Managing a Growing Business (ft. Bottle Rocket Media)

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Dario00:02So what were you saying? Your one big regret was what?

Dan Fisher00:05No, just looking at you and guessing your age, probably my one big regret is not starting a business sooner.

Dario00:13I'm 52 though.

Dan Fisher00:15Are you 52? Yeah. You look really good for 52.

Kyrill00:15I'm 69.

Dario00:16Yeah. Yeah.

Brett00:17God. You guys make us look old. Yeah, I was gonna say, you look really good in 52. Cause I know what 52 looks like. That's it.

Dario00:23You

Kyrill00:24Heheheheh

Dan Fisher00:27Yes.

Dario00:28No, no, I'm just messing. We're, we're, well, I'm 31, Kyril's 30.

Dan Fisher00:34Yeah. Cool.

Kyrill00:36Get it getting.

Dario00:36But I feel 52 if that helps. How old are you guys when you started?

Brett00:36Yeah.

Dan Fisher00:38Well, yeah, nothing we can do about that.

Kyrill00:42When did you guys start?

Dan Fisher00:45We're in our low 50s and we started this business at 40, 39. Right in that neighborhood.

Dario00:53okay.

Kyrill00:53wow.

Brett00:54Yeah, 14 years ago, yeah.

Kyrill00:56That's a first, I will say. Like most of the guests that we've had on the show either have started like in their mid to late, usually like mid to late 20s typically when they kind of jumped in. But tell us a little bit about like how that kind of came about. It's like at, or like basically at 40, that's when you guys decided to start the business. Like, what was that like?

Dan Fisher01:18Well, Brett and I are both veterans of television and film. And so we spent the first half of our careers in the trenches learning storytelling, learning filmmaking, doing all sorts of learning design, doing all sorts of different things. And we came together at the Oprah Winfrey Show, where he was one of the lead designers and I was one of the lead editors.

Dario02:00Was the show in, was the Oprah show in Chicago?

Dan Fisher02:03Yeah. Yeah.

Brett02:03Yeah. I mean, literally five blocks away.

Kyrill02:05I've always wondered that.

Dan Fisher02:07Yeah, so the show ran for I think 25 years, I want to say. But we were, I was there for the last nine -ish, nine and a half, and I think Brett, you were there for, how long were you there? Yeah.

Brett02:11I think that was the round number, something like that, yeah.

Brett02:20I don't know, for 12. Definitely like the last nine and then a little kind of start and stop, you know.

Dario02:25So we'll make you guys go into like video. Yeah. But we'll… But…

Kyrill02:25And that's where you guys met.

Brett02:28Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It was…

Dario03:48Hahaha.

Brett04:00did it for free and just said, this is the type of video we want to make. And so we just went and made it. And it was just like a short documentary of like a frame shop. And then we're like, OK, cool. We made one thing. That's kind of cool. And then we kind of had one calling card and then started to talk to people and slowly, slowly built a business.

Dan Fisher04:18You're leaving a few things out, but yeah. You're leaving out the fact that you directed a feature however many years before, you know, and I spent a decade in Hollywood, like, behind some very talented people. So we weren't going in cold when we started the company, but we were, it was our independence we were calling on.

Brett04:20Yes.

Kyrill04:26Nice.

Brett04:31Yes.

Brett04:35Right.

Dario04:43But it's still different, right? Like you guys were in like the film and TV side of things and then you went into the corporate end, which is kind of like a different animal in a way, right? So you are kind of starting first. You do have the experience though, which is really useful.

Kyrill04:44Yeah.

Brett04:50Mm -hmm.

Dan Fisher04:54Yes. Yes.

Brett04:55Yes, whereas when you're 25, what the hell do you know? You know what I mean? You know, it's like, you know, it's you're just like, let's grab a camera, let's grab a thing, let's go do it. And that, by the way, is amazing. And that energy and that, you know, bottomless pit of like, you know, just wanting to do and grow and do it, where we kind of entered that corporate field as more experienced.

Dario05:50And you started at a good time too, right? When the DSLR revolution was starting, right? That opened accessibility to so many people.

Kyrill05:53Yeah.

Brett05:55That was it. I mean…

Dan Fisher05:56Yeah.

Brett06:16Forever.

Dan Fisher06:20work with crews that have their own gear and all the camera gear and everything is advanced so quickly that we don't want to get into the gear game so we just work with a lot of all of our crews come with cameras or we go to a camera house and rent you know we just do it that way.

Kyrill06:23Mm.

Dario06:37We fell into the gear trap early on where it kind of becomes because it gets to be so fun. You're like, this new toy came out and then. Yeah.

Brett06:44Yes, a hundred percent. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's exactly what it is. In fact, there was one of our regular DPs. He was such a gearhead, like all we had to say is, did you see that? You see that new gimbal? He's like, what? What? What? What? And then the next shoot, he'd be like, look what I got. You know, it's so it's like we didn't have to spend any money. And truly, my God, you know.

Kyrill06:44Yeah.

Dario06:55You plant the idea in his head.

Kyrill06:56you guys were enablers. They were enablers.

Dan Fisher06:58Yeah, we are enablers. Yes.

Kyrill07:06bad influences.

Dan Fisher07:08Yeah.

Brett07:10And Dan's right, it's like we bought those two or three 5Ds like Mark II, Mark III, I think is as new as we got. And then maybe five, six, seven years later, we're like, we should get that EOS R just so we have one 4K camera and house. But we really, truly haven't bought any camera gear in a deck. I mean, truly in a long time, because why? We've got plenty of people that we work with. In Chicago, with our crews,

Kyrill07:18Yeah.

Brett07:39It's different in every town, different in every setup. But the guys we work with own cameras, own lenses, own lights. Even camera guys will have some audio equipment. So it's not working with the DP. And he goes, great, what camera should we rent? It's like these guys have two, three, four cameras ready to go from.

Dan Fisher08:19Right. And you guys know sometimes the camera, the sensor, and the lenses, well the lenses always matter, but sometimes the sensor matters. But most times you're making content that's on a website, on a phone, being watched, on the train, during a commute with, you know, scratchy headphones. Like it, it kind of doesn't matter if you can light it and you can tell the story which camera you're using. Most times in a content space. And when it does, we step up and we…

Kyrill08:43Yeah.

Brett08:47And you get the fancy camera. Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Fisher08:48rent the big boys or we yeah yeah yeah

Dario08:49Yeah, I get the cool stuff. So…

Kyrill08:51We kind of like adopted that mentality as well, just where we were not looking to be constantly trying to get the next piece of gear that we absolutely need or that we think will be fun. Like we only get equipment now if it's actually going to be essential that we feel like we're going to use on multiple shoots and things like that. And like the difference for you guys when you started was like you'd already been in the industry for so many years. So you had an idea from the technical side of things, how a lot of things worked.

Dario08:54Yeah.

Dario09:07Essential.

Kyrill09:21Whereas a lot of people who get into the industry fresh like we did, we had no clue what the industry was like. So all we could do is like what resources were available, buy a camera and then just learn on the go. So that's kind of like how I feel like people who tend to be a little bit more gear heads or people who are jumping into it and trying to learn the industry a little bit, you know, understand the technical side of things. But like everyone has a very different kind of path. So like I was just curious, like how…

Brett09:21Exactly.

Brett09:40Hmm?

Kyrill09:48Did it feel like when you kind of jumped out of it, was it like a fish out of water moment or did you have at least a bit more of an idea of like what the business was gonna progress through down the line?

Dan Fisher10:01We had no idea. I feel comfortable saying that, but you can correct me. We just knew that there was a space, right? We knew that video was going to be a thing. It already was big in our life and broadcast and films, but we just knew that video was a space, but we didn't really know how much it was going to take off. It was definitely tiptoeing into it.

Dario10:04Heh heh.

Dan Fisher10:31to be like, my God, we need to hire people. We need an editor. We needed this, we needed that. We can't keep up. And we didn't, we didn't, I don't want to say we didn't expect it. Of course we hoped for that, but we didn't know, you know, and especially myself coming at it from editing, I knew right away that I couldn't edit and direct and produce and run a company, but I didn't think it would happen as quickly as it did. And we had an editor within.

Brett11:01months. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty quick. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty cool. I mean, we got a lot done. The two of us literally, we would go and shoot and again, like one of us would be director, one of us would be camera op. Occasionally we'd hire a real audio tech who would come with us and or maybe another camera op and we go shoot and we go back and I do the design work.

Dario11:02really?

Kyrill11:03Nice. Like in -house? Okay.

Dan Fisher11:07Yeah.

Brett11:28Dan would edit, occasionally I would edit, you know, and we would write in and do all of it, but very, very quickly, I don't know if we got this advice that early, but if you're in the company, you're not running the company. If you're doing everything, you kind of can't manage it, and very quickly it was like, well, how are we gonna sell, what are we gonna do? You start to move from being creatives.

Brett13:35to run the business, to do the other stuff. And so that first hire was freeing Dan up. The second hire was freeing me up. We hired a designer. Okay, great, now we've got an editor and designer. Now who's gonna manage them and the projects? And then you kind of hire a producer and so on and so on. So it's a slow road.

Dario13:54How did you guys have so much success in the first year? Because it seems like you guys were overwhelmed with business right to the point where you gotta bring on other people so you can handle the managerial aspects of it.

Dan Fisher13:55But that's the – Go.

Dan Fisher14:08I think partially because I'm insane, like we just keep pushing forward. That's what we do. And so it just becomes a numbers game. And backing up, I'd say maybe that first year our editor wasn't a staff member, but they worked. But they worked every day. You know, it was a permalancer. So it probably…

Kyrill14:08Yeah, not cheap to do that.

Dario14:09Yeah.

Dario14:32freelancer basically.

Brett14:35Yeah, yeah, freelancer. And then at some point we're like, should we do this? my God, are we gonna hire somebody? How are we gonna pay them? Like it was a big deal.

Dan Fisher14:40Right, we do the math after a year of them being freelance and it just, it only makes sense to bring them on full time. Right.

Dario14:40Hehehehe. Hehehehe.

Dario14:46It was like cheaper than keeping them as freelance basically, right? Yeah.

Brett14:49Yes. yeah. Yeah, you just do the math.

Dan Fisher14:50Yes, when somebody works every day, you know, even with benefits, it just makes more sense for the company to bring them on full time.

Brett14:57And in that first year too, remember we left the Oprah show. So imagine several hundred video professionals, producers, writers, all the people at all the levels of the Oprah show. You know, maybe a third of them went to LA to go be with Oprah in LA, but the rest.

Dan Fisher15:18Everyone else needed an editor. Everyone else needed a shooter.

Brett15:19We're a video producer for the dental association. We're a producer for this agency. We're a thing for this agency. We're a producer for this medical company. We're a thing for this. And Dan and I at the Oprah show build reputations of being nice guys who did good work. And so we used that professional network of ours to say, hey, remember us? We really liked, we did all that great stuff together. I see you're.

Dario15:24Right, right.

Dario15:36Mm -hmm.

Brett15:48at Acme company, hey, let us know if you need a hand. And that first year or two, we did a massive amount of work with people we knew of our professional network. All of our sales was via network connections. Nothing was outbound or cold call. I mean, it was outbound to that professional network, but nothing was cold call. Nothing was inbound. It was all, hey, we exist. We're a company. Let us know if you need a hand.

Dario15:57Right.

Dario16:16I can imagine how hard it must have been for the other video production companies if there's suddenly an influx of like all these producers that are going and grabbing all these like corporate clients. That must have been like mayhem.

Dan Fisher16:26Yeah. Well, also it was right on the cusp of, if I tell you that in 2011 when this all went down, right? 2011, right? Yeah. 2011 when this all went down, that I didn't even know I could get a job as an in -house video person. Like you heard about it at larger corporations and you knew about it from watching really dry…

Brett16:36Yeah, 11, 12.

Dan Fisher16:55industrials when you know when you were coming up but you didn't really know that that was a gig the way it is now like that's like an ass that's a gig that people really aspire to get like being in house on the client side or being in it and so there was just a need you know and and honestly had I known that job existed maybe I just would have gone for that job you know yeah totally but but yeah it was just a very different like everything was transitioning from

Brett17:15you

Dario17:17Good thing you didn't.

Dan Fisher17:25the traditional way of communicating with commercials and YouTube obviously was around but it wasn't what it is today to where it is now. So there was this huge, you know, now there's a ton of internal positions in video and design and editorial and so it's just a very different time, even only 13 years ago, as you know.

Brett17:46And that was part of our hunch was not as simple as, hey, these videos on the internet, this might be a thing. But it was like, you know, we saw like, wow, it feels like there's going to be real budgets just for digital content. You know, we had lived in the land of TV broadcast.

Dan Fisher18:31It's still my favorite sensor.

Dario18:49You know, you mentioned how like the old footage still looks good today. I know for a fact there's some shooters that up until like two, three years ago were still shooting on 5Ds. Not like the first one, but like the last Mark model that came out.

Kyrill18:50Is it all there?

Brett19:06Yeah.

Dan Fisher19:06Truly, truly for so much of what we do, anything that you're delivering 1080, it's perfectly fine. It really is. Yeah.

Dario19:13It's still requested to this day, like all the outputs, all the deliverables are always 1080. Like 4K is just in case they ask for it, but I think most phones don't show true 4K anyways. Like they just go up to 2K. So, yeah, it's still HD.

Kyrill19:19Most of the time, yeah.

Brett19:22Yeah.

Dan Fisher19:28Bruh. Bruh.

Kyrill19:31It's also just an easier workflow or like kind of for them as well at the end of the day, because the file sizes are smaller. Sometimes their websites, if they need to upload it directly to the website, a one gig file is gonna be a lot better than a 10 to 15 gig file. Obviously, it depends on how big the files are. Like if you're doing webinars, for example, that's almost always gonna be in 1080. Sometimes I've heard of people even doing it in 720 exports just so that…

Brett19:49Right.

Kyrill20:01it can fit onto those platforms and everything like that. And it's funny, because now there's a new cameras coming out where they're still boasting, you know, 8K and things like that for the consumer area. And I'm thinking, man, if you were to incorporate an 8K workflow, that's gonna change everything. I mean, just switching from 1080 to 4K, you have to get bigger SD cards.

Brett20:04We've had that, yeah exactly.

Kyrill20:28sometimes different types of cards, then you need all the storage, the backup storage, the cloud storage. It's exponentially more expensive.

Brett20:34It's, it's, it, it, it really, really, really grows. We, we did one project where we did shoot 8K. Yeah. It was actually for Apple. and they wanted it to be 8K raw. No, yeah. 8K raw. And then they sent us three or four iPhones that they want us to shoot ProRes RAW 4K and

Dario21:07God.

Dan Fisher21:09Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we just had a team member transferring files all day. And of course, who got overtime? That guy, because it took forever, right? We underestimated the time. Yeah. Fastest drives all day, swapping cars, and still it took, you know, about 10 hours to transfer day of shooting.

Dario21:19Yeah.

Brett21:19Right. Even with fast drives, it was still, you know, even just getting it off the phones. It was two huge raids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dario21:26finish reading a book by the time it's done.

Kyrill21:32This is why DITs are such a key role in the industry. You know, it's almost like the equivalent of like, you know, when you invest in a camera, like say like a DSLR and then you get all the necessary equipment that can help support it, like a tripod, slider, all that stuff. You know, a lot of people talk about, yeah, I want to upgrade and get a new camera, like the nice, really good RE or something like that. It's like, okay, great, you bought the RE, that was a hundred grand. Did you think about the slider? Did you think about the gimbal? Did you think about the tripod?

Brett21:34Yeah.

Dario21:57Heheheheh

Brett21:57Everything. Yeah, that's another 100 grand. Yeah.

Kyrill22:00Like that 100k turns to 500k.

Dario22:01No, Kirill, the best part is when they spend a lot of money on the lenses and the camera and then they have like a $500 tripod. That's the best one.

Dan Fisher22:03Right. Right.

Kyrill22:10my God, I've seen, I know some guys that still use really old school tripods and they're putting like their C70s or C200 sometimes on it. And I'm like, it works, but it's like, all it takes is one little bump of the shoulder for that thing to come crashing down.

Brett22:10Right.

Dario22:23Yeah.

Brett22:28Yeah, exactly, exactly.

Dan Fisher22:29Yeah, I mean, and that's really just a business conversation of where do you want to invest your money?

Kyrill22:56Yeah, there's no point at that point. Like once you're being like a freelance shooter versus a business, it's like still like you have to have like a business mindset for both, but the business models are very different. You have to focus on different things to invest in and things like that. If you're a freelancer, a lot of the time equipment is something that is key because that's what a lot of productions do look for. You don't necessarily have to buy everything, but a lot more key things that are attractive.

Dario23:34Yeah

Dan Fisher23:35Right.

Brett23:35They're not asking for lenses or they're not asking for, you know, occasionally someone will say, can we shoot on a red? Cause someone told them red was good or something. But besides that, but there are situations, there are video production companies where there could be some people in house, someone who's like a PA or someone who's an editor, who's also a shooter. And occasionally they want to go out and shoot stuff. And like there are affordable, great cameras like a.

Kyrill23:38No.

Kyrill23:44Yeah, yeah.

Dario23:44Yeah.

Brett24:03still like DSLRs or a Blackmagic or whatever where it's the body is a couple grand or two or three or four grand and you can get some simple base lenses that are pretty good or go rent lenses for 50 bucks a day and now you've got an in -house shooter you own the gear and you can go and shoot and you can make more money. We're just not set up for that.

Dan Fisher24:22shooters.

Brett24:23But but and we're and we're not shooters in house. So there are video production company scenarios where, yeah, that makes sense. Great. You got a shooter in house or you're a shooter. Yes. I want a little bit of gear. But then when it comes to everything else, yeah, you're a gaffer and rent a truck. And there you go. As opposed to paying X tens of thousands of dollars to own the gear. And by the way, you have to store the gear and maintain the gear and all of that. So you can pick and choose. It's not.

Kyrill24:23Yeah.

Brett24:52Dear God, if you're a production company, don't buy gear. It's just you need to figure out what's right for your business plan and what works for you.

Dan Fisher25:00There's no better investment than a C -stand, I'll tell you that. It'll last forever. Yep.

Kyrill25:00And, yeah. Or a tripod, a good tripod. A good tripod can last you a very long time as well. You know, the crazy thing about our industry right now is that if anyone's wanting to get into it, it's so affordable, so affordable to learn and just kind of jump right into it. Like people are always saying like, like what's the latest like 4K camera that we can get so we could start shooting or something. I see these posts all the time.

Dario25:03Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett25:08Yeah.

Dario25:16so easy.

Kyrill25:28And then just out of curiosity, I was like, what were some of the older cameras that were like the holy grails back in the day? Like you remember the C100 Mark II when it was brand new? That thing cost like eight, nine grand to get. It goes for like $500 on Kijiji or eBay these days. You wanna learn filmmaking? Buy one of those cameras. That's all you need. And it's just like, my God, I can't believe it.

Dan Fisher25:37Mm -hmm.

Brett25:37Yeah.

Dario25:40really?

Brett25:40Yeah.

Dan Fisher25:43Right. Right.

Brett25:48Yeah.

Dan Fisher25:48Yes.

Dario25:48Yeah.

Dan Fisher25:54We talk about it all the time, like if there's a short film to be made, the absolute right thing to do is what you just said. Go out and purchase a 10 year old camera, because 10 years ago is still 2014. You know what I mean? The cameras are amazing in 2014, and you'll be able to make a short film with a $500 camera that looks as good as anything else. If you know how to light, you're fine.

Kyrill25:54It's still great.

Kyrill26:0914 my god

Dario26:10And it's when we started.

Kyrill26:20Exactly. Yeah. No excuse.

Dario26:21There's really no excuse nowadays, eh? Back in the day, at least you could have said, I don't have the equipment. Now it's like, if you want to do it, you can.

Brett26:25Right, well, even on an iPhone, you've seen all those different like Zakuuta iPhone mounts and there's amazing Blackmagic software where like you could shoot 4K ProRes RAW on an iPhone and really control it. And it's like, yeah, there really is no excuse between that and you buy them.

Kyrill26:56Yeah, like the camera's not what makes a video or a short film or anything like that good. It is the tool that you need to kind of get started for sure, but it's not the thing that makes it. What makes it? It's the storytelling. It's the quality of the writing, the content, like what your vision is for the project. Everything else is just a tool at the end of the day. Like this is why, you know, once you get down the whole gear rabbit hole of like, you know,

Brett27:25Right, yeah.

Kyrill27:49One of the things I was going to also touch on, like we've been reminiscing a lot, I just realized, you know, about the good old days, you know, what, how bottle rockets started. Well, like where's bottle rocket today? Like for you guys in terms of as a business, like, like what's, what's today like for you guys?

Dario27:53Nostalgia.

Dan Fisher28:06You can go for it, Brett.

Brett28:06I'll go. Well, we're trying to diversify a little bit, you know, and we've, we're a video production company, you know, first and foremost, that's our core, our core functionality. In addition to video production, we have added another service, SEO strategy. That was something we did for us as a company, like.

Dario28:28okay.

Brett28:31hey, we want business to come to us. And so we hired our director of marketing a few years ago and she, Tamika and she dramatically overhauled everything we were doing from our website perspective. And so we went from being an unranked company to having 500 keywords in like the top 25 and 50 in the top 10. And we're very, very well -ranked. If you type video production company or motion graphics,

Dario29:02That's how I found you guys.

Brett29:10you know we should do this for our clients and it's the exact same people that are coming to us asking for a video so we kind of took a year to kind of explore and understand what that might mean and so we we we added this service you know about six months ago have handful clients now and it's great it's it's it's nice to to have that and it feels like a superpower as a video production company because we can look at every video from an SEO perspective and

Dario29:44How does it differ from video marketing? Because a lot of companies, if they're adding an additional service, they'll add video marketing, for example.

Brett29:47Grrrr!

Brett29:52Right, and we do that too, but really there's no such thing as video marketing by itself.

Brett31:47hey, I saw you left United and you went to here. Just want to let you know we'd love to work with you again kind of a thing. So, you know, we're very big on just our existing network of people, people that know us and like us and have paid us to make videos and are happy with our work and we just try to keep in contact with them. So we're growing the video side of the business, we're growing the SEO side of the business.

Dario32:20Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean by breaking off into a branded content?

Brett32:24Well, Dan, why don't you actually talk about that part?

Dan Fisher32:25Yeah, I think where we are today is…

Dan Fisher32:34Look at this camera. Yeah. It is very warm in here, no doubt. I'm in one of our edit bays.

Dario32:35camera focusing issues.

Kyrill32:37condensation on the lens. wow, I guessed it.

Brett32:38Hehehe.

Dario32:42Hehehehe.

Kyrill32:45Give it a little wipe. Give it a little wipe.

Dan Fisher32:48There we go.

Dario32:48then he's gonna get a fingerprint on the lens.

Dan Fisher32:51Is it working? Am I focused? Am I focused?

Kyrill32:51No, I meant with a cloth, but yeah. It's okay. You got a ProMist filter on it now, okay? It's a creative choice.

Brett32:56Mmmmm

Dan Fisher32:57Hahaha.

Dario32:57I promise. You were shooting at an 8K and it's too much so we gotta like…

Kyrill33:02Yeah, it's too much now guys. We gotta do the podcast.

Dario33:04Pro Mist Filter.

Brett33:05there you go.

Dan Fisher33:05Very good.

Brett33:09Branded content.

Dan Fisher33:10Yeah, where we are today is…

Dario33:57Can you give us like an example, like the type of video?

Dan Fisher34:00Well, I guess the first one that comes to mind, Brett brought up, we did this project for Apple and really it was just the story of a group of glass blowers. It wasn't for Apple. We weren't selling a phone or a computer or a camera. We were just telling this story and then at the end of it, Apple puts their name on it.

Dario34:30I see.

Dan Fisher34:30And of course, the, you know, Brett set it up, you know, they sent us, they had camera requirements, they sent us phones, there were things about the video, the requirements from the client that were necessary, and Apple's a tech company, so those are tech requirements. But the idea is basically telling the story, you know, for branded content specifically, telling the story, any story that fits in with a brand that…

Dario35:03You know, Kirill, who's that company from Seattle that did something similar? We had them on the…

Kyrill35:08offbeat?

Dario35:10Offbeat was doing something similar, no?

Kyrill35:13ish that they were like, they were doing something where they were kind of more so trying to tell local stories, kind of like short docs and things like that. It's a little different though, what Dan and Brett are doing. Like branded content is like, it was like a very popular aspect where a lot of companies are trying to tell different stories. Like as they mentioned with that they're doing with Apple, where it's not trying to sell so much, right? They're just trying to attach their name to good stories. That's what essentially branded content is. It's like, it's like.

Brett35:22Hmm?

Dan Fisher35:40Right. It's.

Kyrill35:42short docs almost, but sponsored by a company. Yeah.

Brett35:43Hmm? Sometimes.

Dan Fisher35:43Could be short docs, could, right. It really promotes a brand or a lifestyle, which is part of a brand. So I think a great obvious example is if you were REI or any camping company and you made a short film about people camping, there's probably gonna be the product in the shop, the tent, the thermos or whatever they're using, but you're never gonna mention it. You're not gonna talk about how great this tent is or how waterproof it is.

Dario36:07Yeah.

Dan Fisher36:13You're just going to show people living the lifestyle and then at the end the logo comes up, you know, if it even comes up.

Dario36:14Right.

Kyrill36:18It's the use case.

Kyrill36:30I'm trying to think of which one you're talking about. Yeah.

Dan Fisher36:35Yeah, I mean, we've been telling stories for so long. You know, if you include 10 years at the Oprah show and then all the work we did 10 plus years before that in this business, that it really is just kind of like full circle, right? We started this business and the business is making videos and we get clients and some of our clients make a physical product. Some of our clients are software as a service. Some are, you know, we do internal, we do all kinds of stuff.

Kyrill36:49That's all I was gonna say.

Dan Fisher37:04And so to say we're going to focus on branded content is really just to say we're going to continue to tell stories and seek out clients that maybe are a little bit less in the sales space. So a little bit more about story first and not product or service first. But it's the same thing we've been doing for decades, really.

Kyrill37:24Yeah.

Kyrill37:31I do have a question about that, but first to lead into it, you said you're going to break off and focus on that a bit. Is that still going to be under the Bottle Rocket name or are you guys coming up with a different company name for that?

Dan Fisher37:45We are going to put it under a different moniker. And mostly because Bottle Rocket as it is now isn't going to really change, or isn't going to change at all. But it's really just perception. If you come to our website and you see a bunch of product videos, you don't necessarily think high -level storytelling. Versus you come to this new site and you see high -level storytelling, that's immediately what you think.

Dario37:57Mm.

Brett38:11We're going to use the same videos and be like, hey, look, here's the 10 branded content videos we've made. It's not starting from zero. It's…

Dario38:12Right.

Dan Fisher38:15Right, right, it's not hard for us to make the switch because right now we've probably 25 % or 25 to 50 % of our videos depending on which month are already this. So…

Kyrill38:16Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brett38:29We're just trying to, you can imagine an agency, if you guys work with agencies, everything is just so specific, right? Agencies are so specific. Like our joke that actually happened legit was someone was looking for a video for this product video, 15 second video, one of the shots, a cat walked through the frame.

Kyrill38:38Yeah.

Brett38:53Two seconds of a cat walking through the frame. They're like, great. Do you have any pet stuff? Yeah, no problem. And Dan had directed some stuff with some dogs. And they're like, great. Here's all our stuff. And they're like, this is great, but we're really looking for a cat director. We're like, are you? Seriously? Seriously? Do you have anything with cats? We're like, no, but we have the dog that what?

Dario39:08We've heard that we've heard that before

Dan Fisher39:08This is true. This is a true story.

Kyrill39:10I get it, I get it, yeah.

Brett39:19the clients are really specifically looking for cat shots. So it's like, okay, great, fine. And so we're trying to head it off at the pass a little bit, which is to say, we don't want you to look at our site and…

Kyrill39:25Brett (39:33.269) you know, have a mark against us because we have this and that. So we just want to try to build a brand, which all good, whatever it needs to be, you know, that really focuses on that type of storytelling so they can click through a bunch of things. Be like, great. Wow, these guys are great storytellers. They're visual storytellers. They know how to build, you know, build a story together. And again, like Dan said, we only have literally decades of experience of telling hundreds of thousands of stories at the Oprah show and other places. Like, we actually know we're talking about air.

Dan Fisher39:58Yeah, I mean…

Dario39:59Yeah.

Brett40:03You know, so it's just trying to make it easier for the sale a bit and for us just to kind of build this separate brand a little bit No, not yet

Kyrill40:08Yep.

Dario40:10If you launched it already, not yet.

Kyrill40:11Not

Kyrill40:14It's funny that you mentioned the cat versus the dog thing because that reminded me of something that Dario and I had to deal with last year with a corporate lead that we were trying to sell on. I forget the specific industry it was, but it was like they wanted a very straightforward explainer type promotional video, which is pretty standard. And we have, like you guys, we've done many, many videos like this for a lot of like finance companies, software companies, tech companies and things like that.

Brett41:08Yeah. Right. Do you have anything in a warehouse though? Is it a bigger warehouse? Is it a yellow warehouse? You're like, I don't know. I don't.

Kyrill41:11Do you have something with the manufacturing? Yeah, do you have anything in a warehouse? Yeah.

Dan Fisher41:13Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we've been generalists intentionally since day one, right? We work in financial vertical, healthcare vertical, product vertical, software like, you know, and it still happens. Hey, do you have anything with a conveyor belt in it? No, but I can shoot a conveyor belt. Yeah.

Kyrill41:21You

Dario41:37Haha.

Kyrill41:38Like so specific, yeah. And the funny thing is that sometimes it's not even like a key element to what they're trying to do. It's like, what do you need? It's a one conveyor belt shot that would even be in the video.

Dario41:50It's like a one -shot type of thing.

Brett41:52Well, that's what I'm saying, yeah. It's like one shot. Well, they're real visual. They really just want to… And listen, we've pitched a million things and you just can't… As soon as somebody asks for that, I'm like, okay, I'm writing this off. We're done here. We're done here. I'm not gonna fight. Yeah, I'm not gonna fight. Right, right, right. If you as the agency, if you as the producer are not saying to the client…

Dario42:05We're done. We're done.

Kyrill42:07You're a little too picky. You're a little too picky here.

Brett42:18these guys are great. They're master storytellers. They're going to get what you need. And instead of saying they don't have any conveyor belt footage, then it's like they're not doing their job because they're not finding the right, the right best person. The client. Yeah. If they think they need to see a conveyor belt, they're not wrong because they're not producers. They just know what they want.

Kyrill43:15Yeah.

Brett43:38Here's what we need from this company. We're the producer, we're writing the script. I'm gonna be there instead. This thing's gonna be great, don't worry. But we love this crew because she's an amazing director, he's a great shooter, they really know what they're doing. So you try to build relationships with people that become your advocates, that are nice, that do return emails, that do all those things. And it's hard. And when you run into the people that aren't, okay.

Kyrill44:08Ha ha ha!

Dan Fisher44:17Well, it's such a subjective business that you can't dwell. There's any number of reasons you're not going to get a job. When you don't get them, there's a few that continue to irritate. When you don't get them because you don't get an opportunity to talk it through. When you don't get them because of ridiculous requests like…

Kyrill44:29Move on.

Dan Fisher44:45conveyor belt or cat director versus dog director, you know, like that stuff is challenging, but otherwise, you just gotta move on.

Brett44:52Well, also, even more than money, and occasionally you're like, I really wanted that job. But occasionally you're like, damn, we would have really made that video great.

Kyrill45:09Yeah.

Brett45:27And you're like, those are the ones that really hurt, you know, where you like put in that effort and you're genuinely passionate. Like, man, what an amazing organization. I'm so glad they reached out. I would crush this. This would be so great. They seem so nice. This can be such a great partnership or for whatever reason. You don't get it. Those are the ones that bug me more, you know, where I just felt like we were money aside. Like that would have been fun and we were a really good fit. We would have made something great, you know?

Kyrill45:55We've had a few of those. Yeah. Actually, one thing I was going to also ask was branded content is that type of content that a lot of people in our industry are always kind of like talking about trying to do more of, you know, something that's more focused on the storytelling aspects rather than, you know, the explainer, the, the classic corporate type videos. Like obviously, you know, those are necessary videos and you know, they, they do also pay the bills, but

Dario45:55Yeah.

Brett45:56Good.

Kyrill46:21people are always talking about doing more branded content. So how do you guys go about finding more of those stories? Cause it sounds like you guys do quite a bit of that. Is it something that you kind of pitch to direct clients or do you have a lot of agencies kind of coming to you with the concepts that you have to bid on and pitch for? Like what has been your experience in that regard?

Dan Fisher46:41I'd say a little bit of both, but there's more success going direct to clients. I think branded content is just in our DNA, so it's just what we pitch when we have the opportunity to pitch a concept.

Dan Fisher46:59Agencies come to us, but it's a very competitive, there's a lot of people doing it. So I'd say we have more success with the client side.

Kyrill47:11But how do you go about it direct with direct to client? Cause a lot of the time, at least in our situation, for example, a lot of clients come to us with very specific things like, we need a, we need this kind of promotional video. We need to do an explainer video for this or something like that. And it's only like once in a blue moon where we've been able to kind of convince them to do something a little bit different. But a lot of the time they're very focused on one thing. We focus on that. And then they just kind of forget about any other ideas after that. Like what has been your like.

Dan Fisher47:49Well, I think it…

Dario47:49Although, Carol, we don't really pitch branded content. Like, we might pitch, like, different types of corporate videos.

Kyrill47:53No, I know, but like…

Dario48:05Yeah.

Dan Fisher48:09Well, one thing I would say for us is anytime we've ever made a video for ourselves, it has gotten us work because we're doing it with conviction, we're doing it with passion, and so when we make our own branded content work, people notice it and they ask for that. So that's part of it. The other part of it is…

Brett48:34And you know, it just interrupts and not it's and that is those are passion projects. So it's not about bottle rocket. It is a short film. We just did one about this chef and a timpano. And it was, you know, and someone else did the thing about this. You know, we're always asking, like, what should we go shoot? What should we do? And occasionally there's just time and everyone's schedule. We, you know, pitch ideas internally. We go make that video. You know, the company started with that. Make a video you want to make, you know, like.

Kyrill48:39Yeah, yeah.

Dario48:40So it's like a short film, like a… Yeah.

Brett49:02Go make the cat video then. You know what I mean? So people go, hey, you're a cat director. So we go make a video and they go, I saw that Apple video, that Tempano video you made. Sorry. So just to clarify on that point.

Kyrill49:05Yeah.

Dan Fisher49:13Yeah, I'd say the other part of it is circumstantial. When we shoot, we shoot very efficiently because we really prep hardcore. And so anytime we go out to shoot, especially in a documentary space, anytime we go out to shoot in a documentary space, you could probably make six different videos with that footage. So you can easily…

Kyrill49:41Yeah.

Dan Fisher49:43take what is a more direct, specific ask and turn it into a branded content thing. And we have done that. And then the only other way to get branded content work is to pitch it. Is to roll up your sleeves, create a pitch deck, go to the company and say, hey, we want to make this video about you. Or I guess there's one other way. And that is to make the video and then sell it after the fact. Those we've had less success with.

Kyrill49:54Hmm.

Dario50:13Less success.

Dan Fisher50:14Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill50:16This is more cold pitching, right?

Dario50:16Interesting.

Brett50:16I mean, yeah, well, it seems like you go make a camping video and you go, we can slap REI on this, or we can slap this on this, or it could be anything, or we can slap Subaru on it, and the last shot, but your Subaru pulls away or whatever. So it's like, there's a lot of ways you can make content and just modify it for them. But that's a theory that doesn't really pay out a ton.

Dan Fisher50:25Right.

Kyrill50:40I like your approach. I like your approach of kind of like trying to take what they're proposing to you and then kind of figuring out a way to get them more out of it in that aspect as well. Where it's like, if they're coming to you with like a very specific promotional video, if in terms of like the prep, you can kind of like.

Dan Fisher50:40It takes a lot of work to get that to happen.

Kyrill51:02work on a way to kind of develop other pieces of content that are a little bit different. Like a lot of people in the corporate space, for example, talk about doing, you know, you do a promotional video and then you do like a 30 second like Instagram reel, maybe five Instagram reels that go about it. So it's kind of, you guys are kind of taking a similar approach to that, but getting a little bit more creative with the content itself in terms of how you can kind of like pitch it, you know, like maybe do like one long form video. That's like five minutes, but letting the client know it's like,

Dario51:22for.

Kyrill51:31this is what we're gonna shoot for, but then we're also gonna take little segments and then make a one minute or a two minute or a 30 second one or something like that. So that sounds like it's been your most successful approach to date.

Dan Fisher51:38Right.

Dan Fisher51:42Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you guys have been editing videos for a decade, right? You know how little you need to make a great video, right? So that's, you know, again, especially in the documentary space, you have a good interview. You could shoot footage all day long, but you need very little if this footage is good to make a great video. So if you have the opportunity to shoot a bunch,

Kyrill51:52Mm -hmm.

Dan Fisher52:12There's always stuff left over. There's always footage left over. And you have to shoot a bunch. That's the way it works. You can't go in with a precise amount of shots and think, we're great. Because again, in the documentary space, you don't always know what people are going to say, or how they're going to say it, or who's going to be better. So you have to get it all. But because you have to get it all, you can just edit videos, silicone, come home all day.

Brett52:19Shoot two minutes of footage.

Dario52:41You guys said that before you started pitching it, you already created like several short films of your own, right? And then you guys kind of, 25?

Kyrill52:4725, they said.

Dan Fisher52:51Only five.

Brett52:52you mean for the branded content? Yeah, there's probably a dozen or two of things that we'll be able to move over to this new brand and be like, here's branded content.

Dario53:06I'm just wondering like how did you guys because It seems like you got a if you want to go in that direction. You got to create some short film So I'm just wondering how do you guys come up with your ideas for your shorts? Like where do you guys go look for?

Dan Fisher53:18Well, so that's the hardest part. So we're primarily nonfiction space. We do some scripted. Brett really likes scripted more than me. And so the hardest part is finding a person or an organization that's interesting enough to spend your own time and money and energy on. Because there are plenty of people, I know plenty of people that I just don't want to put on camera.

Kyrill53:48Yeah.

Dan Fisher53:48You know, so that's really the hardest part. And if you're doing scripted, you need a script. And that's, everyone knows that's the biggest challenge of them all is to find a script that's worthwhile. So it's not easy. It's the reason we don't have as much original content as we would like because we either don't have access to the people we want to get on camera or don't have a script that warrants time and energy.

Brett54:13That's it.

Brett54:17That's the one word I would access. Access to the right people, to the people you need to tell the story. You can have a great idea. I want to do a documentary about this thing, about this amazing restaurant. Great. Do you know the chef? No. How about the owner? No. Do you know anyone in it? No. Can you shoot there? I don't know. Well, then you're not making a documentary about that restaurant. You know?

Dario54:21access.

Kyrill54:22Yeah, I agree.

Dan Fisher54:41Right.

Dario54:42Yeah.

Kyrill54:43You guys are just describing, you guys are just outlining the biggest thing that I'm wrestling with right now, because that's one thing that I'm trying to kind of figure out, not only for us, but like just to kind of like see what we can kind of create down the line to kind of elevate our offerings, elevate our content in some certain way. And a lot of it is, you have to try to find different stories and a lot of the time people, a lot of people when they think about doing short documentaries or any kind of documentary, they think,

Brett55:21Right.

Kyrill55:40back in 2019 and we were following four different characters and some of the characters were great to work with. I would be able to kind of like just follow them around, talk to them and you know, do good interviews. And then there was one, for example, who was just constantly late, you know, not communicating very well, not making making my job very difficult. And I learned very quickly, this is a challenge that a lot of people will also face. But yeah, it's it really is a matter of like you have to find the right

Dan Fisher56:14Yeah, yeah, it's the hardest thing, you know.

Kyrill56:37they're trying to do something. There's like a conflict that people can kind of potentially relate to, right? It's not just like, I made this company and it's all great, la -di -da. It's like, okay, great, then what? It's like, okay, but why should we care? That's the other thing. It's like, why should people care about that story? That is a big thing as well. It's like, why do people care about this story? It's not just a story for the sake of it being a story.

Dario56:49Hehehehe

Dan Fisher56:49Right, right.

Brett56:54Right.

Dan Fisher56:58Well, right.

Dan Fisher57:05Right, plus everyone's a filmmaker now. Go to TikTok, go to Instagram, go to Facebook. It's like, you know, you want to do a documentary on… You want to do a documentary on somebody who works with bees? Beekeeper? Want to do a documentary on a beekeeper?

Kyrill57:50Yeah.

Dario57:50You gotta invite them to a podcast. It's the only way.

Dan Fisher57:52Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill57:54That's a start, yeah.

Dario57:55Yeah, just do a general podcast and it's like a chef's you got a beekeeper.

Kyrill58:02Maybe that's the next podcast for us Dario, Story Searchers. You know, that's that could be the name. I kind of like that. We should maybe do that.

Dario58:04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We got to trade. We got to trademark that. I'll go. I'll go grab the domain.

Brett58:05Yes, exactly. Hey, hey. Now that we're talking, maybe we should do a video. Yeah, exactly.

Kyrill58:12Story searchers.

Dario58:14Hehehe

Dan Fisher58:14Yeah, but you're not wrong. The podcast is kind of the new frontier of documentary storytelling because people don't have to leave their homes. It can be done. It can be…

Dario58:48Before we head off, I just had another question. When you guys were first getting into video, you noticed like a trend, right? It's almost like you guys like saw the future, not to be cliche or anything like that. And, you know, I had a lot of success with it. I'm just curious, like what trends are you guys seeing nowadays?

Brett59:10Go ahead. Go ahead.

Dan Fisher59:12Well,

Dan Fisher59:18The sky isn't falling, but AI is definitely a thing and it will definitely affect your business and ours. That isn't really a trend that's happening now, but that's, I think we're minutes away from it. I just don't know exactly know how it is, right? So when…

Dario59:37It's like that Doomsday clock and it's like we're like a minute away from from doom.

Dan Fisher59:41Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, you know, obviously everyone is waiting Sora to see what that does. You know, I'm eager to see what, you know, since I use everything Adobe and I use Photoshop, generative AI, I'm waiting to see what Premiere looks like, you know, what you're able to do inside Premiere. That's a little bit of a game changer, I think.

Kyrill59:412012 2012 is coming

Brett59:41Right, exactly.

Kyrill01:00:05Yeah.

Dan Fisher01:00:11You know, certainly if I were a drone pilot with what I've seen on Sora, I'd be concerned, but working with real people and working with, you know, specific content, I'm not overly concerned, but I think it is going to affect our business. I think there are a lot more in -house departments now. There's a lot of displaced marketing people and film students and…

Dario01:00:53Surprisingly not that many, but…

Kyrill01:01:06I actually just thought of an idea that I think a lot of clients might actually like, cause I know this one, this one wedding studio, for example, you know how like when wedding companies typically produce wedding videos, they take weeks, months sometimes to produce and things like that. So one thing that they, that there's like this trend in the wedding industry where they're getting people to come in on the day of to do behind the scenes kind of social media content and stuff like that. And then next day they have a video like that. So maybe.

Dario01:01:34No, not even the next day, Kyrill. It's the day up. They keep posting like TikToks. Yeah.

Dan Fisher01:01:34Mm -hmm.

Kyrill01:01:36or like just the day of, yeah, they're basically posting as it goes. So maybe that is gonna be a new job position for a lot of productions and companies down the road and likely will be an in -house type role as well. And like I'm looking at a lot of like bigger organizations and things like that that have like in -house content creators and producers. And one that really fascinates me is that I'm…

Brett01:02:24Yep.

Kyrill01:02:30behind it I'm like thinking about okay how do they go about constantly creating all this stuff constantly like on a day -to -day basis they produce amazing branded branded stories as well it's like the whole range from like basic social media to highly produced branded content this is these are just all internal teams as well so it's something I'm just kind of exploring more of now

Dan Fisher01:02:51Yeah.

Dario01:02:54That's actually a really good idea, Kyril, like bringing on like a content creator for like a shoot, yeah. It won't even cost that much, to be honest with you.

Kyrill01:03:02for all of our shoots, cause it's like, like, yeah.

Brett01:03:07Right, someone with a phone.

Dan Fisher01:03:07Right, there's some amazingly talented people, like she said, the barrier of entry has never been lower, right, who are raised on shooting, recording audio, then editing it, then throwing in a graphic, like they can do it all. And once they know what the brand is, they're really able to capture it effortlessly.

Kyrill01:03:29Yeah, because one thing that's very popular with a lot of productions is getting behind the scenes content, which you do need to get to use as promotional material later on in video, right? Or like as a production company, you want to be able to promote yourself a little bit, show a bit of behind the scenes. But you're always kind of like, Juggler's like, okay, who's grabbing a quick social media clip here and there? Sometimes I'm like, Dario, quickly grab something. We're trying to do it with like a…

Dario01:03:56Hahaha.

Brett01:03:57We do the same thing.

Kyrill01:03:59with little DJI cameras and things like that. And sometimes just like a dedicated like mini DSLR just to get some nice, like high quality images and stuff like that. But I think just having like maybe a dedicated social media person who's there, like you said, Brett knows the brand, knows what you're going for, knows how to capture it on the day of quick shots here and there posts right away. And then, yeah, like maybe that's the evolution for even video production companies, you know, get those

Dario01:04:01Pocket 3.

Brett01:04:02I do.

Dan Fisher01:04:28I think that's, I would say that's absolutely, you know, talking about trends, you know, if we're not there already where it's going. I'm not exactly sure how to capitalize on it yet, but we have been talking about it because people do want everything more immediate.

Dario01:04:46Yeah, and a lot of lot of pieces of content too, right? Because again with social media you got to keep constantly feeding the the beast, right? Otherwise like…

Dan Fisher01:04:52Right. Right. Right.

Kyrill01:04:55Yeah. That would be a great add on for clients too, because you're like, not only is that BTS content good for you, it's great for the client. And that's something you can pitch to them with as well. It's like, look, we're going to create this like really high quality content for you, which is obviously needed. But do you want to also create something for your social media? And I feel like a lot of medium sized businesses are going to especially be wanting to jump on that because the more content that they can get, the better typically. Right. So,

Dario01:04:58Yeah.

Kyrill01:05:24then literally the social media person has a very specific job that day, which is to capture the essence of like what the client is about, what we're trying to do and get creative with that, right? It's almost like when you're video shooting alongside photo, but now this is like the third role as well on shoots. And like.

Dario01:05:41third, yeah.

Brett01:05:42Yeah.

Kyrill01:05:46Before you know it, it's like every production is going to have like four or five people doing different jobs. It's almost going to be like a wedding. You know, it's like, there's the couple, there's the client, you know, at the end of the day, the planner, the florist, you know. my God, this is going to, this industry is just evolving like crazy. But anyways guys, we've already gone way past the hour mark, but we really appreciate you jumping on board and I really like.

Dario01:05:54There's the planner.

Dan Fisher01:05:54Yeah. Yeah.

Brett01:05:55Yeah.

Brett01:05:59Trying to get as much as you can out of that day, you know?

Dan Fisher01:06:07Yeah. Yeah.

Brett01:06:07Yeah, nuts.

Kyrill01:06:15some of the ideas and things that we've already discussed on this. I know Dario and Ariel after this call are going to be like, all right, we came up with some good stuff.

Dario01:06:21Honestly, when you said that the social media person, I was like, my God, that's true. Why didn't we think about that? It's so easy to add on.

Brett01:06:22Mmm.

Kyrill01:06:27We have it just.

Dan Fisher01:06:29Well, so there are entire agencies down here that only do that.

Dario01:06:35Yeah, there's that I know it's like a marketing agency thing. So as soon as you mention, I'm like, we could easily just add it on. And that kind of makes us look more well -rounded, right?

Kyrill01:06:36Wow, really?

Dan Fisher01:06:38Yeah. Yeah.

Dan Fisher01:06:46Yeah, so it's not, it's definitely not a new idea, but I think it's catching on. I think, I think it's.

Kyrill01:06:46completely new offering and yeah.

Dario01:06:51No, no, it's not a new idea, but to have the video production company just tack it on, I think is definitely new, right?

Brett01:06:57Yep.

Kyrill01:06:59It's a new use case, essentially, right? It's like utilizing a resource that's going to be beneficial to not only the client, but also to the production company as well, because there is something to that.

Dan Fisher01:06:59Yeah.

Dario01:07:08Yeah, because we, yeah, like we know, we know several people that have their own wedding production companies and the extra social media person is like a 2023 phenomenon or 2022 phenomenon. So I know that like this year I've noticed they started just offering that themselves instead of like the couple getting someone else to do it. So it's, it makes sense, I guess. Yeah. For us to do the same.

Dan Fisher01:07:23Yes.

Kyrill01:07:23Yeah.

Dan Fisher01:07:35Yeah. Yeah.

Brett01:07:37Awesome. Well gents, such a pleasure. I'm glad we got to connect. And thanks for having us on.

Dario01:07:45Yeah, likewise. So if people want to find you, it's bottlerocketmedia .net and you guys are based in Chicago. And yeah, and what are your socials? Is it at Bottle Rocket Media?

Kyrill01:07:46Thank you. Any.

Brett01:07:54Yes.

Brett01:07:58Bada Rock Media 312. It's most everything. It's Chicago. It is.

Kyrill01:08:02Is that the area code?

Dario01:08:04Hahaha!

Dan Fisher01:08:06Is it wait, is it Bottle Rocket Media 312 or Bottle Rocket 312? Check that real quick.

Brett01:08:10I don't know. I don't know. I'm going to the bottom of my page.

Dario01:08:10I'll check right now. Before we end the episode.

Kyrill01:08:12Everyone is like, yeah, what is our socials?

Dan Fisher01:08:15It's like I don't know my own office. I don't know the phone number to the office. I, cause I never call it.

Dario01:08:20Bottle rocket 312.

Dan Fisher01:08:23Bob or Aki 312.

Kyrill01:08:24I haven't been to Chicago yet, but when I do go down there, I will hit you guys up and we'll grab some drinks.

Brett01:08:25you're right, yeah.

Dan Fisher01:08:31Yes, for sure, for sure. It's the season. If you're gonna go, you got about a two month window where it's really nice. This is it. May and June, no, June and July. It gets really hot and then it gets really cold and then it gets really humid and then it's nice for two months.

Brett01:08:32This place sounds great.

Dario01:08:35are

Kyrill01:08:40Only two months? That's it?

Brett01:08:42Eh, it's very nice air.

Kyrill01:08:47And then what, it just gets really hot or?

Kyrill01:08:55It just sounds like Toronto, honestly. Like, we're used to this. You guys aren't that… I mean, Chicago's far, but not that far.

Dario01:08:56So yeah, I was gonna say it sounds like hair.

Brett01:08:57Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not very different from Toronto. Yeah, exactly.

Dan Fisher01:09:01Yeah.

Brett01:09:05No, it's not that far. Not at all. Cool, cool.

Dan Fisher01:09:05No, no, not at all. Not at all. Not at all. All right. Great talking.

Dario01:09:08Okay, alright, let's end this episode. Alright, thank you guys.

Kyrill01:09:08Cool. All right. Thanks guys. Don't quit yet. Don't quit.

Dan Fisher01:09:12Bye bye.