Talking Budgets and Surviving Client Turnover (ft. Leveler Media)

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Kyrill00:00So when a client says premium all the time, is it really premium? That is the question of today. All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. We got Patrick from Leveler Media and you're based in Philadelphia, correct?

Dario00:06Hehehe.

Patrick Blake00:19That is correct. Yeah. I've been here for 12 years now.

Kyrill00:2212 years, amazing. Welcome to the show, Patrick. So before we kind of jump into it, just give a little quick backstory as to who you are and who Leveler Media is.

Patrick Blake00:25Thanks for having me, guys.

Patrick Blake00:32Yeah, sure. I was like born and raised in this area. So I finished, did went to college here and never left, which I feel like at the time in like 2006, 2007, that wasn't really the trend for Philadelphia. You would graduate from school here and then you would go to New York or LA or Chicago. So I stayed and started my company here with two other guys. And that was in 2012 that we officially

Dario01:11with the same partners?

Patrick Blake01:12It's just two of us now, but yeah, same guys.

Kyrill01:17And you mentioned that you jumped right into like turning it into like a corporation and everything like that. You just kind of dived headfirst into the industry or was it kind of like a little gradual insertion?

Patrick Blake01:27Yeah, I went to school for photo for photography. So I did, I did like three or four years of just kind of freelance photo work, a lot of product photography. I probably took 10 ,000 car part photos for like pet boys and things like that. You know, like just like any, any photo jobs, anyone that would have a 24 year old like into their studio to run that sort of a thing. I was doing it. and then I just felt.

Dario02:02Hehe.

Dario02:24But you were doing photography first, right?

Patrick Blake02:27I was, yeah. Video wasn't a thing, you know? I'm in my 40s, so video wasn't really a thing when I was in school. I learned film on a Bolex camera, like shooting film. And then I kinda noticed that the world was becoming Harry Potter newspapers. So anywhere that a photo would be was starting to become a little video, like a little embedded blog video or something. I was like, I should probably learn video.

Dario03:14Heheheheh

Kyrill03:19Yeah, that time when all those cameras were coming out, like the early 2010s, it was almost like a wild west or like a gold rush in a way when you think about it in terms of video production, because more and more people started realizing that, hey, this is something that can be more independent now. And there's a lot of possibilities, who knows where it can go. So a lot of people were kind of diving into it. And we were part of that as well. It was around like 2013, 2014 when we really started dabbling more into it ourselves. And then…

Dario04:00Not even close.

Dario04:13out of light.

Kyrill04:16things like that you're always constantly learning with, but it's like at least the very starting point. But like since you've now been kind of into it with your business partner for a while, like how has the industry kind of like shifted from your perspective, like from back then to now?

Patrick Blake04:32I think there's just a lot, like you said, it's just accessible now. Like we were even chatting about it before we started the pod. Like podcast apps are like make podcasting super accessible. And now you're seeing a lot more of like that kind of content and stuff. So it's just video has become more and more accessible. Kids are, are starting to make like legitimate video work when they're like teenagers. And you see, I see some of it and I'm like,

Kyrill05:21Have you noticed that as a shift and also the requests from some clients, agencies or leads? Cause we've noticed that with some agencies where they've gotten used to the idea of like, let's get a video photographer hybrid and they will take care of everything on a shoot, which is really crazy when you think about it, like to put that much pressure. Like we had a lead recently reach out to us about doing this project where they wanted to get all these like,

Dario06:08We should also mention that we've only noticed agencies requesting something like this. When it's direct to a client, it doesn't come up at all.

Kyrill06:14Yeah, mostly agencies.

Patrick Blake06:18Interesting, yeah. I mean, I definitely have noticed a trend in people wanting to pay less money for content. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, really, like when the pandemic stuff like really shook up the industry, you know, like at least here, we like physically couldn't be running sets that had 10, 12.

Kyrill06:19Yeah.

Kyrill06:24That's the bottom line, it's just paying less. Yeah, yeah, it's another way of paying less.

Dario06:25Yeah, that's normal.

Patrick Blake06:42people, you know, like we just like weren't allowed, we couldn't get that together. And if we did, it would have cost so much extra to have like COVID specialists and all the PPE stuff and like all that and everything. And, and I think during that time period, a lot of agencies and a lot of clients were like, well, we can just hire one person to, to like make stuff in the interim while we're doing this. And then it just became like the default.

Dario06:50Yeah.

Patrick Blake07:08you know, so like maybe that's part of it. I'm not saying that's all where it came from. I think a lot of it is what we were talking about earlier where like it's just, if you've got the passion and the time and you don't mind working an 18 hour day, like you can do a lot of one man stuff yourself. I have zero interest in that. So I'm fine. Like when a client is like, Hey, we'll start talking and they'll be like, here's our budget for what we want to look for. I'm lucky to be in a position where I can just be like, no, thank you.

Dario07:40They'll come back.

Dario07:47That's the best feeling.

Kyrill08:06Yeah, I mean, it's, there's a difference between trying to adjust and allocate the right resources for the right budgets, then versus, you know, saying, yeah, we'll do all of this for your budget. You know, it's a very different kind of toe you're lying or lying you're toeing, sorry. Toe you're lying, I don't know.

Patrick Blake08:26Yeah, I mean, it's definitely that's probably a big thing, you know, for like doing this to teach younger folks or like newer folks into the industry, like ask people what their budgets are. Don't have like a hang up about being like, man, I can't talk money with them. Like, how are you supposed to make something if you don't know how much money they have to spend on it? You know, like that's.

Dario08:26Hahaha!

Dario08:40Mm -hmm.

Patrick Blake08:51The best jobs that we do, the best clients that we have are the ones that come to us and they say, this is how much money we have, what can you do with it? And then you're working in a, then you have your playing field and you can be like, here's all the pieces that we can put onto that, you know? Yeah.

Kyrill09:09I mean, one thing to also mention is that if you're also undercutting or other companies or you're basically trying to be this hybrid one -man band, the thing that a lot of people will learn this and they will learn it the hard way most often than not is that you will burn out at one point or another. We have a friend of ours who was like that and he's like a unicorn. He's able to do a lot of things and a lot of things really well. And a lot of agencies and companies have wanted to work with him because of that.

Patrick Blake10:15Yeah, it's just not sustainable.

Kyrill10:31thousand bucks, no problem. And then the second year is like, shoot, I'm not able to work that day. I hurt myself. And then it's like, how are you going to find someone to do that? It's like, no.

Dario10:36Yeah, and he can't find anyone.

Dario10:41Not to mention you're also categorizing yourself as that low budget option. So that client will never see you as anything more than that. And when you do try to like get a raise or charge more, they're just going to go like, well, I got you for that price. So I guess I can just find someone else that'll do for that price. It's just the valuing the value of like, it's just creating problems for everyone involved. It's creating problems for them. And then for us, especially, cause they'll go use them and that.

Kyrill10:45Ahem.

Patrick Blake10:47Absolutely that.

Patrick Blake11:01Yeah.

Kyrill11:03Exactly.

Dario11:11talk to us and then they're like well we're expecting that and then we gotta go like hell no.

Patrick Blake11:15Yeah, and look, everyone's rates go up, freelancers' rates go up, everyone's rates go up, so a lot of clients understand that. Bigger clients, bigger agencies are like, yeah, every year there's gonna be a little bit of an increase. And some people don't, though, and then you have to have that uncomfortable conversation with them where they're like, well, we got this same thing from you two years ago for this amount of money, and it's like, well, that was two years ago.

Kyrill11:15Yeah.

Kyrill11:38That was then, that was pandemic.

Dario11:39Is that still common because like everything's gone up so much since the pandemic that I think it's just become accepted that everything's expensive. Like if a Civic costs 40 ,000, everything's gone up, okay?

Patrick Blake11:47Yeah, you f –

Kyrill11:50Yeah.

Patrick Blake11:50You'd think that, yeah, you'd think that. I love it when we get pushback on stuff that's not even like profit margin for us. Like if we have to travel somewhere and I'm like, this is how much the flights were and there are people want to like haggle and I'm like, this is how much the flight was. Like I'm not flying out there for vacation. Like they're flying out there because you need me to be there. You know, yeah, that's the stuff that really grinds me. Like when they're trying to haggle on just the logistics of it.

Dario12:04It's a flight, yeah.

Kyrill12:05Yeah.

Dario12:09Yeah.

Kyrill12:17And the one thing we also touched upon about how once, and this is like something that you kind of get reminded of this as you go on through your career, because like, you know this, but then you kind of get reminded of it from certain situations you deal with leads is where once you work with a certain client at a certain price point, they're always going to think of you in that kind of price range. The second they need something a lot larger, they're going to look elsewhere. That's just naturally how it is, right? And like, that's what I mean.

Dario12:43That goes for companies too, not just freelancers, yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill12:46I'm talking about companies specifically. I'm talking about clients because we have an example of something that we did was there was this one organization that we worked with for a number of years from like 2017 till 2021 roughly. And we did a lot of, it was like a lot of education based content. They're an organization that doesn't typically have a lot of budget or anything like that. So we always try to work with them to kind of get them something decent for what they were, for what they had. And we worked with them for a number of years.

Dario13:20So during the pandemic, they kind of paused work and then late last year, they finally got in touch with us again. We usually did like their annual event. Yeah, like I had a conference.

Kyrill13:29Annual conference, yeah, event conference, yeah. It wasn't massive, but it was something big enough where like, you know, we would come in with like a few people, film it, record it, and promo video, and then like full conference video. So we got hired by the, again, to do it. And then a day before the shoot, I looked at, I called Dario and I said, Dario, I just noticed that we're not doing the main conference. Yeah.

Dario13:53They had two, so on the first they would be like a big one, second would be like a smaller one.

Kyrill13:57Yeah, just like a small like kind of like question period with one of the speakers. And then there's like, that's odd. So we went and filmed it. And then at the event, they showcased this like highly, highly produced promo video that was done for the conference. And turns out they hired another company to do that video and to do the conference the day before. And we talked to the contact there and we were like, so.

Dario14:48Yeah.

Kyrill14:53That was terrible video. Like it was bad. Like in terms of what the value was, it's like, but that goes to show in those people's mind, that's what your price point was. They weren't looking at the quality so much. It was almost like they were looking at how much they were paying for and the psychological factor kind of came in. And that's how they kind of went about it. And then we just realized, all right, I guess that's it with this client. Cause like.

Dario14:55yeah.

Patrick Blake15:17Yeah, I think that's good to bring up. That's like a great thing for younger folks too, starting out. If you're trying to start your own company and you're just two or three people at the beginning, like don't let people know that you're just two or three people at the beginning, you know, just straight up. I'm not saying you have to lie to them, but don't necessarily volunteer that you're just two guys. Cause then, like you just said in your, in their head, you're just two guys. You're going to get the smaller budgets. You're not like a.

Dario16:02You know, the other the other part of that is also the contact you have because we found this out a little later, but I think what happened with that client is that the head of that department got in touch with like the communications people at the university and I and the communications people have the money, right? Versus like the specific department only has like a portion of that. So I think I'm pretty sure that's what happened. So I guess another lesson in that is.

Kyrill16:18Yeah.

Kyrill16:23They have the money.

Kyrill16:31100%.

Dario16:32like also know who to get in touch with at these organizations. Because sometimes that specific department has pennies and the, you know, the apartment communications usually has like the bags. So.

Patrick Blake16:37Yeah.

Patrick Blake16:45Yeah, I mean, communications, I would say we've done a lot of higher ed work. A good, if you're looking, A number one, I think it's harder to just fish for colds client work now also than it's ever been because there's such a wash of people doing that. You know, like I think about the amount of emails I get every day of like just straight, just, we could narrow it down to just people that do voiceovers. I probably get.

Dario16:57Yeah.

Kyrill17:01Yeah.

Kyrill17:08Hey, hey, hey, they'll…

Dario17:08my God.

Patrick Blake17:10I probably get 10 emails a day from people that want me to hire them to put me on their whatever roster to do a VO stuff. But like, yeah, finding places within companies that are gonna have the budget and are looking for the work that you do, you know? The alumni associations, here's a little inside tip. Almost every school has an alumni association and their whole job is basically fundraising. They have budgets.

Dario17:15Yeah.

Dario17:38Kyrill (17:39.217) Interesting.

Patrick Blake17:39they have budgets. Because their job is to make the school look good and to get people to want to donate. So that's an avenue. Yeah, so there's definitely, you just learn these things working with people. And again, keep an eye on what their titles are, what departments they work in. And those are the folks that you can then like, hey, if you guys are ever looking to do something, we can help out with that.

Dario17:41Let me write that down quickly.

Kyrill17:43Alright.

Kyrill17:50yeah, that makes sense. Yeah.

Dario18:06The biggest tip I got was the communications department has all the money versus the marketing department. Because I always thought it was marketing. Like you do marketable content, you go straight to marketing. And then I found out from another person, it's like, no, no, you got to go to the communications people. I was like, interesting. The money, yeah, that's what they told me. And I was like, my God, that makes a lot of sense now.

Patrick Blake18:16It would make sense, right? Yeah.

Kyrill18:18Yeah.

Kyrill18:22They give the marketing people their money. That's the difference, yeah.

Patrick Blake18:30Yeah, but just sometimes you just luck into it too, you know, you never know. Like timing is such a huge thing. Some man, we've been doing this for myself, but outside of the company, 20 years, I've been doing media creation in some form or another. And like, sometimes you just hit right, like someone has budget they need to use. They bring you in to do a tiny project. They love it. They like working with you. That's I think, try not to be an asshole like.

Kyrill18:34It's timing. It's a lot of timing. Yeah.

Patrick Blake18:58They like working with you and then maybe when they get next year when the new stuff rolls out, they give you another call to come in and work on some more things.

Dario18:58That's always the key.

Kyrill19:08Yeah. And it just goes to show like the main lesson from before was just that, you know, sometimes it's, if you're, if you get a client at a certain price range, it's going to be very hard to convert them into a higher one. Take that client for what their face value is at this stage in your career, work with them, develop, grow, and then eventually find other ones. Like you're, like, you're not going to work with a $500 client and turn that into a $50 ,000 client. That's, it doesn't happen.

Patrick Blake19:32Yeah, I mean, the $500 client might just not have that kind of overhead either. You know, I think if you do get in with a company or a client or a school or whatever that you know has money, tell them that you can do bigger things too. Like I think there's a big across the board in our industry. People don't want to talk about money. And it's like, this is all these people talk about all day long in their other jobs. Like they're doing this with you because they want to make more money. So it's fine to be like, Hey,

Dario19:34It's rare, it's rare.

Kyrill19:51Mm -hmm.

Patrick Blake20:02If you guys want us to work on a bigger project with a larger budget, we can do that. Like that's a fine thing to say to a client. Like, hey, you know, we're going to knock this job out of the park. Next time, if we had a little bit more money, we'd be able to do this, this and this, you know? And like we've definitely grown relationships with people that we started working with eight years ago into like much larger budget jobs doing that.

Kyrill20:24so you've kept long -term relationships that long with certain clients, like eight years?

Patrick Blake20:27For sure, I mean, I don't mind. Yeah, like try not to like, you know, throw too many like actual client names and stuff, but like University of Pennsylvania is one of our best clients. You know, we, A number one, I love working for them because almost everyone that works there is insanely intelligent. So it's like fantastic working with people that have like three types of doctorates. And you're like, wow, you just like soak in their knowledge while you're working with them and stuff, but then you can.

Kyrill20:38Nice.

Patrick Blake20:55kind of like grow, they have a major university budgets. So you know, like this job might be a $1 ,800 one -off interview or whatever, but then stay in contact with them. And maybe when that bigger job comes down, you get that phone call. And we've been working for UPenn for like eight years now.

Dario21:14For your long -term clients, like have your contacts there stayed in that company that whole time or have they been cycled out?

Kyrill21:14I'll

Patrick Blake21:21So U -Pen, yes, yeah, U -Pen, we've been lucky enough to have people there that hire us who have still been there and have actually not just been there, but like moved up into higher positions at the different departments. But it's also good if you have a good working relationship with someone at a company and they move some to another company and just be like, yo, what's up? What's up? You still doing video work for these people? You still hiring contractors for these people? And sometimes that's like a great way.

Dario21:31Yeah.

Kyrill21:32Yeah.

Dario21:39They bring you with them.

Dario21:48Because I noticed with us, our turnover rate with our clients is about three years -ish. And I think it's because they'll usually leave that company, go somewhere else, and then bring us along with them. And then either we'll still be able to do work with a new person there, or maybe that person is bringing on their other video production partner, their favorites.

Kyrill21:53On average, yeah.

Kyrill22:09Everyone has their, everyone has a guy. You know, when you think about it, you gotta be that person's guy, you know, or that person's video company. And yeah, yeah.

Patrick Blake22:13Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We felt the sting on both ends of that, getting work from someone that has moved and also losing work because our contact has left that company and the new person has their people. Yeah, so it definitely can go both ways.

Kyrill22:31Yeah, it's almost like a natural progression where it just kind of works out like that. And you do good work with a company for two to three years. And then, yeah, people, especially now, because now in our industries or in those industries, typically a lot of people are trying to job hop so that they could also have career progression. They can increase their salaries and things like that. Yeah, so it's kind of in line with, you know, the client turnover. And it's just like, always expect.

Dario22:50One to two years is the average.

Patrick Blake22:51Mm -hmm.

Kyrill22:58that if you land a new client, you have maybe two to three years. And then if you're lucky, you might get more time with them. But yeah, people move around in jobs. I've seen it many times where we've had great working relationships with a lot of different clients. And even just moving around in those companies, they get a completely different role. So they're not really responsible for that aspect of the job anymore. Like that I've seen happen actually more often than not because then, because they're…

Dario23:17yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill23:25They're too busy working on their own stuff and trying to learn this new role. They don't have time to try to push you with the new communications person or the new marketing person. It's nothing personal. Everyone has their own stuff that they have to deal with. So you have to adapt as a production company to those turnovers.

Patrick Blake23:33Yeah.

Patrick Blake23:41Yeah, sometimes you just have no, like they're just gonna, it's like going to a restaurant, you've been to the same restaurant a whole bunch of times, you're like, let's try something different, you know? Like trying not to take it personally, because sometimes it's just that, where they're like, let's work with someone else, because we want it, you know, we want it to look a little different, or we want to see what it's like with someone else. So that happens, and it's hard to not take it personally, you feel like wounded by it, like offended, you're like, ugh.

Dario24:14Kyril sends me those posts all the time. Like every time I go on Instagram. I'm just like, I'm just like, who cares, man? And Kyril's like, look, there's another company there.

Kyrill24:15Yeah.

Patrick Blake24:22Yeah.

Patrick Blake24:27It's just something that's gonna happen, you know? Yeah, for sure.

Kyrill24:30You know, it's just always curious. You're curious. That's why. So it's like, it's like, who's there now?

Dario24:32So how? Yeah, no, it's all good.

Patrick Blake24:37Yeah, I've had, you know, sometimes that has happened and I have a relationship that's good enough with the person that's the client to just be like, yo, what's up? Why didn't we get this phone call? You know, and there's always a, there's usually always a good reason, you know, so it's not, don't take it personally.

Dario24:49Why you do this?

Kyrill24:54The most common reason is budget, is that a lot of companies have cut their budgets. So that's like what's the most common thing. And that's why we don't take it personally and that's why a lot of people shouldn't take it personally. It's that they just can't afford you anymore. They need to cut budgets in certain areas. Like we had one other client where we did a lot of educational content with.

Patrick Blake24:57Yes.

Dario24:58Yeah, it's usually budget. Yeah.

Kyrill25:16It's funny, all my examples are educational based content, but it's a good example of like where they might get an influx of cash to really work on a few big projects that they need, but then they don't need any more work after that. And they're not going to be spending 10, 20, 30 grand on a single video if they already have a lot of what they need. And if a lot of their needs are smaller, bite -sized content, they're either gonna try to hire someone internal or try to do something very bare bones. And then like,

Dario25:18Yeah, I know right?

Kyrill25:44That's it. And then if they need something big again, then they'll come to you. But again, budget is the biggest determining factor of like how long a business relationship can go in and yeah.

Patrick Blake25:53Totally, yeah. We've definitely lost clients because they've hired like one in -house person to just crank out content, you know, and they're paying that person less money for a whole year than they're paying us to make one commercial for them, you know? So it's like, I get, as a business owner, I get it. Like I try not to get mad when I know people are doing things because just like financially that's the best thing for them. Like that's how it makes the most sense. There are DPs that I would love to work with on like…

Dario26:33Yeah.

Dario26:45that's true, they're probably, our freelancers are probably going through the same stuff, I didn't even think about that.

Kyrill26:47Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's so true. Especially when you have a list of your go -tos, it's like you're not able to give it to one of your main guys. It's like either, well, some of the time it's like, you know, they're not available too. It's like, you know, the project was not that big enough that we needed to bring outside help, especially if you have like people within your team that can handle a lot of aspects of it, especially if the budget is very tight and you…

Patrick Blake26:49Yeah, it's a daisy chain, right? Yeah.

Kyrill27:15I wanna make sure the company is also profitable at the same time, right? Like, yeah.

Patrick Blake27:18Totally. That's the biggest growing pain in the beginning. My goodness, man. I can't tell you how many jobs we did where at the end of everything, I was like, we made like $100. Because the whole budget goes into, you want it to be good, especially in the beginning when you're trying to build your visual voice and build that collection of work that you can then use to get other work. You want it to be as good as it can be. So there's definitely that fine line of, well,

Dario27:28I know that I know that feeling

Kyrill27:28yeah.

Patrick Blake27:48We lost money or didn't make any money on this. It wasn't worth it to get this final piece that we can then shop to other clients or show in a meeting or add to a pitch deck.

Kyrill27:59Yeah, it depends on the project as well. Like you shouldn't be losing money on a quarterly report video. You don't need to be hiring Roger Deakins to be shooting that or anything like that. he'll make it beautiful.

Patrick Blake28:10Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, right.

Dario28:17Imagine.

Patrick Blake28:17Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, I remember the first time someone gave us $5 ,000 to make like, my God, it was like 11 final deliverables or something like that. But it felt like we won the lottery. You know, we were like 25, like we were like, man, these guys just cut, just gave us this money. You know, like we only had like two examples of commercial work at that point. And you're just excited to do it and do a good job and hopefully keep them as a client. And, well, look,

Kyrill28:29yeah.

Dario28:43until you start editing.

Patrick Blake28:46I make no bones about editing is punishment. It is a punishment job. You have to be a certain sort of sicko to love editing. Find yourself a really good editor and like make that person your world and your best friend and hang on to them and be good to them and send them flowers and do all that stuff. Because anyone that's like sat in a dark room for four days and then had a client be like, no, this isn't it, like knows the sting of.

Dario28:55Hahaha

Dario29:07flowers.

Patrick Blake29:16editing.

Dario29:17Yeah.

Kyrill29:19Yeah, and it's not easy also communicating that too. It's like when it's like, that's like, this isn't good. We have to redo it. It's like, fuck, now I got to tell them about this. You know, it's like, I got to reiterate this.

Patrick Blake29:27Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's tough. Or you'll spend like a ton of time on some like cutting something and they'll be like, we don't like this music track. And you're like, well, it can't just swap it out. The whole piece is cut to this track. You know, like, stuff like that. As an editor, you're just like, it's easy as a producer to just be like, yeah, we'll swap that track out and we'll find something else that works. And then the person that was editing it is like,

Dario29:50What have you done for those situations when there's been pushback on the music? Because normally what we do is we go into it already having chosen the song with the client and very rarely after we switch to that process have they wanted to change a song.

Kyrill30:05is very rare.

Patrick Blake30:09It depends, it's on a client to client basis. There are some people I know that will be like, A number one, I think just the music that's in our work is something we take very seriously. And it's something that I think it's overlooked by a lot of young filmmakers or video makers. So just like, I'll just grab like a canned track off artlist and throw it in there and it's great. And like, you can make the crappiest video like 50 % better.

Dario30:21Mm -hmm.

Kyrill30:25Mm -hmm.

Patrick Blake30:37by just putting a track in there that like hits and feels like the right mood and is catchy and is like good. And so we put a lot of time into that before we even start doing anything. We don't always share that with the client first because sometimes when it's disjointed from the imagery, they can't conceive of it. Another learning curve thing is realize that a lot of people that don't have a creative mindset or a creative background.

Kyrill30:40Yeah.

Patrick Blake31:04are not going to be able to visualize things or not be able to understand these two things together will become this thing. So we will wait a lot of times for the rough cut for them to hear what the track is. But it's always, it depends on how much of actually how brutal I think it will be on the editor to have to swap. I'll make a fight sometimes for an audio track of being like, no, trust me, we listened to 400 audio tracks. This is the.

Kyrill31:06Yeah.

Dario31:16Interesting.

Patrick Blake31:32this is the best one for this project, like let's sit with it for another day. Like that doesn't always work, but sometimes it does.

Dario31:39We show them the songs with a… sorry, go ahead.

Kyrill31:39So I have a process for that in terms of the music selection. It really is a skill that you have to develop over time because it's like, you have to hear it. And the one thing that a lot of people don't realize when they're picking this music, you also have to feel that it works. When I'm picking music for any of our projects, I have to kind of have a little bit more of a connection than just, that sounds good. It's like, hmm.

Dario33:14Is this, is this the one you're talking to? Okay. That honestly, Kyril, is a specific, like one, like it's a rare.

Kyrill33:22That's what I'm saying, those are outliers. I'm joking that there are outliers out there where it's like, I presented so many songs and they…

Dario33:26Yeah, like, it's a very big outlier.

Patrick Blake33:28Yeah.

Dario33:30No, but that is a particular type of thing that doesn't happen often. But one thing we –

Kyrill33:34Yeah, I know, I know.

Patrick Blake33:36Yeah, thankfully that's rare. Some clients are just that way. They're just gonna try and feel like they need to get their money's worth out of it by making you change things.

Dario33:42No, it's not even that. It wasn't even that. It's just… I think when you're going into that project, it was going to be very… Anyways, that situation doesn't happen often. And if you're in that situation with that type of client, you knew going into it because we knew going into it was going to be like that. But it was one of those things where we needed something with a portfolio. But one thing we do for this…

Kyrill33:54I know, I was just joking that it's an outlier. I was just joking that it was an outlier, yeah.

Patrick Blake34:04Yeah.

Patrick Blake34:08Yeah, and music's an easy thing for people to be like, I don't like that. You know, everyone feels like they know it.

Dario34:12You know what we do? We also present it with the storyboard. So like, we kind of let them listen to it as we're presenting the storyboard as well, rather than just here's the song, listen to it. So there's visuals attached to it. And then by then we are hoping that their creative side gets unlocked a little bit and they can kind of see the video.

Kyrill34:14Yeah.

Patrick Blake34:31Mm -hmm.

Kyrill34:33And like usually that's the hardest part is when you get the, to get the skeleton right is, is the, is I feel like the, the biggest hurdle that you have to get with a client. Once you have the skeleton for the video figured out, the meat is easy to adjust in terms of the content. You know, you could always like move it around a little bit, adjust it, you know, make it fit and work. But if you don't get the skeleton right, then, then you're, then you're blind at that point.

Dario34:57Kyril, you know what we should do? We should probably just create like a video of the storyboard and it could just be like, just put a song on it as well and just record some video on what's that AI voice website called? 11 Labs.

Kyrill35:03We've talked about that. It's hard to do that.

Kyrill35:14Yeah, we did something like that already.

Dario35:15I know, but I'm saying we could just create like a video of it. Yeah, just do like the images on the video with the VO, with the music. That could probably be an easier way of showing them.

Patrick Blake35:15Animati – yeah, they can work well.

Kyrill35:25Now, depends on how much in depth you can go with the pre -production depending on what it is, right?

Dario35:26It's not a bad idea.

Patrick Blake35:32That's yeah, that's my.

Dario35:32It'd be quick, you just put all the images on a timeline, put the song and then… Anyways, just mental note for later after this call, we'll talk about it.

Kyrill35:35Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Patrick Blake35:38Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill35:40We'll see, we'll see. You were saying, Patrick?

Patrick Blake35:43I was just like, you know, we used to go like all out too in like pre pitches and things before we knew even if we were going to do the job and stuff a lot of times. I think I got burned out on, on that amount of work.

Dario35:53How, like how involved, how developed would your pitch get?

Kyrill35:58wow.

Patrick Blake36:01We've we I mean we've pitched on some very large projects where you're working on a pitch for like two weeks before It's presented, you know, and then there are not only is it just one concept a lot of agencies will want like give us three Concepts and you know, you have like you're up against multiple other people that are also bidding on the job Like that's the kind of stuff that really burns me out is when I like put

Dario36:17Hmm.

Kyrill36:17Ugh.

Patrick Blake36:28a lot of mental effort and thought and creative energy and like my soul into pitching a thing or like building ideas that we think are great. And just you never ever had a chance out of the gate. Like sometimes an agency just needs three bids to show to the client. They already know who they're working with and you just never had a chance, you know, and like those are the ones that really sting. Like I never know for sure when that's the case, but sometimes you're like, we did it. Like this is so good.

Kyrill36:45Yeah.

Patrick Blake36:58and then you just don't hear from them and then like a week later you're like, hey, what's up? And they're like, yeah, sorry, we went with this like other company. It's like, you just knew you were gonna do that right out of the gate. So I just wasted like two weeks of my life, but.

Kyrill37:06Do you ask them why?

Dario37:06Thank you for letting me know.

Kyrill37:12Do you ask them when that is the case? Cause Dario has asked many times when we've pitched on projects like that and they've told us either it's like, it was between us and one other person or it's like, yeah, we had someone picked out.

Dario37:24I don't even ask anymore, Kirill. I stopped asking. We used to ask just out of curiosity, now it's just…

Kyrill37:26But we did at one point, at one point.

Patrick Blake37:30Yeah, I have before, I've never asked afterwards just because I feel like it is what it is at that point. There's no reason and like mucking it up. I have asked before to people that we had pitched like multiple jobs to and never gotten any of them. Like I have been like candidly sidebar chat. Like, are you guys just asking us for these every single time? Cause you need three bids and you know that you're never going to give one to us, you know, like.

Kyrill37:57you're calling him out, yeah.

Patrick Blake37:57like this has been mold. This has been like multiple times now where like it is not. And the answer was no. And I believe them. But you know, a lot of it comes down to right exactly. They're never going to tell me like, yeah, I've just been wasting here. But like, who's pitching, who's pitching your bid to the client, you know, in those situations, we're not the ones that are in the room with the

Dario37:58What they say. What they say.

Kyrill38:05They're not going to say yes. They're not going to say yes.

Kyrill38:19Yeah.

Patrick Blake38:22clients showing them the pitch decks we've put together with the directors treatments and like all that stuff, you know, it's like who and if that person has a horse in the race, they're like, they're like not going to give you the same pizzazz that they're giving to the people that they want to do it. You know, so like that's that's another one. You just have no control over that. You just have no. Yeah, I mean, wouldn't surprise me if that goes down, but like, yeah, I don't know. So it's a tar. It's a tough thing.

Dario38:42You gotta pass him an envelope. Next time you ask him candidly, pass him an envelope.

Patrick Blake38:51You just, we're in an industry that can hurt your feelings pretty easily a lot. So you have to get a thick skin. Yeah.

Kyrill38:53Here's what –

Dario38:56Ha ha ha.

Kyrill38:56yeah. Patrick, here's what you do next time with that particular lead. When they ask you for a bid, you create a PDF document with like your company logo on the title slide. The next slide is just literally is like 50 grand. Then the next slide is thank you. And see what they say. It's like, and then it's like, you want more in depth, then reach out to me again. Then you'll know if they're actually curious.

Dario39:09Just a number.

Dario39:13hahahaha

Patrick Blake39:13Yeah, I mean.

Patrick Blake39:20Yeah, I –

Dario39:21No, you want to know a way? You send them the previous one you sent and just change the numbers. See if they say anything. That's how you know if they looked at it.

Patrick Blake39:28Yeah. I mean, look, I definitely, we've definitely gotten more in the habit of like, here's a really great template for what we're trying to do. Like, let's just rearrange like pieces and text inside of this to make it fit what we're doing. That just comes with doing it a lot. And you like get, you find out what works and what doesn't work. Like, Hey, this is a pitch deck that has been successful for us. Like, let's just repopulate this with the new content that we need to be doing.

Kyrill39:28Yeah.

Dario39:57Yeah, that's what we do.

Patrick Blake39:58It's just that's, yeah, that's an ever evolving thing as well.

Kyrill40:02It keeps improving every with every pitch you do. That's, that's the good thing about these templates and working off of one that way you see what's working, what isn't working, especially when you're presenting it to a lead or a client, what you find is important, how much you should focus on certain aspects of it. You know, it's like, you only need to, you don't need to show them like 10 examples. Here's like two or three really good case studies that are relevant to the product, to the project that can showcase what, what is possible. And then, yeah, and then just.

Patrick Blake40:25Mm -hmm.

Kyrill40:30and then just go forward with that. But there's never one pitch that is going to be the greatest pitch of all time. Your best pitch is your next pitch. That's the best way to look at it.

Patrick Blake40:32Yeah.

Patrick Blake40:40Yeah, for sure. And like, don't be afraid to show other people's work and be like, we want to make this thing. You know, like that's something. Yeah. Yeah.

Dario40:47I've thought about doing that. I always felt weird about like, cause then does that work for you? Have you done that? It works, huh? Okay.

Patrick Blake40:53Yes. Yeah, because you're not always going to have like a one for one for what they're looking for. And they're not going to have, and sometimes you show them things that again, a lot of people in certain jobs don't have that creative like expansion, you know, so you can show some people a video and be like, I want you to like, just look at the visuals in this. Don't worry about the content is different. The music is not right. The mood is not right, but just like, look at this filmmaker, this DP is like,

Kyrill40:55It's the same. Yeah.

Dario40:59Yeah, I know, I know.

Dario41:10Mm -hmm.

Kyrill41:18Yeah.

Patrick Blake41:23footage, this is why we're showing you this example. Some people can't do that. They just, it is what it is, they just can't do it. So sometimes it is very beneficial to just go find something that's almost a one for one that they're looking for that you have not made, but you think is good and you can do it in the budget. Tell them that, don't lie, don't be like, hey, we made this, but then be like, this is what we would like to do for you guys. And that definitely, you can bear fruit from that for sure.

Kyrill41:43Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill41:50I mean, when you think about it, you're also, whenever you're putting together storyboards and you're using reference images, especially from websites like frameset or anything like that to kind of like showcase, here's a wide shot we're gonna shoot for this. Here's a medium, here's a closeup. It's a lot easier to go and find those reference images on these websites than to literally go through all your videos like, here's a wide that we can use and then screenshot that, adjust it, save it, put it, you know, you have to find ways to efficiently pitch in terms of ways to.

Dario42:35Depends on the project size, Kero. If he's doing big commercial stuff, then you do have to put a little bit more elbow grease in it.

Patrick Blake42:40Yeah, if we're right, like, you know, the client I was specifically talking about where I felt like sometimes we just never had a horse in the race, you know, these are like $100 ,000 commercial shoots where it's like, you know, yeah.

Kyrill42:48Yeah.

Dario42:49Yeah, it's, it's, yeah, it's high level stuff for us. It's like more. Yeah. For us, it's more like middle of the road stuff. So it's like a lot fat, like our, how quickly it takes us to create a proposal is fairly fast. Cause again, I'm just swapping out like case studies and just some other project information on like the estimates. Right. But I actually just remembered I also, what I'll do is I try to get their, competitors out of them during the intro calls and everything. And then I might pull.

Kyrill42:52It's all relative. It's all relative. Yeah.

Dario43:17references from their competitors and to like the the pitch just so they can also see like okay so and so is doing this work we can do that but with our style essentially

Kyrill43:28or better, where it's like, this is what they're doing wrong, here's what you can do better, and then stand out from them, right? Which is a good way to kind of, the one good thing about doing that also shows the client that you've done your research, you've looked into them, you've looked into their industry, and they might be a little bit more inclined to trust where you're coming from when it comes to suggesting things, because then it's not like you're just, yeah, it's not like you're just pitching blindly.

Patrick Blake43:29Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dario43:50They can see their competitors are doing.

Patrick Blake43:51Yeah, definitely be a little careful with telling people what they're doing wrong, because I've seen that advice a lot in like pitch things or like stuff. okay, yeah, because I've seen that though, where people are like, yeah, find their pain points, tell them what they're doing wrong. And it's like, you want to piss a room of people off like immediately, like come into a meeting and be like, here's all the things you guys did wrong with your last video project, like and how I'm going to fix them and like, yeah.

Kyrill44:01no, not the lead. I'm not, we're not saying that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill44:12Hahaha!

Dario44:18no, we've never talked smack about another video. What do you mean?

Kyrill44:19No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You can tell them like what their competitors are doing wrong and what they can do better than what their competitors are doing wrong. So it's like you're kind of doing that, subtly putting it on the onus on them. Yeah, it's like your competitor, competitor B is doing something really wrong with their video. What we suggest is doing something like this, which will really blow them out of the water, you know, and then they'll be like, ooh yeah, let's blow them out of the water or whatever.

Dario44:25Yeah.

Patrick Blake44:31Yeah, you can do it. You just have to be strategic about it. Yeah.

Dario44:46Most of the time what we're saying is like your competitor is doing this and you're not. That's majority of our conversations like you guys aren't doing this but they are.

Kyrill44:51That too.

Kyrill44:56You should look into that.

Dario44:57You should – we should – we should do something similar, I mean.

Patrick Blake44:59Just saying.

Kyrill45:01Yeah, let's try to make it better, but you know, at least that's a starting point. That's a baseline to that's the, how do you say, the baseline of quality that you should be looking at, at least.

Dario45:12And also checking out the competitors also gives you ideas on what to pitch. As you can see, it's like, yeah, they could do this type of video. I didn't think about that. Great, let me add that to the list.

Kyrill45:16yeah.

Kyrill45:21especially when you're pitching in an industry that you're not too familiar with a lot of the time, because then you're like, what type of video content would actually be useful for an organization like this in their industry? Like for example, just doing a general promotional video for a manufacturing client might not be as important as say, creating a series of content, a series of videos that showcases their entire process because they need that as evergreen content for the future. That might be a bigger.

Dario45:24Too familiar with.

Dario45:49training.

Kyrill45:50focus than say, yeah, yeah, or training videos. You know, they might need more training videos versus like say a financial organization that has a conference that needs an event video. So all about knowing what to pitch and how to pitch it to these leads.

Dario45:55conference.

Dario46:09I want to know more about Philadelphia. Like what's the scene like down there?

Patrick Blake46:15it's getting, it's getting healthier, you know, like I said in probably like, you know, five to wait. If you were at one of the universities here getting a creative degree in production or whatever, you know, you almost certainly were then going to move to New York or LA afterwards. Like that was just kind of the pipeline. And I, like a lot of people just.

Kyrill47:29What are some of the industry, like more dominant industries that you work or that need video in that in Philadelphia?

Patrick Blake47:35I mean, Ed's and meds, man. Philadelphia is, I was talking to Dario about it. Like Philadelphia has, it might be the most universities per square mile of any city in the country. So we have like an insane amount of colleges and universities in this area. And which comes along with them, almost every one of them has a hospital attached to it, you know, Jefferson, Penn, all these things. So, so they all have like massive.

Kyrill47:39It's a mess.

Kyrill47:47wow.

Dario47:47this wild.

Dario47:59interesting.

Kyrill47:59wow.

Patrick Blake48:03you know, that world. So there's a lot of Eds and Meds healthcare stuff, if you can get into that. We don't actually do a ton of healthcare stuff. We work with universities on like STEM projects, you know, science and education and stuff like that, but it's not like healthcare based, which I kind of like. Doing pharma work is great and it can pay the bills, but it's also kind of soulless sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it has to like, there's just a lot of things you have.

Dario48:26very dry.

Patrick Blake48:31to make two to make it not as good. You know, like something worse than when clients like make it worse on purpose and you're like, yes, you know, like, okay. So yeah. Yeah, we're lucky enough to work with like a pretty wide range of clients. We've been doing a lot more work with the major sports teams, which is awesome. Just growing up in this area, you have no choice but to love.

Dario48:39Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Kyrill48:40Ha ha!

Kyrill48:55Nice.

Patrick Blake49:00sports I feel like, you know, like Philadelphia has a has a stigma about it of being like a rough tough gruff sports town and is like there's a lot of truth to that. So doing work for the Phillies and the Eagles and the Sixers is like, man, like that's like, if you told 11 year old me, you'd be on you'd be in the dugout at a Phillies game during a game, producing a video for them, like while it's happening, I would be like,

Dario49:31Nice.

Kyrill49:38yeah, doing those, doing any kind of like sporting event, a lot of the time, those are always, those are always exciting projects because there's a lot of, there's a lot happening constantly. And especially, it may not be so much, you know, if you're from the fan perspective, you know, you're sitting, you're watching the game and you're focusing on everything there. But when you're filming something like the behind the scenes aspect of it, there's a lot of like, okay, this is about to happen. We have to go and run over to this side of the field. We have to go here. We have to run here. Like we haven't done a…

Patrick Blake50:28Yeah, it depends. You know, like some of our, we've done a couple of videos for the Phillies and for the Eagles that came through a larger agency that's in Philadelphia who we love and we work with and they're great to us and hopefully continue to make things with us into the future. But we've also just like, you know, the Sixers, we make stuff, we're currently working on a project for them right now that I can't talk about because of NDA stuff, but like they just come directly to us for that.

Kyrill50:55Nice.

Patrick Blake50:57So there's no middleman there, you know, like, so that's, that kind of stuff is, I'm a big sports fan. So like that stuff is great to me. And the budgets aren't always great, if I'm being honest, cause they know it's a cool job and that, like people will want to do it. So like, but it isn't, but we love it because it is a cool job and we get to go meet a bunch of athletes and celebrities and, and like, you know, talk about sports with them and that that's great. You know, nothing makes me happier than doing it.

Kyrill51:13Yep.

Kyrill51:26There's nothing like doing a project or doing work that you're super passionate about at the same time. I guess you could call that the cool tax for the work that you're doing.

Patrick Blake51:35It is. It is a cold. Cold taxes exist. Absolutely.

Dario51:35Cool text.

Kyrill51:40And it just sucks when those, when the clients know it and they, and they leverage that to their advantage all the time.

Patrick Blake51:46Yeah, yes, yeah. I mean, sometimes it's almost like to an embarrassing point, where they'll like ask you about a project and then tell you how much money they have to spend. And you're like, guys, like you're pushing the coal, you're pushing the coal tax pretty hard right now. But yeah, but you know, you wanna, you wanna always say yes to the stuff like that if you can. And you know, that's the high profile stuff. You know, we won a gold Addy award last year for one of our Phillies pieces and stuff. And like, that's just.

Dario51:57Hahaha.

Kyrill51:59Alright, let's make it work.

Dario52:00I'm gonna do it.

Kyrill52:15nice.

Dario52:15A GoDaddy award? GoDaddy, okay. I heard GoDaddy.

Patrick Blake52:16That's awesome. A gold Addy. So that I guess, do you guys not have Addys in the Addy Awards are something I guess maybe not in Canada. I don't know. Just like it's just the advertising awards. No, no. I mean, yeah, they probably sponsor something. I'm sure there are like a website GoDaddy Award. Yeah, right. Do they still do they even still exist? I remember the Danica Patrick commercials and then like that's about it. All right.

Kyrill52:19Go…

Kyrill52:25I feel like I've heard of the Audi Awards.

Dario52:26I've heard of it. I thought you said Go Daddy. I'm like what? They have awards?

Kyrill52:36Best website.

Dario52:37Hehehe

Dario52:41yeah, they're big. GoDaddy's still big. No, no, GoDaddy's still big.

Kyrill52:42Yeah, it was.

Kyrill52:46I don't think they're, I think they're too big to disappear at this point. They own too many websites. Yeah.

Dario52:49Too big to fail. They're like the banks now.

Patrick Blake52:50right. Yeah, they're the internet landlords, so.

Dario52:54Landlords, yeah.

Kyrill52:55my God, yeah, that's a good way to put it. Internet landlords, internet real estate agent. Yeah, that's what it is, the internet real estate guys.

Dario53:03That was a thing for a bit with the metaverse.

Patrick Blake53:06right, yeah.

Kyrill53:07for like two minutes. Can you imagine that there were people who actually spent like millions of dollars on metaverse land? When you think of it, it's just ruins.

Dario53:08Heheheheh

Patrick Blake53:15Yeah, whoops.

Dario53:16It's called money laundering, Kirill.

Kyrill53:19Yeah. Yep.

Patrick Blake53:20Yeah, yeah. He said, hey, there's a sucker born every minute, right? So you just got to find the right scam for him. Yeah. Insane. Yeah.

Kyrill53:25could just play RuneScape.

Dario53:26There's a Zuckerberg born once a lifetime and he spends two trillion trying to set the metaverse up.

Kyrill53:33Those guys need to just play RuneScape and call it a day or Sims. That's it.

Dario53:37since Patrick what's next for you and your company?

Patrick Blake53:38Yeah.

Patrick Blake53:43Mmm, well.

Dario55:09How much did you go down? Like how many employees are you at and then what were you at? What are you at now?

Patrick Blake55:12We were at four people that were at the studio every single day all the time. Now it's just, it's back to just the two partners. And honestly, I don't, there's pros and cons. Like I miss the social aspect of having the studio. I miss having like my music equipment set up at a studio and not in my house. I miss like storing all of my gear in the studio and not in the basement of my house. Like I miss.

Dario55:20Wow.

Patrick Blake55:39Clients coming in for screenings and going to lunch with them something that just straight up does not happen anymore Like this is this is the way that everyone does meetings now and communications and stuff. So it's different I Like being at home. I like working from home. I my house is where all my favorite things are So like I kind of like that about it. I definitely get more done absolutely, I

Dario55:45anymore. Yeah.

Kyrill55:46Yeah, it's a shame.

Patrick Blake56:0850 to 60 % of my day at the studio was just bullshitting and joking around and socializing and going to get lunch and then going to get a coffee and then, you know, like, so I absolutely get more done at home. But I do miss it a little bit. And we did we did two jobs after the shutdown in 2020 for the whole rest of that year. That's it. So two. Yeah.

Dario56:31Yeah, it was rough. We were in the same boat. We were in the same boat.

Kyrill56:32Only two, wow.

Dario56:41Decent ones, it was yeah, everything else was tiny.

Dario56:50Yeah.

Patrick Blake56:50Yeah, yeah, we had like a, yeah, we right exactly. We were taking, taking like any post work we can get sort of a thing, any little thing, but then we only did like two proper shoots that whole from the whole rest of that year. And like, I would say like, not until honestly, this probably halfway through last year into this year has it felt like we're kind of back to the pace that we were at before everything shut down, just because it was like building a whole new.

Kyrill57:59wow.

Patrick Blake58:18not fail as a company basically.

Dario58:19Yeah, it was a mess here too. Like there's someone that came on the show that mentioned they applied for the money to keep people, their employees on board. I forget what it was called here, but they said it took like months to get it. They said it was supposed to get it like immediately and then it took months and then barely covered anything.

Kyrill58:20keep the lights on.

Kyrill58:37Yeah, and they didn't cover much.

Patrick Blake58:37Yeah, it was tough.

Patrick Blake58:41yeah, it was gone again as soon as we got it. You know, it was like, we still at the time, we're still paying employees and paying rent on our studio and paying all these. So it was like, as soon as that check came in, it was gone again out to these other people. I wasn't making any money at that point. It was just keeping the business alive at that point.

Dario58:45Yeah.

Kyrill59:02Yeah, no, it was tough.

Dario59:02Yeah, we couldn't apply for anything because we weren't incorporated at the time. I was like, fuck, if only we did it like like in 2019, we would have been good.

Patrick Blake59:06Mm.

Patrick Blake59:09Yeah, right.

Kyrill59:11But the funny thing is 2019, like you said, we were on our way to doing that and we were growing, but then yeah, the pandemic just shifted everything and I looked…

Dario59:22No, no, we were, we were, we were, we were plateau. We were plateauing in 2018, 2019. We were plateauing, Kirill. I don't know if you remember. We hit it. We hit a plateau. We had, we had a pretty strong plateau. and then after 2021 is when things went up.

Kyrill59:29We were, yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit, but.

Kyrill59:39Yeah, 2021, it started to kind of like slowly come back a lot more of the work 2022. It felt like it like we kind of got we got better, like actually better than before the pandemic, which was which was great. And then 2023. Same thing. It was like a bit of

Dario59:54No, no, no, no, no, Carol. Twenty twenty one was like we were we surpassed our twenty nineteen numbers. Twenty twenty two was wild. We blew up. We blew up in twenty twenty two. And twenty twenty three, too.

Kyrill01:00:03Yeah, that's what I'm saying. 2022 was a big one for us. But to be fair, we had a few unicorn projects that came through that were big budgets that really helped. But yeah, it still counts.

Dario01:00:12Still counts, it still counts.

Patrick Blake01:00:13I mean, that's how it goes. It's different every year. You know, like, I would never sit down and be like, we're definitely going to make this amount of money next year. Like there's just zero, guess not how our industry is, you know, I still am trying to convince myself to not be worried when it's been like three weeks or four weeks and we don't have like a new like pre -production thing getting ready to happen. You know, I'm like,

Kyrill01:00:27Yeah.

Patrick Blake01:00:42All right, this is it. Like pack it in, start looking at full -time jobs at other industries, you know, like other agencies and stuff.

Dario01:00:46You know what's crazy? You've been running your business since like, you started in like what, 2006 and that's still like something you experienced where it's like, it's been like three weeks, nothing's come in. Like, it's wild. It never goes away. Yeah.

Patrick Blake01:00:55Yeah. Yeah.

Patrick Blake01:01:00It happens every year. Yeah, there's always a lull. It's never at the same time. I would love to try and like be able to predict it. Sometimes you can, you can like suss out in other industries when they're getting their new budgets at the end of a quarter, or like when they're neat to use all their money, because then you'll get hit for like four projects all at the same time. So like we've kind of learned to like read the tea leaves a little bit in that sense. But there's just no way of knowing, you know, like last October,

Dario01:01:14Alright, yeah yeah.

Patrick Blake01:01:30we did like three major jobs. I was ready to like check out for like a month. I was like, I was flying all over. I was in so many different time zones. I was like, man, I'm so tired. Like I, you know, it's like in a three hour rental car drive by myself, like listening to the Beatles station on like the XM serious radio, just like trying not to have a meltdown, you know, but like.

Dario01:01:52Hahaha.

Dario01:01:57You should have been playing that Pink Floyd song, Money. That's a vain motivator.

Patrick Blake01:02:02Yeah, no, like right, that's the, you know, you always think about in the back of your head, you're like, it's gonna be, it'll be over and then you'll have the money and you'll have all the, you'll have the, you'll have the final products and you'll forget about all the pain and like time and sleeplessness and like all the stuff that comes along, like that goes by the wayside and then you just remember the good stuff, so.

Kyrill01:02:02Dun dun dun dun dun dun.

Dario01:02:09Just think of the paycheck. Just think of the paycheck.

Dario01:02:23haha

Kyrill01:02:25It's funny, cause it's like when you don't have a lot of the work coming through and it's like all of a sudden you have a lot of free time, you know, or it's like, it's not as stressful work -wise, but you're stressed about getting work. You know, you're thinking about getting the work, but then when you actually are super busy with work, you're like, man, can we just have like a week, like in January where there's like nothing, but without the stress of thinking that when am I gonna get the work? When is the projects gonna start coming through?

Patrick Blake01:02:58It is, you're signed up for, yeah, sometimes you're doing four jobs at the same time. Sometimes you're hoping that someone sends you an email asking you to do work because it's been a bit, you know, so like that's the way it goes. Save your money, kids, you know, like that sort of a thing. You know, there's no guarantee that that next job's like coming down the pipe either. I always try and remind myself that, so stay hungry.

Dario01:03:09in the video.

Kyrill01:03:24The one good thing though is that it's exciting to not also know because then it's like, I don't know what my next project will be. It will be interesting to see what it could be, right? And that's…

Dario01:03:24Stay hungry.

Dario01:03:34Kirill, it's not exciting, okay? We'd much rather know. And then, if I was him and I had employees, I'd want to know 10 years in advance what's coming in.

Kyrill01:03:38I know we'd much rather know, but…

Patrick Blake01:03:43Yeah. Yeah. Especially when you're on the hook for other people. Yeah.

Kyrill01:03:43Yeah, but I'm also being realistic that that's yeah, but also at the same time is like, you know that that's not realistic. So you got to try to look at the positives there and there when possible.

Dario01:03:52Shoulda be positive, bro, we all wanna know what's coming in tomorrow, okay?

Kyrill01:03:54I know, but come on, you know, it is what it is. You know, you're not gonna know. So go with the aspect of what could it be?

Dario01:04:04Hilarious. Okay. I think we should end it there because it's already been an hour guys if you want to see Patrick's website, it's Lvlr .tv so leveler .tv, but you know just Lvlr and exactly and What's your what are your socials?

Patrick Blake01:04:20Take all the vowels out.

Kyrill01:04:22Hahaha.

Kyrill01:04:26Same thing.

Patrick Blake01:04:27My Instagram is just my name. If you're looking for me personally, it's just Patrick Lee Blake.

Kyrill01:04:38With the vowels or without the vowels? Okay, cool. It was probably taken.

Dario01:04:38Is it? Yeah, what the ask is. Should have kept consistency, you know.

Patrick Blake01:04:40with the vowels spelled all the way out, yeah.

Patrick Blake01:04:46I think it was probably gone, yeah, it was probably gone.

Dario01:04:48Okay.

Kyrill01:04:50anything that's shorter on any kind of social channel, it's gonna be snatched up very quickly, I've noticed.

Patrick Blake01:04:55Yeah, man, talk about tech regrets. Like I was one of the first people to get a Gmail account. I could have just had patrickblake at gmail .com if I wanted it. But I was like, you know, a child. So I was like, how about something cool? Like no form at gmail .com. And now I get.

Dario01:05:22ha, ha.

Kyrill01:05:24Hahaha!

Dario01:05:30You know, you could, you could always sell that infor, you could always sell that information. That's wild.

Kyrill01:05:30Ho ho ho!

Kyrill01:05:41That's some terrible security breaches right there on those organizations. Or it's like, what is it? That's like the recovery email. It's like, I need to change my password, go to noformandgmail. It's like, yeah, I'd love to change your password. Here it is. I suck at my job, duck123.

Patrick Blake01:05:44Bad… yes.

Dario01:05:51Hahaha

Patrick Blake01:05:59Yeah.

Dario01:06:02hilarious. Alright, well, thank you again Patrick.

Kyrill01:06:04Thanks Patrick.

Patrick Blake01:06:06Yep, thanks guys.