Strategize Your Niche (ft. CHUCK Media)

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Dario Nouri00:01Okay, all right, it's live. All right. So, hey everyone, welcome to episode 48 of Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we have Stuart Edgeworth from ChuckMedia.co. Stuart, welcome to the show.

Stuart Edgeworth00:15Guys, Dario, Kyrill, great to see you both here. How's it going?

Dario Nouri00:20Good good.

Kyrill Lazarov00:20Great to see you. I think this is the first episode where we're having a guest that is not in a chair and going for like a very different kind of podcast look. And I applaud you for it, but I'm very curious to see how your back is gonna be after 10, 15 minutes.

Stuart Edgeworth00:22Yeah.

Dario Nouri00:35Hehehehe

Stuart Edgeworth00:36It's going to be wrecked. It's going to be wrecked by the end of it. Yeah. Oh, you have to forgive me. I was just a bit of a juggles. I've got an office in Sydney, but, um, shooting from home today, I've got three little kids as well. So it's just like a lot of, just logistics guys. Yeah. So thanks. Thanks for bearing with me here.

Kyrill Lazarov00:39It's all about the shot, right?

Dario Nouri00:41Just looking at him right now, my back hurts.

Dario Nouri01:00Yeah, all good. Stuart is also our first Australian guest.

Kyrill Lazarov01:01No worries.

Stuart Edgeworth01:05Right on.

Kyrill Lazarov01:05Oh, oh really? I didn't even realize that. Yeah, wow.

Dario Nouri01:08He was, he was just talking about how it's winter in Australia and it's still hot. Like, didn't you make the connection?

Kyrill Lazarov01:13No, I know, but I didn't realize he was our first guest from Australia. For some reason, I thought we already had someone from Australia, but yeah.

Dario Nouri01:20No, no, we did the UK recently and we finally broke into Australia.

Stuart Edgeworth01:25Oh nice. So you've gone international already then?

Dario Nouri01:28Yeah, yeah. But this is good. I'm very curious about the market down there. Like how's video production down there? I'm curious to know all that stuff.

Stuart Edgeworth01:30So who are you talking to?

Stuart Edgeworth01:37Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess what we're still finding at the moment is I don't know how you guys are finding it. You guys are in Toronto, right? Yeah, yeah, okay. Like we're okay. Like Chuck's got some pretty juicy sort of projects that'll keep us, you know, the wheels turning for quite a few months ahead.

Dario Nouri01:47Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth02:02I don't know, we're getting the vibe that certain aspects of production are just like slowing down a little bit. Like, are you feeling a bit of that? We're definitely… I'm getting calls from more crew, sort of that. They're like, yo, if you got any work, give me a call.

Dario Nouri02:11the interest rates.

Dario Nouri02:19Yeah, yeah. How are they? What's the interest rate situation down there?

Stuart Edgeworth02:25Uh, I think it's just like we're probably like peaked. I think that's where we're at. So um because you guys have sort of you guys have wound it back in right? Aren't you guys like heading back over the other side of that hill?

Dario Nouri02:33That's what they said here. And then next thing you know.

Dario Nouri02:40Oh no man, like that's what we all thought and then I basically the way to go about it is this is if they say oh They're not gonna raise it anymore. That's a lie. They're gonna keep raising that thing. It's an outright lie

Kyrill Lazarov02:43Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth02:52Oh damn. Yeah right. I was just going to say we're at that point. I think the news today was the Reserve Bank was saying, yeah we're just going to hit pause. Maybe this is the last ones and everyone's sort of like, you know, just double down. Yeah, alright. Watch this space. I'll let you know how things pan out in the next few weeks.

Kyrill Lazarov02:55I'm gonna say I'm actually also trying… Oh, sorry, go.

Dario Nouri03:09Get ready, they're gonna raise it. I'll bet you, I'll bet you money.

Dario Nouri03:18I noticed, and we talked about this on an earlier podcast, how starting the year, things are fine, lots of leads coming in, first two, three months, and then as they kept increasing them, we noticed the leads just started to dwindle. And it's not just with us. Other people I spoke into same situation. The people we spoke into the UK, kind of similar situation too in terms of work. So I think it's, I don't know how it is in the States, but.

Stuart Edgeworth03:34interesting.

Stuart Edgeworth03:37Yeah.

Dario Nouri03:45at least in Canada, UK, now it sounds like Australia too, it's like an infection man, it's spreading.

Stuart Edgeworth03:48Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth03:52Yeah, look, I'm sort of in two minds about it because before, so I've been in full time back in production for over a decade now and before that I kind of had like another weird little life where I was in business development and sales for like an international adventure sports company. And so, you know, I had like this whole business development sales head space where it's, you just, you know, if things get quiet, it's your fault. You know, you just hit the phones harder or you just hustle harder and, and stuff keeps coming in. So yeah, look, I think I'm not saying that things aren't slowing down. Like I said, I'm getting more calls from crew who were just sort of, you know, feeling the pinch a bit and just, and, you know, so they're hustling a bit more. but i think like we're kinda lucky we we've got couple of our clients are we've got some government clients and they're so i longer pipeline projects so it's sort of like we've got that benefit of having at least like a few months of work with some bigger projects whereas yet like i know i know a lot of some other video production companies it's more like you know you get those uh… the small projects where you know you do it but then you look at your just always looking for them for the next one right which uh…

Dario Nouri04:51Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth05:10can be stressful, can be super stressful.

Kyrill Lazarov05:13You mentioned that you came from a background of business development and sales, and you mentioned how there really isn't a slow period unless you're not really pushing to do outreach in some way, shape, or form. Do you apply the same kind of tactics for your business as a video production company, or do you take a little bit of a different approach to getting leads?

Stuart Edgeworth05:38I guess just by nature, I've still got that, there's at least some element of that sales mentality. Look, I mean, I got out, I moved out of sales because it is pretty high pressure, right? You know, there's like a lot, you've got to have a certain personality type to keep going with it. And it is like a lot, it takes a lot of just personal energy to, you know, to maintain a really high level in sales and business development. But I mean you guys know as well right when you've got your own business you've got some sort of fire inside you which you want your business to succeed so there's always and all of us particularly when you start out you go through those peaks and troughs where you're like you're flying high and you're pumped with business and then suddenly the bottom falls out and like well. I've got to get some working quick. And so it's more like a fear of not, I don't want to be in those, in those troughs as much. So I think that's where, where like that drive comes from. But yeah, a hundred percent. I'm still, I'm still doing outreach. I'm more of a, I'm more of an outreach relationships kind of guy when it comes to how I'm hoping to build the business. I know a lot of the

Kyrill Lazarov06:53Mm-hmm.

Dario Nouri06:54So you're doing like cold calling or anything like that?

Stuart Edgeworth06:57uh… that there's an element of cold calling but it's not like it's not the classic pick up the phone call hundred numbers and hope like to them stick i don't really have that in me anymore it's more like it's more targeted cold calling i guess so uh… if we uh… so for example with you know we're sort of completing the series of induction and training content for a pretty big infrastructure project here in sydney And what we're doing is we'll sort of shop that to other clients that we think we can help. So it's sort of like, look, we've, you know, this is very much in your, in your wheelhouse, it's in our wheelhouse. This is how we can help you. This is how we can, um, you know, how, what we can provide will benefit your business. Um, but just making sure it's like, it's like an actual alignment and all. And also we ask, you know, we ask our clients for referrals. So like big part of what we're doing as part of the whole customer journey is planning the seed that referrals are really important and it would be awesome if you thought of any other people that you've worked with that we might be able to help in a similar way because it Even though 10 years down the track, still, I don't know, 90, 95% of our business is still referrals. You know, we don't have some amazing marketing machine that just brings organic leads in. We don't have that kind of operation. But I'm curious to hear about you guys. I know a lot of businesses have got it dialed in terms of more of a…

Dario Nouri08:22Hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov08:31Cough

Stuart Edgeworth08:45What's the word? You know, an integrated digital approach. We're still kind of old school in a lot of ways, where it's like leads, referrals, relationships, that kind of thing.

Dario Nouri08:50Hmm.

Dario Nouri08:56I mean, like I'm kind of jealous of that to be honest with you. And also like if it's not broke, why fix it, right? Uh, but for us, uh, we, we were operating on a lot of referrals when we first started out, but again, we didn't have like a big chunk of them. Like it was like a couple here or there. Um, now we've, we've yeah. And the quantity was also lacking. Uh, but then once we started focusing a lot on SEO, we started getting.

Stuart Edgeworth09:02Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth09:12Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov09:12Yeah, not consistent.

Dario Nouri09:23our leads coming in from Google search, right? So that's mainly been our jam.

Stuart Edgeworth09:30Yeah.

Dario Nouri09:30up until yeah like now we're trying to explore different avenues for that. We're just prepping some stuff for social media like we had several guests talk about how they had a lot of success with doing ads on Facebook and Instagram and I don't know if they said LinkedIn but it's something we want to explore in the next coming months. I also am looking at

Kyrill Lazarov09:53Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth09:54Yeah.

Dario Nouri09:57Maybe like trying to pivot our pack like our services a little bit like I Was actually going to talk to you about this today kill when you came over but in terms of like, you know We're doing like mid to high level video production, but I feel like a lot of the times now Clients do need a ton of content But they don't they can't afford, you know the same quality of production for those little assets, right? So I like what Prospective Picture does with his social media packages. So I want us to kind of explore something similar. In terms of outreach, I don't know, I was thinking about that recently. I think our approach for that is just going to be like… targeted content or like knowledge pieces and then just Publish that on social media and like hopefully through that traction will get something. I don't know like maybe it's just me I'm just nervous like doing cold outreach or there's something like that

Kyrill Lazarov10:54It's that I see, I think there's another side to the relationship building, which I think Stu, you were talking about where, uh, it's not necessarily cold outreach to certain, um, like people you don't know, but kind of like inserting yourself in different kind of like communities, you know, like maybe like marketing groups or teams and things like that, just getting known in different communities and just keeping, keeping relationships like those alive. And then down the road, you never know where that person might get a get hired at a different company and might need video content down the road. And then that's how they'll remember you. So that kind of relationship management, I think is key, which is why that's one thing I've been like also trying to keep at like a, at a certain level with certain marketing groups. Like we, one thing that we've been a sponsor of over the past few years is the American marketing association in Toronto. They are all over the U S as well. And so I'm just kind of in that community, you know,

Stuart Edgeworth11:46Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov11:51going to certain events, talking with people, trying to go to other marketing events within the city, just to kind of run into people I know and just like building those relationships, maybe getting introduced to a few different people. Obviously it's not something that guarantees work down the road. It's kind of like watering a plant to get, you know, like a vegetable garden down the road. You may get fruit, you may not, but something really good can come of it down the road. But… Again, that shouldn't be your main source of, that shouldn't be your main thing that you rely on. You have to think of different ways. And that's what Dario has been kind of talking about, which is trying different ways of finding where business can potentially come from.

Dario Nouri12:33Stu, you mentioned how you really let your clients know that referrals are pretty important. I'm just wondering, what's your process for that? Because personally, me, I find it hard enough to get a review out of them. I don't know how you're getting both. You know?

Stuart Edgeworth12:42Hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth12:51Yeah, I mean, I ask all clients, it doesn't mean we get one off all clients, and we have reviews as well. That's just part of the process. At the end of every job, we'll follow up. and send a message thanking them and asking for a review. I don't know, maybe like 30% of our clients end up leaving a review. But then if we work with them again, usually, I don't think it's because people don't want to leave a review, but I think things just get shuffled down in people's inboxes.

Dario Nouri13:26Yeah, I think so too.

Kyrill Lazarov13:27That's mainly it. That's mainly it. It's not that people don't want to. It's there's such a huge to do list for a lot of things and people just don't have time. And then they and then they forget sometimes that's even how it is with sometimes emailing back and forth between people. It's it's not that they don't want to get back to you sometimes. It's just like something came up and they have to deal with that, that it just keeps getting shuffled down.

Stuart Edgeworth13:30Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth13:48Anyway, yeah.

Dario Nouri13:50Sometimes they're not allowed either. I found that out recently. Like two of our clients, apparently like legally, they weren't allowed to write a review for us. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth13:53Okay.

Kyrill Lazarov13:57Oh wow.

Stuart Edgeworth13:58Oh, okay. Yeah, right. All right. Well, there's that too then, right? Yeah. Was that like a corporate client? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I'm curious.

Dario Nouri14:02I was like, okay, I'll stop pestering you. Yeah. Corporate something about how like they'd be representing the company if they did that and they'd have to get permission. So I was like, okay, don't worry about it. Forget it.

Kyrill Lazarov14:03You know that, you know that makes sense.

Kyrill Lazarov14:14Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth14:16Okay.

Kyrill Lazarov14:17Yeah, yeah, it makes sense. As soon as you said that some people aren't allowed, I'm like, I know exactly what that is. It's like, we can't have you, you're not our PR person. You can't speak to what the company feels, right? Which is just a little interesting, but I get it.

Dario Nouri14:25Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth14:27Yeah. Right, right. It's like that brand reputation thing, right? Like they're so focused on making sure that nothing could potentially damage the brand. Yeah. Okay. That's interesting. Hey, I'm curious. What do you guys sort of with the productions that you're working on, do you tend to like, do you niche down? Are you sort of like servicing a broad range of clients? Are you targeting certain stuff?

Dario Nouri14:32What are you gonna do?

Dario Nouri14:56Broad, broad. Yeah, like especially, yeah, no, I don't want us to niche down on anything. I like the fact that it's always something random that we haven't done before. It's almost like, okay, I get to check this off the list. Like we have this, actually it's already August, we have a project this month that's for our hair salon company, and we're doing like an educational like workshop series with them.

Stuart Edgeworth15:07Yeah.

Dario Nouri15:21So there's that. We've done manufacturing. We do like a whole bunch of different things. We've done water bottles, dog treats. And then we'll do, yeah, this year there was a lot. A lot of manufacturing.

Kyrill Lazarov15:28We did a lot of manufacturing videos this year, which was actually kind of a funny trend. Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth15:33Okay. Yeah, right. Like, um, and do you think having some clients having seen that you've done manufacturing videos, maybe that's like where more came from or just, or that was just like a random occurrence? Yeah. Okay.

Dario Nouri15:47It wasn't public. It wasn't public. So I don't know how they found it. But but hey, I'm happy to do it. It's always interesting. Like, I mean, the last one we did was for like a garage door company and it was like super fascinating to see how like they're made from beginning to end. You're like, okay, interesting. I didn't know this like interesting little tidbit. But if you see like garage doors, like, it's not like wood or something on the inside. It's like styrofoam. Do you know that? Yeah, super interesting stuff.

Kyrill Lazarov15:50Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth15:55For sure.

Stuart Edgeworth16:00Yeah, you gotta get it.

Kyrill Lazarov16:05Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth16:12Oh really? I think that's, you know what, I've got a feeling that's a Canadian thing. We definitely don't have styrofoam on our garage doors. That must be like insulation.

Kyrill Lazarov16:16Wait, Styrofoam? Oh, well.

Dario Nouri16:18It's Styrofoam. It's some type of foam material. Maybe I'm wrong now. I don't remember the exact name, but it looked like Styrofoam.

Stuart Edgeworth16:28pretty sure our garage doors are just like tin.

Kyrill Lazarov16:28Like a foam composite.

Dario Nouri16:31Foam composites, something like that, I don't know. Anyways, something like that.

Kyrill Lazarov16:34Tin, tin, oh, it depends on what era. Like if you look at all the homes in Toronto that were like built in like the mid-1900s. Wait, 1900? 19, like, am I, I don't know, like am I saying this right?

Stuart Edgeworth16:34Yeah, right.

Stuart Edgeworth16:43Yeah.

Dario Nouri16:46Probably No, not made not bad. No, no, no cuz the company we were doing before they started like over a hundred years ago Like a hundred twenty years old They were like the first guys It's like them and another guy that make it

Kyrill Lazarov16:56Okay, because I know, I remember my family's houses. I remember my family's houses, the houses on my family's street, back in the day all had these like metal doors that would like screech every time they would open and close. Kind of like the door that you, I think Dario your house has right now. Now that I think about it.

Dario Nouri17:16But you know, Kyrill, the new ones, listen, the new ones don't make a peep. Like you almost don't know they've opened. Silent. It's pretty interesting. I can't wait to replace that one. But then the problem is I won't know when it's open. The one now I can be on the other side of the house. I'll hear it. Oh, hell yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov17:21Yeah, that's how it.

Stuart Edgeworth17:23silent.

Stuart Edgeworth17:33You know when someone's coming through, yeah right. Pros and cons.

Kyrill Lazarov17:39uh, Stu, I was actually-

Dario Nouri17:39Yeah, but no, yeah, we do like a bunch of different types of video. Sorry, Kierl, but I'm just curious, what about you? Like, are you niching down on specific types or are you just like us? Like you're open to whatever?

Stuart Edgeworth17:53But we're kind of open to whatever. I think we went down a path of trying to niche down maybe 18 months ago. So um. So I actually got a business coach and was like, okay, trying to figure out how I could, you know, sort of level up the marketing approach and, you know, just like how I could grow the business a bit more quickly. And so part of that strategy was niching down. And at the time, we were actually doing a lot of work for healthcare and pharmaceutical companies. Just like, it just happened to be that our biggest client then was a pharmaceutical company and we done some of the healthcare stuff. So we're like, well, look.

Dario Nouri18:27Hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth18:35These are good clients, we kind of know how they operate, you know, we know that sector, that industry, so let's sort of, you know, do some more targeted marketing in that space. And I think part of it, it wasn't like super successful, long story short. It didn't like particularly yield great results. And I think that, I think part of that is just due to the laws around advertising pharmaceuticals in Australia. It's like way, I don't know what it's like in Canada, but in the States, right? You know how like, like on TV every second advertisement is for, it's for a drug, right? It's

Kyrill Lazarov19:09Mm-hmm.

Dario Nouri19:15Fast and loose over there. Yeah. It's actually wild when you go there and you just turn on the TV at a hotel, and you're like, Jesus, I just, like, what is going on here? Ha ha ha.

Kyrill Lazarov19:18Oh my god, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth19:24That's crazy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov19:26Well, that happened in March. In March, I had to travel down to the States for a shoot for us. And in the hotel room, anytime I would turn on the TV, I'd be lying down in bed. And then the whole ad section was pharmaceutical ads. And most of the time, it's them listing out all the side effects that you would get from those pharmaceuticals.

Stuart Edgeworth19:40Yeah.

Dario Nouri19:44Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Stuart Edgeworth19:44Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right?

Kyrill Lazarov19:49I'm like, okay, that's what they legally have to do. But they're saying, you might get diarrhea, you might die, you might lose your sight, you might lose your hearing. And it's just people in bureau like, ah, you know, like smiling the whole time.

Stuart Edgeworth20:02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like living their best life playing golf. It's like… Always playing golf. Nice weather, playing golf. They've all got erectile dysfunction. Depression. It's sort of, it's funny, right?

Dario Nouri20:02on a side note uh… it's okay because the target market is all people that's why that's the target market well i guess you should have you should have done it there you should have gone to the u s and then uh… and each down over there uh…

Kyrill Lazarov20:05They're always playing golf. That's what it is.

Kyrill Lazarov20:12Well, yeah, probably.

Stuart Edgeworth20:21Well, right? Yeah, that was the conclusion I came to, is I'm just doing it in the wrong place. Because you can't advertise drugs basically at all in Australia. So the sort of work we were doing was more like patient stories. So it's more how the pharmaceutical companies get the message about their treatments to other healthcare professionals. So, you know.

Dario Nouri20:33Except alcohol.

Kyrill Lazarov20:34Uh-huh.

Dario Nouri20:49Hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth20:50clinicians in hospitals and So it's sort of like it's coming at it from a different way It's like this is the benefit of this treatment has had on these patients is a patient story If you wanted to prescribe it for your patients, this is what happened with it. So It's not advertising There's nothing let's go there's less golf. Yeah

Dario Nouri21:07It's not as good as people playing golf. Let's golf instead.

Kyrill Lazarov21:09You know what?

Kyrill Lazarov21:13I know, Stu, I know the reason, at least I think I know the reason why probably the niching down didn't work is because you guys picked an industry where you had to niche too much to the point where what you just described to me where the way you were advertising for this company was stories about how this company helped another person, which indirectly helped the people that were in the video. And I'm thinking to myself, that is…

Dario Nouri21:40That's complicated.

Kyrill Lazarov21:43Just hearing it, I can't imagine, there's only so much of that you can do. Not every company can do that or needs to do that based on their needs. And pharmaceutical companies wanna just sell drugs. That's essentially what they wanna do at the end of the day. How many customer stories are they gonna need to do on a daily basis to feed Stu and Chuck Media? You know? Ha ha ha.

Dario Nouri21:49Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth21:58Yeah.

Dario Nouri22:02Hehehe Hahaha

Stuart Edgeworth22:07You probably have come to the same conclusion we did, but just much more quickly. Well done. Yeah, yeah, so. Yeah, right, right. So, and then like weirdly we got introduced to like a big consortium that's doing a big infrastructure project here in Sydney. And now like.

Dario Nouri22:11Hehehe

Kyrill Lazarov22:11Oh, yeah Hey, everything's trial and error.

Stuart Edgeworth22:32Their pharmaceutical stuff has dried up. Like that was probably 60% of our, maybe more of our business a couple of years ago. It's probably now a little more like five to 10. And we've been doing these infrastructure jobs. So sometimes, I mean, sometimes you just don't know which way the wind's gonna blow, right? So we're riding that train for now. And it's cool, you know, like you guys were saying, it's cool when just, you know, random stuff comes in. Yeah, I guess that's one of the joys of this job, right? Like you get windows into… Ah… Eh…

Dario Nouri23:07Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth23:13learn about it and you spend a day or two with people and understand how they're spending their life. That's fascinating to have that opportunity, right?

Dario Nouri23:25Yeah, that's what I love about this job.

Kyrill Lazarov23:26You know, one thing that, you know, just kind of like on the flip side, you know, because a lot of companies say it's not good to be general, you better niche down. But then if you niche down, you know, you don't get to expose yourself to different types of jobs. Do you feel like the kind of like do it all types of projects kind of approach? Do you feel like that kind of like boxes you in to the to the box of like, you know, you're not the master of any type of video project or industry as a result? compared to like say other companies that only do like say industrial work, other companies that only do pharmaceutical work, other companies that only do this. Like maybe it's not industry so much so, I think it's more so production type. And I think, I guess that's one thing to clarify. Like we like having different types of industries coming through the front door, but not necessarily doing like 50,000 different types of video projects all the time. Like a lot of it is like a lot of corporate type work in terms of like similar types of

Dario Nouri24:24What are you trying to say like within corporate? Because when you were talking just now, I was thinking, OK, you could niche down and maybe do commercials. That's different from corporate. Is that what you're trying to say?

Kyrill Lazarov24:25promotional videos.

Kyrill Lazarov24:39Yeah, that's what I mean. Cause it's like when we were talking about how, when Stuart you were asking like what types of projects and work do we do, we do like all different kinds. It's I think to clarify, I guess it's like we do many different types of industries, right? More so a lot of, yeah, more so a lot of industries. Yeah, so that's just something I'm clarifying also, you know, like for maybe the 10 or 15 audience members that we have listening to this right now. But yeah, essentially that.

Stuart Edgeworth24:49Mm.

Dario Nouri24:54industries yeah i think that's what he was asking yeah

Kyrill Lazarov25:07all kinds of different industries coming through the front door. Cause a lot of the time, a lot of companies need very similar types of projects, you know, 30 second ads, uh, one minute promotional videos, maybe two to three minutes story videos or something like that. It's a lot of like similar types of content, but all kinds of different kind, yeah, Darya.

Dario Nouri25:22You can, I think you can pretty much niche down in the sense that like, if you're a corporate video production company like us and Stu, like you can have a lot of one type of industry, right? That you can consider that kind of, I have enough of a niche in that particular industry, right? But to be honest with you, like we all do, we've all done videos for a ton of different industries, right? Um, the niching, the niching down the way I see it is you either

Kyrill Lazarov25:31Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth25:35Mm.

Kyrill Lazarov25:41Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov25:46Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Which is normal.

Dario Nouri25:52You could just specifically focus on like maybe just finance. Like I know by the booth, the animation company, they they're focusing strictly on finance videos now they niche down over there and on, on that industry. Or you could just focus on different types of productions. Like you could just focus on commercials, just focus on commercial video production, that's strictly what you do. Oh yeah. Events.

Stuart Edgeworth26:00Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov26:11Only ads, only ads, only events. Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth26:16I kind of think as well, right, with niching down, it's referring to maybe what you're targeting with your marketing, but not necessarily what's coming through the door and what you're still producing. I think… like I know other production companies which their marketing and their online presence is niched because you know it just helps to focus how they're approaching that aspect of their business. But it doesn't mean that other sectors, companies, you know production types aren't still coming through the door and they're not still doing that. So you know that can be like an important distinction. I think like when we were looking at niching

Kyrill Lazarov26:37Mm.

Stuart Edgeworth26:59disparate and different types of work we were doing but it was just like okay, that's cool. We're not going to like turn work away if it makes sense to do it. But we were niching in the sense of okay, we're going to look at where this audience lives online. We're going to try and tailor our online marketing presence to suit them. We're going to talk about solving those sorts of problems for them. But it didn't like, it still didn't like, like if something totally different came, like came through the door, we're like, oh yeah, that sounds cool. It's not like, oh, but it's not our niche. So I don't know if we can't do that. Yeah. So I think that's probably like an important distinction as well.

Dario Nouri27:35Hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov27:36Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov27:41I think what a lot of people might be afraid of when niching down is that they might be closing themselves off to people who were thinking about reaching out, but then don't because they see, oh, they only do these types of projects. I don't think they can help us out with what this is, when in reality they probably can. So I feel like sometimes it's like a fine line of where you wanna showcase very specific work so you can get more of those types of clients coming through the front door. But then you also wanna be open to ones that you never thought of. would be interesting to come through the front door? Because yeah, obviously there are certain projects you want to, if you want to get certain projects coming through the front door, like you said, your marketing and your online presence has to be very much targeted with that. But do you feel like it is possible to do that and still kind of build a business that allows other different types of projects to come through the front door? Or do we need to create our own little niches?

Dario Nouri28:34You could still do it. You could still do it, Kyrill. Like you said, he still had stuff coming in.

Stuart Edgeworth28:36Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov28:37Yeah, yeah, I know.

Stuart Edgeworth28:40Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov28:41Yeah, I guess it just depends. It depends on the market and where you are.

Stuart Edgeworth28:44I think it depends as well how much capacity you've got for marketing. You know if you're a one man band type business that's very different to like if you've got a team of ten people. who can, you know, if you've got more people and people who can focus on marketing, it's possible then to have, you know, say your main page is your aspirational page, right? Like this is the sort of work you want to head towards, the stuff that you're most proud of and like in five years time if you were just doing that, that'd be amazing. So, you know, maybe it's like those high end TVCs like how… it'd be great if we were just doing really creative, high budget, high TVCs all the time. But then if you've got other people, you might have like just landing pages, which are more niche. So for example, with, when we were looking at the pharma, we're basically playing in LinkedIn because that's the platform where pharma and healthcare people tend to live and then linking them through to a specific landing page.

Kyrill Lazarov29:39Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth29:56page just shows Chuck Media does Pharma, but like our main page shows, it tells a different story. So if you've got more capacity, you can like niche on different landing pages and have different strategies so you're funneling people to different places.

Kyrill Lazarov30:09Yeah.

Dario Nouri30:12Were you advertising on LinkedIn?

Stuart Edgeworth30:15We didn't and that's because, do you know what? We probably should have tested it, but what we heard was that it's expensive, like your cost per lead is pretty high. Right? But then we also heard, if you do manage to land leads, they tend to be high quality, high value leads, but we were just like, ah, we're gonna stick to the organic, see how that pans out.

Dario Nouri30:18It's expensive, eh?

Dario Nouri30:27Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov30:28super high.

Stuart Edgeworth30:44But yeah, like we just basically the feedback we heard was that you may as well just do organic on LinkedIn because you probably get similar results than if you were doing a paid campaign on LinkedIn, but just not having to spend the money.

Dario Nouri30:57I'm not surprised you got that answer because most of the ads I see on LinkedIn I go, oof. They're not good. Like, half the time I'm like, it's just as bad as a lot of the posts I see. Half the po- like, 99% of the posts I see on LinkedIn just make me cringe half the time. And like, the ads like match it. Yeah, there's- oh, 100%. But organically! Organically there is.

Stuart Edgeworth31:03You're right.

Kyrill Lazarov31:05They're not great. Do you think there's an upper?

Kyrill Lazarov31:14Do you think then that there's an opportunity? Do you think there's an opportunity there? Like if everything, if every ad on LinkedIn.

Stuart Edgeworth31:15Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth31:25Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov31:26Yeah. But that's what I was wondering if all the ads on LinkedIn are that bad, like 98% of them are terrible ads through LinkedIn. You think there's potentially an opportunity to try to make something good and capitalize on that, you know, something that might stand out from the, from the LinkedIn ads that we see nowadays or something like that. Do you guys think that?

Dario Nouri31:46Absolutely, where we got it's the way to figuring that I was just creating some type something that is organic on a platform like TikTok or Instagram would do really well on LinkedIn because it'll be different from what everyone else is posting Because no one's really being that authentic or that like normal on LinkedIn Everyone's being very like, you know, like you got a mask on type of stuff. So I think as soon as you become more Yeah, I see

Stuart Edgeworth32:03You should test that. Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth32:11Yeah, yeah, everyone's like the most buttoned up. Best self, right?

Dario Nouri32:15I, yeah, if you be authentic, I think you could go far on LinkedIn. It'll be different. Cause you know, you have a lot of our people, um, uh, millennials, Gen Z or is coming on now and like it's, if you go on Instagram or Tik TOK, how many like reels do you see making fun of like, uh, office culture? A ton, man, a ton. So people are just waiting, waiting for like normal content on LinkedIn.

Kyrill Lazarov32:20Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth32:36Totally. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov32:37Oh yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov32:43See, think of it like this. I don't know if you guys remember this, but when Facebook was really popular, it was like the millennial generation and everyone had that mask that they would put on back then. If you look at the people that we knew back in Facebook, like maybe 10, 15 years ago, they're posting exactly the same on LinkedIn, like they did on Facebook 10, 15 years ago, but with the way they communicate, the way they communicate.

Dario Nouri33:06No they're not, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? People on Facebook used to post like, Kyrill, do you forget what we would post on Facebook back in the day? We've all had to do a cleanup job. We've all had to do a cleanup job on our timelines. What are you talking about? How many posts did you go and delete?

Kyrill Lazarov33:17What are you referring to?

Kyrill Lazarov33:26No, I'm just talking about the way, like the way they communicate, but in a more professional way, you know, because I remember people used to use Facebook for business when we were in university, for example, right? And then they all switched over to LinkedIn essentially. And it's very similar from what I remember, unless I'm remembering different.

Dario Nouri33:42But you remember that doesn't that does not that does not fit with the past.

Kyrill Lazarov33:50Yeah, well anyway.

Stuart Edgeworth33:51I think your point though about there being an opportunity there makes total sense, right? Because as like, yeah, at the moment, it feels like LinkedIn's just on a, the trajectory of it is, you know, what, 10 years behind the other big platforms.

Kyrill Lazarov34:09Yep.

Dario Nouri34:10It needs its office space moment. The guy just comes in and says, no, this is just wrong. And then like people are like, all right, it needs that kind of moment. It really does. But I mean, like, it won't be hard because you just have to see what works on other platforms and just, just apply it there. I think it'll work out really well.

Stuart Edgeworth34:13Yeah, right.

Kyrill Lazarov34:20Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth34:20Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth34:28Yeah, yeah. I like what you're saying as well, right? Like as, I feel like people, they just get, like get a bit older and they, they move into LinkedIn. You know, so like people who are coming out of university, they're starting their more professional careers. So they like end up starting to dabble in LinkedIn, but you know, they're still the same people and they'd like, you know, they're more, they're more themselves on other platforms. You know, as well, like it's, I feel like, um. it's really important to remember that social media is still connected to the real world. It's easy to think of it like this nebulous sort of thing but it's like well you know these people that you know if you message them or you post they're still real people so you can still you can still try and actually connect with them in some way in real life and it's and I feel like that's kind of where we've had success like just bleeding the real world into You know connections that have maybe started on LinkedIn or vice versa as opposed to having them You know like totally separate spheres and like hoping to get leads just direct from From a social media space if that gonna make sense

Dario Nouri35:46Yeah, I think.

Kyrill Lazarov35:46You've gotten some leads through LinkedIn at this point, like organically.

Dario Nouri35:51Yeah, he said the majority of his stuff was from referrals or making connections, like outreaching on LinkedIn. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth35:52Oh yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov35:56Oh, but through LinkedIn. Okay, okay. Interesting.

Stuart Edgeworth35:58Yeah, well, like, you know, connections on LinkedIn, but then we'll, you know, this will catch up in other ways, you know, particularly with the farmer stuff. It's like industry specific. So then sometimes be events or we, or you talk to someone who knew someone because they worked at another company. It's like, Oh yeah, send that guy a message. And it's just sort of like, you know, I guess just

Kyrill Lazarov36:06Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth36:21treating the real social network as an extension of the digital social network or vice versa. Those networks are not separate lands.

Dario Nouri36:34Yeah. How's your team? Like what's your team size? Like tell us a bit about that.

Kyrill Lazarov36:39or dynamic.

Stuart Edgeworth36:41Oh yeah, a dynamic? Like how do you mean? How's your team dynamic? Just so I can understand what you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds political.

Dario Nouri36:48That is a complicated question, Kyr, what do you mean by that? I actually don't know what that means, what do you mean by that? He's just, he threw that in there because it was a big word. He's like, it'll make me sound smart.

Kyrill Lazarov36:50What?

Kyrill Lazarov36:55I didn't…

Stuart Edgeworth37:02Hahaha

Kyrill Lazarov37:03No, I mean like in terms of how you work, like how you work with your team.

Dario Nouri37:07That dynamic is he's the boss and they listen to him. That's the dynamic. What dynamic do you want, Kira? Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.

Stuart Edgeworth37:09Hey.

Kyrill Lazarov37:10There you go, okay. Okay. Nevermind, nevermind.

Stuart Edgeworth37:12Do you mean like, do we have more of a left-wing political structure in the team? Or…

Kyrill Lazarov37:18No, no, no. Listen, I've been on vacation for the last three weeks, so I'm just easing myself into it.

Dario Nouri37:18Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Stuart Edgeworth37:23Oh, that's it. Yeah.

Dario Nouri37:25He's the today is his first day not drinking margaritas on the beach. So give him some space. You know, he's got to like come back to reality.

Kyrill Lazarov37:29Yeah, exactly.

Stuart Edgeworth37:30Maybe not even the first day, I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So we got in the team, so we got an editor, producer, plus me, and then we, like other contractors. So for these projects we've got at the moment, we've got an animator and graphic designer who are sort of working with us for a few months. uh… and then you know like when we when we've got productions was proving up and down so that's what we've built of the last ten years or so like my background is actually even i have that like sales sort of thing my background is really is a dp so I was a freelance, yeah, freelance DOP for a while before that kind of Frankensteined into a production company, you know, just sort of kind of, you know, needed more people to help with jobs and then slowly figured out how to make things work.

Dario Nouri38:32Were you a salesman, then you became a DP? Or were you a DP, then went into sales, then went back into production?

Kyrill Lazarov38:32What did?

Stuart Edgeworth38:38uh… so i like uh… i studied communication media production at university and like uh… i was i was doing stuff before uni as well like you know just mucking around with cameras and making short films with my friends and stuff when i was a teenager uh… and then i just went traveling after university and i just fell into this job when i was in the uk and worked over there for a few years and it was just a good job like you know good to make money and travel around and

Dario Nouri39:07Mm-hmm.

Stuart Edgeworth39:08uh… and then that company opened up in australia and so i hope helped with that and look with them for a few years and then actually created content for that company sorted did a handful of years for them and i was like all this is like was what i was supposed to be doing the whole time and uh… so i like pretty quickly quit that job and then just um…

Stuart Edgeworth39:35you know, three, three to five years. And like in that period, slowly that was starting to turn into less of a freelance thing and more of a real business thing. But like, I feel, I don't know about you guys, it felt like for a few years, I was faking being in business for a while, like just pretending it was a company and then it slowly turned into more of a real thing. Yeah.

Dario Nouri39:52Yeah.

Dario Nouri39:59That's the rite of passage. You gotta go through that. Fake it till you make it.

Kyrill Lazarov40:03Yeah. We started it like right in university when we were just starting in the industry with no experience whatsoever. It's like boom, company. But really it was two freelancers working together for about five, six years, which we've talked about in the past. And then only in the last like three years it's been

Stuart Edgeworth40:13Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov40:22really like a business at its core, because we have to redesign everything. And I'm actually curious, like what was your kind of aha moment that made you realize that you wanted to turn it into a business and like a real business, rather than, you know, just either being under the guise of a name or choosing to jump into it rather than freelancing.

Stuart Edgeworth40:26Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth40:38Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth40:42I'm not sure if there was any one specific aha moment. Probably a few different things helped with that transition though. I think probably just landing a couple of pretty big jobs and pretty big clients where suddenly had a bit more money to play with. So I was like, alright. let's you know test just getting someone on part-time for the festival wasn't and editor getting editor on palming all the editing off to someone else and then suddenly that freed up all this time right so i got okay now i can concentrate on other aspects of the business uh… but then also like personal changes right so uh… it was way easier to just sink all my time into you know just just whatever like working, you know, work shooting, working editing all day, all night, weekends, whatever before I before I got married a few years ago when we've got little kids now and like as soon as you got little kids you just I literally can't spend as much time I'm doing a bunch of stuff so I had to hire people and so I had to hire people then I had to figure out how to make a business to pay people and still pay myself so like a lot of it is figuring stuff out on the floor. I mean that's business right?

Dario Nouri42:01pay them.

Stuart Edgeworth42:11There's like one of my favorite businesses analogies is it's like you, you jump off a cliff and you try to figure out how to build a plane on the way down. And I sort of feel like that's it. I'm still always like approaching the ground and like wildly trying to piece something together. Yeah. But what's your, so what's your, what's your dynamic? Tell me about you. What's the, the

Kyrill Lazarov42:21Yeah.

Dario Nouri42:27Oh my god, that's funny.

Kyrill Lazarov42:30and you're like.

Dario Nouri42:34I'm gonna let Carol answer this one.

Kyrill Lazarov42:38Well, the dynamic is essentially Dario and I is like, we're the two core members and both partners in it. And like you, we hire a lot of different contractors and that's kind of how we manage it. We do wanna eventually build out a bigger team, but we've realized it's gonna be a slow burn until we get to that point where we can bring in some full-time people, but because of also of the market now, I know.

Dario Nouri43:02That makes me so nervous. Like hiring full-time people makes me so nervous, you have no idea.

Stuart Edgeworth43:09Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov43:09Yeah, at least at the moment with the way things are, it still just makes sense to keep it the way it is with us. I mean, it took such a long time for us to get it where it's basically two of us being paid full-time salaries, right? It's like, we've heard from a lot of other companies, it's hard to go from one to two and then two to three. But then as you start…

Stuart Edgeworth43:24Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov43:33moving into it, then it becomes a little bit easier. So it's like jumping from one person to two. You basically need to multiply your business by two for it to be profitable in that sense for everyone. And then going from two to three, and then when you go from two to three, you essentially have to get a 50% increase in business for it to make sense. And then from three to four, then it's 25%. And then the math just kind of goes in that kind of exponential fashion. So,

Dario Nouri43:45Oh, I see.

Stuart Edgeworth43:53Yeah.

Dario Nouri43:57Oh, okay. Yeah. Interesting. That makes sense.

Stuart Edgeworth43:58Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov44:02Yeah, it's a lot that that's why a lot of people say it's a lot harder to get from one to two and I mean Dario look it took us years to get to the point where we can both be on a full-time salary where we actually can live off of it at this point right? Um might be that was our fault.

Dario Nouri44:16That was our fault though. If we had our… That was our fault. If we did things the right way, it would have been a lot sooner.

Kyrill Lazarov44:23All experience, all learning, right?

Stuart Edgeworth44:23Well, I mean, yeah, there's like, you can't, like, there's no way to have that perfect path from start to finish. You've got, yeah, it's inevitable you've got to make those mistakes. I don't know anyone in business, in production or wherever who hasn't. who hasn't had those growing pains and had to go through that. I think one thing that helped us with that leap, as you're saying, is we didn't… So I didn't hire a full-time person straight off the bat, so I got a part-time editor to start with. So it wasn't like I had to double the salary. It was like, okay, we'll get someone in two days to help with editing. That's, that's an easier stretch. And it was also like a limited contract to start with. So I was like, all right, I know, I know I can cover this couple of days of an editor for this, these, this number of months. I know I can cover that. Let's see how it goes. If it's, if it's a disaster and like, okay, I've budgeted for that. If that didn't work out, no problem. But you kind of have to make those, you have to make those uncomfortable jumps, right? Because you don't know how it's going to go. And then. You kind of have to. put yourself in that pain to figure it out sometimes I think. Whereas, yeah, I look at the people who… who just barrel a head with business and a lot of the time it's just making those leaps and just figuring out how to do it. Once you've put yourself in that position, you know what I mean? It's like really scary and quite uncomfortable but I think that's where, when you put yourself in the fire like that, that's where like the real growth happens and that's how it happens the most quickly.

Dario Nouri45:56Yeah.

Dario Nouri46:06See, my thing is like, if we have enough leads coming in, I'm comfortable making that, because it's like, okay, I know I can close X amount that are coming through the door. But if it's not like that, then I get a little nervous, you know?

Stuart Edgeworth46:12Yeah. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov46:15You know, Stu, you know, one thing that just, one thing you got me thinking about just now, which I thought was interesting, I never thought of it in terms of hiring people based on days of the week. Like you hear full-time and part-time, full-time is like 40 hour weeks, part-time is 20 hour weeks, but the way you said it, you first went about hiring an editor for two days a week consistently, specifically two days. It's basically kind of like getting two full-time rate.

Stuart Edgeworth46:18Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov46:44days of editing guaranteed for a person. What if like say if there are other important aspects of the job which may not necessarily need, you know, how do you say, full time essentially worth of work but you hire that person like say, you need a production manager or something that works like one or two days a week as well. Essentially you're getting like a one salary but for like three or like two or three different jobs. Maybe I don't know if that's something that people have thought of like. Like, but I'm wondering how doable that could be depending on the nature of our industry. Cause definitely there are certain roles, like you don't need people all the time, but you do need them still. But then again, I don't know, like maybe you just need contract work as well.

Stuart Edgeworth47:14Totally. Yeah, yeah.

Dario Nouri47:30I think you're over complicated. Yeah, like it's certain roles you need all the time. Like you need the producer all the time. Editor full time is like, if you're getting to that point, you definitely need one. Just because think about how many changes come back and you're like, okay, just quickly work on this. Like a production coordinator.

Stuart Edgeworth47:45Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov47:49But some editors you can't always get, right? So like maybe what you could do if you wanted to get like two or three editors on a part-time staffing kind of work, you know, you could have two, like one editor for two days like he did and another editor for the other two days. And then that way you're kind of still getting a full-time role, but you're getting two people who still want a little bit of freedom and flexibility, but still kind of consistent work. You know, I feel like that could be like a.

Dario Nouri48:12but then you could also just get one full-time person.

Kyrill Lazarov48:16But it's harder to find quality people. That's that. That was my point. Right. A lot of quality people are harder to bring on. Yeah.

Dario Nouri48:21Oh, I see. Yeah, I guess the benefit too is one of them pulls out or like just decides to go his own way. At least you still have another one, right? That's actually not too bad. That's not too bad. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point.

Stuart Edgeworth48:23I think it's well like…

Kyrill Lazarov48:29See what I mean? You're not putting your eggs in one basket. That's a very interesting approach you did, Stu. That's what I'm saying.

Stuart Edgeworth48:35Yeah, and I think as well, it's the full-time leap, like you were alluding to before, Carol, right? It's like the requirement to double the salary requirements of the business, if it's you and, you know, whereas if it's a fraction of that, you know, if it's 30% of, you know, extra salary that you need to cover, that's a lot more, it's even just like mentally, right? It's…

Kyrill Lazarov49:05Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth49:05It's less of a leap. You feel like, you know, you always have that stress about hiring someone else, like how am I going to pay them? How am I going to get enough work through the door to cover that? So just like, it brings the temperature down on that decision a bit, I think.

Kyrill Lazarov49:20Yeah, 10, and the other thing is a lot of people sometimes misinterpret the percentages of how much extra business you need to go through, right? Like if you wanna go from two to three, some people might automatically think you need 30% extra business. No, you need 50% extra business of what you currently have to get it for that, right? And that's the other thing, you have to make sure your numbers are right also in those senses.

Stuart Edgeworth49:36Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth49:43Yeah, yeah. I meant, and that's like where a bunch of my mistakes and learnings came from. I'm not particularly a numbers guy. So, you know, like learning, learning about, like I had very bad cash, cash flow management for quite a while. And it was only by going through that and realizing Like looking at, oh hang on, I don't have as much money as I thought. Now that I've got these people looking at where it actually went because I'd spent it. Like I had to go through that pain for me anyway to understand it because that's a weakness of mine.

Dario Nouri50:17Oh my god.

Kyrill Lazarov50:21What was the biggest thing that you learned?

Dario Nouri50:22Did you get an accountant?

Stuart Edgeworth50:25Oh, sorry, what was that? Like an accountant?

Kyrill Lazarov50:25Go with Daria's question.

Dario Nouri50:27and I was gonna ask if you have an accountant

Stuart Edgeworth50:31I've got a bookkeeper and an accountant. Yeah, you know what? If you don't have a bookkeeper, get a bookkeeper. That's probably like the first thing.

Dario Nouri50:34No more cash flow problems then.

Kyrill Lazarov50:38What was one cash?

Dario Nouri50:42Hahaha.

Kyrill Lazarov50:44every one of us as a business needs to have that. It just frees up so much time and like less stress, especially because then you know you have someone you can rely on.

Stuart Edgeworth50:49every time.

Dario Nouri50:50Except for us. Except for us. Our accountant congratulated me. He's like, you did a fantastic job bookkeeping.

Kyrill Lazarov50:58Again, I think it's because we're still small enough where it's manageable. If once I think there's probably like a certain point when a business grows where you need to get someone else to do it. But actually I was curious, Stu, because you said you had a lot of different cashflow things that caused you a lot of headaches. What was like one experience that really made you learn the importance of like how to manage that in particular?

Stuart Edgeworth51:23management. Yeah, so during COVID, I mean we've all probably got a COVID story, right? But so I lost one of my biggest clients, which accounted for at that point like probably 40% of the business. So there's suddenly a big hole there. And that was, I just hired my first

Dario Nouri51:43Oh my god.

Stuart Edgeworth51:53editor right at the start of COVID. So like three, three and a half years ago, something like that. So it was like COVID and they'd just, yeah, hired someone and also all this cash had just had dried up. So it was…

Kyrill Lazarov51:56Oh.

Dario Nouri51:59Oh boy.

Stuart Edgeworth52:13Man, it was like, it was a bit of like, just tightening everything up. So getting rid of any extraneous expenses that we had. So at that point we ditched the office and became a, you know, just everyone worked from home. So we didn't have office overheads and cut down on all that kind of thing. we're just, we're really targeted with the subscriptions we have. I don't like, I just, I don't know about you guys, but I just keep ballooning out with the different subscriptions that, that I use. You're gonna like keep going back and trimming that stuff, right?

Dario Nouri52:44Oh yeah, same here. Same here. It's so bad. You know what though? I was going, I was going through our expenses because I was like, how did we spend 800 bucks in subscriptions this month? Right? So I was going through the numbers and I was like, oh man, they're all necessary too. Like you can't even like discontinue one of them. You're like, I need all this stuff.

Kyrill Lazarov52:46What?

Kyrill Lazarov52:50It piles up.

Stuart Edgeworth52:59Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov53:02Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth53:03Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov53:06It's like the business version of streaming services. Once you get one, then you want another one and then it just kinda adds up. It's like, yeah, but I need that to watch that thing, which I like to do. And then you watch, but then I need that one because I like to watch that thing. The whole subscription model has really changed every industry, I feel, because I know there are a lot of, I remember a lot of our editing software used to be, you buy it once every year.

Stuart Edgeworth53:09Yeah.

Dario Nouri53:09Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth53:19Yeah, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov53:32and then you would have like a 2017 Adobe Premiere that you hold onto for dear life so you don't have to do the subscription pack, but then all the updates make it a necessary thing. I remember, I think from 2013 to 2017, I held onto the same Adobe software, so I didn't have to upgrade or anything like that, but you need to.

Stuart Edgeworth53:45Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth53:53Right away. Yeah, yeah, totally. They've all got us there, right? And then, but I mean, it's part, it's partly our fault. You know, there's, there's like going back and looking at things there, like at that period, anyway, there was some script subscriptions where it's like, okay, this is nice to have, but we can actually perform this function with this other bit of software, which, which costs, you know, a 10th of the price and we don't get this one feature in it. So we're just going to have to suck it up and and forgo that feature while we're going through a bit of pain.

Dario Nouri54:29I know what he's talking about. Did you go to DaVinci Resolve, the non-4K version? Is that what you did? Ha ha ha, I got you. Because the HD one is free, right? Well, it was, I don't know if it's changing now.

Stuart Edgeworth54:34So we… I'm not talking about that but we have just got a DaVinci Resolve. Yeah yeah wait… i think it was the uh… but i mean it's still it's like a one-off payment for like at the full suite with davinci right since yeah

Kyrill Lazarov54:46It still is.

Dario Nouri54:50It's great, hey, I'm not knocking it, it's amazing. If we didn't start on a premiere, we'd be working on that right now.

Kyrill Lazarov54:52Yep.

Stuart Edgeworth54:58Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the switch is hard. But yeah, I think as well, like, so probably the first hire, before the editor even was the bookkeeper, like getting someone to do the books part-time. Just to tidy all that up. But you know, I guess you've got to know what your weaknesses are, writers, and try and address those too.

Dario Nouri55:22100 percent.

Kyrill Lazarov55:23Yeah, and you were lucky to also be able to get rid of your office when you did. I know a lot of small agencies here in Canada that could not. And they were, I knew one, for example, that signed like a five year, no, what it was like a three year lease, two months before COVID lockdown hit. And her, her entire agency got completely decimated and she had to scale down to just like her by herself.

Stuart Edgeworth55:42them.

Dario Nouri55:43Jesus.

Kyrill Lazarov55:51and then just contract out people. You know, like imagine like a full-time staff agency had to be scaled down to just the one person because of something like that, which is, I felt for her. Like it's a brutal experience. So I'm happy you didn't have to go through something similar as well.

Stuart Edgeworth55:51Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth55:55Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth56:01Whoa. Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth56:10Yeah, that's rough. I mean, yeah, I'm sure we all know people who had a similar experience, right?

Kyrill Lazarov56:17Are the rents, are the commercial rents in Australia like massive or is it, or do you feel like they're manageable? At least maybe nowadays.

Stuart Edgeworth56:27I think they're manageable now. They've definitely come down since COVID, right? I think there's way more competition because it's still, it's still not like the amount of people going back to the office is still way down on what it was pre-COVID. So there's, yeah, that's right. Yeah.

Dario Nouri56:32You're in Sydney?

Dario Nouri56:40Still low, right? Are you based in Sydney, right?

Dario Nouri56:48Yeah, the numbers here are pretty low too.

Kyrill Lazarov56:48You know, it's funny. I remember when things started opening up again and companies wanted to film B-roll of people in the offices working, but a lot of the time people were still working from home and it's just offices that were empty. Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth56:51Yeah.

Dario Nouri56:58Oh, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth57:00I'm out of there.

Dario Nouri57:02Dude, dude to this day, to this… To this day it's still a problem for a lot of the shoots we're doing at offices, like… They gotta call people in, most of the time they're not there. I don't blame them either, but…

Stuart Edgeworth57:10Yeah. right in what one of our clients they just so they moved from the head of the manufacturing uh… factory with their offices attached, kind of like on the outskirts of Sydney. But they decided to like split their business and bring all, all of their team to like a really sweet new fit out right in the middle of, of the CBD in Sydney. It was like a four level brand new fit out. They would have spent, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars fitting out the offices and that was like just before COVID. So they had this beautiful new four levels in a town in the city. And it was just like ghost town.

Kyrill Lazarov57:52I feel like the universe.

Stuart Edgeworth57:52And I'm sure that would be repeated across the city. It was just, yeah, it was just a ghost town for a couple of years, right?

Dario Nouri57:52Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov57:59I feel like the universe targeted those businesses in some way, shape or form. Sometimes I wonder, it's like, why did it have to be like right before COVID that all that happened with them? Maybe at least six months beforehand or maybe, there's bad luck, Dario, and then there's that. Imagine you buy a car, you sign on it, and then immediately after you sign it, you see the bumper just like fall off.

Stuart Edgeworth58:11Yo.

Dario Nouri58:13Just bad luck.

Stuart Edgeworth58:15Something, yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov58:29right then and there and it's like, oops, or are you driving off the lot? Literally driving off the lot, hit a curb and the whole car falls apart.

Stuart Edgeworth58:39Yeah, yeah. Although, although to be fair, this was like a pharmaceutical company that did pretty well out of COVID with what some of the things that they were fine.

Dario Nouri58:41It's like the car from Blues Brothers.

Kyrill Lazarov58:48Oh yeah, they're fine, they're fine, yeah. Those guys are trillionaires now at this point, which is wild.

Stuart Edgeworth58:54Yeah, yeah, like literally, yeah.

Dario Nouri59:00Dude, that office got paid for more than five times over by the end of the pandemic.

Kyrill Lazarov59:01But.

Kyrill Lazarov59:04Oh yeah, oh yeah. It's just like a little vacation office for them at that point. It's like, oh yeah, we'll go chill at the office. No big deal, you know, no problem. Anyways, we're kind of like hitting the hour mark soon. Just before we go, is there any, is there one piece of advice that you would give to any other like new aspiring filmmakers, entrepreneurs or production companies that are just starting out?

Stuart Edgeworth59:07Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth59:10Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth59:31Just starting out.

Dario Nouri59:33Or that are like maybe even a little past that. Not still going. Not not still going, Carol. Like, you know, maybe they're like, you know, they want to take that next big step.

Kyrill Lazarov59:34Or that are still going, yeah. Maybe for us, what's the…

Stuart Edgeworth59:36Yeah, yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth59:41growing pains yeah uh… you know what i feel like the longer i stick around doing this uh… as i said it's sort of like just the past ten years where it's been my full-time vocation where i've been like you know hardcore production and running a production company but like

Kyrill Lazarov59:43Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth01:00:08I'm at a point now where I just want to make sure I'm enjoying it and I'm working with friends so I'm making sure if I'm going out and we've got a production day, it's great people around me and I'm actually… you know i'm on spending time doing something that i enjoy so it's easy and i'd like you will go to pay the bills right so you do sometimes have to make decisions just based group you look at the issue but you're going to make sure you have those projects that keep you keep your food and i keep you excited whether it is doing passion projects on the side so we're trying to passion project each year so whether it's a short film or music video or you know, just stuff that is like, will burn money on it, but I'm proud of it and I feel good doing it and it's stuff to show people and it's stuff I can say, you hang my hat on and be like, yeah, this is something really, I'm really stoked about. So yeah, you know, just make sure you keep, find ways to keep enjoying it because it can be tough, it can be tough, right? Everyone hits beat humps with their… with their business so you've got to make sure you've got those things that keep you enthused. We're lucky though, right? We are lucky in terms of generally the sort of work that we get to do. It's pretty amazing the sort of industry that we're in.

Dario Nouri01:01:37Mm-hmm.

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:37You know, it's funny you mentioned that because early on when we were starting out or when I was starting out, I loved taking like a lot of equipment with me on my vacations and trips. And I would always be like, I'm going to create like an awesome travel video.

Stuart Edgeworth01:01:49Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:01:53I'm gonna take a lot of clips and everything and do something cool when I come back with it And now when I go on vacation, I think to myself I don't want to be work I don't want to be working or thinking about creating videos I'll just bring a small camera with me and only take some photos here there. I'm not going to create an elaborate Travel vacation video or anything like that. I have I deal with this all the time I think I don't have the time to go through that when I get back. So what's the point?

Stuart Edgeworth01:02:03Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth01:02:12Well.

Dario Nouri01:02:20You know, the first episode we shot this year, Kjell and I made a bet, which is public. And we said, if we don't create a passion project each by the end of the year, we're gonna do an episode shirtless. So we're about seven months in. No, no, we're eight months in and we still, eight months in, we still haven't done it. So keep your eyes open. You might see a very special episode coming up.

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:34Yep.

Stuart Edgeworth01:02:34You're right. How's that looking?

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:37We're, yep, eight, we're eight months in. And I…

Stuart Edgeworth01:02:42The clock is ticking, fellas.

Kyrill Lazarov01:02:46You know, you know when we're gonna end up doing it and we're gonna call it a passion project. We're gonna call it December 30 for no 30th is what we're gonna do

Dario Nouri01:02:51December. No, I'm on vacation the 14th, so it's got to be before that.

Stuart Edgeworth01:02:55Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth01:03:00Yeah, you gotta get moving.

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:00At least yours has to be before that. At least yours has to be. I still get December to do it.

Dario Nouri01:03:02Heheheheh

Stuart Edgeworth01:03:08I mean make sure you do it right. It's good that you set yourself a goal and a target to do that sort of thing right. I think that's important. You've got to make yourself do that sort of stuff.

Dario Nouri01:03:19My goal is just to become very fit. My goal is to become very fit by the end of the year. So when I take that shirt off, it'll hurt less. Ha ha ha. Blambi. Ha ha.

Stuart Edgeworth01:03:24Okay, right. He's leaning hard into plan B there. Yeah, you're into the crash.

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:28He's going with plan B. He's going with plan B, you know, cause he has a feeling

Dario Nouri01:03:34B for abs. No, it's plan A, A for abs. Ha ha ha.

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:38Be for abs. I'm like no

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:45Oh man, oh.

Dario Nouri01:03:46Listen, Stu, before we end this, okay, why did you call your company Chuck Media when your name is Stu? Is it going to be called Stu Media? I wanted to ask you this when we first had our conversation. I was like, what's up? What's going on here?

Stuart Edgeworth01:03:46us.

Kyrill Lazarov01:03:56I was gonna ask this.

Stuart Edgeworth01:03:57Yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth01:04:01Yeah, yeah, what? What? It was just like, so when I was, um… When I was like 18, I went and worked, I actually worked at a summer camp in New York. And, um, I was teaching video production to kids there. It was like a pretty plush summer camp for rich New York kids. It was totally wild. But for whatever reason, that was my nickname. It was Chuck. So I was like, all right, we'll just repurpose that nickname. So that turned into the company.

Dario Nouri01:04:34He's like the guy from Fight Club, he's got his alter ego.

Kyrill Lazarov01:04:34I was on your w-

Stuart Edgeworth01:04:37Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's my dark side.

Kyrill Lazarov01:04:37I was on his… I was on your website looking to see who was running it, because I only today got a chance to look through a few things for work. And I'm like, where's this Chuck guy? I'm like, there's no Chuck anywhere mentioned here except for the name. And then I'm like, who are we talking to? Stu. Does he work for Chuck or like… I'm like, what's going on?

Dario Nouri01:04:52Hehehehe

Dario Nouri01:04:59Hahaha

Stuart Edgeworth01:05:01Chuck back here anyway? Yeah, yeah. Like half the time when people are calling me up the first time they're like, hey Chuck and I mean I don't correct them. There's a few people who think I'm called Chuck out there.

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:11Do you just go with it at this point? Like you should just.

Dario Nouri01:05:11You should just go, he goes with it. They're like, we tried to find you on LinkedIn, but we couldn't find a Chuck. How many connections has he missed out on because they were looking for Chuck?

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:17Yeah

Stuart Edgeworth01:05:21Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, yeah. What's business, I've lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Business would be like 20% bigger by now. Yo.

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:22You know what? You sh-

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:29You know what, Stu? Stu, I have an idea for you and I wonder, I wonder how this might play out for you in your sales approach and with dealing with clients. It's like, anytime a client has a question for you, you have to say, oh, let me check with Chuck. He's your silent partner. Or the silent owner, the silent owner of the business. Nobody knows, nobody knows or sees him ever, but he has final say on everything.

Stuart Edgeworth01:05:45Like, that's good. Yeah, yeah.

Dario Nouri01:05:46Oh My god, that's genius that's genius. Oh my god, that's good except for stew

Kyrill Lazarov01:05:58And he just communicates through still, you know?

Dario Nouri01:06:00Dude, he's got to, he's got to, you got to mess with your new employees like that. I mean, you have to do it. And, and you know what? After like, listen, after a month of messing around with them, then you break, you like, go like, okay, it's time to meet Chuck. You're like, I'll go grab him. You walk out, you walk back in. It's you. Oh my God. That's good.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:02Nice.

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:04You have to, please, please do this.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:07Just like, hang on, let me call Chuck. That's not gonna work. No, that's not gonna work.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:24but no.

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:28Oh, so you're in a very unique position with this. Like I wish our name, our business name now was an actual person's name, just so we can mess with people like this.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:33really work.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:39This could really get me out of some freaky situations, yeah.

Dario Nouri01:06:39No, but you should- You should actually like what Karel said, you should actually use that because like a lot of times when we're talking to clients and I just don't know the answer to not look dumb, I say, I gotta check with Karel. Even though I know he doesn't know the answer either. I just need a little bit of time.

Kyrill Lazarov01:06:43Oh yeah.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:54Yeah, yeah, right.

Stuart Edgeworth01:06:58pretty maybe I'll just like send the invoices from Chuck so it's you know you know when you're like Chuck's like the hard ass and he's like yo this invoice is two days late and I'm like I'm sorry Chuck is just he's a hard ass

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:03Yeah, create an email with him, you know, just like create an e-

Dario Nouri01:07:06the do it two days later

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:14Oh, okay.

Dario Nouri01:07:16Hehehe

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:17Oh, and with the new employees in the email chains from Chuck, you got to like ream yourself out. It's like, Stu, you did a terrible job with this project. You just have to cc'd in the…

Stuart Edgeworth01:07:24Yeah.

Dario Nouri01:07:25Hahaha Yeah

Stuart Edgeworth01:07:30Yeah

Dario Nouri01:07:31God, I would have too much. Yeah.

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:31It's like, Stu, what were you thinking, man?..

Stuart Edgeworth01:07:35Yeah, yeah. It's true, you dipshit, what the fuck was that? Yeah, yeah.

Dario Nouri01:07:38I would have too much fun with this if I was in the shoes.

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:41I wanna live vicariously through you just to be able to do this. Like, I'm throwing all the ideas of what I know Dario and I would be doing. Oh, please, yes.

Stuart Edgeworth01:07:46Yeah, yeah. I'll be CC you in when I get a new employee. I'll just be CC you when I'm just ripping into myself.

Dario Nouri01:07:48Hahaha

Dario Nouri01:07:55Hehehe

Kyrill Lazarov01:07:56I'll be waiting. I'll be waiting for that. You don't have to do it this year, but maybe next year or something I'm waiting for that email

Stuart Edgeworth01:08:00Yeah, yeah, you just sometime in the next 12 months you'll just get this BCC slide in and be like, oh that's weird, just do some hit email and you'll know. And you'll know.

Kyrill Lazarov01:08:08Oh my god, I something to look forward to guys maybe in the maybe in a future podcast episode

Dario Nouri01:08:09Oh my god.

Dario Nouri01:08:13That's a short film idea. There's a short film idea somewhere there.

Stuart Edgeworth01:08:14Keep an eye out. There's something there. It's your passion project boys. There you go.

Kyrill Lazarov01:08:17Oh, even, you know, there you go. There you go. That's what this, see, you took my idea, man. I love it. There you go. Awesome.

Dario Nouri01:08:19I might take that. Hey, I think I found my idea. Actually, I just got to film it. I just got to film it now. I claimed it.

Stuart Edgeworth01:08:22Yeah. I think I know.

Stuart Edgeworth01:08:34Nice, nice, nice.

Dario Nouri01:08:36Alright well uh, Stu, it's time to go cause it's uh, evening time here and I know you got your morning to start.

Stuart Edgeworth01:08:40Yeah, for sure. Pleasure chatting to you guys. I really appreciate you reaching out from across the world and yeah, setting this up is awesome. It's awesome to talk to you guys and hey, all the best. Yeah, yeah. All the best with the growth and yeah, to all your podcast listeners as well. I hope this kicks off for you.

Dario Nouri01:08:49Quite literally across the world.

Dario Nouri01:08:59Thank you.

Kyrill Lazarov01:09:00Thanks. Thanks for jumping on. We'll chat soon.

Stuart Edgeworth01:09:02Yeah, pleasure. All right. Thanks guys. Cheers. Bye.

Dario Nouri01:09:05Thank you.

Kyrill Lazarov01:09:05Take care, bye.