Rebranding, Sales, and Scaling a Video Business (ft. Miami Video Productions)

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Dario00:44Okay, perfect. So, all right, let's just get it started and then we can dive back in, testing out the thumbs up feature on Riverside. Okay, guys, welcome to episode 53. We got Ariel Martinez with us today. He's from Miami. His company is Miami Video Productions. So, funny story about you, Ariel. Kyrill actually sent me your podcast about four or five months ago.

Ariel Martinez01:03Mm-hmm.

Kyrill01:09Oh my god, I was like, why does he seem familiar? I didn't even realize this.

Dario01:13Yeah, the girl sent me your podcast. He's like, hey, check this out. This guy's doing something similar to us and his episodes are pretty good. And I watched it and I was like, oh, yeah, this is pretty cool. And I added it to my list and totally forgot about it. A month later, I'm reaching out, finally get in touch with you. And I'm like, why does he sound familiar and why does this picture look really familiar to?

Ariel Martinez01:14That's so fun.

Ariel Martinez01:25There you go.

Kyrill01:34Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Ariel Martinez01:38Yeah, no, well, we have a big library online. And every time I hear that someone has even heard it, I forgot that I did do the podcast. And it's always interesting to get that feedback again.

Kyrill01:51So you're not doing it anymore?

Ariel Martinez01:53I am. So I was like, I took like a year off because just work started getting crazy. I got married. And then now we have thank you. We're about to celebrate now two years, though. So now we're. Huh? No, no, I'm saying because I'm still not back is what I'm saying. Sorry about that. No, no, no. Marriage life. Sorry about that. No, marriage life is the best.

Kyrill01:57Mm-hmm.

Dario02:02Congrats.

Kyrill02:03Nice.

Dario02:08You see that? Like it's a bad thing. You said it like it's a bad thing.

Kyrill02:17We're saving you from your wife, don't worry.

Dario02:19Yeah, yeah.

Ariel Martinez02:22She's actually in the other room with our, with our newborn now. So it's definitely been one thing after another. And then I finally decided like, this has to come back, like, this is going to have to work into the schedule somehow. So we're still figuring that out, but we're going to relaunch it now. Um, different, uh, with the different sort of branding, different, uh, approach, uh, to the podcast. So, uh, but yeah, still working on that.

Dario02:47So for those that don't know, what was your podcast about and what's your new focus gonna be? And what's, what was the name of it too so that if they want, they can check it out.

Ariel Martinez02:55So the funny cause I'm like the king of rebrands. I am always like renaming things. So it originally started off as the iFilmMaker podcast, which was fine. And like, it was cool. People knew about it. I wasn't like, I'm always second guessing the names that I pick. And then it was fine. We did a couple hundred episodes and then toward the end, before I took a… break from it, I had rebranded it to, cause I rebranded my entire company to Miami Video Productions. And then I rebranded the podcast, Miami Video Podcast. Why? I don't know. I think it really was more of like, if I'm doing this and really not making any money on it, it's just volunteer stuff. Maybe it should just point back to the website. But then after I made that change, I was thinking, wait, Sometimes I don't want my clients seeing this stuff too. So I do talk about my clients sometimes. So like, man, I really didn't have like sort of a focus and a direction. All I knew is that I love talking about video production. I love talking about it. So I, you know, the podcast was about me. I had a co-host, I had a couple of different co-hosts throughout the podcast then I invited a bunch of guests on and I did very little solo episodes. And it was really more kind of like

Dario03:57Ha ha ha.

Ariel Martinez04:24sort of your guys's model, you invite somebody on, you have a conversation, you pick sort of a topic of discussion and you kind of talk around that topic. This new direction is gonna be a lot more educational based. It's gonna be a lot more step-by-step guides, it's gonna be a lot more solo episodes and there's going to be a course that I'm actually building out that is going to be catered toward that as well. So it's a lot more. I guess on my end to try and have another source of revenue type of deal, but at the same time, I really think that, you know, there's tons of filmmaking courses out there. This is not going to really be a filmmaking course. It's going to be more of a business building course. I think that in my career, in my business, I've been able to do things that I don't see a lot of my, I guess, colleagues doing. And then I think that some people can benefit from that knowledge and how I do it because I really do take a lot of knowledge And wisdom from people that are not in our industry a lot more business based Professionals and entrepreneurs and I've implemented that in my business model and I think that a lot of people can benefit from that

Dario05:43That's something we were, Kyrill and I were chatting about off the podcast as well. Like one of our long-term goals was like, Hey, you know, maybe, maybe when we hit a hundred episodes, we'll just amalgamate it all into like a course or something or a book. Who knows.

Kyrill05:46Yeah.

Ariel Martinez05:55Yeah, you could absolutely.

Kyrill05:58I would say even a thousand. I feel like a thousand gives it that extra little bit of like, oh, we've really talked to a lot of people kind of thing. But yeah, that was the other thing you mentioned, which was you're talking about like reaching out and talking to different types of businesses. In the kind of guests that you bring on, are they mostly video production companies or is, okay. Or are you thinking of transitioning that?

Ariel Martinez06:18Yeah. So now in this new rebrand, in this new sort of approach, it's going to not be mostly, it will be video production professionals, but it's going to be entrepreneurs. Like it could be a guest about how they manage to achieve a certain type of success of scale, right? And they're using a technique that could easily be applied into our business model as well. So I think that it's not a bad idea because that's what I've done. I've looked at other entrepreneurs that are not, not one of my mentors are in my space, in my video production industry. And I've learned so much from them. And I think that it's important to see how other people do it in other industries, because although some things might not work, other things might. And I think that we can apply those kinds of scaling techniques, business building techniques, email listing models that they use in our business. as well with hiring with selective clients and things like that.

Kyrill07:21Well, it's an outside perspective.

Dario07:21Let's talk about your rebranding. Oh, sorry. I was gonna ask.

Kyrill07:24Yeah, I was just saying, it's just because it's an outside perspective. That's all.

Dario07:28Yeah, I was going to ask about the rebranding. Like, what did you do in the rebranding? Was it just like a name change? Was it like a, was there more that happened on the business side of things? Or what was part of the?

Ariel Martinez07:40Um, the rebrand was really to establish a difference in approach. The rebrand is really to let them know this is a different show. I didn't want to open up another, another podcast. I didn't want to have another podcasting account. I'm going to keep the same library that we have. And there's basically going to be like an establishing point where this has changed from here on forward. Um,

Dario08:02I meant more so for the business. So like when you went from, I don't know what your business was called before Miami Video Productions. Also, how did you even get the URL, the domain for that? It's like, that's gonna be a tricky one to get, no? Ha ha.

Ariel Martinez08:13It literally, it literally landed on my lap. I had Miami Video Services. The rebrand really was to Miami Video Services. I wanted production, but it was not available. So I had services. It lasted like four or five months before somebody emailed me, Hey, Miami Video Productions.com is available $400. And I said, yeah, I know. So I jumped on that real fast and immediately started rebranding once more.

Dario08:20Okay.

Kyrill08:20Ahem.

Kyrill08:32No, that's cheap. That's cheap.

Dario08:33That's pretty good.

Ariel Martinez08:40from Miami Video Services to Miami, because I wanted MVP also, the initials MVP. So that is how that happened. And what it was before it was just Miami Video, I'm sorry, it was Ariel Martinez Films, which was myself. And so it happened, my first company when I first started was Ten Gates Productions. That was a production company. But then I immediately, a couple of years into it, I'm like, I decided.

Dario08:46Oh nice.

Ariel Martinez09:09I want to be a DP, I want to be a cinematographer, I want to sell myself and I want to have that image. So I did that, I rebranded to Ariel Martinez Films and it worked perfectly. It worked, my clients started hiring me, things were going great, I was getting some great jobs, great DP work, which I still am, but then as I grew, as I continued to, and I started like applying these, everything I'm learning, right, from those around me. that are like mentoring me and kind of speaking into my life, speaking into my business, without knowing it just started growing. And then before you know it, I'm there hiring crews of like 15, 20 people on a set. And sometimes it's not even a film set. Sometimes it's a broadcast. Sometimes it's a podcast. Sometimes it's very different things that kind of doesn't brand well with Ariel Martinez Films. And so I started thinking. I want to build a production company. So do I want to grow myself and do as much as I can possibly do? Because it doesn't brand well. Let's say I want, if I want more clients like that, because it's very profitable to have jobs like that. If I want more clients like that. And then they come and visit Ariel Martinez Films website. It's not going to be as appealing as coming to a production company and seeing that we do a lot of good work and showing showcasing everything that we do. So. under Ariel Martinez Films, I had a hard time sort of, because the word films is really what was killing me. And then my name, it's really a lot of stuff, people that I'm sending out on these sets. And I had to kind of separate myself from my name, really from the work. It really had to be a production company. My clients already knew me at the time. So they could, they always had, they were able to reach out to me regardless to continue working. But I started to go in the direction of building a production company where, I don't always have to do it myself, right? And then it actually kind of, it kind of blew my mind when I was working one time and a couple of times I've heard one of my friends on set, you know, a colleague of mine and they answer a potential client on the phone and they, you know, they're saying, hey, are you available this day? And they're like, no, I'm sorry, I can't do it. They hang up. And then it happened again. And in my mind, I'm thinking,

Kyrill11:21Cough

Ariel Martinez11:32Why would you miss out on that work? Like, even though you can't do it, like you could send somebody and still make some money. And that's kind of like where it started like, think I started, it started hitting me. Like people don't do this. Like you're only selling your own time. And if you really want to grow and be profitable, you know, you got to sell other people's time as well. You know? And so that's.

Dario11:53You made the transition from videographer to video production owner. That's the main transition you were making at that time.

Ariel Martinez11:57Correct. Essentially, yeah. Right, so I had to take my name out of it and show a production company that could do a lot of different types of work. And then the scale of work that we could do, because every videographer, you know, I'm sure you guys can go in and show up with one camera and a backpack and just get footage for a recap video at any event. That same person, can they have an eight camera setup with a jib and two steady cams and go live and at the Adrian Arts Center in downtown? Well, yes, they can do that as well. And so that's kind of what I wanted to showcase, sort of as a production company, that it could all be done really, and then obviously at a high level, at a good level, you're not compromising quality.

Kyrill12:43Yeah, so now.

Dario12:43Yeah, it's an important transition to make and the name change is definitely a part of that. When Kyrill and I were first starting out, one key thing we wanted to do was we wanted to give off the impression we were a business versus just a freelancer. That's why we opted for the name Lapse Productions and not something that incorporated Dario and Kyrill films, something like that. Because we knew if we did that, then we would always be looked at as videographers. And those are actually two distinct things that… Sometimes clients get confused with but like if they're there there's completely different search terms You know like if you go on Google and you're typing videography You're mostly getting well mostly wedding companies or like solo freelancers right versus if you go video production That's when you get that's when you get production companies

Ariel Martinez13:26Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kyrill13:31The other problem when you go with your own name, sometimes for a production company, is that you're always gonna be viewed as the one that people wanna hire. So you're gonna be going back to the same aspect of selling your time, because if you're not available for something and you tell the client, like, hey, let me send out one of my guys, they're like, no, but this is the Curell Films or Dario Films or Ario Films. Like we want you because that's what we're hiring for. We don't want someone else, right? So,

Ariel Martinez13:54Yeah.

Kyrill14:00you're selling the person at that point rather than the service and the team, right? Like you're trying to sell a team rather than a person. That's what you're doing with a production company. And to do that, you have to come up with a brand name, irrespective of your name, or at least do like what our last guest on the podcast did, which was kind of come up with like an interesting name based off of his, but you know, it all depends. You have to sell it as a team, essentially.

Ariel Martinez14:27Yeah, with all that being said though, it's not like you can't be extremely profitable just selling your name. You could. I just actively made the decision. I thought about it and decided, do I want to grow? If I kept my name, my prices just have to keep going up and up and up. And you could do that if you're at that level. I think I'm a pretty good DP. I think I could get the job done for the most part. But I'm not.

Dario14:28Yeah.

Ariel Martinez14:57I don't know that I was interested in becoming the DP and becoming the one to hire as opposed to becoming the production company to hire. And so I made the conscious decision to, you know what, I want to grow a production company and have everything under one umbrella and be what I think is more profitable that way. I think it would have been a harder road to go. if I was to just keep my name, raise my prices, get better at my craft, and hopefully convince some people to hire me and pay me a huge premium to do the job.

Dario15:38Well, there's a ceiling if you stick with just being like a DP. There's a ceiling because if you're doing corporate, you could be the best one. But there's a certain rate that you'll need to abide by for certain levels of productions. After that point, it kind of gets to a point where it's like, well, OK, you're good. But I can't afford that. That's not part of the budget. I think transitioning to producer, that's when you can make the ceiling is what you cap it at, essentially. It depends on what types of projects you take on.

Ariel Martinez15:51All right.

Ariel Martinez15:55Yeah. Yeah, and that's what I mean by.

Ariel Martinez16:08Yeah, that's what I mean by it's a harder road to follow because I mean, you're talking about, are we going up to like the Shane Hurlbut side of like D P that level because he does commercial stuff as well. But I'm sure his prices are completely different. If that's where your where your approach is, and that's fine. But it's a harder road to go on, you know, and Yeah.

Dario16:29It's a different road too. Cause that's more like commercial, like again, like we mentioned this on the podcast, there's essentially three different paths. You either go into commercials, you go corporate or you go film and TV. It's like, they're not the same road and each one is its own animal, right?

Ariel Martinez16:42Hmm. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm more on the actually, we actually do a lot of corporate, we do some commercial, but mostly corporate stuff. For the most part, what would you call a what would you call a graduation? What would you call graduation like a commencement ceremony?

Kyrill17:00Yeah, we saw it.

Dario17:03Hmm? What's that?

Kyrill17:07Education, education or that's event, that's event, that's event.

Dario17:08That's corporate. That falls on the… yeah, but that falls on the corporate. That's all corporate. Yeah.

Kyrill17:13More so, yeah.

Ariel Martinez17:14Is it? Yeah, I mean, yeah, they're you know, they're

Dario17:17If you're dealing with a business, it's corporate.

Ariel Martinez17:20That's true. But so is commercial.

Dario17:21Unless you get like commercials, commercials I would say is, well commercial I would say is like higher level corporate in a way. Because it's more so for stuff that's going to be broad, I guess it's part of broadcasters.

Kyrill17:21But if it's in it.

Ariel Martinez17:35I mean, I've done commercials locally.

Kyrill17:36ads, it's ad space. It's like you're literally pushing, you're pushing ad dollars behind a project. That's what is a commercial work. Whereas corporate is like non ads ad revenue push, I guess in a way.

Dario17:38Ad space, yeah.

Ariel Martinez17:45Look.

Dario17:49But they do, they do technically. Actually, this is an interesting discussion. What's the difference between commercial and corporate?

Ariel Martinez17:49I don't know that it-

Ariel Martinez17:55I mean, look, no company, I'm talking education, I'm talking university, they won't spend so much money if they don't expect to get something back from it. Right. So no, yeah, you're right. Any company, even movies. So we're really talking about categories here, right? What does it fall under? Commercial or so if you're, yeah, it's a very commercial and corporate. Don't.

Dario18:04Yeah. I mean any company really. Every time, anytime. Yeah.

Kyrill18:24Very vague umbrellas.

Ariel Martinez18:25I feel like they're almost the same. Are we thinking narratives? Narratives is very different to shoot. That is a hard road to follow.

Dario18:32It's still, yeah, narrative is completely, that's a different thing in itself, but I feel like.

Ariel Martinez18:37You could make money on narrative, but it's almost like trying to be in action. You got to be in the right place.

Dario18:42I guess, okay, commercials, I guess is, commercials, I guess, if it goes on TV, it'll be considered a commercial. Commercial world? I guess, okay, commercials, I guess is, commercials, I guess, if it goes on TV, it'll be considered

Kyrill18:51It's all digital now like commercials are digital Dario. It's not you can't say commercials just TV now like it okay

Ariel Martinez18:52Yeah, but…

Dario18:54Yeah, damn, that's true.

Ariel Martinez18:58You guys have to…

Dario18:58Maybe the size of the budget, because it's like not… A manufacturing company is not gonna put $100,000 to create a video and then pump like half a million to promote it on social media. It'll be like Coca-Cola will do that, but not the… Maybe…

Kyrill19:03Yeah

Ariel Martinez19:07Let's do it.

Ariel Martinez19:12I couldn't…

Ariel Martinez19:18If a company calls you and says, hey, we want to do a web video, let's say, we want to do interviews with our customers, want to do some B-roll, put this together, put it on our website, what is that called? What is that considered corporate? What if they get that same video, then put it on TV, cut it down to 30 seconds, is that now commercial? I think it's, yeah.

Dario19:31corporate.

Kyrill19:39Yeah

Dario19:39But you know, for them to do that, maybe the scale of it changes. Well look, because work for TV…

Ariel Martinez19:44No, no it doesn't. Listen, I see commercials on TV that look atrocious. There is no scale there. There is no scale on those TV commercials.

Kyrill19:48Anything can be a commercial that's the point he's making Dario. He's saying that…

Dario19:53Okay, when you listen, look, on paper, yes, but when we mean commercial, I think it means something else. Like maybe for us, when we say like, oh, we're doing commercials, like it's, you kind of understand it's like, oh, okay, that's a whole other level, no?

Kyrill19:55Oh my god. You know what?

Kyrill20:12Guys, another different thing. Oh, sorry, Ariel, just to add one more point. The commercial world in the US is very different from Canada. For example, you have the entire medical sector that has all those infomercial commercial type projects that are everywhere. Every time I go to a hotel in the US, there are so many different kinds of commercials that I never even thought were possible compared to what's in Canada. So.

Ariel Martinez20:15Yeah, quite good.

Dario20:33Ha ha

Ariel Martinez20:36Oh my god, that's so funny.

Kyrill20:39That's probably why there's such a weird blurred line. It's like, what is commercial or corporate? It's like, it's literally just, they'll film it and they'll throw it out there.

Ariel Martinez20:46I just, I honestly, I categorize it all under one. I put it all in a commercial for me. I put it, like, for example, on my website, you'll find it says commercial, right? However, I do put corporate events, right? Just to make sure that they know we could still work. No, that's a separate thing. So I wanna make sure that I try to find what…

Dario21:04Under the commercials or like separate? Separate, right?

Kyrill21:06No, no, separate, Dario.

Ariel Martinez21:13the different types of clients that would potentially be visiting my website. And then I put those categories anywhere from. Uh huh.

Kyrill21:20I think I… Sorry, go, go.

Ariel Martinez21:24Yeah, yeah, just anywhere around there, commercial, corporate events. I specifically, because I get a lot of clients that just want an interview and they don't care about B-roll. I specifically do like testimonial videos. Like that's a separate thing that could fall into a commercial, but testimonial videos is something that I put in there and things that I get called for on a separate basis.

Dario21:34Ahem.

Kyrill21:49but testimonials are a type of video. They're not necessarily kind of like a different space, right, but the other thing is, I think we, I think I got it guys. Internal is corporate, external is commercial, done, dusted. That's it. Internal, external, that's the best way to describe it. Cause a lot of the time, yeah, they just need an interview even with a little bit of B-roll. It's a lot of the time for internal stuff.

Dario22:00Hahaha

Ariel Martinez22:02That's actually not a bad word.

Dario22:08But, but, Kyrill, but, Kyrill, what, but commercial is really just B2C, not B2B, no?

Kyrill22:18No, man. No, there's a lot of B2B. You think businesses don't sell to other businesses?

Ariel Martinez22:22This guy's trying to yoga his way through this conversation.

Dario22:24no yes but it's the i think the distinction is scale i'm gonna stick with that one

Ariel Martinez22:31scale. Listen, if you

Kyrill22:31Yeah.

Dario22:33And outreach, and outreach. Like if you're TARC, because it's B2B, you know the market is small, right? Like it's very direct.

Kyrill22:35D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D-D

Ariel Martinez22:38But here's the thing, you could get the same video and put it in a small space and a big space. You get me? Like you could scale it up to a nationwide commercial and you can have it local and you can have it on your website. The same video could do the whole thing. So how do you just…

Dario22:50I'll give you a… you know what? This is probably the argument that people in narratives have where it's like, TVs are still like narratives, but then film people will probably go like, no, it's not the same thing, it's different.

Ariel Martinez23:05T-TVs?

Dario23:06Like, you know, like there's film and TV, right? But I'm sure between them they have like arguments where it's like no, film is more of a narrative, it's more artistic compared to TV. Like shows, like shows. Show.

Ariel Martinez23:16When you say TV, when you… Oh, television. Television, okay. Television. He's talking about the categories that you see on Netflix, like TV.

Kyrill23:20I think he means television shows. Yeah, I was getting confused too for a minute. Ha ha ha.

Kyrill23:30Hahaha!

Dario23:31Oh

Ariel Martinez23:33as opposed to movies.

Kyrill23:36Now that's flipped.

Ariel Martinez23:38Yeah, no, that. Yeah. People are binging on a lot of shows now. But yeah, you're right. They are. They've got the quality has gotten like, I guess, TV level or they've gotten up there.

Dario23:51Hehehehe

Kyrill23:55I feel like this is the business version of Canon or Sony, you know, that we're kind of talking about.

Dario23:59Hehehehe

Ariel Martinez24:00Yeah. Yeah, but at the end of the day, so, you know, my goal is to show that we could do it all. You know what's interesting, though? I don't have I really don't have narratives on my website. Like, I don't know. I don't think. Right. Yeah, pretty much most of the time, those projects are self-funded most of the time. And if they're not, they're looking at a Hollywood studio to put it together, you know, so.

Dario24:16Well that's like movies though, right? Like when people say narratives, they mean either short films or movies. So it's like a completely different… Yeah.

Ariel Martinez24:32or people that specialize in narratives. But yeah, I also don't have weddings on my website either. No, I do them as favorites for friends. I'll do it as favors as for friends. I know shooters that do them and, if they had a budget, I'll help facilitate a couple of people to go and shoot it for them. But yeah, I don't do weddings.

Dario24:42Do you still do them?

Kyrill24:42It's a diff-

Dario24:45Made the transition out.

Dario25:02Yeah.

Ariel Martinez25:03I think I've done two weddings. Paid.

Kyrill25:03No, we said… Good.

Dario25:07Hmm. Yeah. Um, was I going to ask? I forgot. Kyrill, go ahead.

Kyrill25:16I was just saying like essentially like narrative work, like you said, is something completely separate. Usually it's not a client that is looking for content, it's not going to come to you and say like, hey, let's make a short film. So it's a completely different genre of video creation at that point. When you're starting like a production company, you want to figure out what type of clientele you're serving, who you're selling to essentially, like who's your audience, right? And if you're doing a lot of the time corporate commercial, this is why we're having this debate because a lot of the time corporate and commercial… can be the same client, right? For one client, you could be doing a lot of corporate internal videos, but they might also need a 30 second spot that needs to get pushed out into the digital space, the television space and all that stuff. But that's why there's that kind of blurred line because it's commercials like as Dario said, in a way sometimes it's a more scaled up type project. Whereas when you think of corporate is a lot of the time also a much smaller scale type project, right? If you're serving wedding clients, then you're serving wedding clients. If you're doing only narrative companies, who are, or only if you're only doing narratives, short films and film production, who are you selling to? To producers and to agencies and like, uh, other, other people in that space. It's a completely different type of people that you're trying to sell to. And that's what you need to figure out when you're doing a production company. Who is your main client base and who are you selling to?

Ariel Martinez26:43That's good. Yeah, I also like what you said regarding how to distinguish it. I think you nailed it when you said corporate is internal and commercial is what goes out to the public. So that's not a bad way of describing it, for sure. So.

Dario27:01I want to talk a bit about the landscape down there. So there's a ton of companies that have left California and moved over to Texas and Florida. I'm just wondering, have you noticed more work coming your way because of that? Or as the scene changed, have you noticed more competition? Maybe some companies moved out from the West, come to the East side.

Ariel Martinez27:22Um, I'll be honest with you, I really don't monitor… that the landscape or my competition that way. I don't, I, because I don't know what good that would do me, right? So I am constantly, I do look at my competition in the sense of what are they doing? How are they doing it? Is there something that I can improve? I'm looking at their website. I always look for improvements that could be made, but at that scale monitoring, what the industry looks like, let's say in all of Miami, for example, I wouldn't even know how to begin to monitor that. Like there's no website that I can go to that I know of that would tell me how work is doing. The only way that I monitor it really is I ask those around me and studios that I'm currently working at, how's work going? How's, you know, how's it? So, Like, for example, we just got out of one of the slowest summers I have ever experienced ever. Oh my God. It was like, oh, it was so slow. Like scary. And I thought, mind you, I have a one month old. I was like, what's going on here? Like, we got to get back to work. And and my wife just stopped working too. So like, okay. Yeah, bad timing. But

Dario28:32Oh really?

Kyrill28:34Even there.

Dario28:37We had something similar here.

Dario28:45Hehehe

Dario28:52Bad timing.

Ariel Martinez28:55But that is a pattern in the summer that it usually gets slow, but this has been the slowest. And so I started asking around, I started asking people that I work with a lot, I was working at a studio and asked them like, hey man, how was your summer like? Has it been slow for you too? And every single one of them has said, absolutely. It was scary as hell. One of the studios that I was working at said that they almost had to start laying people off because it was that slow. It was just a very, very slow summer. Which makes sense because…

Dario29:18energies.

Ariel Martinez29:24A lot of people take vacations when school's out, right? So they're not at work. You got marketing people that are out on vacation with their kids because they're not in school anymore. So there's a lot less work to go around, but it's really, the patterns haven't really changed. So now it's picking up a lot. Now I'm getting like two and three inquiries per day. So that's like a lot coming in now. So there are a lot of ebbs and flows, and you guys know this, when it rains it pours. And so now it's about to pour. So the pattern really hasn't changed.

Kyrill30:02It's interesting how people may not, some people may not realize this, that all these different industries pretty much revolve around the education system and what happens with kids these days. Whatever's going on with schools, that's what's going on with everybody else. It's like, okay, kids are off for two months from July to August. Don't expect much work at that time because everyone's gonna be going on vacation, putting off projects till after they come back. That's why a lot of the time, September is usually a really busy time.

Dario30:12Hahaha, yeah. Heh, heh, heh.

Ariel Martinez30:13Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyrill30:32for everybody because everybody's coming back getting started at the very least into the end of September and October can get really busy But I mean one of the other ways we've always seen about how things are with other competition is who we're pitching Against sometimes right do you find that you're with the back to Dario's question about how people a lot of companies are moving into Miami and Florida Do you find that you're pitching up against new companies that you haven't seen before, or is it still a lot of the same people that you're still kind of in competition with?

Ariel Martinez31:06It's still a lot of the same. To be honest, I don't know that, again, I'm not, I'm not, if I'm pitching to a client or to a potential client, I don't know who else they're considering. So I really wouldn't, again, I stay focused on trying to provide the best work that I can and improving. And if, let's say for, any reason I get rejected, I always try to make it a point to see why, right? Was my price not the best? You know, were they looking for something more specific? Um, I've, I've been rejected because they wanted somebody that specializes in underwater shooting and now I'm fine with that. Like it's just not my specialty. I'll try it if you, if you're wanting to, you know, to go with that. But, um,

Kyrill31:38Mm-hmm.

Ariel Martinez32:01and I've gotten rejected because the price was too high. Right. And it has been like the price could have been high. We're talking about thousands of thousands of dollars and the price was high by like a few hundred bucks. Like wow, I a client actually told me that I was like, whoa, like they did not want to like if the work I mean that tells me and I mean, look when you're looking at your

Kyrill32:15No.

Ariel Martinez32:31competition. You can see their work and be like, okay, I could do that. Or you already know in your head, whether you say it out loud or not, my work is way better than that. Right. Um, it makes, so that was sort of the case with that specific one. And I'm thinking like, what are they looking for? You know, like, or is this somebody, they had to have known somebody inside, but other than that, I don't, I don't dwell on that too much. Um, it, it just really,

Kyrill32:54Mm-hmm.

Ariel Martinez32:58It's really, those are the things that sort of I pay attention to and how to improve my pitch. Right. I don't, and if I could see the pitch of my competitors, that'd be great. Just to learn from them, to really, to, uh, to see if there's something that I'm not doing. So I'm always in a constant state of trying to improve sort of my overall business model.

Dario33:17I used to ask my leads, maybe last year I used to ask them, once I was on a good term with them I'd ask them who else was in the running. I think after a certain point I just stopped caring about it because it really didn't matter at that point. It was fun at the beginning to go like, oh wow, we're in the same conversation as those other guys. I'm like, oh nice, okay, I guess we're doing something right.

Kyrill33:17Yeah.

Kyrill33:38Yeah.

Ariel Martinez33:41Yeah.

Dario33:45But then after a while you're like, I don't really care. And I find it didn't really add to anything. And at the end of the day, you kind of know it's like, OK, it's probably going to be me and that company and maybe that other company. But all the times I found that, again, it didn't matter. And later on, you start to find out that it really just does come down to either money, their budget limitations, or.

Kyrill33:48It doesn't add to it.

Ariel Martinez33:52Yeah.

Dario34:13or really the specific portfolio work that they were looking for. Because a lot of times we'll get leads coming in and maybe it's a very specific thing. I always tell them it's like, well, we haven't done that exactly for that specific industry. We've done something similar and it's gonna be a mix of this video and that video. Hopefully they're able to have the creativity and the vision to see what I'm talking about. But if they don't, usually that kind of kills the proposal at times. That's what I suspect.

Kyrill34:23Yeah.

Dario34:42But it kind of is like a numbers game at the end of the day. Like what's that saying? You gotta get to nine no's before you get the one yes. So I really don't let it get to me personally. It's just like, okay, cool, next, whatever. And another thing on the proposal then, I often find that what helps our proposal game the best is actually just seeing it after like a couple weeks or so. Like maybe you give it like a breather.

Kyrill34:46Yeah.

Ariel Martinez34:49Right.

Dario35:12And then you just look at it from a fresh set of eyes. And then I often find it's like, oh, you know what, that slide isn't important. Why do we even have that there? Like if I'm a client, I wouldn't care about this. Get rid of that. That's usually what helps our proposal game the most. And I find that it changes every couple of weeks anyway. So I'm not too worried about it getting into the wild. Like if a potential lead shares it with another competitor, I'm kind of like, eh. By the time they see it, it's like I probably moved on to something better anyways. So, and sometimes have you looked at your proposals like from six months or like, I don't know, like a year ago you look at it and you're like, ooh, this is hot garbage. No wonder I didn't get that project.

Kyrill35:44Yep.

Kyrill35:48I'm sorry.

Ariel Martinez35:52So I was going to ask you guys, so I've done several proposals, but every time I do it, I always go back to not doing proposals. Like, I really don't. I'll send them in an itemized estimate for their production, the full production. But I have found that. At least for the majority of my clients, they're not. looking for a long-winded price point. They're looking for, can this be done, yes or no? And what's the price point? I feel like a proposal would sort of, it feels so salesy if I have to give them pages and pages and pages of things that I can do and then the price at the end. And so I have, and that I know of, I don't see that has negatively affected me. Like I've… been able to give them an itemized estimate of what this entails. This is why I like to be on the phone with them and talk to them regarding their needs because sometimes I can modify a lot of the stuff that I do and scale it up or scale it down depending on what their budget is. So a good example of that is interviews. I've done interviews with a seven man crew, simple interviews.

Dario36:49Hmm.

Ariel Martinez37:17like simple, simple interviews. I could do the same interview by myself, right? It's really the scale of what the client's looking for. And yeah, I mean, it's…

Kyrill37:28Yep.

Dario37:34So if you have a lead coming in today and they're like, hey, we need this type of, it's a promo video, these are the details, blah, you ask them your questions. Like at the end of that, maybe like by the next day, you just send them like an estimate for the project, do you send them any like samples or anything like that, or just like a straight up estimate?

Ariel Martinez37:48Oh yeah, samples are always, they always want to see samples. That's, you know, they have to see your work. And.

Kyrill37:52Yeah.

Dario37:52Yeah. So you put that in the estimate that you send them, right? Or do you do it as just like, here's a link or two in the email?

Ariel Martinez38:00So I'll show them those in our call. So we'll have a, let's say a video call just like this or a regular phone call. And I'll show them in that, but sometimes they don't have time for a call. They just want to see my work or want to see a product. Not a problem. I'll show a list of similar work that we've done. In the email, I'm writing down things that we can provide in terms of how we can scale to let them know that if this is too much, maybe we can scale down or this is not, there have been times where this is not enough.

Dario38:06Mmm.

Dario38:12Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Dario38:27Mm-hmm.

Ariel Martinez38:30And we've scaled up dramatically to my surprise. I was like, in my head, I'm thinking, why do they need such a huge budget to shoot something so simple? But I gave them what they asked for. And so that's pretty much it. I give the client just what they need. When you guys were in school, when I was in school and they were showing us how to do resumes, right?

Kyrill38:41Yeah.

Ariel Martinez39:00Right. They always told you keep it into one page. Right. Because the way that employers look at resumes is they flip the page, they scan it real fast and they move on to the next one because they have a lot of resumes to go through. I kind of see it the same way with pitches. Like, you don't I don't want to make it so long for them to review this price point. I want them to see the work that I do right away and see the price. At the same time, I want them to know that. This is scalable. We could do it at different levels. And that's kind of what I focus on. And I've had great success with that.

Dario39:38They show different options for pricing. It's like, oh, we could do it starting from here. You can add this. It brings it to that.

Ariel Martinez39:40All right.

Kyrill39:41Yeah.

Ariel Martinez39:44And so one thing that has helped with that is, I have a demo reel just for interviews, like only for interviews, to let them know that you're not gonna miss out if we don't have a dedicated sound guy, if we don't have a dedicated gaffer. Here's a list of interviews that I've done by myself, all by myself. I put no music on it so you can listen to the audio and how it was recorded. You can look at the lighting setup, you can look at… Is this what you're looking for? If it's that simple, absolutely, we can absolutely do it, right? The funny thing is I show that same interview demo reel to those that have a bigger budget and they still love the interviews. Like they still love the lighting setups. They still love how it's shot and they still want the same thing at a much higher scale for some reason. But all right, you know, we'll bring guys and it helps to have a bigger budget just because it's nice to be able to put a light outside because I have time. to have my gaffer throw the light inside, not to worry about audio because I have an audio guy, things like that.

Dario40:48See, the problem with that I found when I've done my sales meetings is that you kind of corner yourself because if you're like, oh, I can deliver the same type of video without that crew, then there's no incentive for them to add that crew, right? Because even if I'm on the other end of that conversation, I'd be like, okay, so just go with the simpler version, right?

Ariel Martinez40:59So yes.

Kyrill41:00They'll go down. Yeah.

Ariel Martinez41:07Yeah, but I always start with the higher end. You could always go down. You can never go up. You do a corner yourself, that's the point.

Kyrill41:07Yeah.

Dario41:13Right, but then what's their incentive for staying at the higher level? If you're saying we can do the same thing at the lower level too.

Ariel Martinez41:20I don't introduce that information off the bat. I, what I do in sort of a line is like, let me know if this number works for you. If not, you know, you know, let me know. Well, I really, at the end of the day, I tell them, let me know if this number works for you. If we have to, you know, move things around, we could. Cause there's a lot of things in the line items that could be adjusted. But I do make, I do let the client know, let's say we're in a conversation, right? And I tell them these are the interviews, et cetera, et cetera.

Kyrill41:21or like

Dario41:25So you do it after you're trying to fix.

Ariel Martinez41:50Even though the quality is really good, there are things that there are some pros and cons to each. So there's a beautiful lighting setup, right? But that lighting setup, if I shot it by myself, took me two and a half hours to put together. So we have to consider that. It's going to take me a while to get there. If you need to work faster than that, I need a crew. There's no way that I could do that.

Kyrill42:10Oh yeah.

Dario42:14Yeah.

Ariel Martinez42:16Like with 30 minutes of setup time, let's say even an hour of setup time, I need more time. This actually happened very recently where we had a rate, but it wasn't the right crew. And it was just kind of a lot of friction because I had to do a lot of the stuff myself. The audio is another thing. If I don't have to worry about audio, I have more time to work on the setup. The camera is not gonna change. You can have the same camera, it doesn't matter. It's the setup. Do we have time to look at different angles? It's really the time that you have on set. that would really allow you to get such a good, nice lighting setup. If it's all day for one interview, I could do it all by myself. It's gonna take me a while, give me like three hours, I'll get you a really nice setup. But if you need one hour, yeah, then I need the extra hands. And that's where you start justifying the crew, but I'm not gonna put all this in one interview, in one email. I'm gonna put this, I'm gonna talk to the client, I'm gonna explain to them, this is how we can get a nice interview, you know? It really depends on the time.

Kyrill42:57Yeah.

Ariel Martinez43:12Sometimes, oftentimes, it's, we have to do three interviews, three different locations. Oh yeah, I need my crew. You know, I can't do that by myself. Or I could, but I'm taking one light. I'm not maybe a backlight, maybe, right? And this is where it helps to have that conversation because I can't put all that in a proposal. You know how long that thing would be? So I like to explain to my client, I like to talk to them.

Dario43:37Yeah.

Ariel Martinez43:41and explain sort of the scale that we can work at, you know, and kind of what you get with each one. Not that the one light, we've done one light interviews that look great, you know, that look fine. And that's all they're looking for. And that's great. Sometimes they want to.

Dario43:55I usually just, I'm sure you do this too, like during that intro call, that's when I really become a detective and try to find out their real budget. And you know what? I have like straight up said like, okay, well you put that as your budget, what's your actual budget? And then even if they tell me, it's like, come on, you can tell me. Like, what am I, I always tell them like, what am I working with, right? And I found that they always tell me.

Ariel Martinez44:02Yeah.

Ariel Martinez44:16Mm-hmm.

Kyrill44:16Yeah.

Dario44:20I don't even have to dig too far. They'll usually just tell me straight up, okay, this is what we're working with. And then I can go, okay, so based on that, we can do this and that, like, how important is this video to you? Because I'll straight up tell them sometimes, it's like, what you guys are looking for? Like, that's not good enough. And I'll have them like suddenly tell me, it's like, okay, we have a bit more to work with. So then from there, I kind of just go through the checklist item, right? Like, I found that in the past, I used to tell them what it would cost. Now it's more so, Tell me your whole budget, because it's almost like I'm a doctor. You have to be honest with me about what your symptoms are. I can give you a good cure, right? That's essentially what we're doing. Because in the past, I used to send them, like, okay, it'll cost this much, right? And then I'd always either leave money on the table or they'd get scared with the stuff. Now it's more so, okay, so what am I working with? Because then I can put a crew together and…

Kyrill45:00Dr. Dario in the house.

Ariel Martinez45:00That's not a bad way to look at it.

Dario45:18make this for you, right? That's the new approach I've taken with it. I've tried the different pricing packages, and for some reason, I don't know, it's just never worked for us. We've tried package one, package two, package three, and every time Kyrill and I sit down and go through it, it always ends up looking weird, so we're like, okay, well, we might as well just like, here's the starting price, and then within that, I'll put some optionals, right? So for example, an optional for crew, it's like makeup.

Kyrill45:25It's hard

Kyrill45:30Yeah, many times we've tried it.

Kyrill45:45Yep.

Dario45:49And then I always sell it as like, you know, like spending a lot of money here. Like, I don't know, do you want them to look bad? Like, I mean, you don't have to, but like, I probably would if, yeah, like I was, this was my video, I would, but, uh, and then usually for like the, the post it's like, okay, so this is what that video, like you guys wanted this. If you guys want social media cuts, it'll be this and that. Like it's up to you guys to decide. I kind of leave the door open for them to say like, okay, cool. Let's do it. Or

Kyrill45:52You probably should get it.

Kyrill45:59I remember.

Ariel Martinez46:01Right.

Dario46:16No we don't have enough money, it's like whatever, this is like the base, so up to you guys.

Kyrill46:20I remember when we were basically trying to put those packages together, we would basically put the main, the base package was everything that needed to be done for the project. And then we found that the next package and then the gold package, it was like, oh, an extra shooter, oh, an extra camera. And I'm just like, why are we adding this? This is not, we don't even need this. We're just gonna hire people for the sake of adding. Yeah, that's what I mean.

Dario46:23Ahem.

Ariel Martinez46:28Mm-hmm.

Dario46:39Hehehe

Dario46:43It would just be like adding stuff for the sake of adding stuff.

Kyrill46:48Every project needs to have its own. You have to scale to what it is, right?

Ariel Martinez46:53Yeah, so that's, but at the same time, you do have clients coming in that doesn't need a one-off, needs something so simple and might be interested in one of your packages, maybe your package is starting too high. So for example, I just started implementing packages in my, in my model that have worked pretty well, I think so far, the way I do it is I have, so I have different packages for what they need. So, right. So I have one man band packages. one man band, I could do it all. The basic package is just myself, or I don't put myself, I say, camera operator with a camera, backpack, whatever could fit in that backpack. I don't write this, but whatever could fit in that backpack, essentially. That's all they come in with. So that's usually, and then I'll put down on, in like a…

Dario47:39Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ariel Martinez47:47as notes like this is a good package if you have an event, you just want B-roll, you don't need anything crazy, it's just one person with the camera, that is it, that's all you're getting, the price is there. You know, you start very basic bare bones, and then there's only three levels in every category, so this is the one-man band category. This is what you're getting for basic. For the second one is the same cameraman with the camera, now you can introduce one light, you could have a lavalier and a shotgun mic. in that package. If at that event, again in the notes, if at that event you want an interview or two, which happens often, now you're moving on to our second package because now we're including audio and lighting. The next one is now we have like a three point lighting setup. We have two cameras, we have a PA added, things like that because now we're going to do, I'm sorry, not a PA, that's an accrue package, still one man band. It's a very one-man band to interview setup. And with that package, I could do all those interviews that you just saw on my demo reel. Now, sometimes, now that's just a one-man band package. Now we go into our crew packages. Starts with two, three, four, what's included. Now, additionally though, you have a final price on each one of those. They're not itemized. I don't have a price on individually. But then underneath that, I'll put like an a la carte menu. Right? So maybe you don't need the audio guy. You're okay with me putting audio directly into the camera. Maybe we rather get a gaffer. Maybe we'd rather get a makeup artist. Maybe we'd rather, and they can kind of customize it just to show that they have options. But at that point, like they're talking to me on the phone. Right? At that point, I don't leave it to them to make their own package. We could talk about it and we'll talk about pricing on that. So that's kind of sort of how I approach it. terms of packages.

Dario49:49Yeah, you know for your proposals like That's one thing that's been on my mind recently is that like well first of all for our proposal Our proposals we have it down to a way where i'm literally just updating two slides on it Which is just a project overview, which is really mostly for me too Because if I ever need to go back I can see the details for it And just the estimate slide, right? But I have been thinking lately that man I am sending out this thing which is It looks nice and it has all the information just in case they need to kick it up the chain. At least they can see like who we are, our work, yada yada. But I've also been of the opinion like, man, it's a lot of slides. So I have been considering consolidating it lately. And I think what I'll start doing is like maybe two of them. When I know that the lead is warm, I'll maybe send them the nice one. And when I know the lead is like lukewarm, I might just send them one where it's like very basic. maybe under like five, five pages, like just something basic, this is who we are, like, you know, this list of our clients work and that's it.

Kyrill50:49depends.

Ariel Martinez50:56Do you send them a PDF or is it like a platform where you make proposals?

Dario51:01It's a PDF. I have been considering a platform because then I can see the stats on it, right? I've been… yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill51:01PDF usual.

Ariel Martinez51:06That's what I was going to ask you next. Are you getting like notified if they're opening it, if they're actually going through it because…

Kyrill51:07Oh, that's a good idea.

Dario51:13What do you use?

Ariel Martinez51:16I just use QuickBooks. I send them a no, proposal. I'm sending them an estimate. And I do get notified when they see it. Again, I try to get them to the information that they're looking for. Here's sort of kind of why I sort of go in that direction. If they're coming to me, I think they've already saw my work sometimes. Most of the time.

Dario51:18You can do that with QuickBooks? Oh, but you're sending them an estimate. You're sending them an estimate. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyrill51:20QuickBooks? Oh.

Dario51:40You would think, but you would think, but a lot of the times they don't. I know what they do. They open up, like, they go through maybe the first 10 pages, or it's the first two pages, or maybe a page and a half, open up all the links on their browser, and then just send the same email in the contact form. I swear to God, that's what 99% of them do.

Kyrill51:42You know man, no. They never do it's wild.

Ariel Martinez51:53Right.

Kyrill51:57Took all the contact forms. Yeah.

Ariel Martinez52:01Well, oftentimes, they'll say, we went through your website. We like what we saw, et cetera, et cetera. But that's not always. So you're right. So maybe they haven't done it. I wonder if there's something that they're.

Dario52:10Just think about it, think about it if you were in their shoes, would you actually vet? And also they don't know how to vet too well because they're not in that world, right? Like we can vet ourselves pretty easily because we know what the quality is.

Kyrill52:17That's true.

Ariel Martinez52:21But yeah, I can't put myself in their shoes because I'm in my shoes and in knowing what I already know, I'm not going to ask somebody for a quote if I don't like their work. So.

Kyrill52:31But that's you. That's not, that's not everyone else.

Dario52:33But you gotta think about it like this. You gotta think about it like this. From their point of view, it's like, okay, they got a lot of things to do. They need to do this extra piece of work, and it's not their money. That's how I see it. So I'm like, they're not care. I'm of the opinion that at least 75% of them are not carefully vetting. Because again, it's not their money. When it's not your money, you don't really care as much.

Ariel Martinez52:33That's all I have to say and I can't put myself in more shoes.

Ariel Martinez52:39Mm-hmm.

Ariel Martinez52:45So it is, so also.

Ariel Martinez52:50Okay, so also consider, consider if they have a lot of things to do, why would you send them a long report?

Dario52:55That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Ariel Martinez52:58So what if your proposal could fit in one page?

Dario53:01That is a good argument for keeping the one page proposal. I will give you that. Ha ha.

Kyrill53:06Yeah.

Ariel Martinez53:07one page proposal, that's not a bad idea. Have a two to three sentence description of what they're looking at and project, like everything's gonna be one to two sentences.

Dario53:09Yeah.

Dario53:19You know, now that you mention it, we had a shoot in the UK, and I had to vet some production companies out for my client because they were going to shoot it over there. I didn't want to fly out over there. And a lot of them did send me proposals, right? And as I was going through it, I'm like, oof, this is a lot of pages. Like, where's the number side, right?

Ariel Martinez53:29Thank you.

Kyrill53:38Some of them were a lot, yeah.

Ariel Martinez53:42Yeah.

Dario53:42So I guess when you first mentioned the one page thing, I was like, ah, I don't think that works. But now it's starting to like warm up to it a bit more.

Ariel Martinez53:51I mean, if you could creatively put all that together, that's cool. I just do the links and the numbers. Like this is my work. This is what you get for this price. And if you need something more custom, like we can talk about that. But what I normally like to do, my first, like when I first get that inquiry email, first thing I do, sometimes they seem like they're in a rush. They give me all this information of what they're looking for. everything like it's everything. Then I know that I could put a number on that and you know on those I'm like okay let me just put a number to this probably a high number and it's a realistic number because I actually think about what it's going to take so I'm not just throwing any number and see if they go for this but again they seem like they're in a hurry they seem like they

Ariel Martinez54:52I get those emails where they're looking for something very general. So that's where my initial response is always, let's get on a phone call, let's talk about it, and then that way I can get all the information I need to give you a more accurate estimate for your production. So that's where I can get them on a phone call. If it's at the time, I'll do it right then. I can tell them I'm available now if you can, or if not, you know, maybe tonight or tomorrow or whatever. I know that they have to hire somebody soon, so I try not to let them wait.

Dario55:27Yeah, I gotta rethink some things. This got me thinking.

Ariel Martinez55:27Yeah. But this is where it's good to monitor all that stuff. You want to know where you're putting your time and effort and seeing if it's producing fruit. So yeah, really evaluate that. If there's a platform, it might be worth a while to use a platform that can give you some statistics.

Kyrill55:48It's a good idea.

Dario55:50I've been thinking about it recently. I forget the name of it. There's one where it's like, you can send them a presentation link and it's just a link. And it kind of goes through everything. I forget the name. Is it Figma? No, that's a…

Ariel Martinez55:58Correct.

Kyrill55:59I know which one you're talking about. I just don't remember the name of it.

Ariel Martinez56:05I'm sure there's a few there. I'm sure there's a few there, but.

Kyrill56:08Like presently.

Dario56:09Oh yeah, it's something like that. It's something like that.

Ariel Martinez56:12Yeah, I mean, and to be honest with you, like, I, if, let's say I do a big proposal, like what I've done in the past, when I do a big proposal, I don't just send them an email. I, I schedule a phone call and go through it with them so they can see. And if they have any questions, they can ask me on the spot. So that's kind of my method.

Dario56:26No, no, you go through it, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill56:27No, you have to… Yeah.

Dario56:33Yeah, yeah. That's saved our ass a couple of times because sometimes the videos I use as case studies, they're like, oh no, we're not looking for that. I'm like, no problem, I got another one I can throw in there.

Ariel Martinez56:46Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill56:48Yeah. It depends on what stage. If you're doing an initial intro call, you should be getting all that information and you should be able to even gauge what the budget is right there.

Dario56:54You think you think Kyrill no the intro call helps with getting like general information like budget and type of video But I found when you like when you do the more Like the bigger proposed like the bigger Sales calls where you're then going through your proposal. Sometimes I found them backtrack on what they were looking for Or maybe it's like they were looking for that initially

Kyrill57:17Oh, so they change it.

Dario57:20And then maybe they see a video sample and they're like, eh, no, not really, we were talking about this. Like something might've happened behind the scenes. So I have seen it where they've changed and backpedaled the last minute.

Kyrill57:30I remember, Ariel, because you were mentioning before how sometimes you need to have certain examples for certain leads and that's why they might reject you. I do remember Dario and I had one lead that was asking us for interviews for a specific industry. It was the exact same type of video that we gave as an example. They're like, that was great for finance industry, but do you have the exact same video for say, another industry? And that was like a… Like I think that basically they couldn't go for it. Dario, do you remember this? I remember a while back that was one rejection we got.

Dario58:05Yeah, but that goes back to what we were talking about. Some of them, they're not creative people, so they can't see that it's the same thing. They don't have the vision. So it's one of those things where my response to something like that is we don't have something like that. We don't have for that specific industry. We can do it. But again, when it gets to be a bit more creative, my rebuttal to that would be…

Kyrill58:11Yeah.

Ariel Martinez58:14They don't have the vision.

Kyrill58:15Yeah.

Ariel Martinez58:24Right. Yeah.

Dario58:33Are you looking for someone that specifically just does that stuff? Or are you looking with someone that has experience in other industries and can give you a fresh perspective on this? That's really the only chess move you could do with a lead like that. And then you leave it to them to answer that question.

Ariel Martinez58:37Right.

Kyrill58:43Yeah. The Fresh Perspective.

Ariel Martinez58:47Yeah, there's not much you can do. Yeah, there's not much you can do other than maybe you could find out if it's because they have no vision, right? Like meaning like what you just said, they can't visualize it, right? You get them to visualize it. You talk them through it. Like this is where, you know, we can introduce these questions that would produce these answers, that would produce this video if this is a story that you're going for. So you kind of…

Kyrill59:00Yeah.

Ariel Martinez59:15want to, and like if you really want to work for this, you know what I mean? Like if you think that this is a potentially good sort of big client, um, you try to get them to visualize it. And so that's a task. So, you know, and that might produce some good fruit there. It might be a good car.

Dario59:29Might, but again, it's always a numbers game at the end of the day. So it's like, a certain amount will work. So you gotta pick your battles and go like, if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. You're just gonna move on. But you're right. Sometimes you fight, sometimes you do it just for the practice too. It's like, let me sharpen my sales skills a little bit. Just take it on just to see, let's see where it goes.

Ariel Martinez59:32Oh no, for sure. It's not worth…..course.

Ariel Martinez59:39I mean, assuming.

Ariel Martinez59:46Yeah.

Kyrill59:49Yeah.

Ariel Martinez59:50Yeah, no, it's not just sales. So because, and this is one of the, I guess, cons of kind of doing the approach that I'm doing, where I'm trying to scale and provide different scales to every project, it's tricky. The trick is knowing the scale that they wanna do it in, but oftentimes they don't know. Oftentimes they don't even know the scale that they need it at. So it really comes down to their budget. And so sometimes I'll…

Kyrill01:00:17Right.

Ariel Martinez01:00:19I'm in our conversation, I can give them a range. This could be anywhere between like 1500 to 4500, right? So it really depends on what you're looking for, is a simple, you know, and then I start, we just get into a dialogue and conversation and then we come, usually come down to like a very vague rough estimate, right? And I tell them, I can send them an itemized quote for that. But then like, when it comes to broadcast and production like that, right? That's the same thing. I have… the you know a bunch of cameras that I can deck out these are cinema cameras that I can deck out make it look crispy for broadcast but if you don't need that kind of quality I also have these cam quarter cameras that are not as good in terms of quality but they're great for broadcast these are you know the camcorders that have that zoom and whatnot I have a whole set of those that are much more affordable for rentals and all that and then the camera operators to man those don't have to be paid as much because there's nothing creative about this. It's just camera operators to just stand there and follow our subject on stage. So it's really come down to like knowing their budget and what they're working with. So that's something that's, I think it gets tricky on a client per client basis.

Dario01:01:41What I like about what you do though is that you do present them with enough options to where them saying no is highly unlikely because it's like, uh, can't do that. Okay. Well then there's this object. Can't do this. Well, then there's that option.

Ariel Martinez01:01:50Yeah. Right. I have, listen, if it's still too much, I got PTZ cameras, right? I got a set of PTZ cameras that I can, we can man, right? It could be, you could have four cameras, no operators, just a PTZ camera control. Like we have those setups. So I'm saying like we have scale, right? It's just the trick is kind of getting them to a, and I don't have broadcast packages yet because that's so like broad. I have to really hone that in. Like, like the one man band packages. But.

Kyrill01:01:52Yeah.

Dario01:01:56Ha ha

Dario01:02:06Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:02:20I could see myself doing that as well, where I'm showing them different package options. And I have to categorize and give it a name. So for example, I could have the cinema broadcast camera package or the standard broadcast package, which is the camcorders. For that, I would say there is a huge difference in quality in those two cameras. Not that one is bad, but it's not as good as, obviously, the FX9 with a nice. long lens on it and whatnot. So I give them those options.

Kyrill01:02:52Do you find that it might be almost sometimes you give so many options to them, they're like, oh my God, no, you tell me. You tell me what's good. You know?

Ariel Martinez01:03:00And I'm straight up honest with them. Honestly, like what I do is like, look, is, you know, I'll ask them, it's not real. Once I think I said, do you want the best quality or do you want the most affordable like, oh, and obviously the answer is I want the best quality for the price that we're paying. I'm like, but no, when they tell me the budget, like, look, if you want to keep it in here, let's save you some money. Let's go with this. Like you don't need, I'll tell them, you don't need the cinema quality stuff. Like where this client, where this is going, like you don't need that.

Dario01:03:14option. Hehehehe

Ariel Martinez01:03:29huge quality, like, let's save some money there. Heck, I'll tell them, you might be fine with PTZ cameras and we're good with that, you know? If you see the quality, and this is what I do in our call, like I'll show them a broadcast with PTZs only, and I'll show them a broadcast with the standard, and I'll show them one with the cinema, right? And like, we're going through all this, and you know, they'll tell me, again, these conversations are like 20 minutes long.

Dario01:03:30Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:03:59nothing crazy, but, and then, you know, I give them options. They say they're all fine, but they'll be happy with the PTZ quality stuff. Like, all right, no problem. Save you some money there, you know? And then I'll tell them, you know, you can use the rest of it on maybe hiring a PA to run the cables, maybe mounting systems and things like that. So, or maybe just one operator and two PTZs. It's, you could have so many different options and combinations like that. So that's why I have to walk them through it so that they can see what they're looking for. And mind you, this is for broadcast. Like I have different, I have like four different video switchers. So I have like the big guy, the big, you know, that has the eight input, the HD eight ISO where it records every camera in high quality. And just by hitting record on one, I could live stream from there as well. But I also have like an eight inch monitor that is like does camera switching. but I mount that on the camera so that I could do it myself while I'm operating if they don't have the budget to have a video switcher and operator and all that stuff. So I could do it all myself. That's a different package. That's like a thing about it as a one-man band broadcast package, you know? So it could be done. I could set two cameras and run just a simple HDMI cable to my one camera and then my little monitor could like do switching while I'm operating and things like that.

Kyrill01:05:26When you talk about broadcast projects, what type of scale does that typically mean? Is it like live streaming, like a conference to YouTube or something like that or to social media? Oh, okay.

Ariel Martinez01:05:35Yeah, I do call it broad. Yeah. I call it, I think in my, in the website, I call it live stream. I don't say broadcast because broadcast you'll think news. Um, and I don't want them to think that I want them to think live stream. So it could, it could, it could be a corporate event that they just want to live stream. And

Kyrill01:05:43Okay, yeah. Yeah.

Dario01:05:45Broadcast here.

Kyrill01:05:49That's, that's what I wanted to clarify.

Dario01:05:53Yeah. Oof, I hate livestreaming, it's so stressful. Oh my god. No, I don't like it. Too much stress.

Ariel Martinez01:05:57Really? Oh, dude. Listen, I've, uh, I have a lot of experience with live stream because I do it at my church, right? So I'm very comfortable with it, but I've only done as much as three cameras, like switching, like calling cameras and going to graphics and things like that. I had, I took a job. I accepted a job where it was eight cameras, right? I, I said it earlier, eight cameras, one on the jib, three static, two on the two on two steady cams, two separate steady cams. And then I had two PTZ cam, no, I'm sorry, one PTZ camera and one camera at a booth for the sign language people. Switching between all that stuff, I had to do it. I did it myself. I had one guy that was, I work with a lot that kind of, he kind of bailed on me.

Kyrill01:06:40Okay.

Dario01:06:45Oh my god.

Ariel Martinez01:06:55I'm like, man, I don't know anybody. And I don't know if I want to start vetting people so close to the event. And I'm like, I'm gonna have to do this myself. So I did it myself. It was at the age, there's a local art place here called the Adrian Art Center. It's huge, humongous. We had an 18 foot jib out there. It was like mentally daunting. Right. Because I'm still directing my operators. I'm still directing absolutely everybody. I'm the one kind of letting them know where to run the cables through and all that stuff, getting everything connected, making sure we have a strong signal. And it was daunting, but it was a great broadcast. It was a great, great livestream. Everything went well. I mean, the livestream. Huh?

Dario01:07:45I don't know why you do that to yourself. That's too much. Why do you do that to yourself? Are you a masochist or something? Ha ha.

Kyrill01:07:47It's a he had no choice man Dario yet Dario he had no choice. It was the guy bailed on him

Ariel Martinez01:07:52Yeah, man, it's when building a production company, man, you got to take those jobs that scare you and either hire the people to do it, right? Obviously being profitable yourself, or you learn how to do it personally. I knew how to do it myself, but at that scale, I was like, I rather have somebody that knows how to do this. But then obviously I didn't have a choice. But you know what? Next time, now I know I can do it. You know, next time. Now I kind of It was pretty scary. I won't admit, I will admit, but, and I started messing with the client. I told them that like, we just saw this on YouTube. You know, I watched my YouTube videos today. They were so nervous, but it was like, we had that conversation. We had, no, we had.

Dario01:08:35You know, if you screwed that up, if you screwed that up, that would have really burned you. Ha ha ha. After. This guy's cracking jokes before the shoot is done.

Kyrill01:08:41See, you gotta do that after. You gotta do that after the whole thing is done because I hate doing that.

Ariel Martinez01:08:50No, this is a good client. I've worked with them for so many years.

Kyrill01:08:53You're messing with the universe. You're testing the universe.

Dario01:08:56Yeah, you could have really jinxed yourself on that one.

Ariel Martinez01:08:58In fact, all the hiccups, all the hiccups, we did lose the livestream, but the thing with internet is that's not something that I can control. That's something that if they have the power to do it, great. But what we did do is we had a backup stream ready to go and we had to use that and that was perfect. We seamlessly switched from one to the other. The hiccups that came from the show actually came from the lighting person that wasn't putting the lights on at the right time. We need the crowd lights.

Dario01:09:06Yeah.

Dario01:09:27Mmm.

Ariel Martinez01:09:27And they're the house people. They're the ones that really weren't paying attention. And then like missed cues from the stage director. But in terms of like my operation, I think it was extremely smooth.

Kyrill01:09:29Oh man.

Kyrill01:09:35Jesus.

Kyrill01:09:43That's good.

Dario01:09:43You know, we don't get a lot of live stream requests. And I think a couple of the venue spaces I've spoken to, you know, when we were there, I heard that the venues actually make it very difficult for you to bring your own people. So they force the client to use their own vendors. So maybe that's why we don't really get too many, we barely get any requests actually for it.

Ariel Martinez01:09:56Yeah.

Kyrill01:09:57Uhhhh…

Ariel Martinez01:10:01Yeah, I mean.

Kyrill01:10:03That makes a lot more sense.

Ariel Martinez01:10:05Yeah, oftentimes venues have their people to hire. At the Adrian Arts Center, now that you mentioned that, that is true, that does happen. I don't know how we're able to, I know they have their own people, but my client, like, we've worked together for a long time. This is actually a funny thing. That was my first livestream with them. They just had a client that needed a livestream. He's very nonchalant.

Dario01:10:22Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:10:35Even when projects that big, I was like, OK. So we did it. It was great. Everything worked out well. But again, now I know I could do it. And I rented as much as I could too. So I didn't like I have wireless transmitters. I didn't want to use my Hollyland ones. I wanted to make sure we got proper Teradex in there with the signal boosters and all that. Even with that, the signal was a little choppy. But. Regardless, I'll expense what I can and make sure that we're always using the right stuff. I'll buy what I can and everything else we rent.

Dario01:11:14Are you like, do you have any staff in your company or is it just you?

Kyrill01:11:19solo.

Ariel Martinez01:11:21I did, I had a full-time editor, but then I had to kind of slow that down, so I kind of had to let them go. I still use them for a few other things, but as a contractor basis, but no, for the most part it's just me.

Dario01:11:36You're like, how come you let him go? Was it just because of the flow of work slow down?

Ariel Martinez01:11:42The flow of work and honestly, I had made the mistake of trying to spend the least amount of money for an editor to edit just like me and that was a wrong expectation to have. It wasn't really my fault. I had the wrong expectation. I thought I was going to multiply myself. That wasn't the case. So basically I…

Kyrill01:12:05Uh.

Ariel Martinez01:12:09it was a wrong hire. What I should have hired was like more of somebody that can fit a producer role. I could do a few other things, right? To help me organize all these productions for coming in and things like that. But yeah, no, I learned and yeah, now, and then also what happened was I got married. And then also what happened was now, you know, we have a baby, so every time I think about that kind of stuff, like it's hard to do that. without a constant source of revenue where you know you can pay them always. So all my jobs I actually don't have, hmm, I have some editing work that is more or less on retainer, but not really, because it's on a per episode basis. But for the most part, it's all on a contract basis per production.

Kyrill01:12:44I'm right.

Kyrill01:13:00You mentioned that you were, cause at first you said you were trying to find someone who was like yourself for editing, which yeah, it's good to have someone who was at least at the same level, if not better than you at editing. But then you mentioned you felt like it was a wrong move because you needed someone who could do other parts of the production process. Do you feel like maybe what you were needing instead was hiring another person to handle those aspects, like production coordination and stuff like that, instead of putting that on the editor?

Ariel Martinez01:13:28Right. No, the editor wasn't doing production coordination.

Kyrill01:13:34Because you said you were looking for something else from the editor, like more so…

Ariel Martinez01:13:38Right. So, so what I was trying to correct that skill level. Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry. I'm at skill level. And then, you know, when I would get my first drafts from him, I was looking at a ton of mistakes that I would have never, like, how do you miss, how do you listen to this and think it's okay type of deal, you know, like he wasn't at that level yet, he was a beginner, which is fine, like people are at different levels.

Dario01:13:39You mean in skill level maybe? Like you wanted a more… Like maybe you got a junior but you were looking for a senior editor? Okay.

Kyrill01:13:44Okay, okay, okay

Dario01:13:50You still have to go through them. Thank you.

Kyrill01:14:02Yeah.

Dario01:14:05Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill01:14:06Okay.

Ariel Martinez01:14:07Um, and I'm like, this is just, and I started thinking this is a waste of my time that I'm basically re-editing all of this, you know, it was just, it was not being used properly. Um, that's kind of where.

Kyrill01:14:16Right.

Dario01:14:19That's a tricky part with freelancers because the good ones, Kiel and I were talking about this, the good freelancers really don't have much of an incentive to go on salary because they'd be cutting their money by, like in some cases, like over 40%, right?

Ariel Martinez01:14:23Yeah.

Kyrill01:14:30Yeah.

Dario01:14:38just for the stability of having consistent salary, which with production companies, it's consistent, but again, it's very like if we lose a big client, that could be the end of your employment too, right? Because we've actually spoken to some of our freelancers and we're like, hey, if we were to hire you, what would your salary expectation be? And it's funny, one of our friends, because he's a videographer, when he told us, I was like, dude, I don't even pay myself that much, but it makes sense because they do.

Kyrill01:14:53Yeah.

Kyrill01:15:05Yeah.

Dario01:15:06Once you're a freelancer and you have an established network, you can make a lot of money. Like, obviously it'll kill a lot of your time, but when you consider their day rate multiplied by most of the month, it's like, that's a lot of money at the end of the year, which you just won't be able to compensate them for if you bring them on as a salaried employee.

Ariel Martinez01:15:16Yeah. I, yeah, I've had this conversation with my wife. She, she likes that she hates, like, she still hasn't gotten like used to the whole, uh, per project basis. Cause it gets her nervous. Sometimes this summer is a perfect example. Like running, we're running low and there weren't projects coming in like they normally do. And, um,

Dario01:15:37Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:15:46And she was trying to push me to like maybe get full time. I'm like, no, this is something that we have to get used to. I've already been doing this for 10 years. So I know what to expect. I know that when it's low, it's about to get high. So I know the pattern. She wasn't used to it. But at the end of the day, like when you look at your numbers at the end of the year and you start considering, I did pay myself this much, but then I'm putting the car on the company and I spent this much on gear and these are my expenses. Like, and then you think,

Dario01:15:50That's not worth it, yeah.

Kyrill01:15:58Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:16:16no company to make this much money, no company would ever hire me. On top of that, I have my freedom, right? I have the ability to go on vacation and block off some days and not be penalized for it or not get paid. I'm able to send a couple other shooters out to another job while I'm working on another job. And it's a different way of working. It's a different way of having income, but you do have to make sure that you're preparing for the slow seasons. You're preparing for all that.

Dario01:16:21No.

Kyrill01:16:37Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:16:45this summer just happened to be uncharacteristically slow. But regardless, it's a way better way of working. So you have to factor that in into your salary expectations if you're even considering going full time. You're losing your freedom. You're losing all that stuff. So that's why I say no company would be able to pay me what I think I'm worth and what, first of all, what we're making. But in addition to the freedom that you're taking away from me and my family. So it's just not even worth considering that.

Kyrill01:17:20Not to mention the overtime, the overtime you would probably have to put in as well that goes into that. And like overtime is not always compensated for in our industry. I've heard of like how some producers and production coordinators and account reps who like work at different agencies, they're putting in overtime a lot of the time. And I asked them, okay, so what happens with all that overtime? Because this isn't an industry where we all work nine to five always. You know, it's not always the case.

Dario01:17:20Yeah, I think the… Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:17:24Oh.

Kyrill01:17:48So there's gonna be overtime. And I asked like, how do you guys deal with that? And they say, oh, so the company does lewd time. So I could take off paid time off on certain days. But then they have to get that approved, right? When it's not as busy. So that's the other thing, right? Like they're giving you freedom, but then you have to get approval for that again anyway. So yeah, exactly to what we're discussing, like to go full time, there would have to be some crazy incentive to make that.

Ariel Martinez01:18:06Yeah.

Kyrill01:18:17make that a thing to basically give up all that time at that point.

Ariel Martinez01:18:20Yeah, no, for sure. And every agency that I've worked with, I have to work with their people, their producers, and all that stuff. They're all on salary working late nights. They're emailing me project details for the next day and things like that. And they're constantly on their laptop. They're nonstop. It's grueling.

Dario01:18:21Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:18:48I don't know what their salaries are, but it's yeah.

Kyrill01:18:52I think it depends also on what your role is in this industry. You know, it's, if you're some…

Dario01:18:58Sorry guys, I got, Kero keep talking, I got someone at the door.

Kyrill01:19:01Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was I saying? It really depends on the role that you have in this industry. Like if you're, for example, a sound operator, right? You're in, all your work is gonna be freelance at that point. It doesn't make sense to go on as staff anywhere because one, you're not gonna make the same amount of money. Two, no one's gonna be using you on a daily basis as well, right? The busiest you're gonna get at that point is based off of what companies hire you. If… Say for example though, you're a production coordinator though, or something like that, that might make more sense to be on staff at a production company, you know, because then you're guaranteeing yourself a certain amount of work, like production coordinators aren't needed on a freelance basis. I mean, like they are needed, but it's, I think as a separate role, maybe not as much on the freelance space in the corporate world.

Ariel Martinez01:19:53Right, it depends on the scale of the project, I think. Yeah, there might be a space for them, but not on my sets, for example.

Kyrill01:19:56Yeah.

Kyrill01:20:03Yeah, exactly, because you're pitching a lot of one-man bands a lot of the time. You're going to be hiring…

Ariel Martinez01:20:07It's always so hard. Sorry, go ahead.

Kyrill01:20:11As I say, you're going to be hiring a lot of videographers, cinematographers. Those are the guys you're going to be hiring most of the time, right?

Ariel Martinez01:20:18Yeah. Yeah, it's always so hard to hire producers just because it's so many factors that you have to consider with regards to their rate and how much time they're going to put into your project and then justify the price. So I hardly ever hire producers because it's like, and I've asked several producers, like what would their rate be? What would it look like on a per project basis?

Kyrill01:20:47Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:20:47People have said like something like 10 or 20% of the project. And I did the math. That might be OK, but it has to be a huge project with so many intricate details to justify that. And then if we try to put a price point on it, a set fee, all right, well, what does that entail? Are you going to be following up?

Kyrill01:20:54Whoa, okay.

Kyrill01:21:16Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:21:16client? Are you going to be getting my entire crew ready? Are you going to feed them? Are you going to make sure everyone's on time? Are you going to do the call sheet? Like how much time is that really going to take on a daily basis? And so that's why it's always so hard to kind of put a price on that.

Kyrill01:21:32Yeah, hiring producers is a completely different game because I don't even think I could even think of that many people that I would be comfortable to basically do that because there's a lot of skills that are involved and a lot of the producers I do know are people in other production companies essentially, right? So the competition, you know, technically, but…

Ariel Martinez01:21:36Yeah.

Kyrill01:21:55At the same time, you can still have great relationships with other production companies where you can help each other out, if you're in a bind and everything, but that's not something that you build a business model based on. And I feel like what a lot of production companies would love to get is the hybrid editor shooter type person to bring on as like a full-time person, at least like, yeah. That's the other thing. I feel like when you, to hire people full-time.

Ariel Martinez01:22:14Now, how skilled would they have to be?

Kyrill01:22:23the only time it makes sense is when you're getting people when you can identify that they're early in their career and they have good quality and potential and get them for a few good years. But then eventually they are probably gonna move on, right? And then you're gonna have this constant, yeah, it's inevitable. Not everyone's gonna stay in the same place at once. Like I feel like this is like common in a lot of other industries as well. Good people are constantly moving around. And if it takes three months to six months to really get people trained up to

Ariel Martinez01:22:36Never.

Kyrill01:22:52what it's like to work in your business, and then they leave after a year, two years, what was all that time spent for at that point, right? It's, again, I think finding people earlier on is probably the best way to do it, at least on a more junior level, and knowing that they're there as a junior level, to kind of help supplement a lot of the more time, what is the word for it, like time sucking, parts of the projects, you know, like really going through footage, you know, organizing things like that in terms of posts, right?

Ariel Martinez01:23:29Yeah, it's just so hard just because I would love to, this is what happened to me. Like I would love to have used somebody at that level to do the simple going through footage, but they don't have my eye, meaning like they don't know what I'm looking for. And even if I told them like four times, you know, it's, um, I guess you have to find somebody with a better eye, I guess. But I've only tried it one time. So I've only had one experience.

Kyrill01:23:38Ahem.

Kyrill01:23:43Yeah.

Kyrill01:23:54Yeah, I mean, like Dario and I have talked about how the best kind of like combo down the road would be to try to get a senior editor and a junior editor together at the same time. That way there's still kind of like that powerhouse that can kind of do that. But again, then you have to build up your business to the point where you can hire these people at that level. And like, how would you, it's hard to define sometimes like what.

Ariel Martinez01:24:13Yeah.

Kyrill01:24:20what would be at a senior editor level and a junior level editor from the freelance base, depending on who's applying. Because as Dario mentioned, whoever is truly a good senior editor may be too busy from the freelance aspect that they don't even want to apply. So your option for senior editors may only be junior level editors who are applying.

Ariel Martinez01:24:40I think like this is the part where you, it would, it would be a good to start looking at other entrepreneurs and other businesses and how they get low ease and what they consider. So for example, maybe in the interview process, just ask them, do you plan to continue on as a freelancer and kind of do your own thing or do you prefer to have a fixed income? And if that's important to you, you know, do you rather know that your money is coming in every single

Kyrill01:24:50Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:25:09every two weeks or whatever.

Dario01:25:12There's a podcast guest we had on, early, early on, Qmedia Solutions, I forget the name of the lady, but she mentioned how you need to just have the expectation that employee is not gonna stay there till the end of time. And I think especially with the new generation of people, like millennials and onwards, they got a job hop anyways, just to be able to survive with the cost of living expenses and whatnot, right? So.

Kyrill01:25:37Yeah.

Dario01:25:41I guess when it comes to hiring employees for your business, you got to have that expectation going in. But also, like again, it just comes down to like how much money you have at your disposal. Other guests have said that when we've asked them, the other one about hiring crew and everything, they said it literally just comes down to the numbers. Like, do the numbers make sense to bring someone on? And if they do, then you bring someone on. If they don't, then you don't bring someone on. The problem with our industry, which we've mentioned on other episodes, is that…

Kyrill01:25:45Yeah, exactly.

Dario01:26:10It is very gig like in a way, like you might get people that are very consistent, but they have no, there's no, there's no retainer. There's no, there's no expectation that they'll be there tomorrow. Right. Like it's not like there's a loyalty there where they'll only stick with you or whatnot. Right. Like if people change, then, you know, like they'll probably, they might change company and another person might replace them and they know another company and they'll bring those guys along. Right. So that's the tricky part with our, with our industry is that it's very service based. When it comes to like, if you're talking to other entrepreneurs and they have a very foolproof way of hiring people, like I'll bet you it's probably they're running product based businesses where it's very easy to gauge the numbers and see, okay, I can easily scale up to that. So yeah, I'd have to hire like senior manager to see the regular management to hire like the other people. Like it's, it's trickier with ours. It's a, it's a, it's a lot smaller than, than we think it is. So because of that, it's very limited.

Kyrill01:26:50Mm.

Ariel Martinez01:27:07So this is what I've learned in doing that, right? So actually it just hit me. I actually had two other editors that were great. They were perfect. They were working out. And do you want to reason that, you know, one of them, they had to step out to do a, to call them like a 30 or 40 day narrative that they had to edit and whatnot. So they had to kind of pause on the project that we're in the middle of. Not the project.

Kyrill01:27:36Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:27:38Again, most of my stuff is most of my editing work, shows, talk shows, podcasts that we're editing. Some of them we shoot them, some of them they get sent to us from LA. And it's a constant like nonstop sort of process. There I can quantify how much money that's bringing in total. And then there I can start looking at editors that can take care of the job, which I did that. And it was actually working out very well.

Kyrill01:27:39Ahem.

Ariel Martinez01:28:06My first editor, the one that I did that didn't work out that I was talking about, he was coming into my office. I had a studio, I have a studio over in the route in Miami and we're working together that way. He had to come into my studio and edit from there, from my computer and all that stuff. And then that's just what didn't work out. And then he was the PA for me also on set and things like that. So it was just, yeah, it just wasn't the right fit. So I had to expand to like be able to have somebody remote edit for me remote. And then that worked out really well. Because it got crazy slow in the summer, I had to pick up a lot of that editing work, right? So, which thankfully it was there, which is good that we had that. So now when it comes to like, let's say a PA for example, this is something that I would probably consider now. First things first, you have to know your numbers. You have to know… what you're making, but not only that, what every position is making. So the way that I do my finances and like my bookkeeping is this is why I itemize absolutely every individual thing down to the cameras and cables that I'm renting out, the positions that are being hired from my company. So if I see that at the end of the year, I made something like $15,000, $20,000 for a PA, right?

Kyrill01:29:22Hmm.

Ariel Martinez01:29:33or maybe more than that, because almost every shoot of mine now has a PA, I could put somebody on retainer with that, you know? And maybe I could say, you know, somebody beginner that is just at the PA level, and they just come in and look, help me keep my gear organized, you know, let's say X amount of days a week, you're coming on my sets to be PA for me, X amount of days out of the month. You know, and things like that where you can work and get creative with the work that they're putting into your business, right? Um, that could be something worthwhile and at the same time be profitable. Cause I'm still charging what I'm charging for PA and I'm still giving them the salary and still be profitable on the other side, as opposed to, um, you know, my guy use them a lot for PA now and even sometimes camera operator. And I pay him way more now than. when he was with me full time. It's just that's what the job calls for. But I could see a space where I could hire somebody, let's say part-time, right? One thing that's hard for me is keeping my gear organized between jobs and all that. Maybe they could help me do that, you know, and still be on set with me as a PA and things like that. And that's kind of the retainer that you're on, you know, and you could work something like that out.

Kyrill01:30:59The other thing when it comes to vetting all this talent is that I've noticed that everybody's goals and goals keep changing as they go, right? Because you said, for example, one thing you can do when you're hiring someone or bringing someone in, you can ask them, okay, what do you plan to do over the next two or three years? Do you want to freelance or do you want to work at a company? Right? They may say that then at that moment that they want to work at your business for the next three years. then like a year down the road, something changes or a life, life happens, right? Also, these are also, there are also circumstances that come from outside of it. They may say, oh, I, it's not viable for me to be full-time anymore. Now I have to go back to, to this, right? So you have to plan for that as Dario was mentioning and yeah, it's inappropriate. Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:31:29Yeah, sure.

Dario01:31:45You can't have your business rely too much on a singular employee. It's almost like, imagine if you're running a company and you've got a secretary. If your company fails because the secretary leaves, that means you don't have a company.

Kyrill01:31:51Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:32:02Yeah. No. Right.

Kyrill01:32:02that also goes to freelancing. Like if you only have one go-to cinematographer always, and then they're not available for a shoot, you're kind of screwed at that point as well. So you need to have a list of freelancers. You need to have maybe two or three of the, you know, in a way to kind of make it so a business doesn't lose out, it's like have maybe two or three of the same positions filled at a company so that if one leaves, you're still able to kind of keep it going. You're not relying on just that one person, right?

Dario01:32:12Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:32:12much.

Ariel Martinez01:32:32Yeah, no, very true, very true. People's ideas change. especially if they're new, especially if they're new, they really don't know what they want. And it might just be telling you what you want to hear to get the job. My last editor that I had that kind of had to kind of cut him loose just because again, things got slow, I had to pick up the editing work myself. He, you know, he wanted to just be on retainer and not be like, he wanted to just have a.

Kyrill01:32:46Exactly.

Ariel Martinez01:33:07or three retainer clients and that was what he wanted to do. But he had been in the industry for so long that's what made me know he knew what he wanted right because he's already done the whole thing. So that's also something to consider how experienced are they and have they been in there long enough to know if this is the route that they want to go. So it was yeah that worked out for us.

Kyrill01:33:16Right.

Dario01:33:31One last thing I want to say, and then I think we'll end it off after that, is that you also don't want an employee that is just going to be there till the end, because you're never going to get someone that brings something new to the table in that case, right? We had another guest that mentioned that sometimes it's…

Kyrill01:33:48No.

Dario01:33:52She had an employee and then after a while, it's like they just told them, it's like I think you should go out and explore a bit because here you've already grown to your max potential. But you can also see it from the business owner's perspective where it's like if you get someone and it's like great, they're working with you for years and years and years. But like their knowledge is always whatever they brought in and whatever they learned with you. You won't get, if someone new came in and replaced them, then you'd be getting someone that might be bringing a fresh perspective to your business that you.

Kyrill01:34:00Yeah.

Dario01:34:20maybe had not thought about, right? Because again, they maybe worked with different companies, they experienced different situations and different ways of dealing with problems and coming up with different solutions that you would have never come up with, right? So sometimes, that change is necessary in a business. Like you need that turnstile of people coming in and out. That's what allows a company to grow. Now obviously if it's too often, then there's probably a problem with your business. if you're getting people coming in and out or just in terms of like selection of people you need to vet them out a bit more carefully. But it's good to have people coming in and people leaving. You need that change.

Kyrill01:34:48Yep.

Ariel Martinez01:34:55This is actually-

Ariel Martinez01:35:00Actually, I'll actually give you a little bit of pushback on that. Companies don't like turnover. That's not usually a good thing because that's somebody else that you have to train. However, it's true what you said, but you're kind of sort of assuming that they're going to be at that same level the whole time. I would rather somebody that is always growing with you. And then if you start with me as a PA, sooner or later, I'm going to start using you as a camera operator, right? Because you're learning and you're on set with me. I'm teaching you all this stuff. which is what I do with everybody that sort of works with me. Maybe I could send you off as a camera operator and make more money off of you, right? Obviously we're talking from business to business, like scaling and growing a business. You want to make more money. So it would benefit me to help you make more money. Of course, I'm paying you a little bit more, right? As you grow with me, because now you're taking on more responsibilities just like any other business. If you're growing with me and now you're at the…

Kyrill01:35:41Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:35:58DP, I see you lighting sets. I see that you know what you're doing. Dude, I could send you off on another job while I'm on this job over here. And now you're making me even more money. So I want them to grow with me. I want them to learn more. If you're stagnant, then yes, like I can only use you up to as useful as you are. Maybe that's just a PA level or maybe that's just a camera operator level. But if I just did a job, like one of my… biggest jobs this year was all these graduate, the commencement ceremonies at Nova, which is a college here, a private college here. That was a $100,000 production that we did in the span of a hundred, of a month and a half or so, where it required ton of cameras, all this live streaming and all this stuff. If I could multiply myself, somebody that's been working with me the whole time and send them over to, let's say, during graduation season, I'm thinking as a business person here, somebody that wants to grow, if in graduation season, I could have two or three other jobs like that during graduation season for other colleges, I would want to train somebody that has been working with me the whole time to handle another one just like that. And it's bringing my company a lot more money. So that's why companies, they're not fond of turnover because it really doesn't look good. Also, that's more time that you have to train and retrain and retrain somebody to do something else. So it helps. Yeah, they always want to learn and grow and you always, I'll always be happy for whoever wants to go and pursue their own thing. Absolutely. You know, and I would absolutely help out with that. And I know that they learned a lot working with me and they're on their own thing. But it also is very beneficial to have somebody that works with you and stays with you and they can grow with you, you can pay them more money because they're making you more money. And you can use them in different ways like that, production coordinating, maybe, you know, they're handling all your production and things like that. Things that kind of take, I think that's kind of harder to quantify in terms of how much money they're bringing you. But I'm talking on like their time, you know, how much money I can get with their time and I can justify their salary at that point. So.

Kyrill01:38:12Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:38:18Yeah, so that's the only like pushback I would give to sort of what you said there.

Kyrill01:38:21So opportunity for growth essentially, and that's probably one of the best ways to get also good talent is that you're also offering the potential for growth. So for example, if you're gonna hire someone who's a junior editor and they know that, you can let them know, hey, we're bringing you on as a junior editor, but over time, depending on how projects go, how you work and how you grow with us as a business, there is potential for you to become a senior editor at some point. Or like you said, maybe you start off as camera operator slash

Ariel Martinez01:38:43Yeah. Sure.

Kyrill01:38:50PA or something and then there's an opportunity for growth. I do also agree though with Dario in that point where like if you do get to that max point, it's gonna be hard to get other perspectives outside and that's why there's a benefit of working with freelancers. A lot of the time is because when you're not working with them, they're working on other projects so they're getting different perspectives, they're growing without you making them grow, right? So, yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:39:16Yeah, there's pros and cons, but also you're paying them more as well. So you have to you have to consider all those variables and, you know, make the decision that's best for your company and where you guys are at. But yeah, there's always going to be a pros and cons. Yes, they have different skill set. They can learn you as a company, let's say, for example, again, from a business point of view, send them to a course, send them to find to take a course and learn more.

Kyrill01:39:20That's the other thing, yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:39:43Right. Give them, give them the skillset to that you can apply to your company. I had a, I was working with a production company with a ad agency that sent me to take the red course, which was really useless. Um, but like they paid for me to do that so that I could learn to use their red cameras. Um, this is years ago. And so it benefits companies to do that. That's why they send their people to college all the time. Like they want to, to profit off of their, I guess, labor, but You know, that's kind of how you want to build your business. You want to give your people more skill sets to grow and whatnot. And the solution could be to hire a freelancer that can do that, but you're paying a lot more money for someone that's probably not going to stay with you. If it's too busy, then he's too busy. Or you can invest in somebody else to bring that into your company, somebody that you already have on salary, you know, for this week, since you're on salary, I'm paying your salary. Learn this skill now, you know, and that'll be more profitable for you.

Kyrill01:40:17Yeah.

Kyrill01:40:25That's true.

Ariel Martinez01:40:41that because you know that they're with you, they're not going to spend time on other projects. So that's how companies sort of juggle that.

Kyrill01:40:45That's the other.

Kyrill01:40:49I agree with that. And I guess whenever we're thinking about hiring people, a lot of the time people are thinking of, oh, do I have enough work to give them? Will they be busy on that side, right?

Dario01:40:49Thanks for watching!

Ariel Martinez01:40:58Yeah, you have to quantify that stuff. So that's the tricky part as a company, but you have to be able to quantify. The only way I can quantify it is, are these are the my numbers coming in and I can get somebody that's dedicated to all these five projects. All these five projects total is giving me this. I'm gonna get a small portion of that, pay somebody's salary, take care of all these five projects for me. Not only that, you talk to the client. If the client has any issues,

Kyrill01:41:03Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:41:24It all goes through our, you know, through our server and our chat and whatnot. And I can see everything, but I, I rarely get involved unless I have to, but I see them communicating with the client and it actually works out pretty well. I'm on set. They're talking, they're getting deliverables done. It was working out very, you know, really, really good.

Kyrill01:41:42Yeah.

Dario01:41:44Cool. All right, I think we'll end it off there because it's been, it's an hour 40 minutes and that's a long episode. Ha ha ha.

Kyrill01:41:50Yeah.

Ariel Martinez01:41:54I got three minutes left on my recording for the camera.

Kyrill01:41:56Oh, beautiful timing.

Dario01:41:57Okay, good, good. So we'll end it off now. Anyways, Ariel, thank you so much for coming on. I really liked this podcast. We spoke about a lot of interesting things. So I'm sure all listeners are all, we'll get a good kick out of it.

Ariel Martinez01:42:05Yeah, for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Likewise.

Kyrill01:42:12All right. Thanks man. Take care. Have a good one.

Dario01:42:12Okay, all right. Thank you.

Ariel Martinez01:42:13Thanks guys. See ya.