you know there's a lot of government organizations we work with and you know they want to do a video right and it's the classic you know our marketing person wrote a script we want to create this you know and I take the script and I go wow this is um this is a brochure you wrote a brochure oh good awesome so we want to make it for sure into a video they're like yeah yeah we want to do that I'm like yeah you shouldn't do that like we like we don't do that like we'll we can
47:58take this concept and shape it into a creative approach that is that is has true storytelling in it that resonates with an audience that people can latch on to and you know and and it's emotional right and and when you start explaining those types of things then they start going oh yeah okay it's like that that makes sense because you know who wants to make who wants to sit there and watch like you know a 30-minute you know brochure video where it's just like it's just you know and so you guys do that a lot too like do you deal with that a lot we deal with
48:30similar things I was actually talking to Kyrill about this the other week about how if we pitch ourselves as being creators but at the end of the day what we do is so technical because if you think about it when your break when you're producing a video there's very little creativity actually put into it there's more technical stuff you do into it down to like Okay so let's say you got to create the script for it when you're creating the script it's like okay I gotta hit these messages yeah I gotta fit them I gotta gotta I gotta fit these key messages in there now I also have to figure out roughly what the script is going to be
49:04even though we do a lot of interview based format but then you gotta know okay I gotta I gotta have them answer it in this type of format then how long should that answer be see break everything down because it's like the video by the time they see like the storyboard and the script you have everything timed down to the second and it's actually really interesting when you when you break that down to the client when when they go like okay we need all these key messages and this is the script and you're like you know what great but I one big problem that script is 20 minutes and this video is two
49:34minutes how do I know I timed it out yeah let's do it together let's sit down and read it out loud and you know what we got to have like breaks in between we can't just it's not like a drug ad where like you know at the end you got the disclaimer that you try to feed everything in into two seconds right you gotta have a little breathing room too see the real creativity like one of the big parts of the creative process is figuring out your uh how should we say dimensions and limitations and being creative on how to maximize it so like for example if if you're given a deliverable that you need to do
50:05something in a minute uh the create the creative you could have the most insane idea but you have to be able to quantify
50:12it and break it down into that specific dimension of one minute how will it work how will it look how will it work and that's when you're like that's creative technical uh being technically creative that's that's probably the best way to put what you were saying Dario is that it's not that you're not being created and being technical it's like how you are adjusting your creativity for that particular project you know being able to navigate that with a client and you know because I don't know if you guys notice but a lot of the clients will they'll nowadays there's so much video and there's so much work out there and a lot of times they'll look at something or they'll look at a competition something that the comp their competition did and bring it
50:53to you and you go we need to do a video like this right oh awesome okay so what's it all going to be about what's your key messages like what are you trying to do what's your goals everything like that and right they come to you with you know the brochure that the marketing person wrote that they pulled from the website probably and from some other brochures and things like that and they give you this briefing document and you're like yeah we can't do that so you have to but but I think it's like this goes back to that sort of care being really getting good at being charismatic and understanding how to shift
51:29the conversation in a really soft way in a nurturing way that gets them to do what you need them to do basically right it's like you guys have a twenty thousand dollar budget for this that's all you've got we can't do a 20 minute video so let's look at our constraints right this is your you know you you want a two-minute commercial right so maybe you know doing 16 interviews you know with your employees is probably not the best idea let's just deal with a voiceover or something right and I think like getting really really good at that I think is like can be such a
52:07a huge benefit to your business like in sustainability absolutely absolutely and that's all about yeah even even with the budget even with the budget because I find that a lot of the times when they come to us and they say because we have we have uh the the budget options on our on our contact job right so I I kind of know you guys do that where you're like it's a completely transparent pricing you guys is that how you guys work uh no no no so okay okay what the budget ranges are so like if they're getting in touch with us like one of the the promises like what is your budget and
52:41R starts from 5 to 75 and goes up in 250 200 2 500 increments and then passenger point five thousand dollar increments but and then I also I always make sure to like confirm what their budget is because sometimes they just randomly select it and then you find out it's a lot lower and you're like well we I gotta cut this call then you know yeah but uh yeah but uh it I always find that if you are presenting yourself as that type of uh if you're if you're a good producer and you explain the situation correctly to them you'll be able to get more budget out of them and I'm not saying that in a way where like you know squeeze them for every penny they got
53:19type of thing no it's like more so in terms of like what they want and uh what the value the value they're getting because like the way we do it I have I even let them know up front it's like these are my cause like I can I could probably milk you for more but why do that right like we've already established this he's the nice guy Dario's the nice guy are you the I do the good cop about that that's smart that's smart um yeah but but then but then I let them know it's like if you guys want to do a little bit extra like we can also add
53:50this in and that in and then we can go to that level and do that I'm actually wondering do you offer like because I've been I've been uh thinking about maybe offering pricing packages like like a you know standard option but then we could go the extra mile with this and then we can really go out with that one right have you tried that out I I I haven't but it's it when when we're working with some of the budgets that we're working with it can just be a really slippery slope right like it's it's like you know you promised you promised something for that and then you end up getting into the project and it's
54:21like oh my God this is like way more I actually find but you know what on the other on the other side I mean I you know it's weird Ebbs and flows right like some some clients are are you know are responsive to higher budgets some some aren't some are response uh respond okay to say having a contingency have you ever done the contingency idea the contingency budget okay this is a little strategy right now if you want So Okay Okay cool so if I know it's a big uh fairly a larger client uh and I know they have money and and these are these are projects like
54:59um you know forty thousand dollars plus let's say right in that window um I'll put in what's called I'll say okay
55:07you really want to be at this number I know you really want to be at 45k on this but I know in my head that this is going to be a lot it could be a lot more work and we could go over on this if something goes wrong you know anything right maybe they change their mind or you end up getting into too many revisions past your revision rounds and things like that so what I do is I build in um what's called I'm going to say okay I'm going to promise you this but because we're so unsure about this we're going to build in What's called the contingency budget and that contingency budget is something
55:40that you commit to up front and that's a fifteen thousand dollar contingency budget our goal though please please know that this our goal is to not go into this I don't think we're going to have to go into this right but if we do we need that pre-approved how's that sound oh that is good and it in it what it does is it adds gives something for the marketing manager or whoever's you know dealing with that to go back to the finance people and go listen to have at least it's a driver of a conversation that they can actually have nine times out of ten that I've that I've offered that if I if I get it right with the size of the client they're like yeah absolutely let's do that that's fair right
56:23because it's it's like anything like it's it's like Architects right it that's actually where where I got it from I think it was an architect podcast and they were saying like yeah like like we're building a bridge here but we don't know like fluctuations in concrete and metal and stuff like that we you know how do we guess this stuff right so they put in contingency budgets and you know you just have to be as a business you have to be fair with it and I think as you're going through the process you're you're informing your client of the process things are going great things are going great and in the background you're probably coming under budget right if you're coming under
57:00budget be honest and don't charge them but if you're if you're creeping up close to that budget and you're like holy man we've spent too much time on this as long as you've informed the client in the project management process all the way how things are going where things have bloated where things haven't and you need to go into it at that point
57:17and there's there's no surprises because the budget's approved they've been constantly updated throughout the whole the whole project what you don't want to do is like go through the whole thing and say oh we're charging you the 15 grand that's not cool they're not going to like that right it just seems like they well at that point they feel like they're gouged so do the contingency budget work it in as a strategy but be be honest with it because again going back to that experience I really like always going back to that experience that you have with your clients don't create a bad experience by gouging right so that that's that's the sort of happy medium but anyway in things you know it's a good strategy because in
57:59what we do you know what it's like right like things can kind of go awry pretty quick I I'm I'm telling you right now I'm I'm thinking that when I'm using it because you can you can you don't even need to do it for uh projects of that size you could do it for any project even even if it's like something like we have a lot of projects that are in the 8K range even if we just tell them hey let's set like a 500 to absolutely contingency budget just in case something happened you know what we decide last minute let's bring on a makeup artist or something absolutely things happening things happen great now now it's like
58:32it's fine it's like you said they're committed to it if they but if we don't go through it great we'll go through it you know absolutely it's great you're managing expectations and that's what's that's the brilliant thing that you've done is that you figured out a way to more strategically manage people's expectations because there's nothing worse that you commit to a budget that you've pre-approved with a client and then something unforeseen comes through you can't really like at least on your end you can't really um tell them it's like hey this is gonna if you want to do this now it's gonna actually have to cost another two three thousand clients hate that they like say
59:04ten thousand dollar project that's a 20 30 increase no one no one wants to have that conversation and with that can or like if it does have to do if you do have to do it and the client agrees and is willing to do it to your point they now have to go through the process of getting it pre-approved again which delays the project which is another big thing and the one thing that your leads and your clients are always going to Value above anything is time not just the money but the time if you if they have something set in their marketing calendars on when they're going to get certain deliverables they want everyone to stick to that because if you keep
59:44delaying absolutely then there like you said it's going to be a bad experience yeah so you know again I think a lot of this conversation that we've had today really comes back to that to the that experience right what are the mechanisms as you're going through the process with the client that's going to make the experience fluid and and make it feel like it was a positive and honest exchange of services right and doing setting all that stuff up front is like is is so key the other the other thing is are we running out of time or can I add no this was that was really good if you got more like that up your sleeve feel free to like toss them into the car I gotta be uh honest like you
1:00:25guys check out uh Blair Enns's stuff the 2Bobs the 2Bobs yeah yeah no no that's amazing and so he's got something called which is really interesting in the do you guys ever deal with the whole proposal thing we want a proposal a little bit we want a proposal very little well Blair Enns is awesome because he's he's he's he's shaped this whole thing yeah oh this is that this was with Chris
1:00:49um yeah I forget what his name is but anyway so yeah he he basically says well we're not really you know the conversation goes well we're not really in the business of writing proposals but maybe we could you know uh have an agreement in principle and then maybe we can move on to the proposal stage right so how do you get out of the you know the The Proposal writing you know oh my God I get six proposals to write and this is all I can do and none of this is guaranteed work right I mean it takes time right it takes time so what we do is like because
1:01:22I know exactly the the the situation you're talking about where a client asks you for a proposal creative yeah uh and you develop a budget everything yeah so what Dario and I do differently is that we basically just simply uh go over what their needs are and what we will do for them and see it and have them sign off on that we don't do any creative until a project is actually moving forward and this is like one of the ways that we filter leads out so for example a client will come to us and uh Dario or myself will hop on a call with them go through our checklist of questions of try to figure out what they want to do and then we have a follow-up call with
1:02:03them and we just go over everything they've talked to us about what their budget is say this is the video we're gonna create for you based on these examples um or something like that it's just it's very it's very basic oh man we should do a role-playing thing you guys ever do the role-playing thing no we haven't we haven't that that could be another piece of content for Creatives Grab Coffee I'll be the the client uh from a thousand person company right okay that's all great and all but uh yeah I have to field this I need a proposal from you guys because I have to field this out to three different departments and they all have to meet and uh they have to meet on that proposal uh to make sure that the price
1:02:42is right and the services are right and then we'll get back to you guys so can you guys put together put together a proposal for us so here's the beautiful thing this uh second call that we're doing it we're putting it in a document form so that's something that they can take and hand out to other departments in there and it's basically a step-by-step of what of what's gonna happen and they and a lot of the a lot of this document is already pre-made like we do this for a lot of our our leads as they come through and we just change a lot of like the project details are you asking sorry Adam are you asking
1:03:15if we give a lot of our creative ideas within this document like this is this is like the types of songs we're gonna use for this oh it's like it's it's like so it's like you can quickly get pulled into writing big bloated proposals oh no we don't we don't do any of that we don't do any of that at all I guess where you guys have done a really good job at is that you'll if they demand a certain thing and it doesn't meet what your criteria is for that sales process then you'll walk away right see this is this is the catch is that a lot of
1:03:46companies aren't in a position to go okay we don't work that way like we're okay you're not the right client for us we're going to walk away some people need that business right so it's really hard not to get like pulled pulled in because the the client is demanding like this is a situation where the client would be demanding something really specific okay we need an intro we need to know kind of like what your general approach is going to be to this we need to know uh how many people are going to be on this project we need you to outline um all of the all the Freelancers right I know what you're talking about yeah yeah so they have they have what's called a standard form proposal an RFP
1:04:26that they send you and you have to respond to that RFP right you're you're your system doesn't matter to them your system doesn't matter to them right so for that so for that we have we we haven't we've only gotten from what I remember we've had we've uh just gotten one like that we don't get a like the rfps we get they don't get the ones we've gotten at least I mean again we don't get that many rfps to begin we're starting to get a little more this year actually but as you grow oh yeah the more you grow and the bigger and the bigger clients that you get the more you're gonna get dragged into that into that proposal writing stage right
1:05:03and so I don't know I don't know what the solution for that is because so Blair Enns the way Blair Enns like handles that is he basically just comes out and says you first of all you have to have have have the nards to have to walk away you have to you have to walk away and and the way you guys have formulated your process that's really awesome that you said listen we do this all the time this is how we work and if the client says well no I don't care how you work if you want the job you have to do this well then you have to be prepared to walk away but that
1:05:37that particular episode I listened to it and he basically said most of the time you're going to lose that battle and also there was a fun there was an interesting episode they did on the rfps where they basically said the you know the dirty little secret is that most of the people sending out those rfps already know who they're going to choose oh yeah and we we get dragged into that all the time because we we do a lot of government work here right and so and and the government work is the worst for the rfps because it's like they you absolutely have to do it there's no if
1:06:09you want the business yeah yeah you want to know your firstborn child's name they want to know who you're gonna marry in five years like yeah so so Blair Enns I think what he says is one of the techniques is he goes in and he says is like why don't we have why don't we just talk about this first and hat just have what's he what he calls an agreement in principle so we're going to have an agreement in principle of this is what the budget is going to be this is generally what we're going to do we're not going to right okay so you take that back to all your departments
1:06:40circulate all that information and then you get back to me and I think that's brilliant because now you've just you've given them a solution but you've shedded all that potential work that you would have to do for no guaranteed work now when they come back to you they've done all that circulation and all that bureaucracy that that all that information has to go through and they've come back to me and said okay I think we're ready to go now you put together a proposal the chances of you getting that proposal and winning that project now is just shot up like by 80 percent so it's kind of it's it's interesting so
1:07:12one of the things I wanted to to just quickly touch upon Adam is like how you were saying some of those leads when they're asking for a proposal and you tell them your process and if they say oh I don't really care about your process that shows uh yeah that shows disrespect right there in terms of the
1:07:27fact where if you don't respect how I work why should I respect how you work and that goes back to your point where you have to be willing to walk away at that point because if you immediately on the onset say okay I'm gonna abandon everything I've done for the last 10 years of my life just to make you happy just in terms of the process then that that relationship is not going to start off on a good point off on a good foot and sometimes when you're creating proposals with very little information for clients you're almost doing a disservice to them as well because you don't have all the information you don't know what is what is the potential you don't know what their strategy is so how
1:08:07can you propose an entire idea when it's not a hundred percent applicable to their situation are you getting that type of resistance I I get it for rfps it's just the nature of the beast but are you getting that with direct uh with your direct clients as well or just with rfps no no that that's that's specifically in our an RFP issue yeah specific yeah and and honestly it's it has more to do with larger organizations that have a lot of bureaucracy and and government contracts but but here but here's here's kind of an interesting take on that though it's like yeah yeah you know it's all easy and all to just kind of say well you have to be willing to walk away
1:08:45right well when you've got 10 employees and maybe you had a couple slow months right and you got to make payroll and your payroll is like you know 30 to whatever thousand dollars a month and you're like we need to get a contract in here that's a very different like mindset if you think about it now when you're sitting there and you have a few if you're the only people working in the company and it's just like hey we got cash flow I know I can pay myself for a year out from now yeah awesome I can say no to that but when you're starting to grow a company and you're starting to get bigger those those
1:09:25decisions you have to start making and and some of the sacrifices that you have to make to get that business becomes a very different conversation and trust me I've been there but I'm assuming at that point at that point I'm assuming you you have employees that would work on that anyway so it wouldn't really make too much of that too much of a dent on on you and well not to me not to me personally but now but now everything costs money remember I can have a I can have I can have a project I can have a project manager work on a proposal for for two weeks that takes her off of all this other stuff that she should be doing yeah you're right you're
1:09:59right so yeah I didn't think about that but that's the that's that's the flip side right there it's that you have to know when to also put your effort in if you know rfps that 95 of the time you're not going to get the job because a they usually have someone already picked out you might be thinking to yourself oh I'm having a little bit of a slow month how am I going to make payroll how detrimental will it be to your business if you spend two to three weeks in a proposal send it in for that's not gonna go anywhere you might as well use that two to three weeks in time to drum up
1:10:27actual business that will be coming in so like with rfps it's one of those things where the only time time Dario and I really dive into them is if we have the time to do them and if they're not asking for too much because unfortunately a lot of rfps they're just not worth it we had one that was asking yeah yeah we had one that was asking for a ton of stuff and I was like Kyrill I'm not in the mood absolutely yeah and I agree I'm like I was trying to look through this RFP like like and I'm like why does this company need to know the backstory of our government oh my god
1:11:01that's way too much information it's an audio operator how they got into the industry like I'm like like I don't know who's gonna be picked three weeks for three months you could just write back you're not getting that you know Adam you said like you know if it's a slow month and you have like you know a big company and you haven't been getting a lot of work I think that's a good time to question why you're at that stage yeah rather than because it seems
1:11:25like if you're really if you're really banking on you know we're gonna we're gonna do that RFP and it's Gonna Save the company that really does sound like a last-ditch effort and if you're relying on that you screw it up probably six months oh yeah and I mean I'm not talking extremes like hey though oh my God I gotta take this because my whole business is going to go under right I think it's more about just building you know just sustainability into a pretty large organization that you've that you've built right and then you have a lot of people to pay right and just when when you're in sales and you get to that
1:11:58level it's it almost turns into more about like we just need we need projects in the bucket fill the bucket fill the bucket right um but I think I think it's a great point I mean it's a slippery slope and it's just something that you know I have really struggled with it's something that I have struggled with because you know when you get you know as a organization of our size if you get a a project that's seventy thousand dollars that's a big deal right and so you really have to kind of weigh out like what it's worth and everything like that it's it's and it's an ongoing struggle and conversation with marketing agencies and
1:12:36um and and organizations like us as as we grow right it's I think it's it's I've done a ton of reading and you know this is where I've just dove into Blair Enns because he specifically consults with agencies like larger agencies on how to deal with all of this stuff but there's so much to learn from all that stuff that can trickle down into what into what we do it's so on the business side it's uh it's really good the one benefit of the RFP I would say is probably that it can help you fine-tune your sales process as a whole right because I remember when we worked on we
1:13:11worked on an RFP for for FedEx and we didn't get it but I even followed up with them afterwards to say we wouldn't follow up I was like I I was like I'm just curious but we're on the right track at least at the RFP and they're like oh yeah it was down to you and another company I'm like okay Kyrill we'll apply that temp so close we'll apply that template to like the rest of our sales process right because I was like okay I guess we were on the right track we just missed out maybe it was budget or whatever but our actual sales Pro like sales funnel or sales process it helped fine-tune that a bit so we just applied that template to our other sales documents
1:13:48and what's going on I think one of the the coolest things um that I've learned as as I've you know grown the company and and moves naturally
1:14:03from a technical person into a basically that's all I'm doing is like producing in sales right but I think that Have You Have you listened to much of Chris Do's stuff yeah a ton yeah the future his his role-playing stuff is just that stuff is just Next Level it's just so awesome to do role-playing he's so calm he's always just he never gets emotional when he talks to anyone and that's what that's how you have to be with the business as well it's like you know it's like okay just be reasonable be logical it's just that like I find I've I learned a lot through that role-playing stuff because you're like oh my god I've been in that exact
1:14:43conversation you know and I had no idea you know and I said this and I ended up doing way too much work right and yeah so that that I really like his his stuff especially when it comes to sales and creative like like selling creative Services it's it's it's really really good have you thought
1:15:00about joining his uh his I have I have I have and it's just it's just I mean you guys probably agree it's time right I I find that the older I get and the longer I keep doing this you know I have a family now you know I'm married you know I have a mortgage all that stuff time constantly becomes my number one priority in currency yeah and even any even money doesn't even money takes a back seat to time now right like I you know I ended up buying this we moved our studio from The Exchange District in 2019 I ended up buying uh an infill property and I moved my whole studio I
1:15:38wanted that sort of like house vibe to a studio and um I bought it personally and everything like that and uh um I totally forgot where was I going with that time time sorry time and money so so I I moved the studio and uh and I I you know you know it snow this year in Winnipeg have you heard that yeah I think I've heard a thing or two about that I had no idea um we also get really cold and I have two houses so they're like you know 15 minutes apart which is awesome but when we'd get a huge dump I was like you know snow blowing my my front yard and then like coming here and having to
1:16:18like clear this house and I was like but by the time I get to work like actually get to work it's like one and I'm like sweating and all this stuff and I'm like I can't I can't handle this like I'm running a business here so so you bought you bought it yeah you bought a instead of you moved from you know we were we were talking about that that's our idea just just to cap that off is um so what I did is I just hired a company and they just manage every the whole they manage the Landscaping they manage in the summer they they come here and they do all the snow removal and everything like that and I'm like that's
1:16:52super expensive but that was the smartest decision I ever know we're gonna do that because because time all of a sudden you know uh you know also cleaning right we ended up me and my wife were like no we're just gonna hire a cleaning person they're going to do both both houses and we'll never have to clean our house again and yeah it's super expensive but I you wouldn't believe the time that I that I saved on that well it's the time that you like like you as you mentioned like if you're spending all that time just shoveling snow not doing your work yeah that's all that's the only thing you're doing that day but there's also other maintenance for these houses so that might take time
1:17:25as well and that day of work that you could have spent bringing in new it makes so much more sense right so sorry I cut you off what were you going to ask about the house no no we we had the exact same idea you should do it it's great to see that you you did that do you have your your point your employees go work it's just more expensive oh gosh
1:17:42yeah so your employees like they work out at the same like you got um how big is it uh I'm gonna say like 1700 square feet but it's it's a it's like a it looks like a duplex it's like a it's a two-story it's a two-story so upstairs we have I converted all the the bedrooms to like edit Suites um I have floating desks in there and it's all I had it all really really really well done that's exactly our idea that was that was their plan for like the next five or five or so so the way I manage that is like so I was talking to
1:18:16my accountant about it and how how am I gonna manage this because I was like okay the business will buy it and things like that so it's a little bit different with a partnership but because I own the the company me and my wife just purchased this this this house as a second house and then we rent it to the business so the business pays the mortgage the business gets the write-off right of of the rent and I get a property that's getting paid for through the business that I can flip when I retire because as video creators as you know I don't know about you guys but I don't have a pension we don't have a
1:18:56retirement package we don't have pensions you're Incorporated obviously yeah we're Incorporated yeah we incorporated uh at the beginning yeah we we just Incorporated last week but our plan was to buy it through the incorporation does through the corporation is that was that not a better idea for you well it could be you had you know and again I'm not an accountant but your accountant will definitely like talk to you about that like so with a partnership it's a little bit different right you know if you're if you're if you're a 50 50 split partnership it's very different where yeah you'll probably want to buy it through the corporation then the Corp the the um the the the property then is is looped into the assets of the company
1:19:36and all of a sudden your company is worth more right so the benefit of that is that if you want to go flip that right say you want to go sell your company it's like hey we have all this gear but we also have this property it actually makes it a lot more appealing oh I see right okay the only thing the only downside I can think of is you have the the live like you know if business gets sued to Oblivion the house goes along with it Ah that's what you got insurance for all right all right I I've never been so overly insured in my entire life what are you insured for through the business uh so we have
1:20:06because we just have the equipment insurance and the two million dollar liability that's that's it yeah because the house is Dario how health insurance so we have an employee health insurance so then we have yeah then we have uh yeah like the house insurance um I have all my equipment here which is all like and it's in the house so yeah so you have to ensure that I mean I've got like I've got life insurance on my personal side I mean I've got just so much goddamn insurance I I hate insurance companies I don't need any more insurance but I get it I get it why why you want it it's super important but I think it's really important as a business to weigh out your options and
1:20:46work with a broker like if if you're getting to that level like work with a broker yeah we were going to rent a place but then it didn't make sense because we actually spoke to one of our one of our friend actually previous guests the Yang from SD were like you know we're thinking of eventually renting out of places like why it's like you'll be spending like 70 to 90k on a place like you might as well just buy it I was like oh that's not that's buy it or you know a lot of a lot of companies like in 2019 we like we had everybody in our studio uh kind of a it was a it was a large space down in the Exchange
1:21:17District we had everybody coming there and then 2019 everyone went home anyways right so I was like all right this is just gonna wait I'm just gonna do it this way everyone's just going to work remotely I'm going to have this and so I do have some edit Suites if people want to come here like we meet here for Creative meetings like I have a really nice setup here a nice boardroom table where you can have meetings get together and you know we can cook meals and things like that it and it's more of like an add-on like for um for morale and things like that right just to get together every once in a while but I find with what we do that
1:21:50nowadays I mean I'm doing 95 of my my sales like this you know I mean you yeah but you guys are probably doing the same thing no we're doing it yeah no we're doing it really wanna do business that way I find they don't even want to meet they don't want to meet in person it's just too much of a pain in the ass yeah everyone's busy yeah everyone's busy hey what employees though how um because it is mostly remote how are you keeping employee morale up or keeping that sense of like like loyalty but also like mentorship and everything else because if they are mostly remote like what are you doing well so we like you know we have a small
1:22:31internal internal team of people and then and then so the way we nurture those uh those people is we hire younger Talent like uh the senior producer uh Brian that works for me he's he's more my age um but we have a graphic designer uh and we have a motion designer and you know what we try to do is we provide as much training as they want to expand their skill set completely covered so if we hire a new motion designer on their contract is if you want to go through School of Motion you guys know School of Motion you ever heard of that no no school School of Motion in in the states it's a really
1:23:12really cool online course for motion designers and just teaches them incredible stuff like it's in it's like I don't know I think it's like a three or like a one month course and we've done that with some of our other employees will say well completely we'll pay for that if you want to go through that um you know we'll give you a certain amount of time uh like at work to commit to that to that training but some of it you'll have to do on your own we kind of make a deal that way but we completely cover the costs of all of it so I think younger people that are getting into the industry for sure are just wanting to
1:23:45expand their skill set like they want they want to be mentored and things like that so we just try to create mechanisms that with that mentorship where they're always learning where they're Nev where they never stop learning the minute where they stop learning and they start you know they start doing sort of redundant things or it's the same amount of content I mean we're creative people we're we don't we didn't get into this industry to do the same thing over and over and over again
1:24:08right so yeah so that's that's kind of how we do that and and we do try to get together we try to have um weekly team meetings um at least one a week where we all get on talk about all the projects across the board uh what we're doing you know what's what potential projects are coming up um you know if we're if we're talking about a one specific project we make sure that everybody has a chance to give their opinion and and speak and I find that a lot of that type of work is really good for morale yeah good good for team building yeah you have to invest in your talent you have like part of investing in your business is investing in the people that you work with and yeah it's
1:24:49nothing worse than like like having someone where you're giving them the exact same thing to do over and over and over again without uh giving them the opportunity to grow and expand over time and um yeah like as as you start to that's the thing like like Dario and I are already thinking about that even if we don't even have any employees yet uh and try to think about like how we could even help our Freelancers uh in ways to to give them different work as well and keep them happy because then they'll want to keep working with us as well it really changes the dynamic as soon as
1:25:19you hire somebody it's it's interesting because when we started we're three people and uh I was kind of the technical guy like I did the I did the Motion Graphics and the editing um but man as soon as you add someone to the mix it's like everything everybody's priorities sort of shift and you're like oh and you say everybody has to sort of find their own way and I think I think that was one of the you know uh reasons you know earlier on in our business with between the three partners that maybe became made it a little bit more difficult is that we didn't really have a plan for like when we started to grow
1:25:53what everybody's role was right and as you move forward you know it's like you're stepping on each other's toes and like Partnerships are are I have a lot of experience in Partnerships you guys ever want some counseling my yeah yeah it seemed actually awesome together and I love I love seeing that I love seeing that camaraderie and just like that dynamic between you guys is just it's just amazing because Partnerships are in business are our work they are
1:26:23like real relationships it's like being in a marriage I mean I was seeing my partners like more than I was seeing my wife at the time right yeah we're married all right so yeah yeah it's it's interesting Dynamic but like I love to see uh success stories of that I'd love to see what you guys are doing and it's awesome to see that the way the way you said that it's like when you see like your friends that are like a couple you guys are so great together the way he said that I'm like I mean it's not really that far-fetched is it I mean it's I mean you spend I mean when you when you when you see and communicate more with your part your business partner then when you do with your girlfriend or spouse or whatever I
1:27:04mean yeah everyone always says that we argue like a like an old married couple anytime they see that that's that's a good that's a good sign because old married couples have been around a long time they've been together a long time that's why they're called Old not yet married couples yeah no it's interesting to hear that perspective you know because uh it's like you don't always get a chest to like Wonder it's like oh I was like how has this been going but that's like an interesting compliment to also say like oh you guys seem to have a good dinosaur absolutely that's cool that that's how it comes across there's there's
1:27:36certainly things that I uh I miss dearly about having partners and and having people on the same level of the business to be able to bounce ideas back and forth on and to be able to have that collaboration because when when you become a like a sole owner of a company you're it and all that disappears and you have to make like you know a friend of mine uh you know as you as you as you know Doug Darling uh you know Tripwire Media right he's been really successful he had a partnership too you know and it kind of went through the same thing where he had to buy it out and um you know we don't
1:28:16we don't talk get together too much but uh I know that it's it's tough at the top right when when you're having to sort of make all these business decisions everything rides on your shoulders right and it's not sort of spanned across other people the pressure goes up it's it's it's it's different it's very different so that's true it reminds me of uh Sopranos when uh when Junior was talking about how it doesn't matter what decision you make is it's about how well you can steer the ship yeah yeah that's that's very very true exactly true yeah okay so we're at the hour and a half this is officially our longest that's awesome is that is that okay wait it was your longest one yet is
1:28:57that a good thing no no our longest one I think our longest one was like two hours or something no oh yeah we did we sorry
1:29:05I bet it was Doug he likes to talk I will come I will confirm after this recording and let you know if it wasn't if Doug sees this buddy I love you so much I love you Doug shout out to Doug I think we'll bring you back on maybe closer to when we actually hire someone because then we'll probably have like a lot oh yeah ask you in terms of like the hiring process because I mean right now like one question I wanted to throw at you was like how do you deal with like I mean there's probably higher turnover turnover rates now compared to the peso how do you deal with that as a business right but yeah we could leave that for
1:29:38for another time as well it's a whole nother conversation I have a big rant on that anytime you want to get together man I'd be happy to share that yeah I'm happy to have you on man well thank you so much yeah thank you guys if you want to check out Adam's company his company is Coelement and you could find it at thecoelement.com they're based out of Winnipeg in Manitoba am I correct yes the place where it snows it's been a while since I passed uh yeah it's been a while since the geography class yeah it's in Manitoba um so yeah anyways thanks so much uh Adam and uh be sure to check out his website thanks guys you guys are awesome thank you
