Passion vs Business, and the Future of CGC

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Kyrill00:09and take three of Creatives Grab Coffee episode 50. Let's go.

Dario00:17Why is it take three Kyrill?

Kyrill00:20Oh my God, the funny thing is the first two recordings, I feel like we're more of a bit of a therapy session for us. I feel like anyone in business probably goes through the same thing where you have things in your head, you just kind of, you wanna, you haven't had a chance to get off your chest and that's kind of what we used episode 50 as, as a means to release what we've been holding up for a while and then we just realized, you know what, we need to give a little bit more structure to this and.

Dario00:47It was too much of a rant Kyrill. You sent me the you sent me you sent me the rough draft of the episode I was listening to it and I was listening to the short one because now we're doing two different recordings doing the full uncut For the patreon listeners and the shorter one Bite sized one for the public listeners and I gotta say listening to that I was like this episode can never see the light of day. We got a hide this in a vault

Kyrill00:48It was, yeah, it was a lot of ranting.

Kyrill01:05Okay, but…

Kyrill01:14Well, now that we've done this recording a few times, remember we have people don't know what's going on. We haven't announced anything yet. And firstly, yeah, we're finally on Patreon. That is one little announcement right there. And with that, there's going to be some changes to how we kind of go forward with the show in the format. And as you mentioned, one thing we're going to be doing is putting the full episodes on our Patreon and then releasing shorter, maybe 20 to 30 minute summary versions. of some of the key topics for public. And this way, for those who want to know a little bit more about our guests or some of the topics we discussed, you're more than welcome to join Patreon and check it out. Sorry, what else?

Dario01:53Yeah, they know they already saw the intro part of the episode. They already gave him a little our little spiel. Basically, we just need help. We're monetized. We're trying to monetize this podcast because there's costs involved. And, you know, I want to make sure that we enjoy doing this. But we do want to pump it out a bit more often. And I'm sure the listeners are enjoying it, too, because there's a lot of knowledge that's being spread around from our guests and whatnot. And, you know, if you guys want to hear more episodes, we got to

Kyrill01:59Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill02:07Ahem.

Dario02:22We gotta find some money for it because it takes time like Kyrill and I gotta take time out of our schedule to outreach to new people You know like vet them I always try to bring on people that are good. If they're not good, I just don't invite them to the actual call. Like, cause you don't wanna bring someone who's a dud, right? And then, you know, Kyril's gotta do the editing. That takes a lot of time out of the work that he should be doing for laps. So, you know, the time is money. We need some money to run this thing. You guys want more episodes? This is the trade off, all right? It is what it is.

Kyrill02:40Yeah.

Kyrill02:54Here's a little sneak peek into the kind of rambling that we ended up doing on the other recordings.

Dario03:00no that rambling was like uh… i don't even know we should go like it was and i'm pretty sure our enemies whoever they may be what abuse that against us at some point

Kyrill03:11Yeah, you know, that's why they say like with therapists, they're, it's very confidential so that people don't talk about, you know, people's deepest and darkest secrets. And that's essentially what that was. But aside from that, one thing we also want to announce is that we finally got our first sponsor for the show, Canada Film Equipment. And as you probably have seen in our intro video, they are the first of many more sponsors to come that we have in the works. And-

Dario03:25Yeah.

Kyrill03:40If you are interested in sponsoring the show, you know, feel free to reach out to us and see how we can collaborate in some way We have a few others

Dario03:49If you're a coffee roaster, if you're a coffee roaster, by some miracle, listening to this, we need a coffee roaster. So please reach out.

Kyrill03:56Yeah, yeah, you can't have Kreatives grab coffee without coffee. Or in Dario's, sometimes, sometimes based on what he's feeling, the tea world, you know, when he makes his monthly switch back and forth from coffee to tea and tea to coffee. Oh, we have, ladies and gentlemen, we have an interruption in the connection. And there he is, there he is, he's back.

Dario04:13We lost Karel.

Dario04:19he's gone always back i have i have bell five so it's not me i got fiber i have fiber optic internet you're running around with copper you're in the best but

Kyrill04:29Well, I have…

Kyrill04:36Well, I'm in a condo, so it is what it is. But anyways, so yeah.

Dario04:38Yeah.

Dario04:42Yeah, basically, if you're a coffee roaster, please get in touch. I reach out to a lot of the good ones here in Toronto. I don't know, I guess they don't check their emails or whatnot, but coffee roasters, please reach out. If not, I'm going to start reaching out to some other people.

Kyrill04:56Yeah, it all depends on what opportunities present themselves, but anyway, so that's that. That's the Patreon and the sponsorship's out of the way. Before we kind of get into the next step, into like a little bit of the podcast show, we just kind of want to take a moment to, oh my God, I don't know if you guys can hear that. That's my stomach rumbling like crazy. See?

Dario05:18Didn't you just eat a whole pizza like half an hour ago?

Kyrill05:21No, that was you, okay? Oh, there you go. So Dario, where are we at right now with Flaps and us as a business aside from Creatives Grab Coffee? What are, where are we at right now? Let's do this as like a little bit of a chance to check in.

Dario05:23I ate a slice. A slice.

Dario05:39Where we at right now, we're just, what's the term, trudging along. We're just getting along, treading along month to month. Work is slow as hell because of the interest rate hikes. Those things are brutal. That's it. I'm pretty sure a lot of other people are in the same situation. We've got a trickling of leads coming in compared to the waterfall that was beginning of the year.

Kyrill05:46Treading along.

Kyrill05:56Yeah.

Dario06:06Nothing, we got some more keeping us alive but next year I hope they cut those interest rates down otherwise we're in deep trouble.

Kyrill06:13Yeah, it's interesting. I talked to a few other people that are also like freelancing just to ask them from their perspective what it's like in the industry right now. And even from them, they're saying, yeah, for some reason, September itself is really slow, which has never been historically like that over the last like five to five or so years, because September is usually around the time where a lot of corporations and companies, their fiscal years end. So. This is around the time when they're trying to be spending money. Even during the pandemic, everyone was still trying to do work in September.

Dario06:43They're cutting. Everyone's cutting costs, you know, so what do you think is the first thing that's gonna get cut? It's video. It's always like that. The first thing that would get cut.

Kyrill06:50Yep. Hehehehe We're always the first. Always the first ones to go.

Dario06:55Look, government wanted people to cut excess spending. Well, if a company is trying to sell products and people ain't buying it because they can't afford to do it, well, that's kind of we got affected, too, you know, like.

Kyrill07:08Yeah, it's funny though, because I always find it funny when videos the first one cut, when it's also one of the most important means of communication from business to business and business to consumer, which is almost like a bit of an irony when you think about it, right? I wonder why that is.

Dario07:09That's the end result.

Dario07:22That makes sense, it's some- because it's more expensive than photos.

Kyrill07:26but it's also one of the more needed mediums, right?

Dario07:30Right, but if you had to choose between photo and video, videos are more expensive ones, so video will get cut. You could still kinda do it with photos.

Kyrill07:35Yeah. Yeah, because sometimes companies, all they really need is something. They don't necessarily need video for what they're doing. It all depends also on the business here. And if you're in a very B2B type business, then yeah, like video definitely will be one of the first things to cut because it's not a major need of investment for what they have.

Dario07:56Or you just reuse the same video content, you don't update it. There you go. Yeah, historically they don't update. If it's B2B, that video is evergreen, most likely. So, you just keep using it. Using it until you wait out the interest rate hikes. And then you can start updating stuff.

Kyrill07:59Yeah, which a lot of companies historically have done.

Kyrill08:09Yeah. Yeah, we've had l- Yeah. We've had some leads come through the front door. It's like, yeah, we want to do a video and update this. And we see the first video and it's from like 20 years ago. It's like, there you go, right there. They had one video cost a lot at the time, probably even more so back then compared to now. And they just were afraid to go back and update it since then.

Dario08:34But that was before, that was in the good times. That was when crypto was at an all time, that was back when crypto was at an all time high. That's when that was happening. People had money to burn. Those were good times.

Kyrill08:37before the dark times, before the empire. Ha ha ha.

Kyrill08:45Oh my God. Yeah. But anyways, overall, like, yeah, things have been a little bit slower, but on our front at Lapse Productions, it's actually been one of our best years as of yet, which is nice to know, but it's funny, because when it's during these slow times, it never feels like it, but when you look at the numbers, it's like, oh, okay, we actually are doing pretty well. But right now, it's a matter of us just trying to kind of focus on a bit more of the marketing. focusing more on creating blog content, focusing on the expansion of Creatives Grab Coffee because this has actually been one of our best tools for creating new connections, new networks and things like that. And it's really yielded a lot of benefits for us that we didn't expect, right? And one of my favorite benefits is the fact that we, if we need to work in other cities, either whether it's in Canada or in the States, it allows us to, or Australia, yeah.

Dario09:39or Australia or the UK.

Kyrill09:44Well, that's the other thing. We've been able to expand not only across Canada, but to several states in the US, the UK, as well as Australia. And one thing we did earlier this year, one of our clients needed a workshop in Seattle and in North Kyrillina. So as a result, we reached out to a few production companies in those cities and brought them onto the show. Oh yeah, in London. Exactly, and in London. We interviewed those production companies.

Dario09:45Ahem.

Dario10:06And London, don't forget London. Don't forget London.

Kyrill10:12got to know them really well, we really clicked and vibed. And as a result, when we went down to execute those projects, we just hired them. And it's honestly become a really good means of, you know, building bigger and better networks as a result. So this is a big focus for us now. And this is why we've also monetized a little bit because we also want to be able to start doing this on a more weekly basis, because we've tried in the past and it gets difficult. but we wanna make that commitment to try to release almost on a weekly schedule going forward.

Dario10:46Yeah, and as an added benefit of being a Patreon member, you get to request specific cities. So let's say you have a shoot in, I don't know, Paris, France, for example. I just threw something way out there. But let's say, for example, let's say, let's say, let's say Paris, France, you got a shoot in there and you don't know anyone. Well, you can request that we find a guest from that city. So it's almost like we're vetting the people for you. It really just helps us narrow down.

Kyrill11:00He couldn't even!

Dario11:14who to reach out to next because like when I'm doing the outreach, I kind of just scratch my head and go, what movie have I watched recently? Oh, Good Will Hunting. Okay. I'll reach out to people in Boston. So next week, I got a guest from Boston.

Kyrill11:27No, Boston I suggested to you because I'm going to Boston next week as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm like, I'm going to Boston. Why don't we reach out to Boston? Ha ha ha.

Dario11:32I was out. Well, anyways, I did watch Good Will Hunting, too. So that was part of the reason.

Kyrill11:42There you go. So yeah, lots of things to come both on the business side and also for Creatives Grab Coffee. In terms of next steps, oh, Dario, we talked with our guests about a lot of interesting topics over this past season, I guess like the last like 15, 20 episodes or so, and there were a lot…

Dario12:05I actually want to talk about before we get into that. I want to leave that for last because that's just a rehash. And if people, I'm pretty sure people that listen to this show. Have been listening. For at least a couple of episodes or whatever, because it's all pretty interesting stuff, unless they're new listeners. Yeah, so if you want, you can also go to those specific episodes, which will be the last 10.

Kyrill12:10Oh yeah.

Kyrill12:24Yeah, that's for the new listeners essentially. That's what this is.

Dario12:33I'd rather introduce a new topic and then towards the end we can kind of go back and revisit some older topics. Yeah, I want to talk about what we were trying to, what we were discussing in the previous two tries of recording episode 50. Falling out of love with the business. I want to talk about that because we did touch on it and it was like, you know, we were trying to form the topic in this two other episodes.

Kyrill12:39Let's do it.

Dario13:04So I want to go into that today. So.

Kyrill13:04Yeah. Well, the thing is a lot of businesses probably experience that in one way or another, in one way or another. You can't be in love with the business 100% of the time, all the time, right? I mean, when you think about also the kind of work you do in video production, when you first jump into it, you jump into it to create video content and things like that. But when you start running it as a business, you're more of a business owner at that point than a creator. Like 80% of the work you do at that point is Business development, business growth, and outreach and stuff like that. And maybe only 20% of the time is actually more of the creative stuff. So I feel like that is one reason that can explain as to why a lot of people can fall out of love with their business in a way. And I think that was, that's one of them, yeah.

Dario13:48That's one of them. I think that was your take on it.

Kyrill13:56That was more so my take, yeah. Everyone has a different way, a different means of how that happens. For me, it's more so that where more of the focus has been on business side of things rather than on the creative. And that's one.

Dario14:09Well that's why I've started to let you focus more on the creative side because I prefer the business side. So that's how we split that up. So now like he handles a lot of the creative stuff. I don't I'm more interested on the business side of it. So I'll even like loop a minute. It's like all right now. I'm handing it off to you. You fucking go along with this. Go have fun.

Kyrill14:14Yep.

Kyrill14:29Let's see, go, have fun. Essentially, this was actually one of the topics we discussed with one of our, on one of the previous episodes, how in any business you have to essentially divide up roles. You can't have one person doing everything or two people doing everything, right? Some people have to have certain.

Dario14:49Who was the guest that said you can't have the creative people talk to the client? Who was that guy?

Kyrill14:57I don't remember that one, but like the thing that I'm specifically referring to here was, well, this was definitely discussed with Adam from DigitalSparks Studios. He was talking about how you have to recognize your strengths and define and divide responsibilities when you're sharing a business with someone, right? That was one topic we discussed with them, but I do know which one you mean. I think that might've been, who was that? Was it Ryan from, no, it wasn't Melesko,

Dario15:12Yeah.

Dario15:21I think it was Maleshko.

Kyrill15:27I only remember that because that was our most recent guest and I remember distinctly that wasn't the

Dario15:31Curel edits these episodes so he probably knows better than me. I just remember like the conversations on the day of and that's it. But yeah, like I remember I remember someone was talking about that, how like the creative people are just like they got to just talk to other creative people because they're like in their own world. And when they mix it with like the business people, that's on like friction start. That's what I remember.

Kyrill15:38Yeah, well that… Go go.

Kyrill15:55Yeah, well, it's because it's a matter of like one, it's different skill sets and kind of what you're focusing on, right? Like what might be an objection from a client to a creative? The creative might be like, well, why do we have to do that? But the creative might not understand that there are other factors that play behind the scenes. Right? So for example, if a client communicates saying, hey, we have to remove this. this format for this video and then do it like this instead, the creative would be like, but this looks terrible. Like, well, why are we gonna do it like this? You know, and then the business, yeah, the creative would be like, but this is gonna be bad, it's not gonna be good, and they'll start listing out things in a way that maybe the client won't interpret it as well, whereas the business side knows how to kind of communicate that in a way that might be, I guess.

Dario16:30The creative is emotional.

Kyrill16:48Not non-threateningly, I guess is maybe not the right word, but in a way that is beneficial to the client. It's like, look, if you want to be able to achieve this, we can't do that, we have to do it like this. Some, don't get me wrong, some creatives may, can talk a little bit better to clients than most, but most creatives, not necessarily.

Dario17:10Creative people are emotional, that's why they're good at what they do. They're in touch with their emotions and whatnot, but when you're dealing with business people, business people are not too emotional about things, they just want to do the business. So, it doesn't mix well. It's like Michael Corleone said, it's nothing personal, it's just business.

Kyrill17:22Yeah, it's a transaction.

Kyrill17:30Yeah. So that was one, that was my side. So what was more so, tell us what your side was.

Dario17:33But that was your side. That was your, yeah, that was yours.

Dario17:39My whole thing was, I guess my thing was that I kind of became disillusioned with the business, but I don't want to give off the wrong impression. Essentially what happened with me was that, I guess I would say maybe in this year or starting last year, I became more in touch with my entrepreneurial side. And I guess I was under the impression that this business, I could have turned into like a huge moneymaker for myself and you as well. I haven't forgotten about you, Kyrill. You're part of the team. Ha ha ha. After 10 years. I was under the impression that we could actually turn this into like a vehicle that could make us life-changing money, right? And then I met these people that are in the e-commerce space and the product they're selling and the money they're making, I came to realize.

Kyrill18:13Yeah, after 10 years, I would hope so, right? Yeah.

Dario18:36What we're doing essentially is still just labor. And even then it's still capped labor. So we're running a business where. I mean it's not gonna make. a ton of money. I mean, for a regular person, yeah, it's a ton of money, but it's not going to be that life changing money. And I think even production companies that are very successful pale in comparison to someone that's running a product based business, right? Even at the height, it was not the problem is again, it's not scalable because we're managing a lot. It's not easily scalable because we're managing a lot of

Kyrill19:10because it's not as scalable.

Kyrill19:15It's not easily scalable. Yeah.

Dario19:19you're managing people and specifically people with talent, which is even harder, right? Because you have to, it's hard to find those people and whatnot and I guess even as if you scale this up, close to the cap, the overhead cause will still be insanely high. And, you know, I'm sure there's companies out there that have grown the production companies to be pretty big and they're doing very well, but I guess my definition of very well changed after talking to some more people in the e-commerce space. to the point where I was like, oh, okay. So for a couple of weeks, I'd say about a couple of weeks, I was kind of like, it was in the back of my mind, it was gnawing at me and I think, yeah, it made me disillusioned with it because I thought, you know, I'm not gonna work for someone else, I'm gonna work for myself and it's gonna become this big, big business and yada again, I like the creativity of it and all, but I do like the business side a lot more too, but when I broke it down, I'm like, oh, wait a minute, it's still… as a business, as a business idea, it's small. And even at its biggest, it'll still be considered small, right? Don't get me wrong, I love what we do. I really enjoy video production work, especially in the corporate space. But it was just something about that really disillusioned me. And then just recently, I came to terms with it, and the way I came to terms with it, I guess, is that I'm just seeing it as

Kyrill20:22Yeah.

Kyrill20:33Cough, cough.

Dario20:49another income stream, like one of many. I guess that was the main differentiating thing for me was that I was seeing this as one income, with the one and only income stream, the be all end all. And now I'm just seeing it as one of many that I will do over the course of my career. That's a really, that was my whole, you know, mind shift on this matter. And I guess the love for it that I had before that is still there, but it's not the same. It's like you love if you have one child, you love that child. But if you have three kids, you still love all of them. Right. But it's still it's three kids. You got three different kids. Right. That's kind of how I'm seeing it.

Kyrill21:25It's a different.

Kyrill21:40Yeah, you're basically splitting more of your, you wanna be able to try different things rather than one. Like before we used to think that this business would be the only business we ever do. And I think that's a realization is that it shouldn't be viewed as such. It should be viewed as one business of potentially other ones that we wanna do because I think…

Dario22:02No, you don't have to, you don't have to view it like that. Like if you're running your production company and it's doing great, fantastic, keep it up. I guess this is, this was, this is, this is what happened to me. I don't know if there's other people out there in the space that I've had the same realization or feelings, but this is basically me just talking about what happened to me over the last two months and in terms of like how my feelings changed towards the production business.

Kyrill22:31Yeah, well, yeah.

Dario22:32You don't have to do this. This is not up to like, I'm not saying you guys got to start thinking like this. It's just something that happened to me.

Kyrill22:39Yeah, every person, every business owner, every person in this industry is different and they have different goals and desires of what they wanna do. Essentially, you have to figure out what you're getting into this business for. And I think what Dario was saying was that he wanted to see it as a potential to see how much he can scale and grow it. But then the realization of how there are certain caps as to how far you can grow and the challenges that comes with it. make an extra $50,000 in sales on a product business, great, you just made a very distinct profit based on what you're selling. If you make an extra 50,000 in sales for video production, one of the biggest things is like now we gotta figure out where we can bring the talent, you know, do we have to expand, do we have to grow, this and that. There's a lot of challenges that come with it that almost, you might end up making as a business the same amount of profit at the end of the day. with those other sales. I remember we were talking with Rupert from Perspective Pictures. He was talking about how when you're scaling this service-based industry or video production business, once you hit a certain number of people, then you have to aggressively grow in the types of people and the way you structure your business. So before he was mentioning that he would be basically managing a team of seven to eight people when it was that small. But once they hit like 10 people, that's when they had to bring in middle management and that completely changed the shape of the business, right? So it's like, sure, you're growing and expanding, but it's like, when you start looking at it from the business perspective, what are those profit margins looking like at the end of the day? Will the same profit margin be there with like a three person team versus a 10 person team versus a 20 person team based on the sales? It's interesting. It's interesting how this industry, how you would scale.

Dario24:33But I mean, like, look, when you're selling a, when you're selling a product based business, when you're running a product based business, you're going to have the same stuff. You've got to bring in middle management and all that. But the only difference is with products, the numbers are just bigger because your margins are different. Right. That's the only difference. So like, I don't know what kind of numbers Rupert's running, but if he was running a product based business, I guarantee you the numbers would be like, there'd probably be several more digits added to the end of that figure.

Kyrill25:00Of course, but that's not why people… Yeah.

Dario25:01That's all I'm trying to say. Like the thing is like the thing that I realized is that, you know, we're running a business where really, if we're not there, it's doomed. And I think, yeah, you could get it to the point where you just step back, but then at that point, you'd have to become like publicly traded or, you know, privately traded, but you'd still need outside investment for it, right? Like these other businesses, you could just, easy step back. I guess you could even with video production, but I guess it's again, the numbers are not, are not really there. Like I'm trying to think like people we've spoken to it's like the ones that are doing really well. It's like several million, whatever, maybe 5 million gross, bigger, maybe more than that. But when you talk about products, it's so the numbers are just ridiculously higher at a smaller scale of overhead.

Kyrill25:58Yeah. Well, because it's re- Yeah.

Dario26:00too, right? Like in terms of team, running the team, team can be smaller too, but the numbers that are running are just so much higher. Like the scalability with video production companies just is, is not there. It's very difficult. I think, I think about some of the top ones in Toronto, their teams are not that big. They're very small, small company. I can't imagine if the team was bigger, it'd be more successful. Like I can't imagine the amount of stress that would be added to the owner of that company by like, you know, Increasing the team and all that like it'd be intense and it's like for what like if I was gonna take that risk on I'd expect like a big Big salary like not nothing Like for me if I'm running like I'm gonna be honest to you if I was running Rupert's company Where he has like 30 people or other production companies that have like 30 people on staff and I'm the owner I'm expecting a salary of at least over 400 like just

Kyrill26:30Some of the companies.

Dario27:00That's just me, I'm just expecting that. Like, I don't know how much they're making, but if I'm not making that much, I would just be going like, why am I even bothering?

Kyrill27:08Like you mean like in terms of like what your earnings are versus the kind of stress and level you're doing. But to be honest, I think if you're… Dario.

Dario27:13Yeah, if I have like that many people I'm expecting, if you have 30 people, I'm like, you must be making a ton of money. It's like at that point, it's like, I'm expecting like at least half a half a mil.

Kyrill27:23he probably is making a decent amount of money, but also when you're running a business like that and you're that involved, because he's also very involved in his business. So there's a level of passion there that can't be replaced, right? And if you're looking at it from just purely a financial perspective, like people who are jumping into our industry are not doing it purely to make money, right? That's not the main driving force. That's more so something that they would like to have as a result of it, right? I mean, when I first jumped into this industry, I thought to myself originally, I don't think I'm gonna make that much money in this industry. So if I can make it to the point where I actually live off of what I do here, then holy crap, that is great. So, and I'm sure that was initially.

Dario28:06I don't agree with that because when I don't agree with that because when you jumped into it you jumped into it thinking that you could hop over to the other industry which was films. That's what you didn't know that the roads right. You thought you could do it make money to then go into films. You didn't go into corporate because ever since you were a little child you dreamed of making ads for a conglomerate business right. at five years old and say, I want to make ads for McDonald's, right? We all do it for money. Yeah, well, yeah, it's like we get into like, I think when you get into this industry, even if whatever, like, I don't know. You're like, I'm not doing it for the money. Blah, blah, blah. You are always thinking about the money because you got you come into it and then you realize, oh, wait a minute.

Kyrill28:38Yeah, well we adopted and we went where the money was. Yeah.

Kyrill28:51You have to think about the money though. That's what I learned. You have to.

Dario29:01Like, you know, there's, okay, the thing is there's three different industries. There's film and TV, there's corporate, and then there's commercial, which is kind of in between film and TV. And I guess we'll throw in documentaries as part of film and TV, but they're kind of separate in a way. So when you get into the creative space, you know, you're a good producer, director, whatever. A lot of us started out as cinematographers. You get into this. And then you're like, what's the next step? Well, if you don't know, you kind of get, you start freelancing. And if you're freelancing, you're mostly working on corporate projects. Right. So eventually get to the point where you get good at it and you can get like, you know what I got, I got to live. Money's good. You kind of, a lot of us just stick into corporate because of that. Right. Until we find out, Hey, wait a minute, if I went into film and TV, I would have had to go through the union, that would have been a pain in the ass and then, you know, I've got to work long ass days. And basically.

Kyrill29:38Yeah, you're.

Kyrill29:54to make nothing for a while.

Dario29:56Not make not have a not have a family if you do probably divorce because the hours are horrible Okay, so screw it. I'll stick with corporate you do weddings on the side You get really good. You don't have to do weddings on the side. You just stick with corporate, right? That's that's really how we all or you know, you kind of get really good at corporate You make the jump into commercial work now You're working with different directors and you're doing commercial maybe you make that transition of TV or film at some point that's really but it's like we all fell into this because It just happened to be the zone where we could make money and do creative stuff. Right. Is that not what happened? Okay. So I just wanted to clarify that. Like, it's not like we woke up and said, we got into this at a passion. We found out that we had, we're good at it and we made it a passion for ourselves. I would say, I don't think, I think very few woke up and said, I want to make ads for, you know, the Lloyd, that's my life goal. That's not really a life goal for a lot of us, right? Especially if you're on the creative side, you're like, I want to make movies.

Kyrill30:31And yeah.

Kyrill30:35Yeah, yeah.

Dario30:53I wanted to TV shows. And then you kind of realize, wait a minute, that's a whole different world. And you get into this. You get stuck here, you're like, I like it, why not? I mean, we like corporate now. Like I personally really like it. If I was to choose, I would stick with this even.

Kyrill31:07Yeah, I mean, look, honestly, you always remember the first bit of money you make off of a video that you create, especially when it was originally not believed that you can actually do that. And yeah, like I remember the first project I got that paid me what looks like 500 bucks for a video. I was like, like back then, you know, like, I mean, like, that's actually even today, like still a lot of money. It's like, it's like, oh, my God, this is actually possible. And then you kind of start. following that and seeing where the industry goes. And like you said, a lot of the time, the biggest market for making money through video production is in the corporate world right now. And it's probably.

Dario31:44But see what you just said right now is you followed the money, Kyrill. Because you got paid for a corporate project if you're really passionate about video on like the stories, the filmic, the film. Like if you wanted to go into films originally, even if you got paid for corporate, you would have found your way to films. Do you know what I'm saying? You followed the money, you went into corporate because the money was there.

Kyrill32:05Well, cause think about it like this, everyone needs to figure out, well, yeah, well, here's the other thing. You also wanna make sure you're also financially stable. So there's like this balancing act that a lot of people have to figure out. It's like, look, if you're gonna get into this industry, you also wanna figure out a way to actually live off of it, right? You can't do the passion work if you're not making money in one way or another. Like anyone who's not doing video production or like people who wanna go into films and TV and all that stuff, but are only focusing on that. you know, they still have to, they still have to put a roof over their head. So they're going to have other jobs.

Dario32:37But you can still make money in film and TV. I don't see any of them on the street with beggars cups. They're making it work.

Kyrill32:44Yeah, but I'm talking about for people jumping into it, not everyone can do it right out the gate, right? Especially when it's uncertain.

Dario32:50Why not? There's a ton of them. No, you just apply for the union and then, yeah, you got to put up with the bad hours, but there's a ton of them working that sink, you know. We went into corporate because like the work-life balance was a lot better and the money was good for us to live in, live with basically. That's a real reason.

Kyrill32:59Anyways, while I'm sa-

Kyrill33:11Yeah, we're saying the same thing here.

Dario33:14Just trying to clarify, because it sounded like, no, like, because even for film and TV, you can still make good money on it. It's just a completely different path is all I'm trying to say. But most of us started trying to get into that. And then we realized what a different road it was. That's all I'm trying to say.

Kyrill33:30Yeah, you realize the different paths that there are and you just have to make a decision on where you wanna go. And if you realize at some point you wanna make some changes, like then make changes and do what you need to. But anyways, so that was basically the gist of everything that we talked about for an entire hour that we condensed into 10 minutes right now. Ha ha ha.

Dario33:52No, there was a lot more complaining, which we'll spare you guys because we've already done it, but there was a lot of complaining about certain situations that have been happening in our country, which are not too good, especially lately. I don't know how they keep topping it week after week, but anyways, we're not going to go into that because we've already done it and it doesn't sound good after we listen to it.

Kyrill34:11No, no, we're gonna move on. So the next thing we're gonna just quickly go over is, where was this? So one of the next directions for the show that we've already kind of touched upon is expanding further beyond where we are now. We've hit already three of the states in the US and our next goal is to hit at least one guest or get one guest onto the show from every single state in the US. And I feel like that is gonna give a very interesting picture of what the industry is like overall in the states where we can kind of compare and see what it's like from one versus the other. And I feel like that would be interesting for anyone who's listening. Cause I don't know any other show or program that has done something like that, which is basically talk to people from every single state in the US or let alone even in Canada, every single province, right? Cause we've done that.

Dario35:07We've done most of the provinces. We haven't done, I think a couple in the, well we haven't done, uh…

Kyrill35:12some of the territories in the north.

Dario35:14Newfoundland, well, territory is not a province. They wanna come on the show, they gotta be a province to qualify. Ha ha ha.

Kyrill35:19but they're still part of it.

Kyrill35:27Trying to try to find like the bigger leads, but yeah.

Dario35:29I think we actually did look on that previous take to see if there was anyone and was that territory we were looking at? None of it? And there was none of them up there. None of them and none of it.

Kyrill35:34None of it.

Kyrill35:40Yeah, well, that's not where the market is. When you think about it, a lot of people go to a lot of these more remote parts of the world. Well.

Dario35:48I don't think anyone goes there, I think they haven't been going there for hundreds of years.

Kyrill35:53No, I've known some creators that have gone to none of it to film some projects here and there. So my point is it's like not, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. There are not people that stay there. Yeah, people, that's what I mean.

Dario35:58to film but not to, it's not like they stay there and start their own company. Yeah, big difference. Not like the market is booming.

Kyrill36:08Yeah, it's only for very specific types of projects. But yeah, so that's essentially it. And that's also why we need the support so we can try to get through the 50 states as fast as possible and try to get it done at least one a week. So with 50 states, or I guess 47 are left now, technically speaking, that would be, yeah, within a year, essentially, that's 47 states right there.

Dario36:35Yeah, we'll get through it in one year.

Kyrill36:37Yeah. Yeah, so that's basically it for the next portion. One other thing we wanna kinda ask our guests is, what are like some other things that you would like to see on the show in terms of topics discussed, production companies, or, well, I guess this is something that goes mostly for our Patreon users at this point, which is like, what would you like to see on the show? What would you like us to kinda talk about? Where would you be curious about? about us reaching out to, as Dario mentioned, maybe Paris, France, or maybe in Germany, or like…

Dario37:11Oh, oh, we forgot to mention another thing too. You get to do, we mentioned that because if you've listened to the first couple of minutes, you heard it over there. But we'll be doing live call ins as well at some point with the Patreon guests. Yeah, we'll try to do that. I mean, we're not going to cater to you to the Patreon. It's a look. It's it's going to happen on this day at this time if you want to and then whatever. So you get to see the show live and then you can also chime in and ask some questions too, because Riverside allows that, which is a really cool feature.

Kyrill37:22Yeah, at least we'll try to do that.

Dario37:39That's going to be really awesome once the Patreon numbers start going up.

Kyrill37:44I think another good thing would be maybe even doing some Q&A's with us on the show on Patreon as well. You never know. Like people can, there could be like some discussions that come through it and like, you know what, we could even do an episode like that. Say we get a good amount of Patreon users eventually and then we can basically do a live show for them and then they could be like, what are your thoughts on this topic or something like that? And then you and I can basically comment on it.

Dario37:52Oh.

Dario38:09Cheryl's being very optimistic of the number of listeners.

Kyrill38:12Look, all it takes is like five Patreon users, you know? That are, I want like, I wanna get a hundred super fans. I don't need, we don't need a hundred thousand casual fans here and there. I mean, don't get me wrong, that would also be nice. But you know, we would love to have like people that are really involved and really passionate. Like think about it, like what are some things that you're interested in, that you're like die hard passionate about? Like how Dario is with his Yeezys. He loves that stuff, you know?

Dario38:16Five.

Dario38:28I would like that.

Kyrill38:42Like that kind of level of, or me with my hats, that kind of level of passion essentially is what we're looking for with our audience. But yeah, and if there are other ideas in terms of what you might think is valuable for you as a listener, let us know, comment below.

Dario38:57The idea better not be lower the price. Look, we gotta pay for this show, okay? Like, I know we don't have the numbers that we need for listeners, so. The, if we had like 10 times the amount of listeners, then I would've lowered the price. But hey, you're getting more value out of this than Disney Plus, so cancel your Disney Plus. You already watched all the Star Wars shows. Enough with the Star Wars, okay? You don't need to watch another one of those garbage shows. Turn your brain into mush. No one cares about Ahsoka.

Kyrill39:25Yeah. If there is, if you've learned something on the show or from any of our discussions with our guests that have helped you improve your business in some way or even how you approach at the following Patreon at creativesgrabcoffee.com for 25.

Dario39:35Send us an interact at the following email.

Dario39:44Buy us a coffee at least, god damn it. Something.

Kyrill39:47Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean that is… except we shouldn't start accepting payments of coffee only, you know, then eventually that's how we're gonna start getting payments in.

Dario39:56I'll take it. I'll take it. Send us something. You made money off this show. Send me something. A little something. You know, deuce me a little. Give me something. A little tenner here or there. Like something.

Kyrill40:06That little tenor. Oh man.

Dario40:11I'm just joking. Gotta have a little fun on this.

Kyrill40:16Yeah. And for those of you who are tuning in and are new to the show, there have been a lot of very interesting topics that we've kind of covered over the last little while. And even like the one cool thing about what we do with the show is that even we are learning talking with these guests because we don't know what the industry like is in these other parts of the world. We don't know what their story is or their experiences. Like the thing we've learned with this show is that every single guest that has come onto the show, none of them have had the same… the same path essentially. There's always been some variances or like differences in how they get into the industry, why they get into the industry, how they've grown, why they've grown. And we've talked about a lot of pretty interesting things. And I remember one of my favorite discussions that we had just on our most recent one with Zach from Maleshko was the whole retainer model bit, because that's something a lot of creatives in our industry talk about wanting more retainer clients, but what we came to the realization is that what we want is more bookings, not retainers, essentially.

Dario41:23I love how we said that if you were doing that, you'd basically be losing out on the inflation cost. Which, you know what? In today's world is a very big problem because inflation reported was like what? I'm pretty sure, listen, listen. Now right now we're down to four here in Canada now, but I'm telling you right now those numbers are fake. It's got to be at least 10%. So.

Kyrill41:30Yeah, that was a big realization.

Kyrill41:39Seven, 8%.

Kyrill41:48It's gotta be more, yeah.

Dario41:49It's got to be way more. I know how they pick and choose. Right. So yeah, that's something. Something no, no one, no one brought that up. It's like, OK, but even if, OK, in normal times, it's supposed to be 2%, right. So whatever you're charging, you got to factor that into the cost. Right. So I guess how I would have pitched it to the client is like. I would have probably said dependent on monthly inflation.

Kyrill41:52Yeah. When inflation was 2%, it wasn't a big deal. When it's 10%!

Kyrill42:16But here's the problem is that you technically

Dario42:17the monthly inflation needs to be factored in because if you're being paid on a monthly basis, you gotta factor in the inflation, right? So, I think it's a hundred bucks, then it's a hundred and two bucks. Ha.

Kyrill42:27But here's the thing though, is that with the inflation, when you're doing retainer models, you're also giving a kind of discount a little bit on that much work. So you're losing even more as a result because that's what a lot of companies do when they're looking for retainer models is like we need more, well, that's how the value is to get them locked into a contract is essentially provide some kind of overall discount and services that helps.

Dario42:42Yeah.

Kyrill42:54helps them swallow that pill necessarily, right? So essentially.

Dario42:56You know what though? It's like, why offer, why offer the discount? Because if they're ready, I remember Adam was talking about it's like it only works. It's worked with him with clients that he already has a good relationship with me, with, which means that he's been doing work with them for a couple of years. It's so it's like, at that point it's already kind of guaranteed. Why offer the discount? Do you know what I mean?

Kyrill43:16Yeah, I think it's just a matter of like, it's not like the, the retainer, the traditional retainer model is not necessarily applicable that well towards the video production world. And yeah, essentially what we're trying to do is just get more bookings, like more consistent bookings rather than retainer. Yeah.

Dario43:34more consistent. I would have, that's how I would have pitched it. Now that I think about it, I would have said it's like, you will be guaranteed that we'll be available for the pro, yeah, we'll be guaranteed for your project. You'll have us for sure. You don't really need to do the discount to lure the men. You could just say, we might be busy, right? So this guarantees our availability. I would still charge them the inflation on it though.

Kyrill43:42a booking every month.

Kyrill44:01Yeah.

Dario44:02I think now it's probably easier to sell that too. It's like, okay, if you're hiring us for the full year, it'll cost this much plus inflation of 2% because that's supposed to be normal anyways. And you just add that on top.

Kyrill44:18Yeah. But, yeah, that was just like a little funny tidbit from one of the past episodes that we had. Oh, actually, this was one thing that I wanted to mention is that one thing that Stuart from Chuck Media talked about, and this kind of goes back to the idea where you might sometimes fall out of love with your business if you find yourself doing a lot of the same kind of corporate work and things like that. Maybe what you need to do is also… take on an annual passion project that you do that you can look forward to every year and get excited about. So that's one thing that he's done to kind of circumvent that aspect of, you know, feeling in like a little bit of a rut with your business is to do something that you normally wouldn't do. So that's something a lot of people should consider as well.

Dario45:02Getting out of a rut though is different, isn't it?

Kyrill45:06Well, maybe not getting out of the rut is maybe not the right way I would say it is I don't know just to kind of like stir up the creative juices a little bit more

Dario45:13Yeah, I think I think for him is it was more stir up creative juices, but I think it's different if you're coming to like a more existent existential situation, right?

Kyrill45:24Yeah. Another thing we also talked about on our episode with Thomas from Offbeat Films was you need to realize that you're going to outgrow your clients eventually. You're never going to stick with the same clients from the very beginning up until now because you grow as a business, they grow as clients, needs change, marketing goals change. Don't take it personally if… if either they move on and they won't take it personally if you also outgrow them, right? Cause when you're starting out in a business, you're also starting out with a certain price point, right? Like when we started doing videos, Dario, it was, we were charging what? Like 150 a video, 500 a video, and that's for an-

Dario46:04So I guess by outgrowing, you're really just saying you've become too expensive for your clients. That's what you're saying?

Kyrill46:10That is one of the main ways. That was one thing I remember we talked about on that episode is that, well, that was just one of them is all I'm mentioning.

Dario46:13What was the other one?

Dario46:18Okay, so outgrowing just basically, yeah, like, well, yeah, obviously, Kira, like you got, you got businesses, we got bills to pay. Like if client can't pay, can't pay, you got to move on.

Kyrill46:28That's my point. And like, and I already mentioned it as well as that essentially different goals and needs change over time, right?

Dario46:35It sounded like creatively when you were saying it, it sounded like creatively you might outgrow the client. I think it's just more so financially. When you're running a business in the corporate space, who cares as long as they can pay, right? Right or wrong?

Kyrill46:42It's more so financially.

Kyrill46:49Well, that, but also, well, there's that, there's that. And also from their end, it's also their goals change as well. So like if they originally brought you in to do monthly videos, right? Maybe they realize after two, three years, oh, we don't need to do these monthly videos anymore. So then they also move on to doing something else. So there's always gonna be an influx of change with the clients that come through the front door. And like even us, like I'd say our current client roster is Fairly new, like from probably two years ago at the most.

Dario47:22Yeah, because their pricing structure changed. That's it.

Kyrill47:25Exactly. So, uh, like don't feel bad if things change is all, is all I'm saying as well, but Yeah

Dario47:30If you're feeling bad, you're in the wrong business, or you should give the reins to the more business-side-minded person on your team. We're running businesses here. We've got no time for emotional, whatever. Your client doesn't care either. They're just a cog in a wheel anyways, right? They got a budget to work with, and they can only sell you so much to upper management anyways, right? There's no emotions involved in this. It's just business. You're just doing transactions, really.

Kyrill47:53Exactly.

Kyrill47:59Yeah. But anyways, those are just a couple of little interesting tidbits that we talked about over the last few episodes. And if you're really curious to see what else we talked about, check out the previous episodes. We got hours and hours and hours of good content for you to check out.

Dario48:17Kyo, you wanted to do like a whole summary of each of the last 10 episodes? They can watch… No?

Kyrill48:22No, I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do a summary of each one. I just wanted to pull like a little, a couple of interesting tidbits like that from past episodes. Like, for example, the retainer idea. Like that was like a very funny realization that we had talked about. Yeah.

Dario48:34That one I liked, the infl- yeah, cause I liked how we saw the two perspectives, like Adam was really for it, or when it worked. And then when we got Zach's perspective on it, on the inflation part, I'm like, oh my God, that's so true, I never even thought about that. And no one mentioned that.

Kyrill48:45Zach.

Kyrill48:51Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's another interesting thing is when we interview some guests, we end up talking about similar topics, but our guests have one aspect of it, one perspective, and then the other one has another perspective. And it's just interesting to draw these comparisons because these are things, these are experiences from people that have gone through this that we haven't, and it's just nice to, it's just interesting to see that unfold and just kind of talk about. But… Yeah, like this and a lot of other interesting topics along the way. You know, we got another 50 episodes coming. By the time we hit episode 100, we will have hit all of the US. So here's to that.

Dario49:31I personally wanted to hit that number close to now, but uh…

Kyrill49:35I would have liked to as well, but it's not easy. And this is why it costs money to do this. It costs money to do this. And here's the other thing. We're also running the actual video production business side, right? We could be focusing on a video. We would be like editing or working on an episode. It's like, oh, we're working also two client projects have come through the door that we have to focus on getting done first. That's gonna take precedent, right? So with a little bit of funding, at least it'll help us.

Dario49:38Yeah, it's not easy. Yeah, it's not… honestly.

Dario49:59Yeah.

Kyrill50:04at the very least hiring even some editors to actually help produce the content if we're busy with other things going on, right? There's lots to come through. And honestly, I just wanna…

Dario50:11Yeah, yeah.

Dario50:16Yeah, Michael, we would still we would still be doing this show even if we didn't have support it's just uh The episodes are just gonna trickle out a lot slower But uh, you know, like if you guys are getting a lot of value out of this, you know help support the show I know times are tough less projects coming in but Again cancel disney plus

Kyrill50:39Yeah, yeah cancel one of those one of those subscription models that you don't need, you know The those ones are just giving you some basic very bare-bones basic entertainment and whereas this is actually We're actually bringing people to you Spreading. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, CGC is all about spreading the knowledge. Yeah, exactly But yeah, so anyways, I think that pretty much covered everything already and said this is what a more condensed version

Dario50:49Yeah. We're spreading knowledge.

Kyrill51:08of those three hour first takes that we did. They were just pure ranting episodes.

Dario51:13There was a, in all fairness, Kyrill, there was a lot to rant about. It's just, our listeners are also in different countries and they don't really, they didn't really need to know a lot of the ranting that went on for here.

Kyrill51:18Yep.

Kyrill51:25They don't need to care. They don't look we get it. You guys are all here to learn new things from our guests and from us You're not here to care about our problems. We're not here to care about our problems But anyways

Dario51:32Yeah, not hear me complain. Yeah. And we're not here to, and the opposite, and you know, and vice versa. But anyways, yeah, look, we're trying to pump out this show more often, expect a lot more episodes. You know, if they come out pretty often and we don't have that many Patreon users, then someone please send Karel like, you know, some coffee money or something, cause that means he's editing. He's editing a lot. Because God knows I ain't touching these. I'm dealing with the outreach. Actually I got two calls from people from Boston coming up today so I better get to those guys.

Kyrill52:03Yeah. Yep.

Kyrill52:12Yeah. Our next episode 51 will be our next guest from the States from Boston. So stay tuned for that and stay tuned for more. We're excited.

Dario52:24Yeah. All right. Thank you, guys.

Kyrill52:25All right, thanks guys. Cheers. And yeah, that's the next thing. We're gonna get some CGC mugs, all right? So, you know, as with every Patreon user, you might get one of these right in the mail if you sign up, so there you go.

Dario52:38Oh my god, you know what Kyrill did for us back in the couple years back? He ordered mugs. I don't know why this guy ordered like a hundred of them. A hundred mugs. Seventy-five! I still have, I still have seventy sitting in my garage in a big box. I don't even know what to do with them. I can't even give them away. No one will take them. I have forty. No one will take them. I have forty mugs in there. I don't know what to do with them.

Kyrill52:46No, no, we or I ordered 75 because that was the minimum. That was the minimum. You can't do less.

Kyrill52:55No, you have 40. You have 40. What do you mean no one will take him? Why would you say no one will take them? We just haven't given them out to people. There's a difference. You're making it sound like nobody wants our mugs.

Dario53:08Hey listen, if they keep raising those interest rate hikes, then I definitely won't be giving them out to anyone. They're actually really good. I will say they're actually really high quality mugs. I've abused them to hell and high water and they're just scratched up a bit, but the logo is still clear. They're really high-

Kyrill53:13Yeah, because these are actually really good quality mugs actually.

Kyrill53:20Yeah. When you start seeing a…

Kyrill53:28Yeah, it's still… Here, let me get this in the center of the frame.

Dario53:31Put it in front of you. Yeah, that's pretty good. Like I've scratched mine up. They're really good mugs. I haven't broken a single one yet either.

Kyrill53:39Yeah. Oh, I've accidentally broken one. It was just from, it's fall. It's been dropped. It happens. It happens. I don't remember this happened during the pandemic. Like, why are you trying to ask me questions like this?

Dario53:42How did you break it?

Dario53:47How did you drop it?

Dario53:53How depressed were you? You drop a mug? How do you drop a mug? I've never even heard of that. Like who drops a mug?

Kyrill53:59You know how many movies there are of people dropping mugs and everything? It's such a, it's such a clu-

Dario54:03Yeah, but that's done for cinematic effect. And then they do the slow-mo. They do the slow-mo of it shattering into 50 million pieces. Wait, just out of curiosity, how many pieces did it break into? Like just two or like a million?

Kyrill54:07Maybe that's what I was trying to do.

Kyrill54:15It was like, it literally, it was just the handle fell off and that was it. Yeah, it was, it, I was still able to technically use it. I was just like, I just didn't want to have that chip. But yeah, like it's honestly, it had like maybe like a little chip on one other side, but yeah, these are good quality mics. So we'll get some CGC ones with maybe like some kind of like Patreon supporter thing.

Dario54:18Just a handle, right? Yeah, so it's still good. You could still technically use it, right?

Dario54:38We should ask that company to sponsor us then.

Kyrill54:41YAAA, okay there we go. Now we have an idea for another.

Dario54:44Sponsor numero tres. We already have another one that Kyrill's gonna go film next week and you'll see this company in episode 51 and maybe this other one in episode 52.

Kyrill54:47No but- Yeah, su-

Kyrill54:56Yeah. So anyways, thanks guys for tuning in and thanks for everyone who's been supporting the show from the very beginning. We know a couple of super fans who've been around since the beginning and we look forward to the next batch.

Dario55:11Yep. All right, see you guys. Thank you for listening.

Kyrill55:12All right, take care. Thank you.