How to Solve Problems and Build Teams (ft. Motivo Media)

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

0:00let's start a little differently give us give us a little uh quick uh intro to you and uh Motivo welcome to uh creatives getting coffee my name is Tim I'm actually the guest guest today I am pretending to be the guest host but I'm still just a guest uh I've run Motivo Media out of Seattle Washington been doing this for about five or six years but you know time flies so I think it's somewhere in that range and I am so excited to talk to you guys today so we're now called creatives getting coffee right Kyrill so creative's getting coffee in their offices on Zoom exactly

0:39creative's getting their coffee on Zoom because Riverside wasn't working for some reason today and here we go thanks for joining us Tim absolutely super stoked to be here and um yeah excited to chat with you guys Tim is our first U.S U.S based companies the first one so a lot of responsibility then to uh represent for the us huh you're representing America right now so it's a lot of responsibility first impression yeah my first impression this is not going to help very much is that I I don't really feel very American uh at the end of the day because I actually grew up in Caracas Venezuela so I spent seven years

1:18in Caracas and then I lived in Costa Rica for one year and then within this country I've lived in New Jersey Orlando Chicago Washington DC most recently Seattle my wife Andrea is Venezuelan my brother Eric was born in Venezuela so and I spent a lot of time overseas six months in Southeast Asia working at refugee camps on the border of Thailand and Burma and um you know I really consider myself more of a citizen of the Americas if you will um or a citizen of the world in other ways saying it so you're basically a nomad at this point yeah you just currently are in Seattle right exactly and I've only been here about four or

1:58five years and that's about where I start to get the itch to go check out something new he's been there for so for that long just because of the pandemic it got it caught him there and he otherwise he would have been somewhere else by now well speaking of I'm heading to Mexico on the 24th for about a month and who knows if I'll ever come back we'll have to see is it for a shoot no actually it's for a basically a vocation the first two weeks I'm gonna try to work at a co-working spaces in Mexico City see if I can manage to run the business work a full-time schedule keep clients happy and do it from there and then we're going to go on a two-week

2:33vacation to some um you know like more beach stuff and then coming back but um but yeah my wife who's full in a Spanish grew up in Venezuela she's also super interested in trying out some other cities other parts of the world and I think our strategy right now is to have like a backup exit hatch City or at least a second place that we can travel to frequently and and have basically like two homes like a Seattle and Mexico City or Seattle and Bogota who knows so with the when you have shoots you're just gonna fly back to like if you have a shoot date in Seattle you'll just fly back quickly through the shoot

3:04and then go back to Mexico City well I mean that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out so I have not committed to leaving Seattle I should be very clear about that this is a a uh a mission to scout it out go see if it's possible go see if it's worth it or not um if I we end up doing something like that I'll certainly have to figure it out but I'm hoping it's a city that's close enough has direct flights and where it's like not that big of a deal anyways and so many of my shoots are around the country anyway I'm always traveling for for production so what's uh what's a difference in a flight from Mexico City to Orlando or Seattle to

3:36Orlando I mean Kyrill I'm I'm copying that idea I'm done with this frigid country I can't take it anymore I'm done yeah he doesn't like like Tim doesn't want to scare his team you know they probably if they're if they're listening to this like oh no is he leaving us definitely technically could but that's not a but that's not a terrible idea yeah there's someone we know that that what what did they go to uh I think they did Costa Rica um I'm not uh I'm not sure but like they're like that's like basically where they they completely live now and they're not coming back at all so I

4:08don't know how that would work necessarily like managing uh work in other countries but then again we've had we've had guests on the show who basically run animation their animation production company from across the world as well they have animators all over the world managing things you know but obviously that's a different business model compared to in-person video production so like what are some challenges do you do you foresee kind of like in doing something like that yeah I mean so what we focus on primarily is short and long-form documentaries right we also do advertising campaigns and content marketing and testimonials and remote production

4:46um but you know really it's it's the short and long form Doc and so the way it typically works is we'll be on set for one or two weeks filming a a story and then we go into post for two to three months on a project so my plan would be to sort of uh plan to be in the states for the big shoots you know like I'm heading to DC soon soon to shoot the host segment for a five-part documentary series Once I go get that shoot done then I gotta go and edit all five parts of the the series right so I want to be here for the shooting and then potentially be remote in a tropical

5:17Paradise if you will and uh you know have that benefit uh you know helping us throughout the post-production process which we all know can get uh quite tedious and especially being in Seattle where it's so gray and dark out and you're in the office all day and you leave and it's dark and you wake up and it's dark I think I might actually uh be a little bit happier uh you know going into those like three four week Marathon editing post-production sessions uh being in a foreign country I mean that makes sense because you're dealing with you're not dealing with like a quantity of work it's not like you have a shoot

5:47happening for like a commercial shoot happening every other week or every week for different clients right where you would need to be in person you're more so having these longer form type projects where you might go shoot a few things and like you said then you have to go and do post-production for like two or three months but I mean like how off how many do you typically have on the go yeah that would allow you to do that how many different Productions at once yeah like typically like uh in terms of management I think you know I mean we we run a pretty full schedule so right now I have about eight open

6:23projects and these are 10 to 30 minute short docs or explainer videos um you know they're at every stage of the cycle right now and then I am currently in planning for another set of Productions um but you know the way that I that I operate is to have a lot of different teams that I can call upon as contractors and I build teams to satisfy a project need and then I'm the the key uh you know manager and maintaining the client relationship and so depending on the project they get the time intensiveness that my role can take can vary quite a lot um sometimes I'm doing all the work myself I'll DP something I'll edit it I'll deliver it maybe I'll bring in a

7:05sound mixer or colorist or something like that but really it's an A to Z in-house production like that most of the time I have my go-to contractors so I have you know a a suite of four super awesome editors and I kind of balance the projects between them enabling me to go in uh you know do the Creative uh CR you know find a vision for the piece go do the interviews be on set direct it and then hand off the hard drive to one of my editors and then you know I'm working with they're basically you know we're working all the time so we already have a shared language

7:36they're you know part of my team even though they're technically their own contractor and we uh we can work that way so it enables us to do a lot of Productions without you know sapping all of my time basically uh let's talk about the uh Seattle Market because we're we're familiar with Toronto and and you know whoever we've had on the podcast from other Canadian cities but uh we're a little bit curious about the Seattle scene so tell us a little bit about what that's like um yeah so Seattle Market is really interesting I think it's dominated by the big players and the big players are Amazon Microsoft you know you have

8:12Boeing and you have these large companies that basically run the show when it comes to corporate video production and there's a ton of uh production companies and agencies in our city that are really just extensions let's say of like Amazon's team but they're they're separate or their extensions especially with Microsoft is a huge player here I would not have expected Boeing of all companies to be in the video corporate video production game you know I I said Boeing but now that I think about it that just came to mind because I'm used to describing the biggest companies in Seattle when it comes to video that I know of so so you

8:47know I mean those are those are three of the most well-known known entities when it comes to video I should qualify I do know for a fact Amazon and Microsoft are the two major uh production demanded you know that's where most of the demand comes from and there's a bunch of companies you'll find in Seattle they do side work they'll work with other brands but 70 80 90 of their business is geared towards a Microsoft or an Amazon and so that's really the main space here and then you have a bunch of smaller production companies like my own uh and then you have a bunch of small Studio spaces and they sort of can be uh rented

9:21out or contracted with by agencies who have the direct relationship with the large clients and then of course you just have your general video needs right you have your smaller companies you have your growing tech companies and you have all the players who are kind of growing in space and they're looking for relationships to grow with so that's that's kind of like what we're focused on right now I have had the privilege of shooting I think we did 13 mini docs for Amazon over the last couple years they were all super good high quality we really enjoyed working with them but my

9:50big focus is on finding companies that are still in the growing phase developing the relationship with them providing value and being part of their growth so that they can really see how we think about things holistically not just as video production company but actually from marketing to video production is how I think about it um and and help them with that growth so that you become that established company down the road when these companies become you know the size of an Amazon or Microsoft if you will so that's really you know what I think about a lot and

10:21then Seattle is definitely has some feature film stuff going on there's a whole community of people that do spend time in that space But is nowhere near as developed I'd say as some of the other cities nearby like like a Vancouver or a Los Angeles and you know I do know there's some bills going through and I don't know a whole lot about it but to create some tax incentives and I do know Seattle is currently building a huge soundstage and so or nearby Seattle so I think that there is some energy and some motion uh going on but I'm definitely much more focused on the doc world and on the non-profit and growing business world

10:57it's interesting to hear how how well known that it's essentially like two companies that have the dominant like say like 80 of the work that is coming through the industry in that City and it just kind of trickles down like a web uh to all these different companies where it goes through like a few different um a few different how do you say um kind of like maybe like barriers in a way so it's like maybe like this one client project would be having gone through like three production companies do you find any like challenges essentially in terms of like how uh communication goes between

11:30all these different um like points of contact yeah it's interesting I mean generally speaking I try to work with people that are good communicators because that is the most important thing in our industry I think is being both a receiver and a giver of good consistent solid feedback and that's actually one of our core values at Motivo is communication so I don't take every project and I don't work with every agency who comes knocking at your door when you do this long enough you sort of can grasp the kind of situation you're walking into and whether it's worth it or not and I think obviously you got to do your homework in pre-production make

12:08sure that you're working with good people at the gate now up until now I've had great experiences working with agencies that have hired me um you know they have the relationship with Amazon say they came to us asked us to to create 12 mini docs all across the country for to to feature Amazon Alexa and especially their accessibility features so identify people who use Alexa who really need it for to get through their life and so we we did that from A to Z but we worked with an agency partner and the agency did put us in direct touch with the end client so we were able to have kind of like a triangle of communication which enabled

12:44smooth process we would have the client on our shoots and they would be there to give us notes and they knew that we were the ones doing the work or a lot of the work at least and so I think it worked out pretty well um but but I mean you just gotta ask questions up front and and make sure that you are getting into a situation that you can work in um but what about you guys like like what about your market and how do you find uh what challenges do you experience when working with the variety of agencies production companies clients Etc Toronto Market is uh pretty Diversified

13:15I think um I wouldn't say there's I don't think it's like you mentioned in Seattle where there's a couple of big companies and they pretty much nominate the CNR giving out a ton of the works of the local businesses just the cell phone market that's it the those are the only ones yeah yeah we have a monopoly on on on wireless carriers here yeah but not video production there's no I don't think there's a monopoly here I've there's such a huge variety amount of work and demand in so many different Industries it almost seems like it could be potentially infinite at least that's how I I see it it's pretty well Diversified in terms of uh types of

13:54businesses that are around here um I would say our biggest challenge is probably budgets I would say like because once you get into like the 10 10 plus K budgets that's which is what we're dealing with a lot now obviously the pool of of uh potential clients uh drastically diminishes um versus I mean that's the question I was I wanted to ask you was in terms of budgets for you guys because our understanding of the US market is we're always saying that you know it's probably because it's like 10 times bigger than the Toronto Mark than the Canadian Market you guys are probably dealing with much bigger budgets which I'm pretty sure you guys are right so is

14:32that like is that an issue that you're finding over there or is that not even a problem right just because of the size of the US and everything when you say budgets do you mean you know getting adequate budgets to cover the quality of work that you want to do is that yeah yeah yeah so I mean it's really varies it there is no consistency here and I I wonder if you find this as well where um you know we all know working as production companies what the expected rate is for people at different you know roles whether it's a gaffer a grip or a DP but we also know most of those people are very flexible for the right project and people have their

15:10desired rates but it's it's very flexible and it's based on the relationship that you have with them the quality that you're offering the trust how quickly you pay matters there's a lot of variables that go into what somebody's actually going to charge you also what is the job how difficult is it how much gear am I bringing how many other people are you hiring that's huge right if I'm going to hire just two people for a doc shoot they know I'm going to be given a lot of roles for this there's no way only two of us can do every you know we're gonna have to play sound and camera and grip too so

15:39all of that varies and I think the same thing is the case on client side um you know clients have a variety of Education levels about what video really costs sometimes they come in knowing what something's going to cost but many times you have to educate them and you have to spend the time to explain this is why it costs what it does before giving them an end price because it'll be sticker shock for a lot of people who think oh video is easy you throw you show up at the camera and then you edit it and then it's done right it's not that hard and you're like hold on a

16:10second let's start let's start at the beginning so uh I've found that to be the best approach is an educational approach and educate people on what their money is going to get them and then help them see the trade-offs you could spend this and this is what you'd get or you can spend this and this is how much better it would be focusing of course on business results and driving what will help them so that starts with questions and understanding what are they really trying to get out of the video some people just want to make something that looks incredible they

16:38want it to look that best it can be they're going for a branding campaign they're not looking for a specific Roi they just need a specific image tone mood or story to be associated with their brand and they'll pay whatever they need to make sure they have that in that context it's a very different conversation than when you're working with an example here is is a local private school who came to us and they want to redo all their their marketing materials and you know they're they're a smaller company and they haven't done a lot of high PR high quality video

17:09production yet so I'm going through the process right now of educating putting together comprehensive proposals breaking out the budget into line items for them to see why it costs what it does and then offering them a variety of you know of benefits at the end you know how much Motion Graphics do we want to do do we want to redo your logo and custom branding or can we use what you already have um you know how many total videos do you want and how long are they going to be all of these things are very typical conversations but can help them understand why it costs what it does so

17:41to answer your question budgets are always a struggle um they're always variable and as a as a business owner we have to be I think smart about that and recognize that there's a lot going on beyond the money sometimes it's about the money but a lot of the times like I've said it's about the relationship and I'm willing to take a smaller budget to build something really exciting with somebody who I want to work with and that also gives you an opportunity to hire people right and to further entrench yourself in the local um you know production company Market but also having those conversations with them and saying hey uh you know this is

18:18what I'll say you know I work with a handful of DPS and we have a really good relationship such that I can come to them and say hey this project is for a non-profit it's a it's a school um you know I know traditionally I pay you 1500 a day for our Amazon projects for this project would you be able to do a thousand dollars a day for the same service because you know we're also taking a cut on the fee but it's going to be really good for our community it's gonna be really great for Seattle to have more people learn about this option for their kids and they might say yeah

18:48that's actually fine and you know what I'm actually free that day anyway and if we can keep it to 10 hours I'm good to go you know and I have that happen frequently um and so you know but then you get the relationship you go get to create the work and you build that uh that trust with your community with the people around you and that just leads to the next project coming in potentially a little bit higher or they recommend you to somebody I've also had the opposite I'm sure I don't know if you've had this happen before where you know maybe it's a bigger established production company or agency they come to you you ask them

19:18what the budget is and and you have that moment of who's going to say it first and they drop a budget number that's you know very healthy maybe even 30 40 above what I would have quoted and they're like I don't know if this will this work for you and you're like absolutely that works for me but now you now now you have to over deliver now you have to go over and above and you're going to also have to make sure that you don't end up in post-production complications where you're billing them for every additional round right at that point when I get to that kind of budget if somebody's going to give me that much money I will go

19:49over and above I will bend over backwards and I'll continue outside of our process to make sure that what I'm delivering is worth what they're paying right if that makes sense so actually it's a calling to be better than I would have otherwise when that happens and I love that I think I think I've made maybe I didn't word it correctly or something because like again um we we always thought like because the US market was so much bigger like you guys were dealing with a lot I guess healthier budgets than than what we're dealing with here because uh like here we're finding that I guess for standard I don't know let's say a company profile video like standard

20:23pricing seems to be between 5 to 10K something like that I always thought maybe in the US because the market is so much bigger be easier to pitch higher budget projects to clients right they they'd be more willing to bite but it sounds like it's kind of the same situation it's similar there's there's a similar aspect to it and it all and uh Tim you basically boiled it down perfectly where it's all about educating the client and communicating why things cost the way they do what Dario and I have found that is very helpful is when we walk them through our process and tell them this is how we will create the video from A to Z we will focus this much effort and

21:03this is what we will produce in this part of the process then we're going to do this this and this and the next part of the process and when you start breaking everything down to them then they start to understand why things are costing as much you know if you just simply tell them it's like okay this is the video this is the deliverable you want it's going to cost us much that's that's why I found that a lot of people have objections typically is because then they're like but how does this work why does it have to cost that much they have more so questions about what is the process they're just but they're tied to the to the budget aspect

21:34at that moment so that's why people start to ask like oh why does it cost that much what they're really asking is like oh what does it take to actually really yeah what am I paying for like what what does it take to create a video and when you walk them through the whole process it just it just makes a lot more sense it's like okay great there's it sounds like you guys are going to do a lot for me that's the price perfect let's do it and that's when I find that there's a lot less of that kind of objection at that point and like I said Sometimes some leads they know they know what goes into video

22:04production you can get right down to brass tacks sometimes they don't and that's essentially the situation where you have to do it and it's nice to know that that's how it is everywhere you have to educate people one other a little bit from from the money side I noticed that you guys are do a lot more like in Seattle I guess there's there's two things I noticed from a lot of people I've been speaking to there's a lot more long-form content and there's a lot more not non-profit uh work in that like I was actually shocked to find out how much there was because here I don't I don't think it's that high it's not as much here we found it's a lot more like uh as a starting

22:41point there's more leads for like one-off projects but it's it's rare that someone just uh reaches out it's like hey I want to do a doc series it's like what how does that work there well you know yeah so while I do have a production company in Seattle and it's where I live you know I spent seven years working in Washington DC and that's where a lot of my clients are based actually even though I lived in Seattle and so in the DC world it's much more non-profit heavy NGO heavy government project heavy and so you get a lot of that kind of work coming out of places like uh Washington DC and then

23:18you also have as as you've we've all seen an explosion of Doc content across networks and it's become a very popular uh genre a very popular form and so I do get reached out to it by a lot of people curious about documentaries you know what does it take to do one um how do we make sure it's good you know how can you help me do this a lot of them have ideas of pitching it to a network and getting it picked up and something like that and that might be like a private investment side of thing but um but in general I would say the the content forms vary by city by uh

23:49industry by you know creative uh trends that are going on in the marketplace right now uh but it but it's not like I I just get like random emails of people saying hey can we do a doc series for this brand usually it's relational people know me I'm out and about I'm going to film festivals I'm going to events I'm meeting people I'm putting out work you know I'm winning Awards with the work that I have people find out about me that way and then when the documentary comes up in in their mind for something they're working on they come to me to learn more about what it would take and that's generally how it

24:23works for me and how I how I generate the work so you're essentially setting yourself you're putting yourself in those uh environments in a way and you're putting yourself in the environment where there are people who are looking for others who can produce that type of work and you're breaking into those networks so I guess this just boils down to essentially what Circle uh what network Circle you're kind of inserting yourself into and developing and growing those relationships whereas if you're trying to like build an online presence uh alone you're gonna get

24:55essentially that circle of people where they're looking for uh for creators that are all like only through Google that's the type of uh people that are gonna be reaching out through there whereas a lot of these other bigger type projects it's more so in certain circles that you need to insert yourself but it's also heavier down down there compared to like here especially cities I like what he said about cities because that immediately made me realize that for example in Ottawa we hear a lot more about government related projects happen in Ottawa because obviously that that's the

25:23that's the government capital of Canada right whereas in Toronto this is more like the commercial capital of Canada at that point and Vancouver is probably another one like that too and like Calgary has a lot more agricultural or what was the Industrial the the other one uh or whatever in the middle yeah yeah in the in the in the middle of Canada yeah and I mean you know I I do think you're right though which is you have to start putting yourself into the networks of the Target or the kinds of people that do hire documentary filmmakers and I think it's a smaller market for documentary filmmaking than say for a branded commercial because almost every

26:01company out there is going to need to make a commercial for their product or their services whereas documentary oftentimes the purpose is to educate somebody or to bring them into a world that they would not have otherwise experienced or is to share the importance of a mission and help somebody feel why it's so important to be doing what a nonprofit's doing usually it's easier and more helpful to show rather than tell and documentaries are the perfect way to show what's really going on right a curated view into the the mission or the purpose of an organization or a person because it's authentic and it's real and of course

26:36there's all kinds of ethical problems especially now with manufactured documentary Making you know filmmaking but you know assuming that you're you're following ethical standards I think it's the best way to bring somebody into somebody else's world and that's what I like to do is help people um really experience things that cause them to question what they previously thought what they profit previously believed and then develop a stronger perspective as a result of it and to me that's one of the most beautiful things which is why so many of my films are about finding synthesis between disagreeing parties or

27:09disagreement a lot of the films I do are to bring in experts who vigorously disagree on a specific topic have them hash it out through the making of the film and then present to the audience the best version of a variety of different you know viewpoints or stories around a particular topic and I think that's a little unique and I think a lot of clients who are familiar with our work know that and they want somebody who's going to be able to do that with or for them and so they bring us in and so it's even a little more Niche than just documentary filmmaking we tend to focus on filmmaking that has an

27:41intellectual component right we always say that our our purpose is to capture the heart and engage the mind and to do both of those well and so that's really what we like to focus on is find topics that enable us to swim in that pool and and find audiences for that kind of material uh I just remembered what my uh initial point was uh you were talking about challenges in Toronto here's one challenge we have uh if we're dealing with a company that has their headquarter in the U.S they're basically a U.S company but they have like a Canadian office the major issue we have is that a lot of

28:14the times because they're in Canada and it's not their headquarter the budget we're dealing with is a lot smaller compared to their American counterpart that's what I was trying to say earlier well no no it's just it's just because of the what's so what's been um uh set aside because that's a specific Department uh part of the bigger business so like say if a corporation is based in the U.S 70 of their business is there 10 in another country 10 in Canada so they're only going to give that Canadian portion only 10 of the actual budget to do things yeah that's what we deal with a lot yeah that's a that's a biggest problem yeah that's why like that's what I was trying

28:53to say earlier because that's what that's why we thought that you know since you guys you're already in the US like the budgets you guys must be dealing with it's like oh it's so nice you know like all this money to play with compared to here it's like well you know it's like the small Canadian division we only have this much to work with you know but but are they demanding equal amount of money work with 10 or is it like they put 10 of the funding but you're only doing 10 of the content anyway so sort of no like I mean it depends on the project but it's always it's always going to be it I know for sure it's always more limited than what

29:25the US Department is gonna get I know that for sure they're not going to do the 100K brand campaign that is the face of the company in Canada when it's like seven percent of them and they're also not yeah and they're also not going to do the cool stuff like that they're gonna do stuff for whatever like it'll be some internal stuff maybe some something for the Canadian Market but it's not as like I wonder if they think that we that that their Canadian counterparts are gonna say a or a boot too much in the content that they're doing so they don't I don't want to have that as like the main focal

29:56point oh man you'll do that to fly in some uh generic sounding people right for the a right a but the way I would think about is like couldn't they get Productions done much cheaper in Canada and so they should be shifting more of their budget that's what I was that's what I've been thinking like but I don't know I don't know I think it's because they'd have to bring their those team members here maybe I don't know like why don't you tell why don't you tell your clients next time you know shoot in Toronto don't shoot it in Seattle shoot it in Toronto it's too expensive here I mean

30:30one funny thing that we've mentioned also before in the podcast like now that we've like interviewed so many people in Canada we've developed now a network of different creators in different cities so now we're like slowly we're trying to get into the us as well like and get to know great creatives like you because in case like say you need someone in another city that you haven't had the chance to explore yet uh we can connect you to people that we've interviewed in that City who might know the market a little bit better too so that's kind of what we're trying to do essentially with the podcast show as well speaking of

31:00flying around though it like is it more common for like uh the the producers and what not to or the teams as a whole to just fly out to different U.S cities and like continue shooting for for your bigger projects first because for here I feel like it's not that common to find people to where to where the projects are yeah like I think maybe the producer might a producer might fly out or like it's it's not a usual request where like that like you'll get a contract that like fly out to maybe Calgary or whatever that's why even for us like our whole thing is going to be like if we don't have to fly out to Cal like I'd rather just Outsource it to someone in Calgary for

31:39example that'll be of the same quality I mean so like uh take those uh 12 pieces I did for Amazon we shot them all over the country and we remotely directed and produced but we sourced vetted and hired local crew and then we would zoom in like this and direct remotely we got really good at that over the pandemic and I think that's become more common because of the pandemic one of the I don't know if you had a chance to look at it but one of the products that we developed at Motivo is actually a remote production kit which is yeah suitcase that we can ship anywhere in the world

32:11and have full control over the lighting the camera movements the uh you know the the camera settings and that enables us to do Productions at scale and at cost for a variety of clients we even did a couple shoots in Sweden where we shipped the kit to Sweden and then remotely shot it from Seattle to Sweden and then got the content uploaded to the cloud and you can do you know deliver content to the client within a couple days which is actually even quicker than sometimes in person shoots so you know that's one tool that we have that helps us do more of those remote Productions and keep the relationships with the clients but to your point

32:46it is sometimes common to send people around but don't you think it's usually related to the projects like the specific project so I have a film currently in the the film festival circuit it's called project home I was an associate producer on it and it's about whether or not 3D printing can alleviate the world's housing shortage and we travel down to Mexico many times to film with families and get the stories there and in this case we would fly down as a crew and as a team and sometimes we'd have to shift one person out or one person in based on availability and we might have a different DP one to shoot but overall you want your core team there every time

33:22to maintain consistency vision and the creative thread that's going to make it you know feel cohesive so it really it varies yeah it depends on what level of creative input is needed for the project and when it comes to more so like corporate promotional content a lot lot of the time it's it's very straightforward Direction and creative that could be communicated because a lot of people have more uh more like Universal experience kind of doing that type of work whereas if it's something like a very specific creative campaign where you need to have this particular

33:57talented director and DP come in to produce it because only they it's their Vision only they can execute it then yeah I completely I can I can see how that is the case yeah I mean have you guys had a chance to travel around and shoot much or are you honestly just at the at the beginning when we started that that was a request but we we really don't get many if any requests to fly out or shoot in different cities like but we're now like pitching like hey if you do have a shoot in another city luckily we do have a network so we can we can get that done but it's not a common like I would say it's very rare it was more common for us with um it was

34:36actually more common for us with um when we were freelancing because some of the companies that we would work with they might have some clients that need uh that have like places in other parts of the country that need us to be flown out to and like yeah as Dario mentioned in the beginning we did a little bit of that and I think now though like one of our clients actually this was the reason why we originally got connected to you is because our client has a potential need for a work in Seattle and so we started Dario specifically started reaching out to companies within Seattle

35:05and some other cities that we're also going to be doing work for them and that's that's why we had to make the connection right so we could fly out but uh like flying to the US is a is a little bit tricky compared to Flying within country right it's a it's easy for us actually if we just we just have to say like oh we're doing this for a Canadian company specifically for the Canadian Market type of thing and then yeah but we're not bringing any equipment or anything like that that's why for that shoot I'm just gonna hire local crew and I'm not dealing with the

35:35carnet process you can't pay me enough to deal with that headache and we're not gonna do what every create has done when they were naive within the first year or two in their careers which was fly into other countries without knowing that it wasn't allowed to do that yeah and one of our favorite stories was when we it was like 2015 we had to go to Houston for a shoot and Dario loves this story because when we got to the airport there he's he looked over and pointed out a suitcase that was busted open and he was like ah look at that some poor guy had his suitcase busted open and then he

36:11looks at me and my eyes were just like and then he sees me just slowly start walking towards the suitcase and he's just sprawled open with the lights all the lights tripods everything is just smoking everywhere either mentioned it was an open Suitcase in a in a big uh cardboard box like it was in a bit it was just busted open and they just delivered to it like have like amazingly everything is here but it just like ripped open mid-flight and I'm just like oh my God so that was like the last time we did something of that nature and ever since then we're just like stay here for an hour yeah but I mean and I've had that happen too and it's been crazy but

36:52even flying within the states you have to be super careful I was interviewing um the former Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court at 9am and we were flying in the day before and my DP who had all the gear was flying in and he got delayed and his second leg of his flight basically got canceled and we we had to shoot the next morning and he had you know two you know two red cameras the the lenses all you know so much of the gear that we needed so we had to figure out what to do luckily he was able to get on another flight but that flight didn't leave until like basically he would arrive at 4am and we'd have to leave at 6am for the shoot so he got on that flight but

37:35then they lost his gear oh come on he couldn't catch a break right and so so here we are like I'm the director and producer of this project and having to figure out how are we going to make this work so we just started uh you know first thing in the morning calling every production company that we could we could find anywhere in Detroit which is where we were at the time otherwise you just tell the client yeah right oh yeah exactly we got phones here just slowly just like this oh my gosh but no but it was gonna be you know it was really a really cool story it was going to be uh you know 20 30 minute festival type film

38:11that we were making and it was in the courthouse that they let us use like downtown Detroit with the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court I mean wait so what'd you do what what happened instead of shooting on his camera as I shot on this camera which is the c200 because I had that with me and then for the B cam we had to use a 5D Mark III or mark IV which is a DSLR camera yeah not what we intended to use to shoot this film on but um we started the first interview with that we had half the gear that we needed but luckily my my DP is phenomenal and we were able to make it look somewhat decent and then we were able to rent a

38:48couple pieces of gear on the way into the courthouse you know like some c-stands and just like random gear because it wasn't even like any um rental house was open it was actually just another production company that we called and they said like sure you can borrow our stuff but it wasn't a normal rental house shot the content and then before the next interview we had a call from the Airlines and they had his bags and they delivered it to us uh that day like halfway through the day and we were able to use it for the rest of the shoot which was awesome and the film ended up coming out was super great one a bunch of you know film festivals and it was

39:19one of my proudest films to date but the making of that film was one of the most incredible difficult things I've ever gone through in my life but that's part of the story and that's part of the fun of it right is like it's not just what the end result is it's like how did you make it happen how did you make it work and we as creators like have to always deal with some challenges that might happen speaking of hilarious challenges we just did a shoot recently for a restaurant and one of the key things for this restaurant was essentially filming with a bunch of TV screens as the backdrop and Dario and I had it all

39:51planned out perfectly on the location scout everything worked fine and then Dario was saying okay we should be able to be wrapped by around like three o'clock today or something like that we get there I was optimistic I said I I told him I told him that's not happening and when we got this it was on Valentine's Day too by the way you should just yeah we'll clarify it was on Valentine's Day and so unfortunately uh when we got there we had a first shot in mind and then one of the main sets of TVs was not working properly so we had to re reset and completely reframe the new shot but then something started happening with the

40:26other two TVs that just did not want to work properly and that delayed the entire shoot by two hours because we had to wait for a specific AV person that they had to come in and help fix it and I still didn't fix it and no it ended up working in the end but it was like not exactly how I needed it so we had to adapt to it but yeah two hours was an issue we had to completely change it through where we had to completely change the setup and where we had to place the camera how we had to light it I don't know about you guys but I feel like that was a pivotal moment in my filmmaking Journey when I became

41:01comfortable with just about anything could go wrong and I know that I'll find a solution and at the very beginning when you're first getting into production I don't know about you guys but I was extremely nervous every single production because I didn't know what I didn't know I hadn't done it enough to know what could go wrong and then when something would go wrong which inevitably does you're in a position of recognizing the knowledge Gap that you have I don't know how to solve this issue because you don't have the experience yet and so you have to figure it out sometimes the solution works sometimes it doesn't but after doing that enough times and I've had not

41:36everything that could go wrong but many like I've done been doing production for 10 years so I've seen so many things go wrong yeah and now I'm at the point where I show up and I'm pretty calm and I'm just ready for what are we solving today like what's the issue that's going to pop up like there's always a solution I remember when I was in Mexico remember I think I mentioned that we did lose gear like you guys did uh and my uh the director was flying into Mexico they held his gear for some kind of carnet issue we couldn't get it and what no the hell they held the boom pole what you're in rural Mexico interview doing a sit-down interview with an impoverished

42:11family and we needed to you know get the best quality audio and I was like I don't know what to do like am I gonna put it on a stick get a stick just a bamboo stick broom a broom but even better check this out we threw it up over the branch and then brought it down and I have a BTS photo I can show you and we brought it down just in front of the subject and it actually worked perfect you should post that on shitty rigs yeah I should do that oh my God you know it's funny you're mentioning how like you were afraid for such a long time and I I felt like early on when we

42:44were starting out our careers like um I didn't feel too afraid that often when I was going out to shoot uh I think it's more so because we had a very ignorance as Bliss kind of mentality at the time where we didn't know how things work because Dario and I did not have a traditional education in this or knew how the industry worked like when I started shooting I just picked up a camera and just made things the way I wanted to make them I didn't know that there was like a particular way to do things that was like a standard across the industry so Dario and I just made stuff made stuff made stuff made stuff made stuff and I think we just got into

43:19that mindset and we just knew how to do things and then as as we kind of progressed then it's like oh now this is how it works but uh okay so we have to plan like this we have to plan like this but it got to the point if something happens on set Dario and I look at each other now we're like all right this is what we'll do we'll we'll we can't make this work we'll do this instead boom done no problem I've kind of been always relaxed even now because especially now because we're just hiring more crew members and everyone's really good at what they do so it's kind of like okay they got it taken care of like on the shoot that restaurant shoot it was like the

43:55gaffer's doing his own thing PA is helping him out Kyrill's lighting the scene and then before I knew it I kind of came back from talking to the actors out to the show I'm like oh that looks so nice yeah that was if I was having to do that it would have taken so much longer I would have been way more stressed out but they got it taken care of you have to trust your team trusting a team is very key Tim you mentioned you mentioned you have like a set of like four or five different teams that you've like it's like a well-oiled machine now that you're confident that you could even send them out if you're

44:23sick that day if something happens like that you can make it happen remotely no problem right it's huge it's again another game changers when you have the reliable team you can go to consistently at every stage of production for me though the most important team to have down tight is your post-production team because post is like one of those fields where it takes a lot of time working with somebody to develop a style a tone a language and editors as I'm sure you've experienced I mean they've ranged the Gambit like any profession of style tone skill experience but having like a

44:58tight backstop you know a tight post team that you know will deliver quality consistently every single time it makes the whole production process easier um not because they're going to say oh fix it and post but you know it can be if you have to and that's a huge relief everyone needs to be good at what they do and like you mentioned um unfortunately like or not unfortunately but you're dealing with these longer form projects so there has to be a lot more thought put into the post side of things versus whereas more so kind of like ad content which is like 30 second to two minute uh short promo videos those can be turned out a little bit quicker so it's not like

45:37um it's not like you have to have some kind of consistency that goes for like three four months at a time where it's like just under a month maybe two three weeks on average depending on the complexity of the shoot and yeah to your point no two editors are the same and I I feel like in in our industry though like almost every at every role there's no two people that are exactly the same everyone brings their own experience and their own uh um uh views on how things are right so it's just about finding the people that work well with you personally not just who works well with other people too a hundred percent and also who can deliver what this particular project calls for

46:14which is it might be you know might not be the same person every time and you have to be good at selecting that I think um so yeah you know it's part of the journey but that's what I love about it right everybody's so different I get every person I meet you guys anybody you get to go through that Discovery process like well what are you about like what do you like you know it's like when you you were the one that was saying you just started shooting right and you were like yeah I just do it how I how I what I like I didn't know that there was a way to do it um well that's pretty cool because that informs how you end up in the style that

46:44you are today even after you start learning but it's like what is it that you like right what appeals to you like I'm curious right what what is it that with no training you're like well this is how I like it and then you know finding people that genuinely uniquely have a passion not just for production not just for video not just for you know the the video production but specifically like I want to create things like this and I'm passionate when I get to you know lightest scene that uses this kind of look or when I get to do stop-motion animation and post or when I get to do this and that's what excites me because I love to serve that up to clients on a

47:21platter and it's like I have just the person that is going to get yeah so excited about what you want to do that is going to blow you away and then that's like when the magic starts happening it's like at each role finding people who are uniquely excited about what you get to offer them um which is always the the you know the best situation at up in and what drives me how long have you guys been doing this you mentioned you've been doing it for a while 32 years how old are you uh so Dario's 30 and I'm uh 29. I started doing this while I was um in in University still so I was dabbling at it

47:58for like a few years just like for fun um before I decided to fully take the plunge and then it was like halfway through my business degree I decided to do it then Dario shortly like about half a year later started working with me as well we started doing a few like small projects and then we decided it might be a big step but let's start a production company right off the bat and then learn with it as we went like we probably had no business doing it back then but given the lack of experience or knowledge of even uh how to do things like I think at that point when we decided to do it Dario hadn't even been on a on a shoot

48:33yet even almost at that point but we knew that that was potentially something that had longevity to it so and we've mentioned before on our podcast that we didn't really start pushing it more so as a business until really the pandemic like the pandemic forced us to really rethink it so now and that's actually how this podcast even came to be is because of uh because of the pandemic and like shifting our mindset in terms of like how to run things right that's why I consider the business to just be two years old yeah I agree it's that's like that's how it feels yeah and we only really started bringing in more and more crew and

49:10talent after we made that meant like switch mentally right in how to run things because up until the pandemic 99 of the time it was Dario and myself and maybe hiring one or two other people here and there just a kind of fill out what other needs there were but now it's gotten to the point where it's like for example Dario would be is like running like three to five different client accounts I'm running like three to three to five different client accounts and we're like kind of dividing and Conquer we come together and work when possible but if need be we split up and we handle different projects like as you need to that's awesome so you so you kind of

49:49stumble it sounds like you you kind of little by little made decisions as the world you know was moving and you were learning and eventually you found yourselves like running a two-person production company we had no clue where it was going at this point you know and I'm actually curious like how did you decide to jump into it you said you've been doing this for like 10 years right like how did you how did you how did you decide to do video production I I didn't study video production in college at all I didn't really think I would ever be doing this uh studied political science philosophy

50:20and economics and I decided right out of college to go get a job at George Mason University in Virginia right outside of DC and I was working in in like a PPE type program politics philosophy economics and I was doing marketing for their online education well to do online education you need video and we had a video team doing the videos and I was doing the marketing and I would get these videos sent to me and they were like okay do your magic go make this and go viral and I'm like oh but this is not viral content like this just is not gonna work and some of it was great but it was like the little things that weren't optimized for distribution you

50:55know the intro was way too long nobody's gonna watch 30 seconds to get to the good part we had awesome graphics and they came in three minutes in the video like well I mean you got to start with that right and and the music there was nothing leading it and we didn't have any click-through uh call to actions at the end as I was giving all this feedback to the video people over and over again and at some point one of them was just like do you want to try like this is harder than it seems I was like heck yeah I want to try thank you so I got to do my first video and then Market the video and it

51:24worked really well and then my boss said hey you kind of a knack for this why don't you do like 20 30 of your role in video so I started to spend you know one day a week working on videos four days marketing well next year I had another chance for a renegotiation and I asked for 50 of my role to be video and they said all right you're on so 50 video percent 50 marketing and every year it went more and more into video until I went full-time video creating hundreds of short videos with professors around the world about the key ideas of their research using animation Motion Graphics

51:53live action I even got to write and direct several short comedies and skits that would actually recreate their ideas so that's where I cut my teeth and I was very fortunate to work in a non-profit where we had gear we had the time we had a decently sized budget and they gave me the freedom to fail and to experiment so I could come up with an idea so you know one of these professors he's a philosophy Professor that works on the ethics of immigration and his view is that immigration is generally a positive thing and that we have a lot of myths around what that means so the idea that

52:24I came up with with him was kid you not call random Ubers call them up on the way to pick us up I would just ask them hey do you mind if we interview you while you drive us to our location and about 50 of them said no problem so we'd hop in the vehicle I'd be in the back of that camera the philosophy Professor would be in the front seat and he would just interview them most of the time they were immigrants we were able to gather the most incredible stories of immigrants from Vietnam from Bangladesh uh you know from India from all over the world in the context of them driving

52:55their Uber at night through DC and then he would lecture in between that around immigration and his views and so that was just like one idea that gave me experience making doc content for this product coming out of that um I then got bit by the startup bug and so you know I did a lot of videos about economic mix and if you study enough economics at some point you're going to think I gotta do this like entrepreneurship is is like how you succeed in this world I didn't think about this before Supply demand okay let's let's jump in I can do this so I so I jumped into a startup and it was

53:25called Klink and an alcohol delivery app and website and I was started as a community director in DC but after three to four months of 20 month over month growth I got promoted to the chief marketing officer and right when I got promoted we had just landed a deal with AB InBev so we got to launch the Bud Light button in Washington DC using our app and technology which means that you could order a Bud Light to your door in under an hour anywhere in the city and you would get special deliveries so they had Steve Aoki showing up and doing deliveries and then they had like the

53:57Redskins football team would show up and and do deliveries and then we got hired by Corona to go do uh deliveries off of dinghies in the beach in Florida and created a campaign around it and so we did a lot of this experiential marketing that also gave me experience with video photography and creative work and so through that project I actually got to direct the promo campaign I'm most proud of about Klink which is like our brand Manifesto and I shot it in two days with under 500 all of it in my house but it looks like it was shot in 10 different locations with paid actors everybody's volunteer it's just it's a really cool

54:34piece I should send it to you um so I got a lot of experience that way um but then I I wanted to stay in the startup world so I I decided to start a company that would help people buy and own real estate together the idea being that if you rent for 10 years with the same people you know friends or whatever 10 years later you're out your rent money and the landlord you know made all the money off of you but you live with the same people for 10 years like what's stopping us from actually getting equity in the houses that we live in so I wanted to start a company to do that linked up with a company called CoBuy in Seattle and they offered me an

55:08opportunity again to be their Chief marketing officer so I moved out to Seattle to work on CoBuy and part of the way to educate people on this was the course videos so we did short documentaries about the co-buyers people who would co-buy about the team that would help them but as you know startup world is brutal there's ups there's Downs there'll be a couple months where you don't get paid there'll be you know a good year after you raise a bunch of money and sort of to keep moving forward to keep paying the bills throughout the ups and downs of the various startups I had to bring in money so that's when we started Motivo and Motivo was just started as a

55:42side project you know two to three thousand dollars a month in income that could keep me going while I was working on these bigger dreams and uh you know it came to the point though where Motivo was growing every single month without me having to put more than five to ten percent of my effort into it and it just became really clear that there was some energy here and something was you know inherently worthwhile valuable and it's interesting with what I was doing so I made the shift from the startup world into Motivo full time and then my business partner at the time a couple months later also quit his job and went into Motivo full time and so

56:18then we just went all out on Motivo and that's been about I mean I'm pretty bad I remember days but I think it's about three or four years since we actually both went full time into Motivo and then that's what took us to today um and that's why you know I'm a little bit more than just this podcast exactly and this is the culmination of every moment before to get to Creatives Grab Coffee that's that's what it was those 10 years so that's my little story but I did have a question I wanted to ask you before you asked me that question which is you know so you guys have been doing this you said for two years now well it's what we consider it's what we consider it's what we consider yeah that

56:54I you know you told the story it sounds like you know you were kind of trying to you know figure it out one day month at a the time the pandemic hits how we're going to do this and but now you have a pretty good thing going right you have your three to five accounts each and you're growing and you have a podcast do you know where you want to go next do you have a a plan or a mission we have an idea of some things not really no we don't really I actually wanted to have a conversation with Kyrill this week about that like uh we I think we actually need to just sit down and like plan out like what our yeah short-term medium term and

57:27long-term goals are going to be and what kind of money we haven't really focused on it though Kyrill uh we haven't had the chance to really dive into uh going into much depth into like what are our long-term goals are we've been trying to kind of get the business uh as quickly to the point where it can be sustainable that way we can have a little bit more flexibility to start thinking about that I mean like I personally want to do more documentary type projects I just haven't had the chance to sit down and think about how we can kind of dive into it a bit more because we've dabbled here and there we want to kind of grow to like try

58:03different types of Productions you know on larger scales too but in terms of actually as Dario mentioned to sit down and try to plan out what the long-term goals could be we haven't had the chance to do that yet yeah something that I'm becoming more and more interested in because you know we can as creatives especially in video gets so caught up in the busyness of the day-to-day right there's always another edit to get out the door another proposal to send another client to bring in but then as a result I think we sacrifice sometimes telling our own story in a way that actually attracts the people that we want to be working

58:33with and and taking the time to Envision a state that we want to get to so it really does take it requires us to take a pause and step back and and really imagine in five years what would be your dream life like more than just work like what do you want to be doing but what do you want your life to look like imagine it and then work towards creating that um but that's something I'm very interested in myself having done this for a little while is getting better at honing and refining what it is that is our you know my purpose why do I do this every day you could do anything why this right

59:08um what is your mission right like what am I really trying to do in the world because there's the the obvious answer which is we're a business we're trying to make a living you know we're trying to provide services and help our clients do the best job but like I kind of want to hone it even further than that like why me doing this right right now like what what are we really trying to accomplish beyond that top layer what what end product what what would you like to see change about the world and I feel like you know the better that I get at defining that the better I get at convincing myself that that is my mission because you're kind of selling yourself on your vision

59:45you have to actually sell yourself on it because you might not believe it's possible um you might not believe it's the right version of it but the more that you sell yourself on it it it's almost like it becomes obvious to other people and and you start finding the clients that enable you to do the work that you want to do you know like the documentary work in in the context you just gave um or for me you know my big next goal is to work on a Netflix documentary or a Hulu documentary or a major documentary that can then you know get onto the streaming platforms and kind of give me that first directorial

1:00:20documentary debut in that bigger context and so you know the more that we're able to hone that the the hope is the more opportunities come your way and the more open you are to even seeing those opportunities when they pop up but that's why I was asking you guys because you're talking to a lot of creatives and you're in the same industry and I don't I don't get to talk about that a lot of with people some so I was just kind of curious you know where you are in your journey of mission purpose and all that still figuring it out ongoing and I feel like we're all kind of like trying to figure that out as we go and sometimes we have an idea of what we want to do

1:00:56but I think part of the part of the the cool thing of what we do is that we may have an idea also where we're going but what's cool is that by doing the work and like going being in the industry you don't know where the path can kind of take you sometimes and it and it's and sometimes I'm very curious about that I like to explore those little Avenues you know like I never in my life would have thought that we would be doing like a podcast show you know I never thought that it was like something that I would be interested in but it became kind of like a like a happy accident uh uh

1:01:26starting it you know and it's to your point like Dario and I get get a chance to sit down now with a lot of different creatives and even discuss things that probably we would never have even thought about discussing ourselves at times honestly when I when you reached out and I heard about your podcast and your show it was like I've been looking for something like this I'm not even kidding right like the title everything is perfect because I'm a huge podcast listener but there's not that much content out there geared specifically for people like us with people like us doing what

1:01:54we're trying to do so you know after I only you know heard about it a couple weeks ago when we first connected but I'm definitely excited to keep listening and encourage you guys to keep doing it because I think there's a huge need for it so I'm just stoked that you guys took that step and are creating the content thanks and we're happy that uh that you know it's being well received by so by by at least some people right like we're right now at this stage of the recording we're at what 53 subscribers on YouTube YouTube on YouTube yeah on Instagram it's like 180 followers but who knows what it'll go to like we didn't do this for the following initially and that's

1:02:28not really what our goal is it's just to kind of build this network in this community right and um like you said there's a need for it for a lot of us and hopefully we're kind of providing that I mean as you know with this kind of content it just takes consistency a lot of it and a lot of time you know to build the audience if that is what you want but there's the inherent value in having conversations with interesting people and you might as well record it if not only for your own you know ability to go back and reference it but then also to share that with other people

1:02:59um so it's yeah it's just super cool um and I guess this is your first uh I'm the first person in America that you're doing this with so just wait for that subscriber number to start blowing up now that you're in the bigger Market ten times ten times uh the budget for the for the subscribers right 10 times the followers right thanks Tim for uh jumping on the show with us we really appreciate it and honestly this was a this was a great episode and um yeah we look forward to chatting more as well likewise thank you guys for having me thanks for creating the space for us to have these chats I hope this isn't the last time I'll get to to talk together even if it's off camera and uh

1:03:35yeah looking forward to seeing what comes up