Creatives Grab Coffee - Importance of Teams (ft. Black & White Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 17

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov.This weeks guest is Judah Hernandez from Black White Media. Black White media is an award winning video production company and video marketing company. They create visuals that impact and connect their clients target audiences.To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comInstagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast where we talk about the business of video production. Well, Judith, thank you for joining us on Creatives Grab Coffee. You know, as Dario mentioned, you are our second guest for the 2022 season. And I just wanted to see, like, how has everything been with you? How has the year kicked off so far? Honestly, I'm just getting introduced to you guys. And this is a really cool idea. I don't know.

Where are you located? Are you in Canada? Are you in the U.S.? Where are you guys? We're in Toronto. We're close to you. We're in Toronto as well. Okay.

It's been weird, man. we're in toronto we're close okay it's been weird man um we had like probably the biggest january on books prepared in december and then everything got canceled like oh really everything got canceled oh wow with the new lockdowns um without mentioning some of the clients like they were some pretty cool ones that we were working on for almost a year and a bit to get these sort of uh deals oh man shut down so i'll be honest with you it was frustrating and annoying because that's two years in a row where that sort of happened yeah um and although that happened i mean i i gotta be grateful i've got a great team around me that even though with the lockdowns and everything we still had you know every year increasing and growing almost by a

double so even though it's a frustrating january uh you know i can see some things already uh moving forward down the pipeline so that's that sucks to hear like we we actually did we were in the post uh production process right now for pretty big project uh that took up like all of our january but us too like at like we're sure the end of december we were like oh my god i don't think it's gonna go through because they were announcing the lockdowns were like okay it's not happening damn it this sucks and then i was skeptical till day uh up until even even on the first day of shooting i'm like is it still happening i know we're here filming but is it happening or yeah you know we had some great projects that we filmed in like november december that we you know are still

kind of working on the post-production for but um you know how it is in the film industry it's a pipeline right it's a conveyor belt if that conveyor belt stops it's like it you create this huge gap and now it's time to do the whole catch up dance again which we should actually formally name the catch-up dance by Heinz or something oh yeah a new marketing idea for them, right? How do you handle like that happening to you? How do you like keep your your positive energy up? Because, I mean, if we didn't get if our project for January didn't go through, I'm not going to lie, would have been a pretty big downer. Yes. So I'm just curious how you would have dealt with it. You know, I personally believe that the best policy is transparency.

I'm not here to give you an Instagram account of the life where it's like all the good things. Man, it was rough. It was an emotional roller coaster. These are things, like I said, we were working on for almost a year and a half to lock in. And then at the snap of a finger it's like nope all done we you can't do this and man just my whole team i had uh i had other teams lined up because it was a big project to to come in and do this as well it's not just food on my table like sinking or rising tide raises all ships. So, but that being said, you know, once you do go through that emotion, one thing I believe of myself is that, you know,

quality and persistence equals success. You do things with quality and you do them consistently, If you do things with quality and you do them consistently, it's almost guaranteed that you will have success. So, you know, fine, it's done. Let's get back to what made things work in the first place. Just continue to talk to people, connect, create quality, and then things will pick up by themselves. And we're seeing that right now. In fact, I had an opportunity at the end of 2021. It was probably the busiest time I've ever had in my career, 10 years, which is a blessing. But I was like, man, I'm going to need a break pretty soon. And then I got it.

And now I'm complaining about it. And then I got it and now I'm complaining about it. So I did take that time to, you know, sit down with the team and really think about what are our next steps moving forward, which is something we wanted to do for a long time. We just, we just never had time to sit down and we came up with a plan. Now we have a way to move forward and we can see the next five years kind of unfolding. And, and that. And that's great. So, you know, in every cloud, there's a silver lining,

just not to be too cliche, but it's really about perspective. How can you use things to create opportunities rather than sulking and sitting back and saying, oh, we didn't get what we wanted. We went through something similar at the beginning of the pandemic. I remember March till June, our books were like empty. Right. And I remember for a good three months, we're just sitting around, not doing anything.

And I know a lot of the other guests we've spoken to were in the exact same spot. Yeah. So that, that's actually what prompted us to kind of sit down and do a complete audit of our business and try to restructure it from like the ground up. Right. The one thing that kind of like kept us afloat and kind of like getting back into the rhythm and, you know, keeping sane was doing our own content. And that's one thing that we noticed that you also do. Like we took a look at like some of the blog posts that you've written on black and white media. And do you feel like whenever you have those slow moments, you know, like, especially now, like you kind of fall back onto that where it's like, Oh, how can I work on

myself? How can I work on my business and develop content? Is that kind of like a little bit of what you do when that happens? Yeah. It's, it's a good thing to continually push your limits and push your bar. And, you know, when you're doing client work, that's not usually the best time to really try new things and, and, and really push yourself. You want to make sure that you can give them what they're looking for and give them the quality. So, yeah, it is a great opportunity to really not just work on,

you know, yourself and the business, but really push yourself to a not just work on, you know, yourself and the business, but really push yourself to a new level, see where you can take it. You were asking me about the beginning of COVID, but this was the, this was the thing. This is why you have a good team around you. So we sat down like two weeks before the first lockdown and we saw what was kind of going down on a global scale and it was before the lockdown we actually created a new website that was dedicated to live streaming

because we saw it we're like you know this is coming and we didn't know exactly how long it was like nobody did how long it would be what was going to take but I was like okay we have skills in cinematography we have the sort of artistic eye but not a lot of people understand the technical components of what it takes to do a live broadcast even through something like zoom with my background and I've done television production my partner has um done productions from all over the world with like google and new york fashion week and stuff like that and we combine those things to create this really cool um new brand where it wasn't just about giving a live stream experience it was about creating a cinematic live stream experience and something that wasn't just you

know webcams pointed but thinking about the set design thinking about the lighting thinking about you know what's the vision for this um and a lot of people appreciated that a lot of people to be honest couldn't understand at the beginning why do i this? I can just do a Zoom call. But pretty quickly, they realized, oh, you know, having 50 people on a Zoom call may not be the best solution here to do a presentation. But yeah, that's how we kind of filled in some of that gap in 2020. Is this part of Black and White Media or is it kind of independent of the business? So how we structured that is it's another company called On The Dot Studios and it's with the same team. But we wanted to compartmentalize those two things because they're not necessarily the same.

But it's sort of this umbrella where there's black and white media. And then underneath that, we do marketing as well. So like video marketing specifically, but then we also have this on the dot where it is geared towards live streaming and, and, you know, video virtual conferencing, things like that. So you guys do the cinematic live stream. You have the video marketing and you also have the video production. Yes. Like how do you how do you handle like that's a lot of endeavors right? Like

how big is your team? Like how do you handle all this? So we have three key roles. Obviously we have a head producer, myself director and I run a lot of the business components and then I have a cinematographer who is sort of a genius at everything technical and when it comes to camera gears lighting and all that and then we do have people that we subcontract depending on the scale of the project to handle certain things at different times we also have editors drone pilots and again all depending on scale of projects but one thing that is important is having people around you that you can trust that you can ask hey i need this done can you do it and if they say yes you you can put your hands up and say and trust that it's going to get done whether that's a small team, a big team,

even the contractors that you work with, you want to, you want these people in your circle. And, you know, luckily I've been able to build that. Yeah. Having the right people around you is, is so important. And it's like, it's kind of hard to find at times, right? Like being able to find the right editor that you're like, okay, this guy's reliable anytime i got a big project i can always like i can just call them up and they're they're good for me like it's so hard to build that how long have you do would you say taking you to build

um a roster of creatives that you can reliably like bring on to a project oh it's it's constantly evolving man it's i don't i would never, it's, it's constantly evolving, man. It's, I don't, I would never say it's ever built. Um, you know, people, people come and go. Um, but, uh, again, not, not to toot my horn. I had a coach playing soccer back in the day. I had a coach that told me a great player isn't somebody who can do all the tricks or even score all the goals. A great player is somebody who knows their strengths and their weaknesses, and they play to their strengths and build their weaknesses. So for me, a great strength is understanding people. And it works well as a director as well,

when you're trying to get emotions, when you're trying to really get people to bring out their best, that is a skill. And it's the same skill required to find the right people to work with. If I can say, I don't know if I'm, I can sniff out the bullshit, right? There's a lot of people who talk the talk, can't walk the walk or, you they're just they're just bad people so we don't want that around i don't think anybody does yeah so yeah positive energy is so key and it's it definitely is a hard thing to kind of find nowadays uh luckily it's if you know what

you're looking for it's very easy to spot, as you mentioned, you know, when there are like certain red flags that pop up, you know, like, this is not just with people you work with, but also, you know, like the potential people that you encounter down the road, you know, who you interact with, who you, you know, grow with. And yeah, it's just, it's, it's pretty crazy. Yeah. I forget who said it, but you know, my dad used to drill this into me. He says, show me your friends and I'll show you your life. Yeah. Yeah. There's a saying there's like, I think there's like that specific saying where it's like, uh, who you are as a person is also determined by like the people you surround yourself with.

So that is always a very good good clean indicator of, you know, people's personalities and the type of people that they hang out with. Right. And same thing in, in the business world, you know, like who you work with. It's like, that is a style of work that you have, you know, it's like almost like a smaller brand that you kind of see spread throughout the people. Yeah. Yeah. Are you guys, am I, I'm asking you questions now?

Yeah. Yeah. Go for it sort of uh partners in your business or um oh yeah yeah we're a partnership we uh well we started doing videos together for the student groups at ryerson and um that was that was going really well and we were both part of the business program right so i was doing business unlock it was doing marketing and then once we graduated we're like i don't know let's give it a let's give it a shot for like a year let's see where it goes and that would happen yeah it was about what six seven years ago now kira yeah about yeah it's it's it's pretty crazy kind of where it's coming you know and we mentioned like in some of our previous episodes that like the first few years it was almost like as if we were two freelancers that work together a lot and then up until i would say up until uh 2020 well

yeah up until covid hit basically when covid hit it basically forced us to re to reevaluate everything basically tear down the business and rebuild it right back up again you know and uh that's when you know like when we mentioned the first few months when nothing was happening, we were just like talking a lot, thinking a lot, trying to figure out what, what to do and what could we expect, you know, with everything being so uncertain. Right. And, you know, like, like you 2021 was our most successful year to date and which is kind of crazy to think considering, you know, with all the restrictions that there have

been. Right. Yeah. date and which is kind of crazy to think considering you know with all the restrictions that there have been right yeah can you one of the things and i i don't like to dwell on what ifs and what could have been but can you imagine how cool it would have been if 2021 had no restrictions and there was nothing going on like how big would it have been for so many companies i talked to they still had a great year but it's like they were it's like trying to do a olympic race with uh with a cast on your leg i feel like for us it's actually been i think the lockdowns kind of helped us just because of the particular situation we were in where it's like okay 2020, 2020, we finally spoke to a lot of people in the industry. We're like, okay, if we're going to restart this, this is kind of like the right

way to go about it. And then 2021 was just kind of like, okay, focus on it, like slowly develop it. And then it worked out. But 2022 without lockdowns or restrictions will be very good for us. Yeah. That's amazing. But I can only imagine for other businesses how bad it's been or how restraining it's been. In the film industry, we still technically were allowed to work. But I have a lot of friends who own restaurants who were in areas where it was just completely shut down. And yeah, they're struggling. just completely shut down and yeah they they're struggling so you know the uh you mentioned the actually you're really smart for seeing uh where where we were heading and like starting up the

cinematic live streaming uh live streaming element of your business we actually had another guest the previous the first guest for this year uh bridget from the video productions she actually also did something similar where she pivoted more so into animation work yeah and now she's like mostly doing that so she went from i think it was like 90 live action like maybe 10 animation to now it's the opposite way yes i wonder if is um have you kind of done the same in a way or is it just like another like part of it that you offer like has it has it grown to the point where it's more than what you were doing before or just kind of like an extra additional thing yeah i'm i mean i've always offered animation um not animation

but the the cinematic live streaming the live streaming um no it's still to date, the production is the bread and butter. We do have some amazing clients in the live stream. We actually helped a bank this year. We built them a studio inside their bank and we were doing live streams because they go out to BNN. They do global financial economic forums. And so they actually saw the benefit of not just showing up on a webcam with crappy audio. So we built them a studio in their bank and help them operate it, which is so smart. So smart.

And the CEO, anytime he has important meetings, everyone comments on how amazing he looks and how clear his sound is. And that alone for me is a success. It's almost surprising that that's not like the standard with a lot of these bigger organizations where they have the capital to fund this. And I don't know what necessarily it could be, but like that should be the standard at that point. They should be like setting the example, especially when they're interacting with so many different clients, networks, everything. You know, now that it's built, it's super easy.

We built it. So you push a button, everything turns on and you hit go live and it's done, but it still looks really good. So this is a battle that i've had many times question though because you've built now that that whole setup for them um do you at least continue to do work with them though um okay you do okay that's good in fact i'm going there next week again and we've it's spent about eight months of building this space.

And the relationship has only gotten stronger. And they've seen different ways that we can be helpful, not just with this one thing. So, and that's it for me. This whole business is relationships. Yeah. Like the one thing we've noticed is that essentially we've all, um, we're not only just like providing a service, we're actually solving problems for our clients. And I feel like the more and more problems and challenges that we solve for them, the stronger the relationships

kind of grow. And, um, you know, as a result, like, I'm just curious, like, how do you typically go about, you know, like finding out the big challenges that a lot of your clients are typically facing, like when they come to you with, you know, we're trying to do this, we think this is what we need to do. Do you dive further into that and kind of see if that is what they need fixed? Or is it kind of something else that you're trying to do? Yeah, often, video is just the gateway into what the real issues are. into what the real issues are. So we have a really extensive interview consultation portion where we give our clients questionnaires. We really dig deep to understand what the pain points are.

Because if we make this great looking video and it's cinematic and beautiful, but it solves absolutely nothing, then it's a waste of time and money and looks bad on us so um our for me the actual production which you know is the sexy part of filmmaking is the tip of the iceberg the planning the pre-production uh getting to know your clients building that relationship that to me is where the work is that and then the post production as well i did deal with the like okay because that i agree with 100% what you said and it's something that we've been also trying to integrate into our business but i feel like a

lot of times we're hitting this resistance where like they just want no no we just need this like one video like i get, there's a bigger problem, but you know, maybe we don't want to deal with it or the money for it. So how do you at least occasionally, like occasionally, not always, not with every client, but I'm, I'm sure that's a big obstacle that you've probably had to face yourself, right? Yes. And no. Um. So again, with the skill of being able to communicate with people and read people, you have to know who you're talking to. And there have been times where I've used this tactic where I've also used it on my kids. Not that they've ever done this, but just as an example, my kid,

I see her about to touch the stove and I say, don't touch that. That's hot. And she looks at me and says, okay. And then I see her hand going slowly at that point. I, I wouldn't do anything. I would almost let her touch it just so she understands what, why I say no. And it's the same idea with certain clients. When I can see they think this is what they want and I say, that's not what you want. And then they go do it anyway. I've had so many people who've come back to me after

and said, okay, now I get it. When they've done a project and failed. So I'd rather work with a client that understands why we do what we do and why we're the experts. If they're coming at us and, you know, they've solved all their problems already, according to them, then why do you hire an expert? Just go do it.

So, you know, sometimes it's better to let them make the mistake and figure out, okay, this is why we need these people. And other times, depending on how the relationship is, you can gently suggest, hey, if you really want to solve this problem, this is the solution we think is going to work best. And if that trust is there, if that relationship has been built, they'll say, okay, let's, how can we do that? What, how do we explore that option? Is there like a limit also in terms of how much resistance you're willing to kind of tolerate with some people? Because, um, um, like, like, as you said, you can give them the suggestion, they go make the mistake, they can come back. Um, cause there have been times where at least, uh, with some leads where we've had, you know, exploratory calls like this on zoom, where we've talked to them, uh, really trying to dive deep and understand their business

and they're explaining it to us. And we're trying to kind of, but they're not explaining it to the point where we can understand it. And we're trying to figure out what the problem is when you start getting these resist, this resistance of like, Oh, why do you need to know so much about this and this? It's like, this has nothing to do with what we asked you for. And then we're trying to say, like, we're trying to figure out what's the right position for you. But then we realized clearly they're not really, they're not serious or not really understanding everything. So we just decided, you know, okay, you know, clearly you guys need something a little different from what we provide. So we kind of like went our separate ways. Like, do you feel like that happens occasionally with you as well? Yeah, absolutely. There have been times where we've had

to walk away because we knew it ended up being a bad situation. There are other times where I feel it's appropriate to stamp my authority on a conversation. And, you know, that sounds bad, but sometimes in the business world, especially, you're dealing with high level CEOs, C-level people who are normally the ones giving the instructions. And they're the ones who are telling other people what to do. So, you know, I've had this experience where someone has contacted me, you know, they're used to being, you know, telling people what to do. And I'm like, listen, you know, call somebody else if you want to, if you want to tell them what to do. If you're calling me, it's because my team is the expert and you need the help.

And if you want to, and if you want to work in that dynamic, I'm happy to help you. If not, help. And if you want to, and if you want to work in that dynamic, I'm happy to help you. If not, let's, let's part ways. And that sort of woke them up a little bit. And they're like, okay, I'm sorry. How can, how can we do this? And then it like softened up to ask questions again. That's a huge gamble, but you got to know who you're talking to. And, and then you can have that mutual respect. I was, I was going to say was going to say, that's a great tactic. I'm just curious because that's not exactly something that casually comes up in conversation. Just to let you know, this is how it is for us, right? Is there something that you kind of look for typically with them where you're noticing this behavior or you feel like they would be potentially open? Because like you said, it's a gamble to go with that approach. is there something that you can ask to feel them out kiro right like

like you have to know how to read so you could you i think you obviously get a vibe where it's like okay this person's willing to listen as long as i sell myself like they'll be willing to accept kind of what i'm saying versus like there's some people where you just talked and you're like okay they're just stubborn at this point. Exactly. Yeah. Fair enough. There's a lot, there's a bit of pride involved in that as well. Um, you know, if, if you're going outside for some help, um, it's almost like some people feel like if they're asking for help, they're failing, but that's not the case.

I'm not a dentist. If I try to pull my own tooth out and I fail at it, it's, that's not what I'm supposed to be doing. I'll go see a dentist. He's the expert. I can't tell him how to do his job. So, you know, that's the, that's the kind of relationship that I'm looking for at the beginning. Are you looking for an expert or are you looking for somebody that you can control and tell them what to do for the most part now again with the balance i want my clients and my customers input i want to be collaborative with them so that we work together towards a common

goal but you don't want to end up fighting at every decision and every creative piece that for something that you know that should be decided just like this yeah it never works for anyone it's a mutual respect essentially that what we're always looking for as you hit it right on the head we're looking for that collaborative kind of partnership where we're working towards a common goal you know we're not here to combat each other that's not the goal that's right that's right judah why don't you give us a little background on like how you guys started in the business because you said you've been doing this for what 10 years now yeah been in the film industry for about 10 years man how do i make this story short okay let me see. Cliff notes version. Cliff notes. Yeah.

So I actually grew up in the U S and, and Florida is where I was at last. And in the United States, we have these programs in high school called magnet programs. You can go to a specific school. You can apply to a school outside of your district. If you want to go to that school for a skill so if you're in drama and a school has a drama really good drama program you can apply to go there for sciences all the different things I happened to go to a school so I didn't apply that had a tv

production program and so they had their own studio they had their own channel and this was their sort of magnet program and I ended up going to this school and I happened into a class where one of the teachers saw I was a great communicator and he's like hey why don't you come and try being an anchor on one of our shows I give it a try went over like like butter it was so. And then I just fell into like the whole creative process of creating film and creating art and TV shows and things like that. It was beautiful. Now, at the time, I was also like a high level of soccer. Like I was with the U.S. United States Youth Soccer Program. I went to university on a full scholarship for soccer i ended up leaving

to go play professionally in belgium oh wow so film kind of was a back burner thing i i didn't know what was going on with that but through circumstances and injuries and whatnot i ended up back here in canada where my wife is from from Mississauga and I always thought I was going to end up back in the UK so I was living in London London's my heart home and we ended up here to figure out what was next and in the meantime I was figuring out I was like hey there there's a lot of production going on here let me just go on to a movie set and see what's going on so I started volunteering on movie sets doing doing some background work. I got a couple of small parts and commercials and whatnot.

And I started noticing that, you know, I had zero say on what was happening creatively, even though I had a ton of ideas, but nobody wanted to hear what I had to say. Like, you know, I got to start my own thing if I want to have any creative say. And that's when I started Black and White Media. Almost 10 years ago.

It'll be 10 years in 2023. And slowly built up to what it is today. Kirill's big into soccer. So when he saw that you did some work for TFC on on the what on your watch yeah you should have seen how big his eyes got I'm like all right I'm like I got questions yeah well that's cool though when I first came to Canada I ended up playing with TFC so I still had some connections in there oh nice and that's how uh that's how that happened so yeah that was good you said you went to Belgium wasium was it um the the belgian

one league like which team were you playing for there yeah i was playing with a club called westerlo and actually okay like for a while um while i was over there and like i said lots of injuries naive yeah old it was a life experience yeah that's that's always been the big risk when it when it comes to soccer like i used to play when i was younger as well but not to that level obviously but uh you know still have that same kind of passion like i completely understand what it is you know even with the injuries you just try to keep pushing right that's it that's it who's your team then this is a big question oh no i didn't i didn't want to get to that you said you're from london so i'm i feel like i have to guess which uh which i want to know what your team is should we do same time or is

that it or what okay all righty on three all right three three two one united man united my man there we go i i was expecting a london team i lived in london but you know what i'm originally from trinidad and so by default because of dwight york being on man united just like he had to be a man united all right all right yep yep i get it for me it was uh dimitar berbatov because he's bulgarian that's my background so the touch of a god you know touch of a god what do they say touch of a god because his first touch was the most insane first touch you will ever see where like the ball could be flying at like ridiculous speeds and he would just very casually stop it as if it was as if he was like just grabbing something off the table

yeah i'll show you some i'll show you some highlights later dario but okay okay yeah elegant elegance emotion yeah is it the just going back to to video stuff yeah um are you the only one that runs a company do you have any partners oh you say there's one yeah we have three of us and it's the producer myself and the cinematographer are the three key uh people and the partners yeah did you guys all start at the same time no no i was pretty i was solo pretty much until we started this um this project with on the dot studios the live event and uh you know working with a team on on that close level it can either work or it can go up in flames pretty quickly

so yeah seeing that it was working we're like we gotta we gotta put this together and uh working we're like we gotta we gotta put this together and uh another say i'm full of cliches guys just just accept i like writing them down you have some really good ones all classics like they're actually they're actually kind of nice so the the saying is if you want to go fast go by yourself if you want to go far you go together so yeah okay like yeah i i like working with a team for a common goal and all going in the same direction it's just really cool yeah that was oh sorry karel go ahead no you're good i was i was gonna say like that's like okay you did almost a decade by yourself right i mean obviously you have a team and everything but not partner level right and then now like now you have like two extra partners right like was that like uh like did you

how did you how did you just decide like okay i'm i'm done being by myself i want to add more people like weren't you scared maybe of like okay if, if I do this, this could go bad. Cause I think statistically that's usually what ends the business. Right. So it's not like a light, casual decision. Right. Yes. Yes. And you know, no matter how nice somebody is, you are going to butt heads when you're

working or living or in any sort of close proximity, you're never going to agree on everything. or living or in any sort of close proximity you're never going to agree on everything what I look for in anyone that I work with from partners down to like a PA is how do you deal with criticism how do you deal with like hard issues because you know we live in this fake world where everybody seems nice they got the instagram life but you put a man under pressure and that's when you see the real qualities come out and on a film set let me tell you something there is pressure and you can see people's true characteristics come out so it doesn't take very long to learn who people truly are. I happen to work with some people who thrive under pressure,

who can take, you know, criticism who are able to learn from mistakes and not dwell on, on, you know, people, other people making mistakes as well. Those kinds of characteristics you cannot pay for. Those are things that are just gold, honestly. So do you find it's, you guys still maintain that collaborative aspect? Have you guys butted heads now that you guys are all at the same level?

But you guys are able to work through it pretty easily, right? I'll tell you what, we won't get into the politics, but the first day I worked with these guys we're we're doing a project for shopify out in ottawa and we were it was a two-day event staying in a hotel we're having dinner and for the first time working with them uh one of the guys said how do you feel about donald trump i'm like good god we got into like the craziest debates on the first night and you know that's how for me I I know that I can work with people because you are always going to have different opinions yeah but if if still you can um love that person and think of them and respect that person and respect their differences, that's a great way to live life, not just working in a company.

So I took that to heart. We challenge each other. We butt heads all the time. But I think it makes you better. I don't like working around people who are yes men. Yeah. Like that's the whole reason you get into a partnership with anyone, or you work with certain people. You want to work with people that are different or provide another skillset that you potentially don't have because you're never going to find another you. That never happens. And even

if you did, you may not like them, you know, or you might butt even more happens and even if you did you may not like them you know or you might butt even more heads with them if they're exactly like you right um and like you said you don't want yes men and like i remember when dario and i first started working together it was like one of those very similar situations where it was just kind of like you know we were just starting out but like you know like we noticed that even though we have a lot of the same interests you know but we're also very like also very different in a lot of other ways and i'm like okay there's potential for this to grow into something bigger down the road let's see kind of like where it goes at least that's how i saw it and you know like you said you go fast by yourself or you um what was it

the the second part you want to go fast you go by yourself but if you want to go far you go together exactly yeah and like maybe like it was like a slower burn in the beginning because it was the two of us trying to figure things out together but now it's starting to go even further than probably what we expected originally yeah because at the beginning we were still like we were friends but friends students were still learning the tricks of the trade and then we're also now working together which is which was weird at first we had to learn each other's uh uh work relationship right yeah it's different when you're friends versus when you're working together right right but then like you know the i guess we clicked pretty well with

that and like even now like we both know each other's strengths and weaknesses, and we use that to our advantage. So it works out pretty smoothly at the end of the day. Like, sure, we butt heads at the end of the day, but as long as we throw, like, a Sopranos reference at the end of that, like, it's good to go, you know? It alleviates it. Transparency, too.

Like, one thing I appreciate is that we don't let anything fester amongst our team. It's a lot of people just let things fester and it turns into resentment. And that's when, that's when it can burn down the walls of a, of a relationship and the business. So we always practice a policy. If somebody has some grievances, just bring them to the table and let's figure it out. Yeah yeah always important to squash that right away because like you said that's gonna like that negativity that um those grievances are going to translate into the work into the way they communicate with other people and the business can suffer as well not only in the relationships yes yes and luckily we've always

been pretty upfront with each other so anytime it's like i don't think we've ever let something go like okay okay no like the most yeah it's like you give it like an hour to like sleep on it or something you know or you know it's like cool down it's like all right this is what happened let's let's figure this out right now right this was probably the best lesson i've taken away from soccer is that in a team setting you know I would have coaches yelling and screaming and saying the worst things in the world but you know after that passes through after that passes you realize they they want the best for you they're trying to pull the best out of you and so despite how they say the things that

they do you got to just you know take the criticism what can i take out of this and then and then build on it so i wonder if you sorry i was just gonna say it makes so much sense that he went from soccer to like yeah like video production because it's like you're dealing with the same thing except instead of kicking a ball around you're creating a video right but it's still teamwork yes it's still leadership it's still still a lot of those elements that's the trained for this yeah that's that's part of the beauty of the of the sport of soccer as well as or any team sport is because a lot of the life lessons and a lot of the uh relationships that you build are like how you build relationships, how you work with other people, you know, translate into other

parts of your life. And like, everyone has a role, you know, you're brought onto a team, everybody has a certain job, you have to excel in it, but you also have to work as a unit with the rest, you know, and that's how a film set is, that's how a production set is, you know, you have the camera ops, the audio ops, the editors the producers the works you know like everybody has a job but it's all a team that has to mesh together yeah that's great uh i saw another thing i saw a thing on your linkedin and um what you said earlier kind of connected the dots for me uh because i remember early on you're like you saw what was coming with the pandemic. So you did the live streaming. And I just saw the other day on LinkedIn that you're also now accepting crypto as payment. Right.

Do you want to tell us a bit about that? Yeah, I'm very interested, if I can say it mildly, in sort of the global economic state especially after covid um so i listened to a lot of experts in finance as a weird hobby what's what's uh what are like the top two you like to listen to uh robert kiyosaki and um who's the other one? So this podcast, Jordan Harbinger, the Jordan Harbinger podcast. Harbinger? Harbinger, yeah. He actually frequently has guests on that talk about not just cryptocurrency, but what it means on sort of a global scale. So he talks about a ton of different relevant topics, but very much is dialed into the world economic state we're in right now.

So I appreciate those two listening to them very much. I'm trying to think who another one might be. In any case, they're all of the belief that the future is going to be in cryptocurrencies now that's going to take a long time and there are going to be a ton of ups and downs to get to a place where this is sort of a globally recognized use but it is headed in that direction and the people who are going to benefit the most or maybe, or maybe lose the most, but definitely those who will benefit are those who are the early adopters and

people who are, you know, creating new ways to use this, this method of payment. So I have another friend who owns a software company and they hired an entire team of software developers in Iran and they pay them in cryptocurrency. And so they, they've never actually had to put money in. They bought cryptocurrency when it was at its lowest. And even now that it's gone down, they're still making money from that and paying people out of it. So, you know, do your research, know what you're getting into. I'm not advising anybody on what to do. Disclaimer, do your research.

But for me, if people like Robert Kiyosaki are investing or at least diversifying into cryptocurrencies then you know it's worth it for me to to attempt to do that as well how are you uh like because we we got into crypto like uh early september i wish i wish we got into it in july because oh yeah oh my god i i'm telling you i did fantasize about it going that being those levels there'll be more opportunities oh yeah i know but july dip was particularly yeah spectacular um so we got into it in the i'd say early september and yeah just for personal investing stuff just to learn it yeah we were actually we're actually just gonna start it for our company too to accept crypto i was wondering how are you accepting are you doing it through um because i

we we like we like crypto.com and i know they have like a function there where you could actually send out invoices and accept it through their system and i actually signed us up for that and all are you doing it through them or are you accepting no i although i do trade in crypto.com as well so i use three different things depending oh wait wait a minute before you go further which card do you have you have the ruby sapphire what are you at i i'm not using a card of theirs oh you're not using the card okay so for me i i invest in crypto for the long term i i keep putting money in there i've never taken taken anything out so far. So I don't want access to it. I don't want to have it close by. I want to leave it in there for years. where i use uh coinbase and coinbase allows you to set up a wallet and so i have a wallet for both bitcoin and ethereum depending on businesses choose to use whichever one they want yeah and

then in my invoice from now moving forward in my invoices i'll have that wallet qr code scannable in the invoice so that people can pay so whether whether they want it or not, the QR code for the wallet is there and they can choose to use that option if they'd like. I see. Okay, okay. Interesting. It's like another option. Yeah, yeah.

Are you, what are you accepting as payment? Like obviously Bitcoin, Ethereum, other. Just those two for now. Those are, you know, the most stable at this time. And so if we get into all the little options, it can get pretty complicated. But yeah, just those two for now.

Yeah, I think Crypto.com also released, it's not their own wallet, but they're doing it in participation with another company. Like they're selling cold wallets now. But okay, interesting. are you doing anything else you know you know a funny story with you it's more i guarantee out of the you know however many thousands of transactions a year i might get one person that'll do it as a novelty but it's more of a publicity stunt than anything else that's what we figured now for now i think you know as things unfold um especially we are turning we are going to turn

this black and white media into an international company setting up shop down in florida as well then i think there will be way more use for that trade trading of that currency without the international bank fees, without. Oh, yeah. Moving money back and forth. I think that's where it would really come in handy. Well, if you're going to do it, Florida is the best place. They're open for crypto. But funny, funny story about that. We had a project for this company called the uh oh shoot what was the name tenderman right this was like in july before we got into crypto and they're like yeah we're like a crypto company we're like this blockchain blah blah blah we're like i don't i don't know what that means but okay i can do your video right so we went to the video two months later when we

finally get into it i was like oh my god carol these guys are huge like they're part of uh the uh adam adam network yeah these guys are huge like holy shit like yeah it was it was like a little easter egg thing and we were and then we were even like jokingly thinking it's like oh we should have accepted crypto back then we would have doubled the money by now oh my gosh you know that that's that's the one curious thing is like if you accept payment from a client you know like save for sake of argument it was like a ten thousand dollar project would you have to time it when they pay you because what if they accidentally pay you on it when it's on a high at 10k and then just drops down to like five it's like but he's in it for the long term i know i know but it is a gamble and you know

like i said it's more of a publicity stunt but yeah yeah i feel and so many experts that i've been listening to think that bitcoin over the next decade could hit a million could hit a million dollars yeah per coin and if that's the case a10,000 project to hit a million is not too bad for me. Judah, you're coming up on your 10 year anniversary. So why don't you tell us a little bit about some of the challenge, some of the some of the bigger challenges you faced up until this point, and maybe some of the challenges you foresee yourself facing maybe in the next couple years? Sure. The biggest challenge that I faced in my 10 years as an entrepreneur is myself. There is no challenge, like the challenge from yourself when you're battling, can I do this? Is this the right decision? You're always second guessing and questioning yourself.

And I imagine that's not over. That's never going to be completely over. However, winning those small battles every day builds confidence in your mind that I can do this. I am in the right position. It was never a matter of creativity. It was a matter of, you know, how do I talk to clients? How do I do this? How to do that? And there are lots of books on entrepreneurial endeavors and how to do things, but you can't understand it until you're in it. It's just like books on parenting.

They talk about all the things you can do tricks to help parent. It doesn't matter what book you read. When your kid comes out, all that goes out the window and you have to be in it to understand it. So over the past 10 years, the battle with myself not not anyone telling me anything not any particular client um it's just a state of mind that you have to try to get to to get to the next step i'll never forget um my first sort of for me at the time was a big project for like a thousand bucks. Right. Yeah. We remember those days. A friend of mine had a clothing company,

it was a sport clothing company. And he asked me, Hey, can you do this project? We just need some photos. At the time I was doing the whole thing photos website you know everything I could get my hands on asked me to do this project which I had no business doing I'll tell you right now just I had no idea what I was doing yeah sure I'll I'll do that it's easy man you should have seen me on YouTube tutorials all day and night. And then I show up at the place, did the job, made a few mistakes, but you know, you got it done. And for me, when I look at successful entrepreneurs,

business people, they say yes. And sometimes they say yes and then figure it out. But the people who say I can't do it until I know how to do it. Those are the people that will fall and will fail. You've got to take the risk. You got to take the chance, say yes, and figure it out along the way. Yeah. I mean, we completely agree.

You know, like when you're starting out, you don't like anyone who started out didn't know the blueprint right you know steve jobs didn't know what it was like with apple you know like that it was going to become the next big thing he just kind of went with it even i mean granted though like he was promising things that weren't actually working at the time so i mean we gotta there's a line to be drawn but yeah but when it comes to like you know like if you have to film something within a certain style, you could do the research and then figure out how to kind of replicate that, you know, as an example and things like that. And, you know, it's, it's funny when, whenever, when you mentioned like the first big job

where you get like the most, like a lot of money for what it is. Like, I, I feel like we all remember that one thing when it's just like, when they finally say yes and they want to take you on for that budget, it's just like when they finally say yes and they want to take you on for that budget it's just like i can actually make this much money doing it like didn't it feel like it was almost like a cheat code you know that you just kind of entered like that was that was how i felt when i made my first thousand bucks off of one job like did not expect that yes yeah yeah we've all we've all been there. You know, I, I, that's my kids home from school. If you hear screaming, that's all good.

I often say this on, on social media platforms, but you often have to look backwards, see where you came from to remember, you know, how far you've come. You know, we can get caught up on oh i'm not here i'm haven't reached this goal or i haven't done this but all you have to do is look where you started and see how far you've come and you're like okay i'm getting somewhere may not be exactly where you want to be but uh you know quality and persistence will create success. As long as you're farther ahead than you were yesterday, you're on a good path, you know? Yeah. People don't realize that growth is a slow burn and you get caught up in it, you know, where it's just like, okay, you know, like it's been, you know, the last few months,

it feels like, you know, it's been like kind of like a slow growth. And like you said, you may always feel like nothing's really changed, but in reality, if you look back, then it's like, whoa, it actually has changed quite drastically from there. Cause I feel like we all have an ideal kind of like position we want to be in, you know, or at least the type of work that we want to be doing, the type of projects we want to kind of like be able to, like, for example, I want to do a little bit more work, you know, more in the sports and the documentary side of things you know and and then it's just like okay i'm not there yet you know like when when we'll when will we get

there as as as a business and then it's like oh wait but we've also done all this which will uh which will lend itself to that when we get there you know it's it's crazy how much like growth is Growth is a slow burn. Absolutely. It's great, though, that you know what you want. A lot of people just continue doing things and let the river take them wherever it may. But for those people who know what they want, they can forge their own path. You know you want to do sports and you know you want to do uh more documentary yeah find those clients pitch those things get and i'm preaching to the choir here but you know what i'm saying um once you know what you want that's the hardest thing figure out what you want and then go after it so yeah you're that's great man there. There's two more things I want to touch on before we end this, but.

Sure. I'll be quick. I'm giving long winded answers. No, no, no. Hey, I love it. No, this is like, to be honest, like we're, we're willing to keep it going as long as, you know, cause these are just great conversations to just to even have between the three of us.

Right. But you know, like we also want to be respectful of your time, you know, and not take too much. Right. It's our, I think we've already hit the one hour mark yeah we're past the one hour but uh the first one i want to hit on is uh and we ask this to all the guests uh it's what was that one moment in your career that kind of got you to where you are today it's like a turning point because everyone's had that one turning point it's always interesting to hear other people's turning points. Yeah.

It's funny. I tried to do a short film and I still haven't released it. It's terrible. But it was almost like I wanted to blend commercial and filmmaking and to kind of blur those lines, kind of giving a story of black and white media. It's just sitting on the shelf. I should do something with this. But the turning point for me, I captured in this film was when I moved to Canada, I was a professional soccer player, but I had to work.

I had to do something in the meantime, before I figured out what was happening next. I just took a job at an Apple store. Good with technology and whatnot. Always have been. And I guess I was like 24, 25 years old. There were like 18-year-olds and 19-year-olds around. One of the managers was like 23 years old.

And here I am sweeping the floor in an apple store I'm like this is this is terrible and then they're sitting behind the bar laughing like look at this guy he's the oldest one here sweeping the floor and the manager is like hey you didn't sweep the corner so I like dropped the broom and pretty much walked out and uh i'm like this is not happening and so i think a month later i started black and white media um and at that time i wasn't getting paid jack at that time i knew i couldn't be sweeping floors so um instead and i also another turning point was when I dropped out of film school. So I was going to Sheridan for film, but I knew that I already understood I could get I could learn how to do film techniques. What I wasn't getting was how to run a business, how to communicate, how to do like the business of film and I know there are courses for that but I said listen I can pay twenty thousand dollars a year for four years to learn how to do this or I can try to start something and maybe not make that much money at the beginning but I won't be in I won't be in debt

and I can figure this out so that's exactly what I did um and you know the funny thing is after after what those four years I started hiring some of my friends who came out of film school they obviously were better at me technically but I was running a business it was already it was already in motion and so I feel like I have a have a head start in that regard And so I feel like I have a, I have a headstart in that regard. Maybe I don't even count the first four years of business, but by the time I understood what was going on, man, things just start taking off. Would you say like, it was like,

as soon as you started black and white media has just been like that, or was there like a specific moment? Like, cause what we're curious about is like, after you started the company, like what was that one moment that kind of skyrocketed the business to where you guys are today? Um, let me see what, what's a one moment.

Could be a series too, you know, like, you know, like something led to this, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be that one specific one as well. So as a film company we were seeing success because i would pick up the phone and talk to people and i could

i can convince people this is what you need but where the real success happened was when I started changing the way we did proposals, the way we, the way we did proposals was simply like listing what we would do and here's what it would cost. And then sending it off. But what I started to do was think, listen, we're a visual company. This is a great opportunity, not just to show numbers, but like give an idea of who we are, what's this going to look like? Show the creative side as well. And so we started putting, building these packages in film.

They call it like a mood board in the film industry. We started combining the mood board with the estimate and putting videos and like live images and creating a presentation rather than just here's some numbers. And man, I tell you that for me, was probably one of the biggest turnarounds that I've seen. And now with those types of thing, we're seeing 80, 90% conversion rates when When people are already interested, we've already had that conversation and they get,

they get to understand that we care about their business because in this, in this pitch, in this document, okay, thank you. In this document um you know we're showing them how their business should look we're we dive deep on their website we go take pictures from their own website we take um you know mottos and things like that and we put it together in a package so they're like oh these people understand us they get what they get what we're about um i think we started doing that in uh 2018 and the one that i do for like my super big clients is actually give them one of those but i also do a video pitch as well i'm like we're we're selling something here and we're not even using our own product to sell it so i started making

video pitches that go that work with the the pdf or the slideshow that they get and they can follow along and man that was people like okay this is impressive we like it so i think those two things you basically has created uh the black and white media experience and given it to them in a way right and something that they can show to other people within their organization because it's one thing to pitch in front of one or two people but then it's like a game of telephone you know when you're when you're pitching to people you know you may say you may give the presentation then they go and tell the higher-ups there but you know they didn't the hires didn't talk to you at that point you know but you've essentially solidified it so that they can kind of show it

to whoever needs to so it's a very very good strategy very nice very smart yeah we uh though we we did something similar not on the proposal end of things, but for like our, our blog posts, we started making the video equivalent and then putting it in the blog post. And we've actually, that's a really good resource for us to just inform clients of certain things. Like we'll just link the video. Cause I remember I was talking to Carol, I'm like, look, we're video production company, but we're doing like text, only text and images for the blog post. But if we just do a video, that would just like we should be able to do proper content for ourselves. We could do it for ourselves now.

So we did something similar on that end just for the blog videos. We're like, OK, like we'll do ones like how is a video made? Like how much does a video cost like we've we've simple actually yeah simple stuff like that but they've actually come in really handy because whenever we do have someone reaching out that you know it's the first time making a video yeah we'll usually send those two videos and like it kind of explains the whole process right yes yes i actually just did a linkedin live for the first time where I was teaching both filmmakers who tuned in and also a ton of my friends and clients tuned in. And I was explaining how the process of filmmaking works so they can understand why videos cost what they do and let them think about, OK, this is where, this is where my money's going.

Because a lot of people who do video for the first time don't understand what goes into it. They, they just see this video and, and, you know, when they're almost trying to sell you on how easy it is to do their video. Yeah. No, no, no, no. Are you looking for quality or are you looking for crap? I mean, we're not, we're not putting crap out there. Yeah. And the cool one is every, every seen that triangle before people have a lot of people have seen this on the internet. So you,

you have this triangle and at the top is, is quality on this. Oh yeah. And this corner is cost yeah and i share this with them and i say okay pick two and this really gets them to think okay this all right so i can make it fast and i can make it cheap but it's not going to be good yeah you know sometimes yeah no no no sorry sorry i was gonna say little tools like that are helpful in sort of these conversations. But that LinkedIn live was was great. Got some good feedback from people who didn't really understand the video process.

Yeah. So some a lot of the time, even what kind of goes into that where like they think things are so easy is also because of past experiences that they've had you know like sometimes it's almost better to have people who have never done a video before so they don't know the process because then we can teach them the right way to do it there have been times where Dara and I have been pitching to leads where they they had like a videographer that came in did it very simple clearly they weren't happy with it because that's why they were looking for more but still in their mind they're they're

thinking it's as easy as that you know they just have to go to someone else but it's like no it's not like one person showing up with a camera and then it's and that's it you know it's not as simple yeah people uh underestimate the power of a good script and a good storyboard like that's it. You know, it's not as simple. Yeah. People underestimate the power of a good script and a good storyboard. Like that's a thing that I really have to teach my clients. So whatever scale, let's plan this out properly so that on the day of production, there are no surprises that we know what we're doing, that everybody's on the same page. Yeah. Production should be the easiest part of the entire phase it should be the absolute easiest not the most complicated exactly yes let's see how much time we have uh maybe maybe two more last question is

really easy um uh what what challenges do you foresee yourself facing in the next couple of years? Yeah, so like I said, I'm aiming to bring the company internationally. So trying to set up shop in Florida this year. That's going to be a huge challenge because, you know, my team is going to stay here and do everything here. And I do anticipate I'll be going back and forth. We already have some pretty big bookings for the, you know, for the rest of the year. The other challenge that I've never even mentioned is that I started a film festival here in Oakville.

It's called the Oakville Festivals of Film and Art. And that's been going on for about, this is our ninth year now. Oh, wow. Those two things at the same time. And I've been the creative director, executive director, and sort of scaling back my role in that company. But to have somebody help them find somebody to fill that role um as i move forward and in the united states it's gonna be you started a film festival the same like pretty

much around the same time you started your own company yeah yeah yeah wow yeah like how crazy man um you know when you're young you can do some pretty amazing things but you might do it no kids man it's amazing what you can do with no i love my kids but yeah main lesson of the video don't have kids until later no i mean listen i thinking about it i wish I had my kids when I was younger to be fair like now that I'm in my 30s and I have a bit more wisdom to run the business I could be focusing a little bit more on the business because I have young kids and I want to I really do want to pour into them so that's where my focus is at right now. And I think, you know,

over the next decade or so, I, it's going to be kind of trying to balance those things. Yeah. So to be, I feel like it would be a challenge no matter when you have kids, you know, like twenties or when you're trying to grow your career, thirties or when you're really honing in on it, you know, there's really no perfect time, you know's yeah you can't you can't in business we can plan everything personal life like to the most extent but like at the same time it's not it's not an absolute right yes if you want to make god laugh you tell him your plans

i like that i like that that's such a good, that's a funny piece of wisdom right there. Okay, Jude, I want to end off on how you got the name for your company. This is ridiculous. My wife is white and I am black. Can't be that simple. So this is the funny thing. it can't be that simple so this is a funny thing um the motto is actually funnier than than the name because people whenever i tell that story people say the exact same thing it can't be that simple

but you know the whole behind after i gave it some thought it's like we want the process to be as simple as black and white for our clients they they show up we give them a product it's simple for them so it has a double entendre but you found a you found a better uh explanation for it after the fact. That's right. That's right. So, you know, it's funny, but that's the truth. I like it, though. I like it, especially the one that you're pitching now,

where it's like you want it to be as easy as black and white. That's pretty good. I like that. Judah, honestly, man, like, I feel like such great ideas and insights were shared, you know, and I think you've had such a unique experience, you know, like kind of jumping into this industry, you know, like that's the one thing Darren I love about doing this podcast is hearing everyone else's origin story in a way and how how they've navigated the space. So thanks again for joining us. Yeah, absolute pleasure, guys. joining us yeah absolute pleasure guys honestly um at this stage of my career if i can help other filmmakers and maybe be a mentor i i love doing that so thanks for inviting me on it's been

wonderful chatting with you amazing thank you thank you Thank you.