Creatives Grab Coffee - Lessons in Longevity (ft. Avalanche Studios) | Creatives Grab Coffee 79

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

In episode 79 of Creatives Grab Coffee, we sit down with Dave Lindsay, founder of Avalanche Studios, a video production company with over 30 years of industry experience. Dave shares his journey from starting as a one-man operation to navigating the highs and lows of the ever-evolving video production landscape. We explore how to maintain client relationships, the role of AI in storytelling, and strategies for building a sustainable business model. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or just starting, this conversation is packed with valuable insights for video creators looking to thrive in a competitive industry.Timestamps: 0:00 - Introduction to Creatives Grab Coffee and Dave Lindsay 2:19 - Launching Season 5 with Avalanche Studios 3:43 - Dave’s Early Career and Founding Avalanche Studios 6:36 - Splitting from a Business Partner and Going Solo 8:05 - The Evolution of Video Production Technology 12:27 - The Importance of Storytelling Skills in Video Production 13:30 - Embracing AI for Storyboarding and Scriptwriting 14:17 - AI’s Role in Dynamic Videos and Production Efficiency 16:37 - Exploring AI Voiceover Tools and Their Limitations 22:45 - How AI Is Shaping Client Expectations 23:27 - Utah’s Video Production Market and Industry Trends 27:49 - Diversifying Projects in Finance, Tech, and Manufacturing 33:26 - Managing Long-Term Projects Like Documentaries 36:16 - Dave’s Favorite Projects and Creative Preferences 39:54 - Breaking Down Project Types at Avalanche Studios 44:15 - Building Long-Term Client Relationships Through Fun Shoots 52:16 - Maintaining a Lean and Sustainable Team Structure 55:36 - Why Lean Models Ensure Longevity in Video Production 56:53 - Avoiding the Pitfalls of Over-Reliance on One Client 59:09 - Challenges with Retainer Models in Video Production 1:06:10 - Strategies for Staying Relevant in the Video Industry 1:07:45 - Final Thoughts and Lessons from 30 Years in the IndustrySPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 🎞️Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

Welcome to Creative Scrap Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creative Scrap Coffee is hosted by Dario Nuri and Kirill Lazerov from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto?

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And now, let's begin the show. All right guys, welcome to the first episode of season five of Creatives Grab Coffee. And today we have Dave Lindsay from Avalanche Studios Alright guys, welcome to the first episode of season five of Creatives Grab Coffee. And today we have Dave Lindsley from Avalanche Studios based out of Utah. So Dave, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I'm excited to chat with you guys and get interviewed by you. Hopefully I can share some kind of insight about the production industry for you guys. So I'm honored to be on the show. Is this like your first podcast episode? Like, are you a seasoned vet or is this a, what's the deal? I wouldn't say I'm a seasoned vet. I have been interviewed on a couple other podcasts about other things, you know, like we did a, a feature length documentary a couple of years ago and we were on a

podcast about that. And so I've been on a couple things before, another business related one. So, but yeah, I don't do this all the time. Being in front of the camera is definitely not in my wheelhouse, so I'll do the best I can. I think that background you got over there says otherwise. It looks like a full podcast studio.

Yeah. Well, I'm pretty good at setting up a camera and like directing other people to talk and be on camera, but actually being in front of the camera is something I don't do all the time. I'm not an actor. I'm not a professional presenter, but I am a business owner. I do have a video production company, so I know a little bit about how it works. So let's go out. Let's start there. Like, tell us a little bit about how it works. So let's go out, let's start there. Like tell us a little bit about how you started your company. Well, I started, uh, Avalanche studios, um, back in 2000. Uh, before that I started right out of college,

just with a little production company, just basically just me. Um, and I started, it was kind of a weird path of how I ended up here because when I was in school, I was studying business and accounting and thinking maybe I'd get an MBA. And I went to the University of Utah right here in Salt Lake City. So I was thinking that was the course I was going to go.

But then a couple years into that, I was taking this statistics class, and I just remember being so miserable looking at numbers and standard deviations. And I was like, if I have to do this for the rest of my life, I don't know if I will survive. And so I thought, I got to do something that I like and that I love and that I want to do. And I was trying to decide, well, what do I like? What do I want to do? And I was trying to decide, well, what do I like? What do I want to do?

And I really like sports. I love playing sports, being involved in sports. And I was like, well, maybe I could be a sportscaster. I'll be the sports guy on the news. And so I thought, well, how do you do that? And I researched it a little. And you've got to get a degree in journalism and go into communication.

So I switched my degree, started studying that kind of stuff. And during that period is when I was like the anchorman on the local college newscast and we'd go out and do stories. We'd take a camera out and go interview people and film stuff and then edit these little news stories. And I really enjoyed doing that in college. And so when I was about to finish college,

I did an internship for a company where we made a short little video for them. And I thought, oh, that's fun. I use all these skills of cameras and editing and telling stories. And I thought, I really like that. And about that time when I was trying to decide if I should apply to ESPN,

see if they'd hire me for sports center right out of the gate, I realized that probably wasn't going to happen. And my wife's uncle asked me what I was doing, and I told him that I had just finished making this video for an internship. And he said, oh, you know how to do video production? Could you make a video for my company? And I was like, companies hire people to make video and and they pay and so a little light went off in my head Oh, maybe I can make money off this so

So he hired me I made a video for him It was probably the world's crappiest video ever made it was horrible now that I look back at it But at the time he thought it was great And he paid me a small amount of money, And I told my wife, I'm not gonna be the sports guy. I'm gonna start a video production company after making one video. I thought I had enough experience and I knew how to do it. And so I went for it and I started up a little business

and I started meeting experience and I knew how to do it. And so I went for it and I started up a little business and I started meeting people and getting clients and started growing and then buying equipment and really learning more stuff. And the more I learned, the more I realized how did you ever think you could start a business? You didn't know anything. I didn't know anything, literally. But I thought I could do it and so I just went for it and in 2000, this was

back in the mid 90s when I was first starting this out. In 2000, we changed our name. I had this partner that I was kind of with and we split up but I just went out completely on my own and started Avalanche Studios in 2000 and been doing it ever since. Why did you and your business partner split up? I started the business business. I started the business on my own and. Started Avalanche Studios in 2000 and. Been doing it ever since. Why did you and your business partner split up?

Uh there's lots of reasons. I mean. Lot of things, but, uh, uh. He wanted to go one direction. I wanted to go another. We had different ways of doing things and just to be nice it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't a good fit for us so we decided to go our separate ways. Yeah that's almost 30 years in business that's crazy. Oh really yeah. Yeah it's been around 30 years yeah so I've seen a lot of technology over the years a lot of different technology come and, yeah. So I've seen a lot of technology over the years,

a lot of different technology come and go, yeah. You must have seen a lot of companies come and go as well at the same time because you basically saw all the different high peaks and lows, the highs and lows of the industry. Like, and when you're saying like how, wow, I can make a video for a company in the 90s is very different to like

in the early 2010s because that's how it was for us. I remember even back then it was like wow this is you could actually make money off of this but back then in the 90s that must have been like a completely uh surreal thing to kind of experience and probably the margins were great back then too right? Yeah things were good it was it was different you know I remember starting with you know using SVHS technology in college and then that went you know then we switched to beta cam you know beta SP we thought we were cool because we had a beta SP camera and then DVC Pro 50 and and then the editing solutions were you know in college it was tape to tape you know deck to deck

editing it was and using things like the video toaster. I don't know if anybody's old enough to remember that, but there was this thing called the video toaster which made by NewTek. I think NewTek is still around and they make like a switching platform, but yeah there was stuff like that. Then we got into nonlinear stuff and we bought our first Avid in the late 90s our first avid system we paid a hundred thousand dollars for it and we had a It was like a three-year lease. Basically was just a Mac computer with like 36

gigabytes of storage on it these big this giant thing and But if you had an avid if you had an avid media composer back then, that meant you were big time and people would come to us to edit their stuff. Film producers and other editors would come in and they'd want to edit on this avid. So we just rendered that thing out all the time where I would sit and edit with people. We were one of just a handful of avids in the Salt Lake area at the time. That was pretty cool to have that. Then after a few years, we realized people,

college kids were coming to us and like, why do you have this Avid? It costs 100 grand. I can do the same thing on my Mac with Final Cut Pro. And I'm like, and then we realized, yeah, you know, you got a point. And so we got rid of our Avid's and we eventually switched over to Final Cut Pro.

And then of course that went away and then switched to final, you know, to Adobe Premiere and that's kind of all we've been using lately is pretty much Premiere products. So, but yeah, technology has definitely changed. And that hundred adjusted for inflation now would probably be like a lot. That's like, that's like 200, 300 and 300,000. See Dario that imagine now like you, the, and 300,000. One Lamborghini Urus. See Dario, imagine now the cost for Adobe Premiere every month doesn't seem that bad now

considering what you had to pay back then, right? I was just thinking, one editing program cost them 100K, which adjusted for inflation is probably like 200, 300 now. And it's like the most expensive camera now, it doesn't even cost that much, half of that. Yeah, and you can do so much more. You can do so much more now with stuff. You know, my son's been getting into it

and he'll just shoot stuff and then edit on his phone. You know, he's making graphics, adding in titles, doing effects, and it's just all on his phone with stuff that he can get for free. And it's amazing, the technology. And stuff that he can get for free and it's amazing the technology. And I used to be really worried about that. I used to be really worried as a business owner. You know, you're thinking about your livelihood and the future and maintaining your clients and are we gonna lose business? And there is some truth to that. Some clients will say, you know, why are we paying you

30,000 bucks for this little project when we can do it for in house? You know, our guy in the marketing department can do it. But you still need to have somebody who knows what they're doing. Somebody has to, you still need people who are talented, who have an idea, who have a concept, who know how to tell a story, who know how to shoot, edit properly, finish. You know, there's still a lot of skills and storytelling. And then even managing a project if you're dealing with actors and locations and you know, you still have to have all those skills, those are still valuable.

Just you know, the technology itself isn't going to make something awesome. You got to have somebody who's got the idea and the spark and the concept and the ability to make it all come together. Do you feel the same way about the potential future of video AI? I'm not quite sure what to think about AI right now about the future. Within our company the way we've embraced it or the way we've talked about it is like we might as well embrace it. Let's just embrace AI and realize that it's a real thing and that it's here. Let's try to use it. Let's be the early adopters of it. And let's try to figure out how we can become experts with AI so that we can still be valuable to our

clients and help make our clients' projects better. And so we've been using it in a lot of ways. Everything from script writing to help us come up with ideas for scripts. The thing I really like the most about it is using it for storyboarding. Because we used to pay storyboard artists a lot of money to sketch out and write up, draw a whole bunch of images. And now you don't have, I mean, I feel bad for storyboard artists, but, uh, but now you can just, you know, type in the prompt of what you want and say, give me a wide shot of a guy in the mountains with the beard and he's, uh, wearing snow

shoes or whatever, and you type in this thing and then it creates this image and you can adjust it and that now all of our storyboards are just like AI generated images and we could have them exactly what we want and you don't have to sketch it out and then try to communicate that to a storyboard artist and then have him draw it and then pay him a bunch of money for all this. It's like AI can do it

and it just saves so much time to create concepts. It's gonna get easier too, because now you can use like Sora just released, right? So you can probably replace your static image storyboards with like dynamic videos from Sora that are like short clips, but they kind of get the point across. Yeah.

Yeah, so AI is something to definitely something to be aware of and try to use it to our advantage, you know? It's big in the pre-production stage now for sure. And there are some other AI tools that are kind of helping things more in the post-production side as well. Like for example, the Adobe Enhanced Audio Editing Software is really good when it comes to salvaging

poor audio from not something that you've produced, but like archived footage or things like that, that's sometimes not always the best. Like we, it's been very useful for us when like a client has sent, here's an iPhone video with really poor audio quality, make something like, make something with this for us that will be usable. And so, and just feeding that through that software, it gives you an audio file that actually does sound much, much better than what it is.

Obviously it's not perfect yet, right? But to be able to just click, drag and drop and download is the amount of time that's saved and everyone's happy at the end of the day. It's amazing just how that tool alone has really gotten advanced. And now they've also included this new Premiere tool where it extends clips further when you need that extra little like one to two seconds of buffer, you know, for that skyline shot or whatever.

Like even like people walking and like actual subjects, it actually is able to do a decent job. I'm sure it's still pretty limited. I haven't had the chance to toy around with it much yet but it's just the fact that that started is a big thing. But we'll see how far it goes into the actual production aspect you know when it comes to motion graphics, artists, before it starts to tackle that area, but it's getting there, it's slowly getting there. It's a matter of years now, or months, maybe even. They said it was a matter of months, like a year or two ago

when it was first introduced, so like I don't think it's a matter of months, but before it gets to like... Well, it quickens up every time, right? So, I mean, look at the the Will Smith eating rocks or spaghetti one is the most popular one. Within a year, they went to like a realistic version of that. And then, I don't know, it's gonna get interesting. Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy.

One thing we've been also using AI for is just voiceover stuff, especially for scratch tracks, trying to find a mood or a style. Some we've almost even just used it for a finished ad. One we got really close, we've used this AI voice and it sounded really awesome. We loved it. The performance was just a tad off. So it's sometimes it's hard to get it perfectly spot on, all the pronunciation and the inflections and everything, but generally you can find a really cool sounding voice.

And so we've done that a lot for temp tracks and just trying to create a mood or trying to work with a client to say, hey, what kind of voice do you want? Should we do this kind or this kind or this kind? And then you can give them a bunch of ideas. So it's really helpful for that too. What have you used for AI voiceover?

I'm not sure, cause I personally don't do it. Our editors do it. For years, I've also narrated like hundreds and thousands of commercials and projects that I do. So we have a sound booth that I personally have narrated tons of stuff and so But what what our editors have done is they'll they'll I don't know what the software is they use but they'll like they've done

It with me left. They'll take my voice that I've narrated something for and they they need to do a fix Change a word or client needs us to update something they just they just train it on my voice and then they just make the fix and Yeah, they just take my voice plug it in and go okay now we can have Dave say whatever now because we got it trained You know, so but I'm not sure I'm not sure what tool they're using for that So you're telling us there's a Dave Lindsey sound or what tool they're using for that. So you're telling us there's a Dave Lindsay sound board somewhere that we can start using.

Yeah, there's a fake Dave AI somewhere. Yeah, the reason I was asking is because when it first, AI audio or voiceovers became really popular like a year, year and a half ago roughly. And we tried it out and it wasn't the best at the time, but now it started getting integrated in some of the bigger platforms like Artlist and it's become a really big part of their entire library

and offerings that they give. And I've been listening to some of those AI voiceovers and I'm like, it's getting close to start replacing a lot of voice actors out there, that's for sure. It's getting much better if it's gotten to like, I know that a certain AI software has gotten good when Artlist starts adding it into their system. Yeah.

It's like, it's getting far now. Yeah. I haven't checked it out, but I saw that that was an offering and I was like, maybe I should check that one out. Yeah. Should I add your voice? Yeah. Make royalties off of the Dave Lindsay voice. Yeah. To the library.

Make royalties off of the Dave Lindsay voice. They gotta pay me for that. Can you actually do that, Kirola? You just add your voice to it and- I don't know. Probably there is something like that out there. But again, it is also AI. So it's like, I don't know

if it's trained on someone specifically or it changes a little bit. I don't know. Like, cause when they, when they're, if you look at the art list ads, they actually show like AI people as well. So you can't even tell who it's associated with. It's like, you want to sound like a, like a NARASPY old man or a tiny little boy or whatever.

You know, it's, it's definitely gotten advanced and it's definitely going to change the business aspect of, of, of like when you're pitching to clients, like for example, now when we're using and hiring voice actors, there's a certain budget that's usually, usually set aside for hiring that actor, working with them, getting the right recordings that you need and everything like that. But now if there's this now AI tool,

like how are you going to go about charging for that? Is it going to be like an anomaly, like a much smaller fee? Or is it something that you just provide as part of it? You know, it's like you always charge the same. That's the rule. Prices only go up. It's like inflation. It only goes up. Yeah. But my point is it like, it changes the it changes the business angle a little bit, right? Obviously, even though you're not hiring a real person, you have to feed the script through the software several times, get the right thing. So more time is being spent on that side. It's like a management fee of that fake horse.

Exactly. So, I mean, in a way, it might price out the same, but instead of some of that money going to, like, say, a voiceover artist, then the money's going to go more so into the producer or the director or production management fee and the time aspect that goes into trying to get that right performance, right? But again, though, like, if you're going to go that route, you got to make sure that you're getting the actual performance that you want. So, because if it doesn't work out like that, then Then boom you got to go and hire every person as well, but we're getting there We're getting I'm surprised at how many ads I've heard broadcast on TV or on You know social media ads or whatever that are using AI voices, and they're clearly AI voices, and they're really bad, but

They still say the same thing and they still get the point across and you can tell their AI but people these clients are putting their ads out with AI voices and they don't care it's just it's cheap money yeah it's cheaper and it's cheaper the ads probably are working and they're I don't know person can't tell, right? Yeah. And when you're like scrolling through, I think it's more prevalent in like social media ads because of how quick that media keeps getting churned out. People are trying to find ways to cut costs as much as possible.

And that is definitely one way to do it where it funny enough, like I see so many of these like funny ads, which are saying you can create a YouTube channel with completely AI everything, which is obviously like a scam in terms of what they're trying to push. But there are even YouTube channels out there though that I've seen where there's one that I listen to where I've been listening to it for a year or so.

And then at one point I noticed something was like, there's something kind of consistent with it. The voice. The voice and it sounded relatively normal and then I forget how I found out but I found out that it was AI generated and I'm like this is pretty good for AI because it's a very distinct voice and I haven't heard it anywhere else so it's getting better to the point where it's like yeah it may have been, but it gets good information across, you're able to follow along, it's edited together fairly well.

So it's kind of wild how far these tools are getting and it's going to definitely change the landscape when it comes to how you're pitching and selling to clients and what kind of clients you're selling to, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. Let's talk about the market in Utah. So you're situated in Salt Lake City. So what kind of industries are popular there? Salt Lake City has all kinds of stuff going on here. It is a fairly popular place. Well, the state of Utah is fairly,

I've got a pretty good robust film and video production industry. There have been a lot of movies and shows that have come through here. I think a lot of the appeal to Utah is the landscapes. You've got you know Red Rock deserts in the south, you got Alpine and mountains, snow in the north, you've got Salt Lake City, which you can do some city type stuff, you have really good crews, talented people, there's been a lot of, you know, shows and industry shows and series that have passed through here over the years. So there's a pretty good market. For us, mostly what we do at Avalanche Studios we do a lot of ads we do a lot of you know business related content we do a lot of documentary related stuff so

we film a lot of documentary style projects and whether that's you know full-on feature documentaries or documentary style productions. So we do a little bit of TV and just a lot of, I don't know, seems like we have a lot of tech companies that we do a lot of stuff for. I know you've probably heard of Silicon Slopes in San Jose, California and the tech companies there, but they have the Utah version of that is called Silicon,

or the Silicon Slopes, what do they call it? Silicon, I meant Silicon Valley. I think you meant Silicon Valley, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, sorry, let me edit that out. In San Jose, it's the Silicon Valley, but in Utah, we have Silicon Slopes. And that's basically a bunch of tech companies like Adobe and I don't know, Workfront, and a bunch of tech companies like Adobe and I don't know work front and a bunch of other tech related companies are popping up all over in

South Salt Lake County and North Utah County kind of bits right between Salt Lake City and Provo area there's a lot of tech companies popping up and So we have a really strong tech industry popping up and so we have a really strong tech industry here and so there's a lot of you know we end up with making content for a lot of those companies. Is that a recent thing? Is that part of the exodus out of California? It's been happening gradually over the last few years. I think Adobe moved their offices here like say 10, 15 years ago. But yeah, there's there's been a lot

of startups and then there's some companies are moving and you know there's companies like eBay and Facebook and others that have some kind of a presence here in Utah. So it's been it's been gradually happening but it's quite, it's been gradually happening, but it's quite a thing. That's interesting. Yeah, we have here in Toronto, it's varied. There's like all sorts of industries here. I wouldn't say it's heavily-

There's no major one. On one. Yeah, there's no like one that's like dominating everything. It's just kind of of a mix of everything. And it's also a cycle throughout the year, right? Maybe one year it's more so in the classic holiday season type stuff.

And then for example in summer, or when August, September rolls around, when the Toronto International Film Festival comes around, then it's big like the entertainment space and then, but there's always constant business and corporate. Like I'd say maybe the biggest is business and corporate really, I guess, but- In finance.

Or maybe in the finance sector cause there's a lot of like big offices here in Toronto for that, especially for international companies that want to have a Canadian presence, but otherwise there's no like one particular one that we could pinpoint to other than that. What's your main go-to? What type of projects do you guys primarily do? Like what would you like to do if that's all you could do? Oh for us, I guess finance is our current one.

I would like to do more in the finance space. Finance and tech is like a little bit more of the type of clients that we typically service over the last few years. That's kind of like the biggest trend. And they're great people to work with. There's like a wide range in terms of like the kinds of projects that we can work on.

Like I would obviously like to do more. Manufacturing too. Yeah. Yeah, that was, that was funny. Like in 2022, there was like this weird year where all of a sudden half of our projects were all manufacturing based clients and, and, and projects. So it's kind of, for us, it's been a very interesting kind of like journey in terms of like the kind of work and clients that we've gotten, but depends like year to year yeah it varies year to year and a lot of it has been like

inbound uh type projects that have come to us so one thing that we're going to be aiming for for example in the new year is to try to start going after figuring out what kind of projects and clients we want to kind of work on that we don't currently and see how we can start actively pursuing them. So that's like one thing that we're going to try to push more for in 2025. Yeah, we'd like us to focus a lot on the man, well, finance, obviously, and manufacturing as well, because there's a lot of businesses in the manufacturing space here. Lease here, yeah. I do like going to their factories and just seeing the processes. It's always like fascinating to me. So yeah, definitely want to add that to our repertoire.

Yeah. Usually I could get some cool footage of stuff if they've got some kind of interesting welding or sparks flying or some kind of interesting machinery. It's always fun to get that kind of manufacturing footage. There's always a wow factor to it, depending on what it is as well. The most recent one we did was for a kitchen cabinet type business, a cabinetry business. And besides the challenge of there being so much sawdust in the air that it's

very difficult to breathe. Just for Carol, I was fine. Mainly for me, yeah. But it's very interesting to see kind of all the different processes that go into it, all the different kind of sprays that they have to do, the cutting, the way they have to calculate everything in terms of like how precise the pieces are being made together. It's cool to see people like working on the craft of this stuff, right? And also there's a ton of different types of content you can create for them. There's yeah, obviously like the

educational stuff for their employees and They always need conference videos or you know, what do they call them? Trade show videos. So yeah tons of content Yeah, honestly, that's one of my favorite things about this job is having clients in different industries where you find out, you get to meet different people, you go to their facility, you find out what they do, you hear how they started, how they got, you know,

invented their gadget or whatever it is and then made it and then are selling it and now they've made a billion dollars, that's always inspiring and fascinating to me to see what other companies are doing and what other entrepreneurs have going on. And to go tell those stories and to meet people that are doing that, they're usually, you know, high quality people who are, you know,

got something special about them and then to be able to meet them and to hang out with them and to film them and to help tell their story and help promote their product. That's a fun part of the business, I think. Yeah, it's one of the only jobs out there that you can do that in because everyone else is kind of like you're in that specific industry and you're kind of stuck in there and it's a small...

It's also one of the few industries where they give you, they kind of open their door, their back doors to you more so, right? Like every, like for every industry, like you kind of like, here's like the here's like the front line of like our services and our business, here it is, but there's very few company or jobs where they would actually just kind of be more open to be like, this is how we do this is how we do this, this is how we make this, this is our story, these are the behind the scenes. It's really interesting to learn a lot about the inner workings of not only the companies but like how these industries are actually operating.

Like one of the manufacturing clients we did in 2022 was for like, was a cable manufacturing company that we had, we didn't realize we were doing big cables for like NASA and stuff like that. And we were like, you guys create like, like some of the major cabling and electronics for NASA. That's pretty interesting. I never would have thought of that. It's like the small office in the middle of nowhere here in Tehran and you're like, okay,

like you guys are helping people get to the moon So random. Yeah Yeah, it's interesting. I mean when I look at the types of clients we have just the type of type of clients We have on the board right now like our projects that we're doing right now. We it's such a wide variety of industries you know, like we're doing we'll be doing a video for a industries. We'll be doing a video for a chemical company in Wyoming. So they mine soda ash from the ground in western Wyoming. So we'll be going out there making this video about their processes and employee orientation content and stuff like that. So there's that. There's

UDOT, which is the Utah Department of Transportation. They're redoing a bunch of freeways all around Salt Lake City. And so we have time lapse cameras set up all around for like, it's like a three year, three year project where we just have these time lapse cameras set up. We have eight, actually we've got 10 cameras set up at various intersections where they're doing this construction. And so we manage that project and create video content from from that. We do stuff for the Salt Lake City Airport which they've just rebuilt the airport over the last five years. It's been like a five-year project and and so we we started filming you know

six seven years ago as we've been making a documentary about the reconstruction of the Salt Lake City Airport, which is we kind of finished the documentary, but we still are now adding on to it because the airport's not completely done. So just projects like that. So just this wide variety of industries and clients and places we get to go. I'm every day I come to work I feel like I'm just goofing off because I don't really have to sit at a cubicle and just do the same thing every day You know one day we're out on site another day. We might be writing a script another day I could sit in the edit bay for a while and supervise stuff. So for me, it just fits my personality because I you know, I think I've, I think I'm too old to have been diagnosed with ADHD back in the day, but if I, if I was much younger, I probably would be on medication

or something because I have to be moving around. I have a hard time sitting still and this industry really helps take care of my need to be doing something, you know. I think this industry also kind of like pushed us in that mindset of like, oh, I need to be doing something different constantly, you know, because that's how it was at the very beginning. It's like, oh, you're doing a video for this company or, you know, like obviously when you're first starting out, you're doing a lot of like smaller type projects. So it's like, oh, I'm doing a music video for this guy or we're doing a corporate video or doing a university video. It was kind of like a weird thing to notice right out the gate that it's constantly different

every single day. It's like, so now that's what you expect that you can't imagine after, especially you, after doing it for 30 years and with the industry constantly changing, so the habits constantly changing, what you've been doing now is not exactly the same that you were doing 10 years ago, right? So you're kind of used to that at this point. And it's- I think it's in our nature

because I would have been switching jobs every like six to 12 months if I wasn't doing this. Yeah. I remember back when I was working at the bank and at the Rogers and everything, after a month or two, I'd be like, it's boring, I need to do something different. Yeah, this industry definitely takes care of that problem.

It's definitely not boring. We're always doing something different. So I'm really grateful I've been able to have a career this far doing what I do. Is there a particular favorite type of project that you've worked on or type of clients or work that you like to do? Because obviously with it being so varied, like you do corporate, you do tech, you do documentary, like is there something that you kind of find yourself leaning a little bit more towards?

I do like ads. I like short form stuff. You know, I like taking a complex message and telling a story in a short amount of time, where you take something that's fairly a big story and a complex messaging and simplifying it, reducing it down to one simple thing, where you can tell the story in a 30-second ad. That's a challenge, and it's fun. And I also love those kind of shoots

because you can put a lot of focus and energy into a concept and writing the script and dialing it in. And then the shoots are usually pretty short and sweet, you know, one or two days. And then you get all this, you know, get the footage and then put it all together and then you're done. You know, you finish it and you're done. And I like the having that process all done and seeing a conclusion quickly,

as opposed to other projects we've done where it's just... Even like this airport thing is great and it's awesome, but it's just like this ongoing thing. It feels like we're never really done with it because we make a documentary, but they're like, you know, a few more things happen and we're adding this new wing and we need to add that into the documentary. And it's like, okay, we'll do it. You know, that's great. We're happy to do it.

But I like the finality of just get in there, tell a story, finish it, and then move on and go on to the next thing. So, but yeah, I like ads. And I do like documentary stuff too. I know that takes, documentaries do take a long time. Yeah, but I do like There's something about Documentary storytelling too that I also really enjoy

It's a it's a challenge. It's It's like it's kind of it's funny because it's kind of the opposite of what I just said about the ads about going in quick but You know of the opposite of what I just said about the ads about going in quick but you know it's filming something for months and months and months or even years like we've done and then then taking that and trying to make sense of it all and then weave it into a story because when you have so much footage you can you could lead the viewer this way or you could turn the story that way just depending on depending on how you edit it. And so that is also a fun challenge.

It's a much longer drawn out thing but we've gotten pretty good at it here at our company and so that's why we end up with a few documentary projects all the time. But I also enjoy doing that. So is it like a, what would you say is a percentage breakdown between documentary and your standard corporate video that you do? Or ads? Probably, I'd say like 30% of what we do is ads. Probably, well with documentary,

there's like full-on feature-length documentaries which we will get hired to make and sometimes we've made our own just as passion projects. But then there's a lot of companies who hire us to do projects for them which are documentary style, you know, like a short four to five minute piece but it's kind of a docu-style thing. So the line is kind of blurred there, but we do, I don't know, probably another 30% of our stuff is in that style. And then we do just regular creating corporate content

or covering events or creating content for events that people might have a big meeting and they need to make some content for their big event, you know, their big sales kickoff or whatever. So a lot of that kind of stuff as well. Um, in terms of like inbound versus outbound, uh, lead generation, uh, what do you mostly focus on? Do you do any outbound or is it just all inbound? What do you mostly focus on? Do you do any outbound or is it just all inbound? Yeah outbound meaning like we're cold calling people or reaching out or yeah

That's like a cold call. Maybe reaching out like whatever whatever works for you Yeah, when I first started I did a lot of that because I was just me trying to tell people I knew how to do this And so there was a lot of cold calling and reaching out and I was going to any kind of, you know, the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce events or any local place where I could meet other business people. So I did a lot of that kind of stuff in my early years. Lately though we get a lot of stuff from repeat business from our clients. We also get a lot of referrals from our clients we have. Our website, we do as much as we can

to try to optimize our website so it gets up there in the rankings. So we probably get 10% of our business every year is new business from new clients who just found us on our website. But yeah, the bulk of it, I think the bulk of what we get is from returning customers. One thing we found really interesting over the years is when you take care of

people and you treat them right and you do a good product, and you have a good relationship with them, and they have a good experience when they're done with a video project, they remember that. If you make the set fun and engaging and they like you and they had a good experience, they'll remember it. And so what that's led to is a lot of business

with other companies. For example, we have one company, one of our biggest clients right now is a tech company called Nice. They're an Israeli-based company, but they have offices in New York and all over the world. They're a multi-billion dollar company. They're an Israeli based company but they have offices in New York and all over the world. They're a multi-billion dollar company. They're huge. But they bought a company here in Utah,

a small little contact company that had a cloud service for the contact center space. And so we'd been doing some stuff for this company about 16 years ago and so we did a few projects for him and over the years the people we worked with it Nice as they would Go through their career and then they would leave that company and go to a new company and when they went to the new company Then they would call us up and hire us so and we've been keeping track of those We've been keeping track of those people that we there those new clients we've gotten from that company called Nice. In fact, last night at 11 something p.m. I get a text from a guy who used to work at Nice and this very thing happened and he's like, hey Dave, I know it's been a

while, can you send me the link to that video that we did some funny video with them for their company? He's like, can you send me that link because I'm with a new company now and I need to pitch that. I'm pitching some ideas to my new boss and we want to see that video and hopefully I can get you in with this new company that I'm with. So we've gotten like probably 15 to 20 new clients over the years who used to be employees at NICE at this other company.

And it's crazy, the turnover, these people, they just go from this tech company over to another tech company, and they're still marketing people or whatever. And so when they get to the new company, they say, oh yeah, the guys at Avalanche Studio, they'll take care of you. So those kinds of referrals are so valuable

and have led to so much extra business for us. So it's just good. What do you do to stay in touch with clients like that? Do you take them out to lunch or dinner? Gosh, we probably should do more. We don't really do a lot. I think when they do leave we we usually try to connect with everybody on like LinkedIn and Facebook and social medias and so we have those connections and usually when

people are leaving they'll let us know like oh I'm not gonna be with this company and so we always try to send them a message and say oh that's great good luck with your new job and let us know if you need something. So I think that's pretty much all we do. We don't really have any other kind of hardcore plan to track those people down, but it just has kind of happened naturally. That's low maintenance, that's good.

I think it's a testament then to how you keep the client experience so high, like such high quality and very engaging, just the way you're talking about how you keep the client experience so high, like such high quality and very engaging, just the way you're talking about how you try to make the day of shoots, like on set fun. That's one thing that everyone should be striving for with the company. Because obviously, yeah, you're there

to get certain shots done and whatever, but you gotta keep it lighthearted with the client. You gotta keep it like a fun experience because for them, that's like a break from their day to day as well. That's like an experience for them that they can't wait to be like, oh, I'm not working at my desk this week.

I get to actually be like working on a video with this company. And I'll like make it an experience for them and something memorable because then yeah, in the future, they will think of you when they move on to other companies. We've had like a couple of clients that we've gained over the years as well, similar to you, but I wouldn't say like 20 from one, that's wild.

That's impressive. It is. We were amazed at it ourselves when we've gone back and every time it keeps happening, we're just like, there's another one, you know, there's another one. And that's not the only client that's happened with. But one thing about making the set fun is I'm not that fun of a guy, but one of the guys that I work with really is, he's really great about keeping two things.

One, he's a really good producer that can manage the set and he kind of really makes sure that in order for it there to be that good experience and that good feeling things have to go smooth so you have to plan it out you got to keep stay on schedule and you got to be nice to people and so when you're on set if you do that and you have fun and you get done on time or you get done early people are happier and feel better about it so we always plan enough time and make sure we're really we know what we're doing and everything's where it needs to be so everyone has a good experience.

Because the genesis for that came when Jason is his name. He's been with me for over 20 years. And he said that when he was in film school, he went to BYU for film school. And he said he remembers being on set for some kind of side productions he was on. There was these directors who were just yelling and mean and they're working 18 hour days and if you did anything wrong they'd snap at you and it was just miserable.

He said he hated it and dreaded working on this film he was on and he's like, why do people have to be like that? Why do you have to yell at everyone and swear at everyone and cuss and everyone's on edge and everyone's pissed all the time and everyone's mad? He's like, why do people subject themselves to that type of environment on set? He's like, it should be fun.

We're all making a movie. You know, we should be super stoked and excited about it and having a good time. So he's tried to make sure we have that type of an atmosphere where everyone is excited and everyone does feel good and everyone's happy. So we make sure we have plenty of food and craft services and we stay on schedule and everyone's nice to each other. And we always got somebody talking to the client and making sure they're happy. And so if you just make it a good experience for people, see, you do all that. And then also you got to make sure that what ends up on the screen experience for people, see, you do all that. And then also you gotta make sure that what ends up on the screen is top-notch too, of course.

But if you can do all that other stuff behind the scenes, then that's really, really valuable. And I think that's why people remember us and why they like us, because they have that good experience in addition to having a good product. So, nice. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of good prep

that goes into it if you're able to kind of keep it that lighthearted. I feel like if there's a lot of stress and things happening on set, that means that something didn't go according to how you prepared for the project or something. Like obviously things happen as well on set sometimes that change circumstances to what the plan is,

but the key is to not react poorly to it, is to roll with it. Like that's one of the big things that we've always tried to make sure that we do on set is that when we're communicating with our clients, it's like things might happen, something changes that is not expected, but to keep calm and then know how to resolve that issue

and make it almost like a non-issue for the client is a big thing because then they don't get stressed. Because if you start getting stressed, they start getting stressed. And then it's like a snowball effect and then that's what they're gonna associate with the project. It's like, oh man, I was so stressed on this day

because of this happening, you know. Or it's like, oh, this happened on set, but the team was very calm. They were able to manage it. So I was very happy with that. They're problem solvers. That's the big thing. Be problem solvers, but be fun problem solvers.

We've had a lot of clients like tell me at least that they were always surprised how we managed to stay calm in a lot of situations, especially when we're doing like an interview, for example, or like a teleprompter reading and the talent keeps, you know, fumbling and everything. And I could see the clients dressing up, but we're like usually pretty calm about it because I mean, we've been through it so many times, there's no point in stressing them out while they're reading or answering a question. That'll always make things worse if you do as well. And then the other key thing is food and coffee. As long as everyone's well fed

and caffeinated, you won't have problems. It's usually when there's no food that you could start to see people getting antsy and hangry. The hangar is coming through at that point. Let's talk a little bit about your team. how many how many team members do you have right now? We have a small core group. There's five full-time people on our staff and then we have a lot of freelancers, so I Don't know probably 20 or 30 or 40. I mean, there's all kinds of different positions We need but we have a key group of freelancers

So in-house we have me and Jason who who I mentioned, who are like our main producers and directors on most projects. We have a couple of full-time editors, and then we have an office manager, production manager kind of person. And then we have a few people, like we have a main DP that's technically not an employee, but he's pretty much our DP for every,

just about every project. But I also shoot a lot of stuff, so sometimes I'll run a camera if I have to. And then, yeah, so that's our main staff. But then all of our other people, like our gaffers and our grips and our makeup artists and our sound guys and any other additional crew like art director or any other people that we might need on set.

Those are all just on freelance basis. Is it always been that type of model that you've kind of employed with like five core members or like a small tight knit team, or did you at one point, for example, have like a bigger team of people where you had actually some video people on staff because that's what a lot of companies have had in the past you know like some hybrid shooters you know as a part

of their core team as well but has it evolved for you over the last 30 years? It hasn't really evolved too much I mean it started just me by myself and so I would do everything and then and then I had that partner for a while and we also would sub people out. We would hire freelancers and then I brought Jason on board and then I was trying to edit stuff back in the day and every time I was editing it just meant I wasn't doing something else. I wasn't getting a new client or I wasn't being productive in some other ways so we brought an editor on and then we brought another one on several years ago,

and we realized, gosh, we've got enough stuff going on, so we have two full-time editors, and they're usually pretty busy just cranking on whatever projects we have. So that's kind of where we're at at the moment. And so we don't have any plans to do anything just yet. We'll see how it goes with project and you know, with with what projects we might be getting. But at the moment, this is kind of where we're at. So

well, how did you avoid the setups? How did you avoid the trap of not expanding your team? Yeah, too, too quickly. And too, too big and too big at the same time. Because we've had several people come on and said that they started over hiring and then before they knew it they had to start letting a lot of people go before they found a good balance. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting industry and there are the

temptations to want to try to hire people and open up a bigger space or buy a ton of equipment and so I'm very frugal. I'm very conservative when it comes to managing our business and not taking on debt. I make sure we pay cash for everything. We did buy a building that we have our studio in, but that was kind of, I looked at that more as an investment because we own it and the value has gone way up since we bought it a long time ago, you know? So, but yeah, I just try to manage things wisely

and I know that, and also I try to make sure we keep a big reserve of cash like an emergency fund in our business so that we can weather the storms because there are definitely times when we have ups and downs with finances with you know projects not happening or not having enough business or projects being delayed you know a lot of times you get a project you're not excited to go it's a big contract and you know we're gonna postpone it for six months. You know?

And we're like, ah, man, we really want that money now. And so stuff like that happens all the time where you've got to be able to weather the storm. And so I've just always tried to keep that as my priority, is making sure we're lean and frugal and we're able to withstand any hard times that come and we've done that and I think that's why we're one of the few production companies in the Salt Lake area that's lasted for you know pushing 30 years because I've seen a lot of other ones come and go

where people you hear about this cool new production company and they got a big new building and a new studio and they're doing all this stuff and they're awesome. Like, oh no, there's my competition. What are we gonna do? And then two years later, like, where did those guys go? Oh, they're out of business, you know? Yeah, it's-

I noticed that early on in our careers because we were networking with people and I remember meeting this one guy at this company and it was in like the fancy area of downtown where all the other production companies were in. And I remember like he was telling me how much he was paying for rent. It was like 16,000 for like it was literally inside a garage, like garage and they put like a second story upstairs and he had like a million desks and they were like all empty

but like all these expensive, like computers and whatnot. We're just going like, this is a lot of money for something that's not. It's not a business model. Yeah. It was a weird business model. I don't, I don't even think they're around anymore. No, it's I remember telling Carol, I was like, yeah, we got to be, we got to be careful.

Like, yeah, we can't afford it. Like, I don't know. Let's just hold off. You have to think in the long game, you know, like I it You could always get really caught up in the aspect of you know, trying to seem bigger than you are or you know Getting that flashy studio space and everything and in a specific area and so many of them went downtown and then especially during the pandemic they felt that sting when Everything dried up and they were stuck in those leases, they couldn't drop them,

right? Yeah. And the biggest trend for longevity is kind of keeping that lean model that you are doing Dave, like, with all the guests that we've had on the show, the most common, the most common lean team that we've seen is like, either two to four or three to five people, depending on how big you are and what kind of clients or projects you're serving and what area. And that has been like the model team for longevity

at the very least from what we've seen. And there are some outliers out there where they have like 10 to 15, but 20 to 30 people, but those are for very specific places, industries, clientele that they have coming through, which is why it works on their end. But in terms of what works for most of us in this space, to last long and to have like a decent flow of business

is that smaller lean model, because then you can weather the storm, as you said, plan for the lows, you know, thrive in the highs, and then just, you know, still be around after 30 years, right? Another one I wanna add to that list, Carol, is not relying on one big client. Because I think there's a couple people I know

that have that one big client, and I always think like, ooh, if that one drops you, like, that's gonna be a rough one. Yeah. Well, like I said, I mentioned that client, Nice, has been our one big client for a time. I talked about how people from that company have, as they left and gone to other companies, they brought a business from their new companies and that's been great. And we've been worried about that because a long time ago they were definitely

our biggest client with probably like 25% of our business at one time. And that was great and that was awesome. But in 2016, this was back before they were nice, they had another name and then they got purchased by NICE. And so this was a Utah tech company and they got purchased by NICE this big international company and so when that happened we're like oh no the writing is on the wall so 2016 we thought it's over our relationship is with all these local people here in Utah

and now this big international company which already have they have a production company in New York which is their main production company and they have a production team in Israel, which is also there Produces a lot of content and so we thought all right. Well, it won't be long before we're done with this company and Now here we are eight years later and we're still doing stuff for him Which every day we just kind of laugh like I can't believe they're still hiring us for stuff. Why are they still hiring us? Because even- Don't let them watch this episode.

I know, it's like, but as we've got to know people in their company, they just keep coming to us for little projects here and there, and we just pitched them. You know, just yesterday we were doing a pitch for them for some new ads they were getting ready to do. And they let us in on the pitch. And we're like, you guys have been,

they've used the New York guys and the Israeli production team for a lot of these. But they're letting us pitch on it. So we're just amazed that we still have a shot with them after eight years. But yeah, it goes back to that point of if all your eggs are in one basket and that basket goes away, that's a big problem.

You gotta diversify. I can see it being where it's like you have a lot of focus on one particular industry, but the way I look at it with our clients, every year that passes, I never expect them to come back. When they do, I'm like, great, they're back for this year. But I don't see it as a firm. It's not that he doesn't expect, he doesn't plan for it. It's not that he doesn't expect.

No, no, no. In the sense of they could drop us at any moment. That's how I see it. So I try not to mentally rely on them coming back. There's one client in particular, every year I talk here, I'm like, they're not coming back this year. They've been three years. They do. And in particular, every year I talk here, I'm like, they're not coming back this year.

They do. Do you guys work on the retainer model or subscription model for video? Do you guys do that? Or do you know anybody who does? And what are your thoughts about that? We've talked about this a few times. We've had some guests that have had some success with it. For us in particular, we tried, we couldn't figure it out.

I guess before we started the podcast, we were trying it out and it didn't work out. And then I think we just came to the conclusion that maybe just one offs might be best. What about you? We haven't done it. We've seen a few companies come and go in the Salt Lake market that have been doing it and they're pretty, when they launch, they're pretty gung ho about getting their name out there and pitching all the benefits of, you know, to a customer of why they should hire them as a subscription model

of you can get unlimited video production. And, and so I'm like, oh man, how do they do that? You know, how do you do that with just like pay $300 a month and you get as many videos as you want? Or I don't know what the, I don't know what they're charging. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. There's actually like a few episodes,

like 10, 20 or about 20 or 30 episodes back where we actually sat down with one or two guests and actually tried to break it down to figure out if it can work. Because like of all the guests, I think maybe two have a working model that works. But we even like broke it down where it's not really a retainer model.

Like people think when they think retainer, they think they want to have like, they want a consistent client, right? But they think of it in the wrong way. They think of like, you know, pay us monthly and you give them unlimited work. But what happens if all of a sudden they need a lot of work in that month?

It's not sustainable. What they want is people to do a lot of pre-booking in the year. That is really what people are trying to kind of go after, but that doesn't always necessarily happen. So, and not to mention like when you're giving such a huge amount of like unlimited services or a certain amount of services,

you're also giving discounting everything as well. So you end up working at cost a lot of the time. So you're not even, yeah, you're getting consistent revenue, but how is the profit margin on that revenue in the long term? The caveat, Carol, though, is that for some of the guests, it did work. That's what I'm saying. Some it does, but 90% of them it doesn't because it's not for every industry. It really depends.

Dave, I'll send you some of the episodes where yeah people discussed it, but I remember like one of the One of the disadvantages off the top my head was someone was mentioning how like some people try to offer it offering a discount Which is like, okay now you're losing all your profit margins and then they don't also factor in like Yearly inflation so they're losing even more on that. And then Kjell mentioned how sometimes it's like they just need all that work all of a sudden and it screws everything up for the production company. But there's some other people that it helps them grow because they have, they already know what their income is going to be for that year.

So they can financially plan. I mean, yeah, one of the one of the guests, what they had was a, uh, was like a pool model, I guess, where they basically said at the start of the year, give us a budget of a hundred grand. And this is what we're going to work with in the year. And this is, uh, the type of projects we could potentially do and stuff like that. But again, that's not exactly like a like a retainer type model. I feel like the main thing that we realized was that the retainer model is not really what people are going for, but that's kind of the word that has stuck with what they're actually going after because the retainer

model is like essentially what Netflix does or what all these other subscription-based services are. It's like pay us a monthly fee and this is the service you're getting as much as possible or like within that month. That's within that model because there was there was another guest that was mentioning how a client might pay you and then they might not use up the whole budget within that year so they want to push it to the next year but he was talking about how that causes a lot of accounting issues because you have to record it as profit, but it's technically not profit.

So you're basically becoming like a bank for that client's money. So that was interesting. Yeah, I've never been able to wrap my brain around it. I've heard people talk about it. They've heard the scene, the sales pitches for hire, you know, why you should hire us kind of a thing. And I've just never, never been able to get it or understand how it could be a viable way

of running a production company. Does those companies last the ones you mentioned that we're offering like, you know, limited revisions within the month and everything. Did they last, are they still around or no? There's two that I remember being big and I don't know that they're still around. I think I've heard, I think one of the guys who founded one of them has left and gone

to a different company. So I don't think they're still around. And that's why I was like, how does that even, how do you even sell that? How does that work? You know, I just never understood the, but I still see things on social media where people are like coming up in my feed like, here's how you can have your own retainer based video production company.

Oh those guys. You know, there's a bunch of guys like that. Those are guys that are selling it. Kyril's done a lot of investigation on that from, if you'd like to. Yeah, like a lot of these people who are trying to sell you on like, oh, like this is how you can get your retainer model to work with your clients.

It's like they're not trying to sell... You're the product at that point. People who are selling to videographers, those are the clients because they can't actually find real clients. So they're actually trying to sell to us, a video and content creators. I can teach you how to make it to $100,000 a month. Oh my God, like I'm sick and tired of those ads. Why are you teaching this magical secret

if you actually crack the code? Exactly, like if you're actually doing that, then that would be the case. Why would you tell anyone else about it? The closest thing to a retainer model that makes sense a lot of the time financially for everyone, for both parties, is when you know that there's specific content

that a client is gonna need every year year. So for example one of our clients we do quarterly videos. It's one of the most basic things a lot of finance webinars. Yeah quarterly webinar videos that a lot of finance companies technically tend to need. So you could go with an air quote retainer type model but like what we do is we meet with them at the beginning of every year, figure out what their content needs are, come up with a budget for everything, sign off on it, and then there's that.

But at that point, there's no need for a retainer model, but you're pre-booking, that's what you want. That's essentially what a lot of people in our industry is looking for, is finding clients that you know they're gonna have a lot of actually planned projects in the year. You book dates in, you book out crews, you book out teams. Everything's set up right at the beginning of the year.

If you do the retainer model where it's like, okay, maybe one month I'm not gonna do anything with them. Maybe in the next month they're gonna need to hire us for like 50,000 projects. What happens with all your other clients? Do you put them aside? Do you put them aside? Do you give them priority? It becomes really messy at that point.

So we agree with you, Dave, or it's just, it's hard to wrap your head around the fantasized retainer model when it's in reality just people. Maybe it works if you offer more services. If you are more of like a marketing firm, I could see it working. You're an agency at that point. You're not gonna see results within a month really.

You need at least three to six months. So sign this thing and then you know the budget and you start doing the marketing for the client at that point. That's the only way I see it working. Yeah, it's interesting. It is interesting that the ones that I've seen in the Salt Lake market, I don't think they're around anymore, at least the one company that

was the biggest coming out of the gate. I don't think they're around. So I guess maybe they have like a lot of funding. They had a lot of funding at the beginning, so they could have taken a hit at the beginning until they built up their client list and then I'm sure they would have phased it out at some point. But I guess if they ran out of money then I guess it didn't work out that well. Yeah, it depends on the only times it works it there have to be a lot of circumstances and factors that come into play to make it work in that one particular situation. It's not something that you can just replicate everywhere. Cause not every business, yeah, theoretically they would be good for them

to have social media content every month, but they can't have, not every business can afford that. Not every business can afford to have constant, uh, and if there is a business that can't afford that much content, they're going to an ad agency. They're not going to go to one video production company. Or they do it all in house. Yeah, or they do it all in house at that point. Like it's a big enough company

that they don't need to come to you at that point. So it's like what you're talking about is basically employee level video content creation. Yeah. Well, that's good. I'm glad I don't have to switch to that model because it sounds Yeah, yeah, don't don't don't stress about it. Like again, if there's a client that comes through that that offers like, hey, like, what if we do that again, though, remember

what Darius said, like, careful with the pre the prepayment system, because I forget which episode it was. It was Umalt. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were they were. Yeah. Yeah, they were talking about how like you're essentially becoming a bank at that point for this business and then it becomes very messy financially. Yeah. I'll send you all these episodes I got to go through. It only got brought up a couple of times where people like tried it and it worked or tried it and it didn't work. So, yeah, but it's like, it's funny. It keeps coming up. It keeps coming up every 10, 15 episodes. It's our industry's philosopher's stone. Everyone's trying to like, trying to make it work. Yeah. We do have a few clients who do like at the end of the year, they'll say, Hey, I know we're going to be doing a lot of stuff with you guys next year, but can

we, can we pay you a little bit right now? I don't know what usually when clients offer to pay us money. We say yes And so sometimes clients will do that They'll you know park a little little prepay a little money in in December for projects We're gonna do a January and February, you know, so we have that happen occasionally, but that's not like our main business model everywhere, you know. So we have that happen occasionally, but that's not like our main business model. Yeah. Talk to your, talk to your accountant and then I guess talk to Umalt to see how to avoid

the financial difficulties. To be honest though, Dario, what makes sense is that if they do say they prepay five grand in 2024, then you record 5,000 in profit, but then say 4,000 of that in the new year, you go to freelancers and people that you hire. You're not a CPA, Karel, so don't offer any advice. I know, but I'm saying, isn't that technically an expense at that point, so you're recording? Just close your mouth, this is not advice.

Yeah, sorry, disclosure, this is not financial advice. You almost failed accounting. This is pure conjecture. You can't bring this up. This is pure conjecture. Yeah, I have no idea. Like, again, I don't know. We have a CPA that takes care of all that,

so we let them figure out all that stuff. If he says it's okay, then it's okay. It was funny, because I went into video production business to get away from having to do accounting, and then my very second client, I told you about the first one I got, but my very second client I ever got, like almost 30 years ago, was a guy who owned an accounting school and he taught people how to do bookkeeping and accounting.

And so he hired me to come to his class and film it and then edit it. And I was like, well, hey, I'm just starting this business. I should probably know how to do this. So he was teaching people how to do bookkeeping for a small business, that's what he did. So we made this big long series of videos on how to be a bookkeeper. And so I would film the class, and then when he was done lecturing,

oops, when he was done lecturing, I would turn the camera off, sit down, and then I would do the class, I'd do the assignment. And so I graduated from this accounting school. And so I learned how to, I mean I learned some actual practical accounting. And that was such a valuable, lucky thing for me to know how to, at least know what a debit and a credit is

and how to manage the books a little bit, you know. And then he was also a resource for, you know, 15 years. He was one of our greatest clients. And this guy helped us with so much accounting stuff in the early years. So even though that was... You lucked out early on like second client. It's exactly what you're not good at and then It was especially with especially with these types of videos where you're creating series of educational content for your clients You have to also sit down and actually go through it and make sure it all makes sense to the viewer

So you have to also sit down and actually go through it and make sure it all makes sense to the viewer. So you have to also understand everything, you know. We did over the last year this one series for this hair salon educational series about how to do curly hair. And by the end of it, it's like, okay, all right, I now know how to do women's curly hair, you know. So we're always learning as it all goes back to the aspect of with every industry that we're a part of, we're learning something new and new skills that you don't expect, right? Yeah, it's great. I love it.

I love it. Okay, so let's start to end off the show. But before we do, this is tradition. So tell us how you got the name of the how you came up with the name of the company Avalon Studios. Yeah Well, this will date me again we've been talking about 30 years ago 30 years ago I don't know if you guys remember these things they used to have called phone books

There was a the yellow pages and yellow In the yellow pages, this was a key part of your advertising if you wanted to get called first you need to have had to have be listed first So have a company that started with the letter a that was that was one thing So I wanted that and then also it's just something that tied into Utah and the snow and you know the environment here So I thought the word avalanche sounded cool the environment here. So I thought the word avalanche sounded cool. Because I grew up right at the mouth of the canyon here by you know, where ski resorts are here by big and little cottonwood Canyon. So I live within you know, 40 minute

drive of like five ski resorts for my house. Was it originally called avalanche with three A's? No. with three A's? No. That was a trick some people did. Yeah, that's good. That was a thing they did back in the day. It was always like AAA plumbing, AAA this, AAA that.

Oh my God, that makes so much sense. Yeah. I saw a post on Reddit about the Yellow Pages how in 2006, the stock was worth something like $3,000 something dollars. Now it's worth like three bucks. Oh man. Yeah, I feel bad for the Yellow Pages. It's been a rough few decades. I keep calling every now and then though, you know, once in a while you get a call from Yellow Pages and I'm like, you guys are still around?

Yeah, it's crazy. But that was kind of the impetus for the name but nothing too crazy other than that simple takes off a lot of boxes for you at that point right yeah thought that yeah a lot of hills yeah a lot of hills a lot of avalanches you know yeah we are by the mountains we We got snow here. So amazing. Well, Dave, thank you so much for joining us, man. Yeah, and guys if you want to find Dave go to avalanche-studios.com for his website and then on Instagram, what is it avalanche studios as well? Yeah on Instagram gosh, I should have known this it's at avalanche.studios I believe,

I'll have to double check that. One of those guys. But yeah, you can find us on, yeah, so one thing you don't get is confused with Avalanche Studios in Sweden, which is the video game company. Oh really? We get calls every day from 14 year old boys

mad about Call of the Wild, you know, the game they're playing and how it doesn't work, and we're like, that's a different Avalanche Studios. But we could be interested in a corporate video, right? Exactly. Selling a show like the 14 year old kid. So there is, yeah, there's an Avalanche Studios group, which is a video game company in Sweden. And then it's also confusing because there's a software company in Salt Lake called Avalanche Software and they make they're owned by Disney

Studios and so with the name Disney Studios and Avalanche Software we get confused for those guys a lot too. Does Disney ever call you by accident? Sometimes Disney doesn't but sometimes people trying to reach them they call us so we get a lot of misdirected phone calls because of all the confusion. So we are Avalanche Studios, the film and video production company in Salt Lake City, Utah, not in the US. Yes, in the United States. That's right. So little confusion there, but it's not that big of a deal, really. So nice. Well, anyways, Dave, thank you so much.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me on. It's been a pleasure. It's been nice to meet you guys and I'm excited for the podcast to come out and hope you guys continue to have a lot of success with all your productions in Toronto. Thank you. Thanks. And you as well. Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Please make sure to follow and engage with us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube and your favorite podcast app. Creatives Grab Coffee is created by Laps Productions, a video production company based in Toronto, Canada. Creatives Grab Coffee is also sponsored by.

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