Mastering Video Production and Marketing (ft. INDIRAP)

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Dario Nouri00:05Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Dario Nuri and Kirill Lazerov from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow.

Kyrill02:18All right, guys, welcome to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. And today we got Julian from INDIRAP .com. Julian, welcome to the show.

Julian Tillotson02:34Yeah, so I'm Julian Tillotson founder and CEO here at INDIRAP I started in the rap in 2013 producing corporate and real estate content for Brands from you know start up in small business all the way up to large enterprise and fortune 500 To date we've done we've delivered over 11 ,000 videos to 500 plus brands in 40 different industries And I'm still having a lot of fun doing it. So I'm sitting here today in our offices in the West Loop in Chicago

Kyrill03:08The the all of the above. okay. Well, let's get started. Well, I guess firstly, you're you're based in Chicago and you've built your company now for how long has it been now like around 1015 years?

Dario03:08So Kero, what are these questions that got prepped?

Julian Tillotson03:13Let's go.

Dario03:2210 years.

Julian Tillotson03:23Yeah, so I started in 2013. I was freelancing around 2010 and started in 2013, so yeah.

Kyrill03:30and how big is now your.

Dario03:31Yeah, we started in 2014. We're almost at the same. Yeah, 2014.

Kyrill03:34Yeah.

Julian Tillotson03:34You guys did? Nice. Okay, cool. So you saw the whole thing. You watched the whole content wave come in. Yeah.

Dario03:42Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill03:42pretty much, I actually bought my first camera in 2011. So I was just dabbling in it for like about two years before deciding to fully jump into it. And I, and during that time, like while I was in school, I was really seeing how the tech was changing. Cause the very first camera I got was a Canon T2i. And that thing at the time was okay. But you could tell once you started shooting more and more, it's like, there are some limitations here. So I felt like as each year kind of went on, like tech just kind of kept jumping like

Julian Tillotson03:56Yeah.

Kyrill04:11is so much like crazy. But like now it's like the tech jumping is like, okay, camera shoots 4k, the next one shoots 4 .5k. Now it's five, then 5k. It's

Julian Tillotson04:12It's crazy. Yeah.

Dario04:22We definitely didn't notice the trend that was happening with video content though. I noticed some of the guests that started in the early 2000s, they saw kind of where video was going with the opening of barriers and more businesses jumping on board. But I don't think we predicted the social media wave of video content that we're in right now.

Julian Tillotson04:37Yeah.

Dario04:57Yeah.

Kyrill04:59I mean, it's still like whether you got in early or anything like that with the amount of competition that's coming in now, it's not so much competition of other creators, but the competition of content. And that is like the biggest challenge that a lot of companies and people are facing these days is that there's so much content being put out there and you're, and you have to keep changing or adapting based on what you're doing. It obviously depends on the industry that you're in. If you're doing a lot of like corporate content that is very B2B.

Julian Tillotson05:14Yeah.

Kyrill05:27then you're not so much in the social media game. But the second you go more into the consumer realm and maybe like the selling of products, specifically, like I feel like that's an entirely different ball game. And I've seen some videos, video briefs where they're saying like, yeah, for this product, we need to have like 20 social clips. We need 30 social clips. And it's like, I think why, it's like, it's like, it's like a, it's like a farm. It's a farm of it, right?

Julian Tillotson05:48Yep. Yep.

Kyrill06:38Yeah, it's basically instead of the biggest and baddest, it's now who's the quickest and fastest or quickest and loudest, you know?

Julian Tillotson06:45quickest and loudest and who's got the most engaging entertaining content where I am, which is for most folks on their phone.

Kyrill06:53Do you find that a lot of the work that you do, like what are like a lot of the types of projects that you guys do in INDIRAP? Is it more in like that kind of realm or varies?

Julian Tillotson07:02Yeah, I mean, it's all kinds. Like I just had, I had a call yesterday with,

Dario10:20So you also do the marketing side of things as well, huh?

Julian Tillotson10:25Yeah, that's super important because I'd say for the first like six or seven years, you know, someone, some brand will come to us, they'll spend 10, 25, 50 ,000 or more on video content. And you know, and I always do a follow -up call 30, 60 days out. It's like, hey, how's the content going? And a lot of the times they're like, we posted to our website and to our YouTube, which has two followers or it's still sitting in Dropbox.

Kyrill11:51that there's results. Yeah, there's nothing like Yeah, like, because once you show them how they're like, say $5 ,000 investment will yield and potentially 50 ,000 in revenue, and show it presenting that as a tangible thing. And so it's like, it's almost like a no brainer for them. It's like, why wouldn't they want to sell it at that point? Whereas, like what most production companies do is just focus on the production aspect, which, honestly, like

Julian Tillotson11:53Yeah, the results are what it's all about.

Kyrill12:19it makes sense because that's what a lot of people, that's what their skill sets are. But then it's very difficult to get to a stage kind of like where you're at, where you're able to kind of do a bit of both, right? Depending on who you surround yourself with as well, right?

Julian Tillotson12:23Yeah.

Kyrill13:00Yeah.

Julian Tillotson13:05What's the word? I don't know. It's extended education for a videographer to understand paid and advertising and marketing. Just shooting pretty pictures, that's like, that's the first step. You know what I mean? Understand how to use a camera, that's the first step. If you really wanna…

Dario13:44There's several people that have come on the show that are trying to implement more video marketing services, but speaking to them privately, they said they've been having a lot of trouble getting it off the ground. So what kind of recommendations or pieces of advice would you have for them?

Julian Tillotson14:02in terms of like paid or I mean video marketing.

Kyrill14:06It's, it's personally like, how did you go? Yeah.

Dario14:07I guess in terms of like being able to pitch it to like their clients, that's what they're having trouble with.

Julian Tillotson14:12Okay. I mean, it really, marketing as a whole really, for me, it's like…

Dario16:22Copsail City.

Julian Tillotson16:2820 reals, two paid ad videos, plug that in and now you're running a paid ad campaign versus like, I'm just gonna do a brand video and you make whatever, three, four, five, 10 ,000. Why don't you multiply that? And again, you make money when you provide value to a business. And shooting pretty pictures and giving someone a video isn't necessarily providing value. You're giving them something that looks cool, they're gonna get a little bit of likes and attention and somebody might tell them they have a

Dario17:11Do you find that the, sorry, Kirill, go ahead.

Kyrill17:11How did you go? I was just going to ask like, how did you basically go from just doing the video production and then implementing the marketing aspect? Cause that's usually what a lot of people are trying to figure out is, is how to make that, that jump. Exactly. It's was it like a big one or did you, did you test out a few things with certain clients or how did you kind of even like develop that?

Dario17:24that jump.

Julian Tillotson17:27Yeah.

Dario19:16for yourself, yeah.

Julian Tillotson19:30That's exactly what I did. Yeah.

Kyrill20:21Yeah, especially with their, if it's like a new, a new tactic that you found that can really help elevate things, especially, especially when a client might need it. Sometimes it's also a timing thing, you know, when you come to them with a solution that they didn't know that they might need, it's like, this is exactly what's going to solve X, Y, and Z for us. So yeah. And once you do it on yourself and you get a couple more clients to do it, then you have boom, several case studies you can start showcasing. It's like a snowball effect at that point, right?

Julian Tillotson20:41Yeah, for sure.

Dario21:07Do you offer different, sorry, do you offer like more than just video marketing? Do you offer also like, cause I mean, when you get into marketing content, there's photos, there's videos, like do you get into the other stuff as well?

Julian Tillotson21:20Yeah, so all things content, so photo, video, everything across the board. With photo, if you're talking lifestyle content, property photos, headshots, event, we do all that good stuff. Because again, the photo side has always been an easy add -on for video. If we're going to shoot up 800 unit luxury residential property development, it's like, okay, why don't we do the video, let's do the Matterport, and do the photos. Let's just do it all.

Dario21:47Yeah, it makes sense, yeah.

Julian Tillotson21:50So that's on the content side. And then the strategy, if you're talking about video marketing, you've got to understand strategy. So the growth strategy we sell, websites and landing pages, because if you're building out a paid ad campaign, you need to build out the entire funnel. You've got to have a landing page of some sort, somewhere to send prospects. So websites and landing pages, growth strategy, social media content creation is huge. So social media content creation.

Dario22:09Yeah.

Julian Tillotson22:20And then management, we work with a partner to do management. I don't do management in the house because it's a nightmare, but I have a client or a partner that loves it and she's amazing with it. So we do that. And then email marketing and some stuff with CRMs in terms of integrating content into people's CRMs, we do that as well. And paid ad campaigns, running campaigns is super clutch. So Deepu from our team runs all of our paid ad campaigns.

Dario22:58You have like a partner network that you can, because you're the expert on video. And if you're not the expert in like SEO, at least you do have someone that is right, that you can refer to.

Julian Tillotson23:07Yeah, yeah, for sure. I definitely have my group of subs that I work with. Because some stuff you just don't need in -house. As a company, you want to try to keep your overhead as low as possible. And a lot of times, you don't need things full -time. We're not doing a million websites a month, so I don't need a full -time web dev here. But I got my team of people, depending upon what the client needs, that can knock stuff out for me. So you just got to look at.

Dario23:44I think that's the best approach because the people I've been talking to it seems like they just want to focus on video marketing. But I think once you go down that path, you got to look at the whole gamut, right? You can't just focus on that because the client is not just creating video content. They create, they need a bunch of different pieces of content, not just video photo, all that stuff. So they're going to go to someone that can cover the whole 360 at that point.

Kyrill23:45Yeah.

Julian Tillotson24:03Yeah.

Kyrill24:10Yeah, it's going to be hard to pitch just video marketing because that's the challenge. Like how do you just pitch video marketing when the client is also going to need, as you guys mentioned, like all the other aspects of it. And then they're going to kind of be stuck. It's like, okay, so you're handling marketing, but just for the video, what do I do about photo? Do I have to go somewhere else? Do I have to go here? And then it can get a little complicated from a strategy perspective at that point when it comes to marketing, because if they go to another vendor for that aspect, then

Julian Tillotson24:43Yeah.

Kyrill25:34Wow.

Julian Tillotson25:37If you want to sell video marketing, if you want to be one of the best at it, you really have to understand what this stuff is, not from just what you're doing, but what other, if you're gonna be working with partner agencies or with clients, if they have an internal team or if they have worked with an external agency, you need to understand at some level, you need to be able to speak the language at some level regardless if you want to be a true professional, if you really want to add value, because

Dario26:44You mentioned your partners, right? Like your partner network. I'm just wondering like what that consists of. Like you mentioned SEO, social media management. What else do you have?

Julian Tillotson26:55Yeah, man, so my personal, again, I eat what I cook, right? So my team, right? Like I got my marketing team, but then I got SEO, blog, website, keyword optimization. What's the other guy do I forget? I got about five or six.

Dario28:01I'll add you to the network, the guest networking sheet. We know several people in Vancouver. Yeah.

Julian Tillotson28:06Yeah, hook it up. I just had a call before I had this. I just had a call to Canadian client. So before I got on with y 'all, but yeah, I have. And again, I've been doing this for 10 years, so I have some pretty deep relationships across the country. And in building that network, I've been burned. I think Dario, when I first talked to you, I had somebody in, I don't know if it was Toronto or Winnipeg, we had a shoot and got burned, guy didn't show up, shit like that. So yeah.

Kyrill28:34wow. That just didn't show up.

Dario28:35Yeah, he was mentioning it as wild.

Julian Tillotson28:36Dude, it was the morning of just didn't show up and that's never really happened to me where I mean this was a pretty big shoot We had it was for the same client, right? So obviously I Crisis management I did I did it well, there's still a client But yeah, we had a shoot up there and it was just like show up, you know Shoot two interviews get some b -roll around this place and you're out Talk to the guy simple nothing stuff. We all do in our sleep probably but

Kyrill28:42Yeah.

Julian Tillotson29:03you know morning of client calls me like hey where you guys at I'm like all right give me one second call this guy he's like well you never confirmed I'm like bro we had three pre -production calls we had I had my creative director on a call with you I sent over a pre -production document like you're an idiot so you know just

Dario29:13my god.

Kyrill29:22That's an excuse. I don't think that's what it was. Like you didn't confirm.

Dario29:23Yeah, that's an excuse, yeah.

Julian Tillotson29:25Bro, just like ghosted me and then I tried calling him back. You know, I was even, you know, my hands were tied. I was like, yo, I'll give you an extra thousand dollars, whatever it is. He just didn't want to work. He wanted to lay in bed, be a jerk and, you know, not make any money. So we ended up rescheduling, shoot, getting it done. But yeah, be careful with your subs, man. I've seen it all, nightmare -wise. That was probably one of the worst. But yeah.

Dario29:37Jesus.

Kyrill29:50I can imagine that. Yeah, but it's like, it's weird. Cause it's like you, like you said, you had three pre -production calls with them, one over the details. Like, did you guys have a contract and everything in place or?

Dario29:51Knock on wood that never happens to us.

Julian Tillotson30:03Dude, yes, our process is so rock solid. We've been using the same process for 10 years. It's like normal business. Like, OK, we have a contract. We have pre -production. This is the date. I sent you the invite on Google Calendar. You're just a bum. Yeah, like simple and stupid process. Like nothing complex. It's just a guy wanting to be lazy.

Kyrill30:13Yeah.

Dario30:18That's what we do too. Google invite Keonder. That's crazy.

Kyrill30:24Simple and stupid, I like it.

Dario30:27How did you deal, talk a little bit about the crisis management part with that? Like what did you even tell the client at that point? Cause I would have made an excuse like he got into a car accident or something. He died, the guy's dead. Let me find someone else.

Julian Tillotson30:33Yeah.

Dario32:50You're like that meme, I don't want peace, I want problems.

Kyrill32:54I only want problems.

Julian Tillotson32:56It's, I mean, that's really what, I mean, I'm sure any business owner or entrepreneur will tell you, like, the problems are what keep you in business. If you can't handle problems, you're gonna fail as a business. If you don't, if you think everything's gonna be great and culture all the time and happy, you're nuts. And I know that's what they try to sell people these days on social, but if you get in the game and you get down here on the field with real business owners, especially if you're in the service business and you're dealing with human beings, no two human beings are the same. Somebody might wake up with a crappy attitude,

Kyrill34:30And one thing to add.

Dario34:30I noticed anytime I get like, not angry, but just frustrated with like a client, especially if it's via emails and everything, I always just go like, okay, let me answer it tomorrow. It's not gonna be a nice reply or it's gonna just be Rocky says, let me just cool down and then get back to this.

Julian Tillotson34:42That's it. Yup.

Kyrill34:49Yeah.

Julian Tillotson34:50We all know what we really wanna say, but if we wanna stay in business and not get like one star reviews for the rest of our life, we can't do that, so.

Kyrill34:52Yeah.

Dario34:53Yeah. Yeah.

Julian Tillotson35:03Yeah.

Dario35:19KISS.

Julian Tillotson35:26The start to finish process for our clients is so fun and it's so easy and they're ready to do more content after that asking for a review is just easy.

Dario36:01Sounds like my email. I feel like you're reading my email right now.

Julian Tillotson36:06future client, you know, find us and do business with us. If you don't mind, leave us a five star view. Here's the link, PS, and then I'll give them like, PS, I've attached our video marketing for your business lead magnet to this. So I got this one, and then I have our video distribution and monetization list lead magnet. So it's another show of value. This is also a way to upsell.

Dario36:30What's a lead magnet?

Julian Tillotson36:33So a lead magnet is these are two of mine. Lead magnets are what I do, what I use to get clients in the top of funnel. So right now I'm running a PayDad campaign for this one. And in the past week I've got 97 leads on Facebook. Most of them, we'll probably do business with 5 % of those people if any. But it's just something to capture emails and then put them into my HubSpot and then drip campaign market to them over time, over months.

Dario37:35clever nice

Julian Tillotson38:01You know, that's it. And we send it out. Most of the time we get it. I don't hound people for reviews. If I send you a request for one and you don't respond, I'm probably not gonna keep going after you.

Dario38:14Do you do just like one follow up maybe a couple months later?

Julian Tillotson38:18No, I probably should. I probably should do better follow up with some of those people, but I don't. I just, and then the ones that I really get, like we just work with a huge, one of the biggest candy, I don't know if you guys have had like lemon head candy before? You ever had lemon heads or like Laffy Taffys or Now and Later's or any of them? Okay, well this company makes.

Kyrill38:35No.

Dario38:35No, I don't think it's up here in… Laffy taffy I've heard of. I don't think it's common here in Canada.

Julian Tillotson38:44This company makes all of that stuff. They've been around for 115 years. We just did a project for them. And we work with a large number of people on their team. And with that, we were able to get multiple five stars because they all had great experiences. So sometimes you're able to get the multiplication effect. Don't just reach out. Yeah, don't reach out to one person. Or sometimes you'll reach out to one person and he or she'll forward the email and you'll start getting reviews like, because you did a great job. So I'm not begging anybody for a review.

Dario38:57Nice.

Kyrill38:59nice.

Dario39:01whole team.

Julian Tillotson39:14We go out of our way to provide an amazing experience for our clients and provide massive value and when that hits them right here, they're appreciative and most of the time they give us a review no problem. And in depth, that's the thing. Our reviews are all real. It's all real. You can read them all. Go to INDIRAP, read our reviews. They're legit. These are clients that we have blown away with our process, our service delivery.

Dario39:39Yeah, that's the thing with our clients, like I noticed it was so hard to get reviews from them. So I like the the the current email I send out now is similar to yours. Like actually when you were saying your email, I'm like, it feels like you're reading mine. But I feel like sometimes it still takes a while to get it from them. And I think they just add it to their to do list and then just forget about it. I think they realize how important it is for like a small business to get that review.

Julian Tillotson39:52Right.

Kyrill40:03Yeah.

Julian Tillotson40:04You know what, here's another secret.

Dario40:20Mmm. Yeah.

Kyrill40:21Yeah.

Julian Tillotson40:36would you click a review? absolutely boom boom boom just hit them like that so I just jump in the chain yeah versus like waiting two three days and then so that's another way to do it and yes

Kyrill40:39Yeah, that's good. Keep it in the chain. Yeah.

Dario40:39That's clever. That's clever.

Kyrill40:47I think being more prompt is the right way to do it. I think, yeah, the second you've given them the video and they've gone off with it to start working on it and they're like, by the way, and it's like, wait, hold on, what? I think it's a timing thing. I think it's a timing thing to really get the reviews. And then if you get it right with the final deliverable and even like even there, it's like, if you like, and here's also like a link to the review or whatever is a good way to do it. I think, yeah, it's like get them on the high, right? Like really get it.

Julian Tillotson40:54Right.

Dario40:58Yeah.

Julian Tillotson41:04Sure.

Kyrill41:17Yeah.

Dario41:23Yeah

Kyrill41:25Next task, next task, right? You're one item on their to -do list at that point.

Julian Tillotson41:33Right, right. And then you're asking to do more work, you know, the next day it's like, I'm not screw these guys. I love them, but I'm done. So yeah. Well.

Dario41:33Yeah.

Kyrill41:40Thank you. Hello. Goodbye. And that's all there is to it.

Dario41:41haha

Julian Tillotson41:45It is what it is. So yeah, you win some you lose some but just I mean every client I send out that out to Send that ask for a review for every client and ask tell them to give you five stars I don't just say hey, can you give me a I'm like give me five stars. I'd appreciate it

Dario41:59Give me five stars, yeah that's good, I'm stealing that one. Give me five stars.

Julian Tillotson42:02Yeah, like you know what, if I did a three, we don't do three star work here, so it's like I'm confident that me telling you to give me five stars is not like I'm asking for something I don't deserve. If something happened and there was a hiccup in a project and there was like a slight problem, I'm probably not gonna ask for a review. You know what I'm saying? Like, for what? You know, I want the ones that, yeah, why risk it?

Dario42:11Yeah.

Julian Tillotson42:26You know, you can't win them all. I don't hit 100%. You know, we screw up too. And for those, I'm not going to ask for a review. Like, for what?

Kyrill42:34You know, it's kind of like the, you know, like in a way Google should be almost like how YouTube changed the liking and disliking system. Cause back in the old day, YouTube also had the five star review system for videos. And the reason they got re yeah, YouTube in from like 2006 to like 2010, maybe 11 ish or so. Yeah. It used to be a five star review system. And I remember seeing this and

Dario42:49Wait, what? Really? I don't remember this.

Julian Tillotson42:57I don't remember that. You're probably right, but I don't remember that one.

Dario43:01Really?

Kyrill43:03It was always confusing because you'd see a video and then someone would have like three stars, someone would have four stars, someone would have two. What is the currency? It was so arbitrary to decide what's a five star, a four star, or a three star for a video that YouTube abolished that entirely and just went with either like it or don't like it, right? And that's technically what it is. If you look at people's reviews most of the time, you're either getting a five star or a one star. How does someone determine three stars? It's like…

Julian Tillotson43:11Right. Right.

Kyrill43:32They did a great job, but maybe this, maybe that, but it was too subjective.

Julian Tillotson43:35It's too subjective. It's too subjective. Like, you know, like on Amazon, you read some of those reviews and it's like, the box cut my hand when I was opening the box. It's like, dude, so I'm gonna give you four, you know what I'm saying? Like stuff like that. It's like, dude, come on, man. But you know, again, when you're doing business with human beings and you're delivering a service, that's what you can expect. Just like.

Dario43:44Hehehehe… Hehehehe… Hehehehe…

Kyrill43:44I've seen those, I've seen those.

Dario43:49The box got my hand.

Kyrill43:50It's like, it's not even my fault. It's just.

Julian Tillotson43:59people having a bad day and they want to let the world know about it and I'm going to give you three stars instead of five. So whatever.

Kyrill44:06It's like, why four? It's like, come on, you're almost there.

Julian Tillotson44:09I don't know, man. I don't know, but yeah, they exist.

Dario44:09So in terms of your business, how much of a percent would you say you do marketing services versus video? Like is it mostly video content you do and then?

Julian Tillotson44:28Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I would say like 70 -30. 70 -30. Yeah, I mean, people primarily know us for delivering amazing content.

Dario44:3370 30. Okay, that's a good amount.

Julian Tillotson44:39You know, and that's, again, that's foundational content. That's your, you know, big videos, your brand videos, case studies, product videos, process videos, event videos, you know, animation videos, things like that. And, but then now we're starting to get a wave of, we also do a lot of social content for people. Because, you know, you got to have, you just got to have that. You got to be out there. So the foundational stuff, the social content, there's a lot of that and obviously paid creative for running paid ad campaigns, you know, commercials and things.

Dario45:20And going forward into the future, like, do you see yourself just staying in that in that ratio or do you see yourself getting more into the marketing side?

Julian Tillotson45:23Ahem.

Dario46:29Mm -hmm.

Julian Tillotson46:39You see a lot of RFPs coming out. They need content more and more. Even the government's understanding this. So it's never going away. I think it's always gonna be the front runner for us. Because that's where we started and that's what we love to do.

Kyrill46:53Yeah. Lean into your strengths, essentially. There's no point in, like you said, watering it down. Make that as like a core value offering for your clients. And then all those other services are, are additional. So like that's kind of a little bit of what Dario and I have been kind of like growing a little bit more. Cause like we're, we're really well rooted in video content. but obviously some of our clients, they need, they need help with photo, right? So what we've done is like built a partnership with a photography company here in Toronto. So anytime they need photographers,

Julian Tillotson46:59Yeah.

Kyrill47:23we bring those in, we bring them in to help execute for the client based on that. And that's kind of what you want to do. You want to provide other value offerings in certain other realms that you're not exactly an expert in, but still be that expert in what you're known for, what they're coming to you originally for.

Julian Tillotson47:35Yes.

Dario49:18Yeah.

Julian Tillotson49:44toxic mindset. And I think there needs to be a lot more of that collaboration everywhere. I talk to a lot of people and they're just, I don't talk to him because I'm like, you're crazy. Talk to everybody. If they present themselves to be less than a good person, then that's fine. But at least try to collaborate.

Dario49:56Hmph.

Kyrill50:06Yeah, like that you're describing a situation where it's like, like, obviously, you're not going to get along with everybody. And that's not what you're saying is like that you have to get along with everybody, but it's like, be open to getting along with more and more people in the industry. And if there really was going to be a monopoly of all clients going to one, to one person or one company, just look at the example of all the big ad agencies that are out there, right? There's so many of them, which goes to show even in the big

Julian Tillotson50:14No.

Kyrill50:33in the big leagues, right? Where with the million dollar commercials, there's still a need for a variety. There's still need for choice for clients because if there was just the one, then there would be no more choice at that point, right? And, you know.

Julian Tillotson50:38Yep.

Dario51:26Mm -hmm. Yep.

Julian Tillotson51:55businesses that need stuff. You got the card, there's so many things you can go after you can't have it all. You know and then yeah it's just like it's toxic and I think it's limiting to the man in the mirror. I just think you need to open your eyes to the opportunity that's out there.

Dario52:15Do you do any, I want to think back to sales a little bit. So you mentioned you were running paint, you're running paint campaigns and everything. Do you do any like cold outreach?

Julian Tillotson52:20Yeah.

Dario52:34Whoa, okay.

Kyrill52:35What? So how does that work?

Julian Tillotson52:43So warm up inbox, this is a thing. So you've heard of cold emails, right? You can't send a billion, trillion emails from your own inbox because after a while you get marked to spam, you'll burn up your inbox or demark reputation and you'll screw it up. There's a service called Apollo .io, right? This is what I use to send cold emails. So I'm a pretty damn good copywriter. All the copy on my website, all the copies in my emails, I write all the sales copy myself. So I write email cadences and sequences.

Dario54:20Well yeah on 3500 yeah that's 1 % pretty good.

Julian Tillotson54:23Yeah, or less than 1 % or whatever it is. If you're sending it out and you book five meetings, 10 meetings a week, you're pretty good. So that's one way is the email. Lead magnets, too. People that I send this stuff to, they go into a different sequence in HubSpot that drips them over two months or whatnot. I send out email blasts once a week to our audience around reposting our blogs or new service.

Kyrill54:23So it's like.

Julian Tillotson54:53offerings or new products that we offer, new YouTube videos that I might shoot, I send that out once a week.

Dario55:25You don't like Google AdWords anymore?

Julian Tillotson55:29It's not that I don't like it. The thing about Google Pay Per Click is you're only getting a small segment of the market that is…

Dario55:51I see.

Julian Tillotson56:06They would have never searched it because they didn't know they had the problem. So I'm letting them have a problem with this. This is how you use video to grow your business. This is if you have video but then it crashed and burned and didn't go anywhere. This is how you use video to, this is how you use distribution monetization to put your videos on steroids or whatever. So I have the mindset of yeah, I use a little percentage of Google Pay Per Click, but I'm more interested in the 90 to 95 % of the market that don't even, they don't know how to use video content.

Dario56:07Yeah.

Julian Tillotson56:36They don't have a strategy, they think it's too expensive, or they have video and it's not going anywhere. And then I present INDIRAP as a solution to solve all those problems via drip campaigns and value add campaigns and lead magnets.

Dario56:50God man, you know, I feel like a child listening to you. I'm like, I don't know anything.

Kyrill56:50Wow. What a system.

Julian Tillotson56:54I've been doing it, I've just been doing it for so long. I just say this off my eyes because again, look, I have ramped ad campaigns where I've wasted thousands of dollars. I've put in, most of the time with Google Paperclip, we're hitting 5X. I think the biggest one was like a 9X where we spent 10K and got a 90K client or something one time. But Google Paperclip is also the most expensive,

Dario57:41Yeah.

Julian Tillotson57:54Facebook or Instagram versus most marketing agencies that

Dario58:06Yeah, yeah.

Julian Tillotson58:33I mean, you're talking about like paid stuff. I've never had success. Yeah, I mean, I on the paid side, I've tried LinkedIn before. Their cost per click's just too high in my opinion. It's crazy, dude. Yeah, like my cost per lead on this thing is like $4 .63. Whereas on Google or on LinkedIn, cost per click might be $12, $15. So.

Dario58:34Yeah.

Kyrill58:35Paid or not paid, it depends.

Dario58:44It's very expensive.

Kyrill58:45Yeah.

Dario58:57Yeah. Yeah, it's very expensive.

Kyrill58:57Whoa.

Julian Tillotson58:59For me, it just, they don't have the backend, I don't know what's wrong with their algorithm, and LinkedIn's a client of mine. I work with LinkedIn. And I've told them this. I'm like, I don't know, that's why you don't see a ton of ads on LinkedIn, because it just doesn't work. Unless you're a big ass software company that has a huge budget and you're running, like I think, who is it? I think Design Pickle, one of those companies is running ads, because they had VC capital, and if you got a ton of money, good for you, I don't have VC.

Dario59:22yeah, yeah, yeah.

Julian Tillotson59:28money, you know what, I'm a private -owned entrepreneur. So it just doesn't make sense for me. I can get a lot more running ads on Facebook and Instagram or even Google Pay Per Click. I do post my successes and things like that on LinkedIn just to like stay in front of my network. And I do get, you know, referrals and stuff a lot. We get a lot of referrals, a lot of word of mouth. So I use it that way, but like the paid, I don't like, I have zero budgeted to LinkedIn for paid now and anytime in the future.

Kyrill1:00:07Yeah, it's more so like, like you just said, LinkedIn is more so the place where you post your successes, you share what you're doing with your network because that's where you connect more socially a little bit with your clients. LinkedIn is basically the place that everyone went to after Facebook. Facebook was where we were for the social interaction and then LinkedIn is the professional social interaction, right? So that, that that's essentially how people treat it at this point is like, this is what I'm up to. This is what, how the business is doing, yada yada yada.

Julian Tillotson1:00:13Yeah.

Kyrill1:00:38ads, it's no.

Julian Tillotson1:00:38Yeah, it's cool, but I also find it like people put on a face on LinkedIn. You know what I'm saying, it's like,

Dario1:00:43Mm -hmm. We all know. We've seen the reels making fun of it and everything.

Kyrill1:00:46We all know.

Julian Tillotson1:00:46Yeah Yeah, yeah, so you know I I see that and I know people on the face But then if I see something I'll always like grab them. I'll text them and they'll be like cool Yeah, you know it's like the real person versus like on LinkedIn where I'll respond and they'll say the corporate thing on I'm like dude Stop like stop. You know what I mean? So yeah, I'm an offline guy, too I do a lot of I'll meet people for lunch or coffee or just go over to somebody's studio and chop it up with them

Kyrill1:01:17Yeah.

Julian Tillotson1:01:24Big time, big time.

Dario1:01:33easier yeah

Julian Tillotson1:01:42Absolutely.

Kyrill1:01:49You know, just grab lunch, shoot the shit, chat a little bit. It's important because they're also looking for excuses for a break, you know? And sometimes just being invited to something is a nice thing to kind of be like, yeah, perfect. Let's, we haven't got it. Let's get out of the house. Yeah, exactly.

Julian Tillotson1:01:49Yeah.

Dario1:01:57Yeah.

Julian Tillotson1:01:57Exactly.

Dario1:02:02Get out of the house, right?

Julian Tillotson1:02:04And it's just another, it's a deeper level of connection when you like go after work or meet somebody or go grab tacos or, it's a deeper level of connection and you're more likely to reach out to that person quicker because you have connected versus like doing 10 Zooms a day. It's like, you get burnt out doing that. And again, this stuff's cool, Hangout, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, which I can't stand, but the in -person always wins if you ask me in the long run.

Dario1:02:29You

Julian Tillotson1:02:34Some of my longest clients were like, I got clients I've been working with for 10, 11, 12 years. I built that stuff.

Dario1:03:56Heh.

Kyrill1:03:56Yeah. Talking to a computer screen.

Julian Tillotson1:03:58I like face to face. I like hand to hand combat. Like let's go, let's meet, let's go do this, let's grab some food. I like that.

Dario1:04:00Hahaha.

Kyrill1:04:06Yeah.

Dario1:04:09Nice. We're getting near the end. So I was just curious about like your team and maybe we can talk a little bit about the Chicago market. So you see what it's like over there. So I guess let's start with your team. Like how big is your team?

Julian Tillotson1:04:12Okay.

Dario1:04:2634, that's a lot. Yeah, I don't think it's 30 or 40.

Kyrill1:04:29We've never quantified our subs, but like, yeah, maybe 10.

Julian Tillotson1:04:29Yeah, like.

Kyrill1:04:41Nice.

Dario1:04:51over.

Kyrill1:04:57So which states, yeah, he couldn't get to 50.

Julian Tillotson1:05:01We'll see, man, that Alaska thing, I don't know about that. We had some opportunities, but I don't know about that Alaska, bro. We'll see. We haven't done Hawaii, so we haven't done Hawaii, no Hawaii, no Washington, no North or South Dakota, and there's one. no, no, no, I'm sorry, we have done Washington, we've done Seattle. Oregon, Oregon, Oregon, yeah. So Oregon, the coast.

Kyrill1:05:04ha ha ha ha!

Dario1:05:21Yeah.

Kyrill1:05:26Okay.

Dario1:05:26There's some people from Oregon coming on, so if you need people there, you'll be able to find out soon.

Julian Tillotson1:05:31I just, I actually have a shoot, we just, the client I talked to before, the Vancouver, and there's one in Oregon. So, I'm gonna hit you up for the network. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're getting there, we're getting there. But yeah, we've been all over the place, man.

Kyrill1:05:39Check, check. You're gonna cross it off.

Dario1:05:41Hehehehe

Kyrill1:05:48nice.

Julian Tillotson1:05:58I mean, the beautiful thing about Chicago is that it's a hardworking city. Everything's here. You have immediate downtown area that people know about. And there's everything. The real estate market is amazing here. There's a lot of tech. There's a huge hospitality. Hyatt is located here. Hyatt's a client of mine. It's one of their global headquarters. Restaurants, senior hospitality, there's everything. I mean, it's a world class city. It's the third largest city in the country. So you have a lot here.

Kyrill1:06:49Well, hopefully we'll make our way down there at some point, but now we will do it.

Julian Tillotson1:06:53Come on through. Yeah, come down here, come by office. I got you guys on lunch. Easily. I got you.

Dario1:06:55Haha.

Kyrill1:07:00And same, if you're ever in Toronto, have you been to Toronto or no?

Julian Tillotson1:07:03Yes, yes, I'm gonna come up. Look, I'm gonna tell you the truth, man. So the past three or four times, we had issues getting into Canada. It wasn't Toronto. Me and Paul from my team, we had issues in Montreal. They kept us in customs till like 1 a over there. Dude, they were like joking and like, you know, we don't speak French, so they were, you know, which is fine, we were just sitting there. But we knew they were talking crazy, dude. They were like laughing.

Dario1:07:21What?

Kyrill1:07:32What?

Julian Tillotson1:07:33They were like, they were, and then they like, they like had my IDs like, you're doing it, and they had like Googled us like, Indy, so they were like looking at videos. I was like, whatever dude, so they let us through. Yeah. Bored, bro, bored. So yeah, that happened, and then one time, my guys, we had to fly.

Kyrill1:07:44They're just wasting your time, my god. They must have been so bored and they wanted to do –

Dario1:07:44hahahaha

Julian Tillotson1:07:57I think it might have been in Toronto. So we went to fly out of O 'Hare, which is the main airport here. This was during COVID. They said some kind of crazy COVID rule. So it was like, whatever. My guys decided to drive eight hours up to Toronto through Buffalo. And they got to the border and they said, nope, you're not getting in. So we've had some problems getting through. I don't know.

Dario1:08:14Why?

Kyrill1:08:16It was COVID, Dario, that's why. No.

Dario1:08:18they weren't letting people in?

Julian Tillotson1:08:19We had, it was COVID times, I don't know. We didn't have any issues in Calgary. We love Calgary, I love it up there. But yeah, I've had some bumps and bruises. The guy that ghosted me over there, Winnipeg, so like I'm a little scarred, but yeah, it's all good. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly, man. I'm glad I met y 'all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, for sure.

Dario1:08:33Don't worry, we'll make it right. Now you know us and we know everyone, so we'll make it right.

Kyrill1:08:36my god.

Dario1:08:46crazy. Okay, I think now is a good time to end it. So let me just pull up your site here. So guys, if you want to check them out, it's indirap .com. So I N D I R A P .com. And then your social media handles are.

Julian Tillotson1:08:50Sure.

Kyrill1:09:03at INDIRAP? Okay, there you go. Consistency.

Julian Tillotson1:09:04Yeah, just INDIRAP. Everything's INDIRAP. Yeah.

Dario1:09:04Add INDIRAP. Yeah. Yeah, so add INDIRAP. I'm definitely gonna do a little bit more research on the content you published, because I feel like you have it nailed down, man. Just listening to you talk, I'm like, wow, I got a lot of work to do after this.

Kyrill1:09:15Yeah.

Julian Tillotson1:09:16I've been doing it for a long time.

Kyrill1:09:20Yeah.

Julian Tillotson1:09:21You know what, man, that's the thing.