Creatives Grab Coffee - Managing a Growing Business (Feat. Bottle Rocket Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 64

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Today we welcome Dan Fisher & Brett Singer Bottle Rocket Media (bottlerocketmedia.net)! Takeaways -Starting a business earlier can be a regret for many entrepreneurs -Transitioning from the traditional broadcast industry to the digital content space can be challenging but rewarding -Networking and leveraging professional connections can be crucial for finding clients and growing a business -Delegating tasks and focusing on running the company is important for business growth and success Affordability of equipment has made it easier for individuals to get into video production -Storytelling is more important than the gear in creating compelling videos -Video production companies should consider diversifying their services, such as offering SEO strategy -Branded content focuses on storytelling and promoting a brand or lifestyle -Dealing with specific client requests can be challenging, but building relationships with clients and agencies is crucial Creating branded content and passion projects can attract clients and showcase your skills and creativity. -Access to interesting people and organizations is crucial for creating compelling stories. -Adding a dedicated social media person to capture behind-the-scenes content can enhance a production and provide additional value to clients. -AI is a growing trend that may impact the industry in the future. -In-house content creation is becoming more prevalent, with displaced marketing professionals and film students seeking immediate and frequent content for social media platforms. Chapters 00:00 Regrets and Starting a Business 13:06 Transitioning to the Digital Content Space 15:57 Networking and Leveraging Professional Connections 23:26 The Affordability of Equipment and the Importance of Storytelling 28:06 Business Expansion: SEO Strategy and Branded Content 33:44 Challenges of Dealing with Specific Client Requests 46:41 Building Relationships with Clients and Agencies 48:05 Introduction and the Power of Branded Content 49:13 The Importance of Access in Storytelling 51:42 Adding a Dedicated Social Media Person to Productions 59:18 The Potential Impact of AI on the Industry 01:06:15 The Rise of In-House Content Creation SPONSORS: Canada Film Equipment: https://www.CanadaFilmEquipment.com Audio Process: https://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.com To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/ #CreativesGrabCoffee #videographyhacks #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #videomarketing #videoproductioncompany #videoproductionservices

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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We are more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativesgrapcoffee.com. Thank you. Hey, what's up everybody? I'm Matt. Welcome to Audio Process. We are a boutique audio company doing location sound, sound design, post sound, ADR, Foley. We service equipment. We do all your audio needs here in Toronto.

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And now, let's begin the show. So what were you saying, guy? Your one big regret was what? No, just looking at you and guessing your age, my probably my one big regret is not starting a business sooner. I'm 52 though. Are you 59? No you guys make us look old. You look really good. Cause I know what 52 looks like. Yeah, I'm just messing. We're on. I'm 31, Kyril's 30.

Yeah, getting there. But I feel 52, if that helps. Well, yeah. Nothing we can do about that. How old were you guys when you started? We're in our low 50s and we started this business at 40, 39. Right in that middle. Oh, okay. Wow.

14 years ago, yeah. That's a first, I will say. Most of the guests that we've had on the show either have started in their mid to late, usually mid to late 20s typically, when they kind of jumped in. But tell us a little bit about like how how that kind of came about.

It's like at that, or like basically at 40, that's when you guys decided to start the business. Like, what was that like? Well, Brett and I are both veterans of television and film. And so we spent the first half of our careers in the trenches trenches learning storytelling, learning filmmaking, doing all sorts of learning design, doing all sorts of different things. And we came together at the Oprah Winfrey Show, where he was one of the lead designers

and I was one of the lead editors. And then when the show ended, which is all you can count on in television, both of us were in Chicago, planted roots, needed the next thing, and so we started Botter Rocket. Was the Oprah show in Chicago? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay.

I was wondering that. Literally five blocks away. Yeah, so the show ran for I think 25 years, I wanna say. I think that was the round number or something like that. I was there for the last nine-ish, nine and a half, and I think you were there for, how long were you there? I don't know, for 12, definitely like the last nine and then a little kind of start stop, you know.

So what made you guys go into like video? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah? Yeah, exactly. It was two different angles. We were both doing what we were doing, you know, design and editing, but we both had experience and desire to do more than just those roles. And you can kind of get siloed into a role in any production house or anything like that. So on our own, we would have our

own design firms or companies or they would go direct or I would. This was when five days just came out. So I would, you know, borrow the camera from like the in-house photographer and borrow lens from this person, borrow the tripod from that guy, borrow a light. And I would just start to go shoot just to do it, just to be like, get my hands on stuff. So I would shoot some of the bumpers for the show or some other stuff. So just trying to like get more involved

with the whole filmmaking process. And then when the show stopped, it was like, I wanna be a director and no one's's going to say, hey, will you please go direct this thing? So we just kind of said, we're directors. Let's go make videos. And we would start very kind of slow. And it would be like, well, I'll be director,

and you be the camera guy. I'll be the camera guy, and you be the director. We would just flip-flop and just start shooting stuff. And we were lucky enough to kind of get some really clients. you be the director. We would just flip-flop and just start shooting stuff. And we were lucky enough to get some really clients. We basically made our first video and did it for free and just said, this is the type of video we wanna make. And so we just went and made it.

And it was just a short documentary of a frame shop. And they were like, okay, cool, we made one thing. That's kinda cool. And then we kind of had one calling card and then started to talk to people and slowly slowly build a business You're leaving a few things out. But yeah, yes, you're leaving out the fact that you directed a feature. Yes however, many years before nice, you know, and I spent the decade in Hollywood like Behind some very talented people. So we weren't going in cold when we started the company, but we were, it was our independence

we were calling on. But still different, right? Like you guys were in like the film and TV side of things, and then you went into the corporate end, which is kind of like a different animal in a way, right? So you are kind of starting first you do have the experience. Yes is really useful. Yes. Whereas when you're 25 What the hell do you know, you know, I mean, you know, it's like, you know, it's you're just like let's give a camera Let's grab a thing. Let's go do it And that by the way is amazing and that energy and that you know bottom was you know pit of like, you know

Just wanting to do and grow and do it, where we kind of entered that corporate field as more experienced people, as people who had done video content at the highest level, our work had literally been seen by billions of people, kind of a thing with the Oprah Show platform. So it wasn't like, can we pull this off? It was like, great, we left broadcasts

kicking and screaming a little bit. And it's like, well, if you think there's gonna be a space here in digital, maybe we can do some content. So it was pushing away from our niche at the Oprah Show, but embracing all the stuff we love to do and putting our flag in the ground that way. And you started at a good time too, right? When the DSLR revolution was starting, right?

That was it. That opened accessibility to so many people. Yeah, we're not really gearheads, but we knew early on just based on a couple of projects that we were gonna buy a couple of 5Ds and some accessories to support it, some microphones, et cetera. And we were off to the races.

And that's pretty much all the gear we've purchased. Because as we've grown, we've just decided, we decided early on to work with crews that have their own gear. And all the camera gear and everything has advanced so quickly that we didn't want to get into the gear game. So we just work with a lot of,

all of our crews come with cameras or we go to a camera house and rent you know we just do it that way. We fell into the gear trap early on where it kind of because it gets to be so fun you're like oh this new toy came out. Oh 100% yeah yeah yeah that's exactly what it is in fact there is one of our you know regular DPS He was such a gear have like all we had to say is did you see that you see that you gimbal? So it's like we didn't have to spend any money and bad influences You know and Dan's right it's like we bought those two or three five DS like mark two mark three I think is is as new as we got and then maybe five six seven years later Really, we should get that usr just we have one 4k camera and house, but we really

Truly haven't bought any camera gear In a deck. I mean truly in a long time because why? You know, we've got plenty of people that we work with. In Chicago with our crews it's different in every town, different in every setup, but the guys we work with own cameras, own lenses, own lights, even camera guys will have some audio equipment. So it's not working with the DP. And he goes, great, what camera should we rent? It's like these guys have two, three, four cameras

ready to go from a smaller Canon or a smaller Sony to an FX9 or a C500 Mark II or to an Arri 35 now or to a Red. So they have the whole range and they just roll up and it's like, I'd rather work with the gear they know and love than be like, you gotta work with this black magic camera. And you guys know sometimes the camera,

the sensor and lenses, well, the lenses always matter, but sometimes the sensor matters. But most times you're making content that's on a website, on a phone, being watched on the train, during a commute with scratchy headphones. It kinda doesn't matter if you can light it and you can tell the story which camera you're using. Most times in a content space.

And when it does, you step up and we get the camera. Cool stuff. We kinda adopted that mentality as well, just where we're not looking to be constantly trying to get the next piece of gear that we absolutely need, or that we think will be fun. Like we only get equipment now if it's actually gonna be essential

that we feel like we're gonna use on multiple shoots and things like that. And like the difference for you guys when you started was like you'd already been in the industry for so many years. So you had an idea from the technical side of things, how a lot of things worked. Whereas a lot of people who get into the industry fresh,

like we did, we had no clue what the industry was like. So all we could do is like what resources were available by a camera and then just learn on the go. So that's kind of like how I feel like, people who tend to be a little bit more gearheads are people who are jumping into it and trying to learn the industry a little bit, understand the technical side of things.

But like everyone has a very different kind of path. So like, I was just curious, like how did it feel like when you kind of jumped out of it? Was it like a fish out of water moment or did you have at least a bit more of an idea of like what the business was gonna progress through down the line? We had no idea.

I feel uncomfortable saying that, but you can correct me. We just knew that there was a space, right? We knew that video was gonna be a thing. It already was big in our life in broadcast and films, but we just knew that video was a space, but we didn't really know how much it was going to take off. It was definitely tiptoeing into it to be like, oh my God, we need to hire people.

We need an editor. We needed this, we needed that. We can't keep up. And we didn't, we didn't, I don't wanna say we didn't expect it. Of course we hoped for that, but we didn't know, you know, and especially myself coming at it from editing,

I knew right away that I couldn't edit and direct and produce and run a company but I didn't think it would happen as quickly as it did and we had an editor within I think the first year yeah oh really nice yeah yeah pretty pretty house yeah yeah pretty I mean we got a lot done the two of us literally we would go and shoot and again like one of us would be a director, one of us would be camera op. Occasionally, we'd hire a real audio tech

who would come with us, or maybe another camera op, and then we'd go shoot, and then we'd go back, and I'd do the design work. Dan would edit, occasionally I would edit, you know, and we would write it and do all of it. But very, very quickly, I don't write it and do all of it. But very very quickly I don't know if we got this advice that early, but if you're if you're in the company You're not running the company, you know, if you if you're doing everything you kind of can't manage it and very quickly

it was like well, how are we gonna sell what are we gonna do you start to You start to move from being creatives to being business people, right? We got into this because we liked old cameras and say action and cut and make cool shit, amazing, that's great. But at some point when you're like, we're gonna do this and this isn't gonna pay our mortgage,

that we needed to learn to be good business people. And the product was just a widget. Now we happen to know that product and we loved it and we did it, but there had to be two sides. There had to be the creative side of the business, the people that made the widget happened to be us. And then there had to be the people that ran the business, which is everything else, right? Sales, marketing, finance, eventually HR, and all those other things that go along with it.

And so it was like, well, should I be editing all week or should I be trying to sell all week? Well, you should probably try to sell all week, you know? And after that first hire, from then on, even until now, our hiring process became this road to how can we remove all of the tasks from Dan and Brett that can be done by somebody else and leave the tasks that can only be done by Dan and Brett to Dan and Brett. So what could be handed off?

Well, we can hand off editing, we can probably hand off shooting, we can hand off audio, we can hand up design, right? And we said we wanted to build a brand around us, our style, not our personalities, but just like it's two guys, we're the company, kind of is what it is. So you try to start to peel away those responsibilities so you have more time to run the business, to do the other stuff. And so that first hire was freeing Dan up. The second hire was freeing me up. Was that we hired a designer. Okay, great. Now we've got an editor and designer. Now who's going to manage them and the projects? And then you kind of hire a producer and so on and so on.

them and the projects and then you kind of hire a producer and and and so on and so on. How did you guys have so much success in like the first year? Like because it seems like you guys were like overwhelmed with business right to the point where you got to bring on other people so you can handle the managerial aspects of it. Yeah not cheap to do that. Yeah partially because Partially because I'm insane. Like, we just keep pushing forward. That's what we do. And so it just becomes a numbers game. And backing up, I'd say maybe that first year our editor wasn't a staff member, but they worked.

Like a freelancer, basically? Every day. Yeah, a freelancer. And then at some point we're like should we do this? Oh my god, are we gonna hire somebody? Freelance and it just it only makes sense to bring them on full-time. It was like cheaper than than keeping them as freelance basically Yes, yes. Oh, yeah, it's every day, you know Yeah, you just benefits it just makes more sense for the company to bring them on, bring them on full time.

And, and that first year too, remember, we left the Oprah show, so imagine several hundred video professionals, producers, writers, all the people at all the levels of the Oprah show. You know, maybe a third of them went to LA to go be with Oprah in LA, but the rest, everyone else needed a video producer for the devil's association or a producer for this agency. We're a thing for this agency. We're a producer for this medical company. We're doing for this. And Dan and I at the Oprah show build reputations of being nice build reputations of being nice guys who did good work.

And so we used that professional network of ours to say, hey, remember us, we really liked, we did all that great stuff together? I'd see you at Acme company, and let us know if you need a hand. And that first year or two, we did a massive amount of work with people we knew of our professional network. All of our sales was via network connections. Nothing was outbound or cold call. I mean it was

outbound to their professional network but nothing was cold call, nothing was inbound. It was all, hey we exist, we're a company, let us know if you need a hand. I can imagine how hard it must have been for the other video production companies Hey, we exist. We're a company What does that mean in hand I? Can imagine how hard it must have been for the other video production companies if there's suddenly an influx of like all these Producers that are going and grabbing all these like corporate clients. I must have been like me him well also it was right on the cusp of if I if I tell you then In 2011 when this all went down right 2011, right? Yeah 2011 when this all went down, right? 2011, right? Yeah, 2011.

2011 when this all went down, that I didn't even know I could get a job as an in house video person. Like you heard about it at larger corporations and you knew about it from watching really dry industrials when you were coming up. But you didn't really know that that was a gig the way it is now. That's a gig that people really aspire to get, like being in-house on the client side or being in it.

And so there was just a need. And honestly, had I known that job existed, maybe I just would have gone with that job. Good thing you didn't. Yeah, totally. But yeah, it was just a very different, like everything was transitioning from the traditional way of communicating with commercials and YouTube obviously was around but it wasn't what it is today to where it is now. So there was this huge, you know, now there's a ton of internal positions in video and design and editorial. And so it's

just a very different time, even only 13 years ago. And that was part of our hunch was not as simple as, hey, these videos on the internet, this might be a thing. But it was like, you know, you would, you know, we saw like, wow, that feels like there's going to be real budgets just for digital content. You know, we had lived in the land of TV broadcast, you know, film where there's so many cooks in the kitchen and every production is massive. And, you know, but it's like, it felt like there could be an appetite for smaller productions that are done

Well, and because of the five DS, you know DSRs You can make stuff look good. We still look back at footage We shot on those and it doesn't look like an iPhone 2. Yeah, I mean you look back and you're like Shit still looks good. You know, I mean Yeah, it still looks great. So that was our hunch. Hey, this might be a space where people are going to start to need content. And as they're figuring out, there's not going to be massive budgets. But we were wrong.

You know, there were real budgets pretty quickly. You know, you mentioned how like the the the old footage still looks good today. I know for a fact, there's some shooters that up until like two, three years ago were still shooting on 5Ds. Not like the first one, but like the last Mark model that came out. Truly, truly for so much of what we do, anything that you're delivering 1080, it's perfectly fine. It really is.

It's still requested to this day. Like all the outputs all the deliverables are always 1080 like 4k is just in case they ask for it but yeah i think most phones don't don't show true 4k anyways like they just go up to 2k so right yeah it's still hd it's also just an easier workflow or like kind of for them as well at the end of the day, because the file sizes are smaller. Sometimes their websites, if they need to upload it directly to the website,

a one gig file is gonna be a lot better than a 10 to 15 gig file. You know, obviously, it depends on how big the files are. Like if you're doing webinars, for example, that's almost always gonna be in 1080. Sometimes I've heard of people even doing it in 720 exports just so that it can fit onto those platforms and everything like that.

Yeah. But, and it's funny, cause like now there's like a new cameras coming out where they're still, they're still boasting, you know, 8K and things like that for like the consumer area. And I'm thinking like, man, if you were to incorporate an 8K workflow, that's gonna change everything. I mean, like just switching from 1080 to 4K,

you have to get bigger SD cards, sometimes different types of cards. Then you need all the storage, the backup storage, the cloud storage. It's exponentially more expensive. It really, really, really grows. We did one project, but we did shoot 8K. It was actually for Apple. They wanted to be 8K raw. No, yeah, 8K raw. Then they sent us three or four iPhones that they wanted us to shoot pro res raw 4k and

We have multiple cameras shooting 8k and in slow-mo. It was like the red epic We it was over 30 terabytes of footage for two days of shooting Yeah, I mean Transferring files all day and of of course, who got overtime? That guy, because it took forever. Right? We underestimated the time. Even with fast drives, it was still, you know,

even just getting it off the phones. Swapping cars, and still it took. It took two huge rays. It took about 10 hours to transfer a day of shooting. Yeah. That's crazy. That's why DITs are such a key role in the industry. It's almost like the equivalent of when you invest in a camera,

like say like a DSLR, and then you get all the necessary equipment that can help support it, like a tripod, slider, all that stuff. A lot of people talk about, oh yeah, I want to upgrade and get a new camera, like the nice, really good Arri or something like that. It's like, OK, great. You bought the Arri.

That was $100,000. Did you think about the slider? Did you think about the tripod? That 100K turns to 500K. Yeah, Kirill, the best part is when they spend a lot of money on the lenses and the camera and then they have like a $500 tripod. Oh my God. I've seen, I know some guys that still use really old school tripods and they're putting their C70s or C200s sometimes on it and I'm like, it works but all it takes is one little bump

of the shoulder for that thing to come crashing down. Yeah, exactly. And that's really just a business conversation of where do you wanna invest your money. If you're a shooter that can get paid for that camera and those cameras are like, what's the package? Like two grand a day or something, awesome for you. But if you're us, who we go out and shoot,

then we spend a lot of time in post, there's no way we would ever pay. We'd never pay it back. Yeah. There's no point at that point. Like once you're being like a freelance shooter versus a business, it's like, still like, you have to have like a business mindset for both,

but the business models are very different. You have to focus on different things to invest in and things like that. If you're a freelancer, a lot of the time, equipment is something that is key because that's what a lot of productions do look for. You don't necessarily have to buy everything, but a lot of, a lot more key things that are attractive,

a lot of companies are gonna be looking for, whereas production companies, clients are not gonna be like, did you get that extra tripod? Did you get that extra slider or anything? It's like. They're not asking for lenses, or they're not asking for, you know, occasionally someone

will say, can we shoot on a red? Because someone told them red was good or something besides that. But there are situations, there are even production companies where there could be some people in house, someone who's like a PA or someone who's an editor, who's also a shooter. And occasionally they want to go out and shoot stuff, and there are affordable, great cameras, like still DSLRs or a Blackmagic or whatever, where the body is a couple grand,

or two or three or four grand, and you can get some simple base lenses that are pretty good, or go rent lenses for 50 bucks a day, and now you've got an in-house shooter, you own the gear, and you can go and shoot shoot and you can make more money we're just not set up for that or not shooters but but and we're not shooters in-house so there are video production company scenarios where yeah that makes sense great you got a shooter in-house or you're a shooter yes I want a little bit of gear

but then when it comes to everything else yeah yeah, hire a gaffer and rent a truck and there you go as opposed to paying X tens of thousands of dollars to own the gear and oh by the way you have to store the gear and maintain the gear and all of that. So you can pick and choose. It's not dear God if you're a production company don't buy gear. It's just you need to figure out what's right for your business plan and what works for you. There's no better investment than a C-stand, I'll tell you that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or a tripod, a good tripod. A good tripod can last you a very long time as well. The crazy thing about our industry right now is that if anyone's wanting to get into it, it's so affordable, so affordable to learn and just kind of jump right into it. Like people are always saying like,

oh, like what's the latest like 4K camera that we can get so we can start shooting or something. I see these posts all the time. And then just out of curiosity, I was like, what were some of like the older cameras that were like the Holy Grails back in the day? Like you remember the C100 Mark II when it was brand new? That thing cost like eight, nine grand to get.

It goes for like $500 on Kijiji or eBay these days. You wanna learn filmmaking, buy one of those cameras. That's all you need. And it's just like, oh my God. I can't believe it. The Mark II is still good to this day. That's a good sensor. We talk about it all the time.

Like if there's a short film to be made The the absolute right thing to do is when you've just said go out and purchase a ten-year-old camera because ten years ago is still 2014 14. Oh my god Started like the cameras are amazing in 2014 and you'll be able to make a short film with a $500 camera that looks as good as anything else. Exactly. There's really no excuse nowadays. Back in the day, at least you could have said, I don't have the equipment.

Now it's like, if you want to do it, you can. Even on an iPhone, you've seen all those different like Zaccuda iPhone mounts, and there's amazing Blackmagic software where you could shoot 4k pro res raw per you know on an iPhone and really control it and it's like yeah there isn't there really is no excuse you know between that and you buy one one by one LED with a with a silk and it's like you're ready to go you know go shoot something so yeah yeah like like the camera is not what makes a video or a short film or anything like that good.

It is the tool that you need to kind of get started for sure, but it's not the thing that makes it. What makes it? It's the storytelling, it's the quality of the writing, the content, like what your vision is for the project. Everything else is just a tool at the end of the day. Like this is why, you know, once you get down the whole gear rabbit hole

of like, you know, pixel pinching or whatever that was, whatever that term is called, you know, it's never ending, you know, and people have to remember that, especially people jumping into the industry, it's like you have to focus on content because that is also the best business move strategy for you moving forward because you need to develop

that skill more so than anything else. The tools, they will constantly be changing as we've seen over the years. One of the things I was gonna also touch on, we've been reminiscing a lot, I just realized, about the good old days, how Bottle Rocket started. Well, where is Bottle Rocket today, like for you guys in terms of as a business,

like what's today like for you guys? You know, I'll go. Well, we're trying to diversify a little bit, you know, and we're a video production company, you know, first and foremost, that's our core functionality. In addition to video production, we have added another service, SEO Strategy. That was something we did for us as a company.

Like, hey, we want business to come to us. And so we hired our director of marketing a few years ago. And she, Tamika, she dramatically, you know, overhauled everything we were doing from our website perspective. And so we went from being an unranked company to having, you know, 500 keywords in like the top 25 and, you know, 50 in the top 10 and we're very, very well ranked. If you type video production company or motion graphics, we're in the top five. If you put the word Chicago in there, we're in the top two. That's how I found you guys.

There you go. So it's something we did and then we thought, we should do this for our clients. And it's the exact same people that are coming to us asking for a video. So we kind of took a year to kind of explore and understand what that might mean. And so we added this service, you know,

about six months ago and have a handful of clients now, and it's great. It's nice to have that. And it feels like a superpower as a video production company, because we can look at every video from an SEO perspective and they all should be looked at from an SEO perspective. You want people to, you people to view the video.

How does it differ from video marketing? Because a lot of companies, if they're adding an additional service, they'll add video marketing, for example. Right, and we do that too. But really, there's no such thing as video marketing by itself, is the truth. We kind of position ourselves as video SEO strategy, but you have

to do it holistically. Yeah, you can tag the video the right way and yes, you can add subtitles and the transcript and there's a few things you can do and put the file name being the right thing, like all that kind of YouTubey stuff. But at the end of the day, you really have to look at like what's happening on the page that the video lives on, what's happening on the site in general and how are you, what keywords and what priority keywords are you trying to attract your audience. And so you kind of have to look at everything around SEO, knowing videos, you know, maybe the tip of the spear as far as some things go.

So it really is just looking, what are your goals? What are you trying to achieve? Who's your target audience? And then you kind of look at all of that and you do this stuff. There isn't one thing and we haven't like, there's no magic. We haven't like cracked the code or anything. Like we're just doing what you're supposed to do and doing it really well and that's it. You know, so, and right now we're just selling to our existing clients and saying, hey, we're doing this, let's talk so it's been successful there

So we have a very small pool of people were talking to a few hundred and so there's that aspect for video production, you know, we Continue to grow we you know a massive amount of our business You know is comes to us via inbound the SEO stuff and so we get new opportunities every day that we're trying to manage and see what's the right fit for us. You know, we're always then connecting with

everyone we've ever worked with before. So, you know, we have our outbound strategy, which is just connecting with existing clients, or someone will have been at one client and then they quit that job and they go move somewhere else and we go hey I saw you you left United and you went to here just want to let you know we'd love to work with you again kind of a thing so you know we're very big on just our existing network of people people that know us and like us and have paid

us to make videos and are happy with our work and we just try to keep in contact with them. So we're growing the video side of the business, we're growing the SEO side of the business, we're going to start to, we're going to break off into a branded content side of the business as well and we're kind of a different moniker soon. So. But can you elaborate on that? What do you mean by breaking off into a branded content? Well, Dan, why don't you actually talk about that?

Yeah, I think, I think. Where we are today is, Look at this camera. Camera focusing issues. Condensation on the lens. There's very one in here, no doubt. Oh wow, I guessed it. There's been one of our headbands.

Give it a little wipe, Give it a little wipe. I thought he was gonna get a fingerprint on the lens. Is it working? No, I meant the cloth, but yeah. It's okay. You got a ProMist filter on it now, okay? It's a creative choice. You were shooting at an 8k and it's too much so we gotta like... Yeah, it's too much now guys. We got a ProMist filter. Yeah, it's too much now guys. We're going to do a talk-tister. Branded content.

Yeah, where we are today is moving a little bit more towards entertainment as much as we can. Baby steps every day, which includes a branded content initiative. I mean, we've basically been doing branded content intermittently for the past handful of years, but it's really just a commitment on our part to focus on higher level storytelling, videos that find the customer at a different stage of the journey and focus a little more on storytelling versus product or service or value or education, but just lean into the storytelling a little bit more. Can you give us an example, like the type of video? Well I guess the first one that comes to mind, Brett brought up, we did this project for

Apple and really it was just the story of a group of glass blowers. It wasn't for Apple. We weren't selling a phone or a computer or a camera. We were just telling this story and then at the end of it, Apple puts the name on it. Of course, Brett set it up. They had camera requirements. They sent us phones. There were things about the video, the requirements from the client that were necessary. Apple is a tech company, so those are tech requirements.

The idea is basically telling the story, for branding content specifically, telling the story, any story that fits in with a brand that allows the consumer to identify with that brand. Karel, who's that company from Seattle that did something similar? We had them on the... Oh, Offbeat? Offbeat was doing something similar, no?

Ish, they was doing something similar, no? Uh, yeah, they were like, um, they were doing something where they were kind of more so trying to tell local stories, uh, kind of like short docs and things like that. It's a little different though what Dan and Brett are doing. Like, branded content is like a very popular aspect where a lot of companies are trying to tell different stories, like as they mentioned that they're doing with Apple, where it's not trying to sell so much, right? They're just trying to attach their name to good stories. That's what essentially branded content is. It's like short docs almost,

but sponsored by a company. It really promotes a brand or a lifestyle, which is part of a brand. So I think a great obvious example is if you are REI or any camping company and you made a short film about people camping, there's probably going to be the product in the shot, the tent, the thermos or whatever they're using. But you're never going to mention it. You're not going to talk about how great this tent is or how waterproof it is. You're gonna show people live in the right style and then at the end a logo comes up, you know

It's a use case The other one from Boston. Oh my god, I forget everyone's name Did they did something similar for a camping or oh my god. I'm forgetting the name Carol's remember you got from Boston I'm trying to think of which one you're talking about. Let me go on our website quickly. I'll tell you right now. Yeah, I mean, we've been telling stories for so long. If you include 10 years at the Oprah Show and then all the work we did 10 plus years before that

in this business, that it really is just kind of like full circle. We started this business. And the business is making videos. And we we get clients and some of our clients make a physical product, some of our clients are software as a service, some are, you know, we do internal, we do all kinds of stuff. And so to say we're, you know, gonna focus on branded content is really just to say we we're going to continue to tell stories and seek out clients that maybe are a little bit less in the sales space.

So a little bit more about story first and not product or service first. But it's the same thing we've been doing for decades, really. I do have a question about that, but first to kind of lead into it, you said you're going to break off and kind of focus on that a bit. Is that still going to be under the Bottle Rocket name, or are you guys coming up with a different company name for that?

We are going to put it under a different moniker, and mostly because Bottle Rocket as it is now isn't going to really change, or isn't gonna really change or is it gonna change at all? But it's really just perception, you know If you come to our website and you see a bunch of product videos You don't necessarily think high-level storytelling versus you come to this new site and you see high-level storytelling That's immediately what you think we're gonna use the same videos million. Hey look. Here's the 10 We've made starting from zero. It's right. Yeah. Yeah, now we've yeah now probably

25% or 25 to 50% of our of our videos depending on which month are already this We're just trying to you know, you can imagine an agency if you guys work with agencies everything is just so specific right agencies are so specific you know like like our our joke that actually happened legit was you know someone was looking for a video for this product video 15 second video one of the shots a catwalk through the frame two seconds of a catwalk into the the frame. They're like, great. Do you have any pet stuff? Yeah, no problem. And Dan had directed some stuff with some dogs and they're like, great. Here's all our stuff. And they're like, this is great, but we're really looking for a cat director.

I'm like, are you? Seriously? This is true. Seriously? I get it. I get it. Yeah. We've heard that before. Do you have anything with cats? We're like, no. But we have the dog. The client's really specifically looking for cat shots. So it's like, OK, great. Fine. And so we're trying to head it off of the past a little bit, which is to say, we don't want you to look at our site

and have a mark against us because we have this and math. So we just want to try to build a brand, which all good, whatever it needs to be, that really focuses on that type of storytelling so they can click through a bunch of things. Be like, oh great, wow, these guys are great storytellers. They're visual storytellers. They know how to build a story together. And again, like Dan said, we only have literally

decades of experience of telling hundreds of thousands of stories at the Oprah show and other places, like we actually know what we're talking about here. So it's just trying to make it easier for the sale a bit and for us to just kind of build this separate brand. Have you launched it already? No, not yet. Not yet.

Soon. It's funny that you mentioned the the cat versus the dog thing because that reminded me of something that Dario and I had to deal with last year with a corporate lead that we were trying to sell on. I forget the specific industry it was but it was like they wanted a very straightforward explainer type promotional video which is is pretty standard and we. And we have, like you guys, we've done many, many videos like this for a lot of like finance companies, software companies, tech companies, and things like that. And we had this one client, I think, or this one lead that was, I think a manufacturing company, and they were asking for samples, which we sent a lot of

similar examples of what they were looking for. And then they came back with the question, but do you have anything specifically with a manufacturing client? And then we're like, not really, but these videos here are exactly what you are asking for. Like to the T basically, it just has a different name. It's like, no, but do you have something with the manufacturing?

Do you have anything in a warehouse though? Right. Yeah, do you have anything in a warehouse? Yeah. You're like, I don't know. We've been journalists intentionally since day one, right? We work in financial vertical, healthcare vertical, product vertical, software, you know, and it still happens.

Hey, do you have anything with a conveyor belt in it? No, but. It's so specific, yeah. Yeah. And the funny thing is that sometimes it's not even like a key element to what they're trying to do. It's like, what do you need? It's a one conveyor belt shot that would even be

in the video. It's like a one shot. That's what I'm saying, yeah, it's like one shot. Well, they're real visual. They really just wanna, and listen, we've pitched a million things and you just can't, as soon as somebody asks for that, I'm like, okay, we're working this off.

We're done here. We're done here. I'm not gonna fight. You're a little too picky. You're a little too picky here. Yeah, I'm not gonna fight, right, right, right. If you as the agency, as you as the producer, are not saying to the client,

oh, these guys are great, they're master storytellers, they're gonna get what you need. And instead of saying, they don't have any conveyor belt footage, then it's like they're not doing their job because they're not finding the right best person. The client, yeah, if they think they need to see a conveyor belt, they're not wrong because they're not producers. They just know what they want and they need a

translator to say, no, no, no, no, no, don't worry about the conveyor belt. What you should be concerned with are these things. Can they tell a story? Do you like their visual language? It doesn't make a difference that that video is in an airport and yours is going to be here, should be concerned with are these things. Can they tell a story? Do you like their visual language? It doesn't make a difference that that video was in an airport and yours isn't gonna be here, but do you like how they did it? Oh, well they're gonna do ours great, I promise. That's what the producer needs to be doing

because they'll find better people, they'll find them less expensive, instead of trying to find the cat director. But agency producers, just like anybody else, they're trying to make their job easy, they don't think they need to own run. They don't want to argue with the client. And so, you know, it just takes more senior people

to be able to have those conversations. I really don't fault the client for saying we need a cat director. I fault the person between us for not advocating for, not just us, but just anybody to say, here's what's important a cat shot on a reel is not important here's what we need from this company we're the producer we're writing the script I'm gonna be there and said this

thing's gonna be great don't worry but we love this crew because she's an amazing director he's a great shooter they really know what they're doing so you try to build relationships with people that become your advocates, that are nice to do return emails to do all this. And it's hard. And when you when you run into the people that aren't. OK, you'd be pissed for an hour. You know, he's serious.

But then you got to just move on to the next thing. And I'm Mark and Humps but closed lost and. You know, it's serious, but then you got to just move on to the next thing. And I'm Mark and HubSpot closed, lost and moving on. You know, it's what it is. Jeff did business that you can't dwell. All right. You're going to there's there's any number of reasons you're not going to get a job. So, you know, move on. Well, you don't get them. You know, the the there's a few that continue to irritate, you know.

When you don't get them because you don't get an opportunity to talk it through. When you don't get them because of ridiculous requests like conveyor belt or cat director versus dog director, you know. Like that stuff is challenging, but otherwise, you just gotta move on. Well, also, even more than money, and occasionally you're like, oh, I really wanted that job. But occasionally you're like, damn, we would have really made that video great. That was a really interesting topic. And you're like, I just wanted to make the video to see it.

Truly. Sometimes it's whatever, I'll go shoot the thing and do the thing, it'll be great, I promise it'll be awesome. We try really hard. But occasionally it's not, yeah, I'll go shoot the thing and do the thing, it'll be great, I promise it'll be awesome, we try really hard. But occasionally it's not the big money ones, it was ones that you were just genuinely interested in the subject matter. Like, oh, that would've been so cool to learn about that.

And go to that place and to meet those people and, and you're like, those are the ones that really hurt, you know, where you like put in that effort, you really, you're genuinely passionate, like, oh man, what an amazing organization. I'm so glad they reached out. Oh, I would crush this. This would be so great. They seem so nice.

This could be such a great partnership or for whatever reason, you don't get it. Those are the ones that bug me more, you know? Where I just felt like we were money aside. Like that would have been fun and we were a really good fit. We would have made something great. We had a few of those, yeah.

Actually, one thing I was gonna also ask was branded content is that type of content that a lot of people in our industry are always kind of like talking about trying to do more of. Something that's more focused on the storytelling aspects rather than the explainer, the classic corporate type videos. Like obviously, you know, those are necessary videos

and you know, they do also pay the bills, but people are always talking about doing more branded content. So how do you guys go about finding more of those stories? Cause it sounds like you guys do quite a bit of that. Is it something that you kind of pitch to direct clients or do you have a lot of agencies kind of coming to you with the concepts that you have to bid on and pitch for? Like what has been your experience in that regard?

I'd say, I'd say a little bit of both, but I, but there's more success going direct to clients. I think brand new content is just in our DNA. So it's just what we pitch when we have the opportunity to pitch a concept. Agencies come to us, but it's a very competitive, there's a lot of people doing it. So I'd say we have more success with the client side. But how do you go about it with direct to client?

Because a lot of the time, at least in our situation, for example, a lot of clients come to us with very specific things like, oh, we need this kind of promotional video, we need to do come to us with very specific things like, oh, we need a, we need this kind of promotional video. We need to do an explainer video for this or something like that. And it's only like once in a blue moon where we've been able to kind of convince them to do something a little bit different.

But a lot of the time they're very focused on one thing. We focus on that and then they just kind of forget about any other ideas after that. Like what has been your like approach with trying to pitch them on those kind of forget about any other ideas after that. Like what has been your like approach with trying to pitch them on those kind of more, not risky, but kind of like a little bit more experimental approaches for them, right? Well, I think- Although, Carol, we don't really pitch branded content.

Like we might pitch- No, I know, but like- Different types of corporate videos. Yeah, yeah, but like we did have like that one where it was like a promotional video we did in the past and we convinced them to do like a short documentary, but that's like a very isolated incident. But it sounds like for you guys, you guys are focused on that a lot with them. Like how do you go about that? One thing I would say for us is anytime we've ever made a video for ourselves, it has gotten

us work because we're doing it with conviction, we're doing it with passion, and so when we make our own branded content work, people notice it and they ask for that. So that's part of it. The other part of it is... And you know, just interrupt, and that is... Those are passion projects, so it's not a b not about a rocket. It's like a like a short film. It's a short film. We just did one about this chef and a tempano. And it was, you know, and someone else did the thing about this.

You know, we're always asking, like, what should we go shoot? What should we do? And occasionally there's just time and everyone's schedule. And we, you know, pitch ideas internally and we go make that video. You know, the company started with that. Make a video you want to make, you know, like go make that video. The company started with that. Make a video you want to make. Go make the cat video. You know what I mean? Some people go, hey, you're a cat director.

So we go make a video and they go, I saw that Apple video, that Tabano video you made. Sorry, so just to clarify on that point. I'd say the other part of it is circumstantial. When we shoot, we shoot very efficiently because we really prep hardcore. And so anytime we go out to shoot, typically, especially in a documentary space, anytime we go to shoot in a documentary space, you could probably make six different videos with that footage. So you can easily take what is a more

direct, specific ask and turn it into a branded content thing. And we have done that. And then the only other way to get branded content work is to pitch it. Is to roll up your sleeves, create a pitch deck, go to the company and say, hey, we wanna make this video about you.

Or I guess there's one other way. And then is to make the video and then sell it after the fact. Those are those we've had less success with. Less success. Yeah. Cause it's more cold pitching, right? Yeah, well, it seems like you go make a camping video

and you go, we can slap REI in this, we can slap this on this, or it could be anything, or we can slap Subaru on it, and the last shot be a Subaru pulls away or whatever. So it's like, there's a lot of ways you can make content and just modify it for them. But that's a theory that doesn't really, you know. I like your approach. I like your approach of kind of like

trying to take what they're proposing to you and then kind of figuring out a way to get them more out of it in that aspect as well. Where it's like if they're coming to you with like a very specific promotional video, if in terms of like the prep, you can kind of like work on a way to kind of develop other pieces of content that are a little bit different. Like a lot of people in the corporate space, for example, talk about doing, you know, you do a promotional video and then you do like a 30 second like Instagram reel, maybe five Instagram reels that go about it. So it's kind of, you guys are kind of taking a similar approach to that, but getting a little bit more creative with the content itself in terms of how

you can kind of like pitch it, you know, like maybe do like one long form video, that's like five minutes, but letting the client know it's like, this is what we're gonna shoot for, but then we're also gonna take little segments and then make a one minute or a two minute or a 30 second one or something like that. So that sounds like it's been your most successful approach to day.

Absolutely, absolutely. I mean, you guys have been editing videos for a decade, right, you know how little you need to make a great video. Right, so that's, you know, again, especially in a dive into the matter of space. You have a good interview, you can shoot footage all day long, but you need very little if the footage is good to make a great video.

So if you have the opportunity to shoot a bunch, there's always stuff left over. There's always footage left over. And you have to shoot a bunch, that's the way it works. You can't go in with a precise amount of you know precise amount of shots and think oh great because You know again in documentary space You don't always know what people are gonna say or how they're gonna say it or who's gonna be better You know, so you have to get it all but because you have to get it all You can just edit videos to the cows come home all day

You guys said that before you started pitching it, you already created like several short films of your own, right? And then 25, they said 25. Yeah, said something about you guys mentioned 25 videos. Oh, you mean for the branded content? Yeah, we would just probably Yeah, there's probably a dozen or certain two, you know, of things that we'll be able to move over to this new brand and be like, here's the branded content, you know? I'm just wondering, like, how did you guys, because it seems like you gotta,

if you wanna go in that direction, you gotta create some short films. So I'm just wondering, how do you guys come up with your ideas for your shorts? Like, where do you guys go look for? So that's the hardest part. So we're primarily nonfiction space. We do some scripted.

Brett really likes scripted more than me. And so the hardest part is finding a person or an organization that's interesting enough to spend your own time and money and energy on. Because there are plenty of, I know plenty of people that I just don't wanna put on camera. You know? So that's really the hardest part.

And if you're doing scripted, you need a script. And that's, everyone knows that's the biggest challenge of them all is to find a script that's worthwhile. So it's not easy. the biggest challenge of them all is to find a script that's worthwhile. So it's not easy. It's the reason we don't have as much original content as we would like, because we either don't have access to the people we want to get on camera or don't have a script that warrants time and energy.

That's the one word I would access. Access. Yeah, I agree. Access to the right people, to the people you need to tell the story. You can have a great idea, I wanna do a documentary about this thing, about this amazing restaurant.

Great, do you know the chef? No, how about the owner? No, do you know anyone in it? No, can you shoot there? I don't know. Well, then you're not making a documentary about that restaurant. You guys are just describing, you guys are just outlining the biggest thing that I'm wrestling with right now because that's, that's one thing that I'm trying to kind of figure

out not only for us, but like, uh, just to kind of like see what we can kind of create down the line to kind of elevate our offerings, elevate our content in some certain way. And a lot of it is, you have to try to find different stories and a lot of the time people, a lot of people when they think about doing short documentaries or any kind of documentary, they always think topic first, always think topics. Like I wanna do a short documentary about chefs,

like you said, it's like, okay, that's very general. Who are you gonna do it with? It's like, I don't know, it's like how where do you start how do you go about finding those interesting people and even sometimes you find people and you talk to them and sometimes they're they're into it at first but then they're not into it later like I remember I did this sports doc series I was just kind of like shooting it back in 2019, and we were following four different characters, and some of the characters were great

to work with, I would be able to kind of like just follow them around, talk to them, and you know, do good interviews, and then there was one, for example, who was just constantly late, you know, not communicating very well, not making my job very difficult, and I learned it very quickly This is a challenge that a lot of people will also face But yeah, it's it really is a matter of like you have to find the right people and the right stories access

That's the best way to kind of to boil it down to in one word is like you need access to kind of get there You know You can make great videos, but if you don't have a good subject or a good person is like you need access to kind of get there. You can make great videos, but if you don't have a good subject or a good person with a story, then, and sometimes people find people, but are also not looking for the right type of story. A lot of the time people need to look for a story

that has some kind of, they're trying to do something. There's like a conflict that people can kind of potentially relate to. Right. It's not just like, Oh, I made, it made this company and it's, it's all great. Lottie dot. It's like, okay, great. Then why?

Right. It's like, okay. Like, but what's, why, why should we care? Like, that's the other thing is like, why should people care about that story? That is, that is a big thing as well as like, why do people care about this story? It's not just a story for the sake of it being that story. That is a big thing as well. It's like, why do people care about this story? It's not just a story for the sake of it being a story. Right, plus everyone's a filmmaker now. Go to TikTok, go to Instagram, go to Facebook.

It's like, you know, you wanna do a documentary on, what's it, you wanna do a documentary on somebody who works with bees? Beekeeper? Want to do a documentary on a beekeeper? It's a great idea. I'm fascinated by it. You know why I'm fascinated by it? Because there's five people on Instagram that are already doing it.

And it's great to watch. So it would be hard to get that person to sit down with me to talk about it because they're already doing it. You know, like everybody's already doing something similar. So it's really hard to get people that don't know you to be interested in working with you. Yeah, I gotta invite them to a podcast. Yeah. That's a start. Yeah. Let's do a general podcast that it's like a chess, you got a beekeeper. Maybe that's the next podcast for us, Dario, Story Searchers.

You know, that's, that could be the name. I kind of like that. We should maybe do that. I'll go grab the domain. Story Searchers. Maybe we should do a video. Yeah, but you're not wrong. Like the podcast is kind of the new frontier of documentary storytelling because people don't have to leave their homes. It can be done, it can be taken out, you can

do it in as short or long increments as you want to or need to. The quality, obviously, certainly of the audio is fantastic. There's any number of reasons why the podcast is that. Before we head off, I just had another question. When you guys were first getting into video, you noticed a trend, right? It's almost like you guys saw the future, not to be cliche or anything like that. And had a lot of success with it. I'm just curious, like, what trends are you guys seeing nowadays? Well, good. Sky isn't falling, but AI is definitely a thing. And it will definitely affect your business and ours.

That isn't really a trend that's happening now, but that's, I think we're minutes away from it. I just don't know exactly know how it is, right? It's like that doomsday clock and it's like we're like a minute away from- Yeah. 2012. 2012 is coming. Exactly. I mean, obviously everyone is waiting Sora to see what that does.

You know, I'm eager to see what, you know, since I use everything Adobe and I use Photoshop, gender of AI, I'm waiting to see what Premiere looks like, you know, what you're able to do inside Premiere. That's a little bit of a game changer, I think. You know, certainly if I were a drone pilot with what I've seen on Sora, I'd be concerned. But working with real people and working with, you know, specific content, I'm not overly concerned but I think it is going to affect our business. I think there are a lot more in-house departments now. There's a lot of displaced marketing people and film students and with the desire to be on TikTok and things be more immediate and faster, there's more in-house happening. I don't know how many of our clients ask you for TikTok videos, but...

Surprisingly not that many, but... We don't move fast enough to do that because if you're doing TikTok you want it on today. Yeah, it's gotta be really quick. So I'm seeing that. I actually just thought of an idea that I think a lot of clients might actually like because I know this one, this one wedding studio, for example, you know how like when wedding companies typically produce wedding videos, they take weeks, months sometimes to produce and things like that. So one thing

that they that there's like this trend in the wedding industry where they're getting people to come in on the day of to do behind the scenes kind of social media content and stuff like that. And then next day, they have a video like that. No, not even the next day, Kjell. It's like just the day of. Yeah. They're basically posting as it goes.

Like TikToks. Yeah. So maybe that is going to be a new job position for a lot of productions and companies down the road and likely will be an in-house type role as well. And like, I'm, I'm looking at a lot of like bigger organizations and things like that, that have like in-house type role as well. And like I'm looking at a lot of like bigger organizations and things like that that have like in-house content creators and producers and one that really fascinates me

is that I'm like one, I'm a big soccer fan. So I follow a lot of soccer clubs also on LinkedIn, just kind of seeing how they go about running a soccer club as a business. And some of the really big ones in Europe For example, they have their own in-house content creators that just focus on that They have social media content creators that are constantly posting like I'm following it and just I'm like because also the business Mind behind it. I'm like thinking about okay How do they go about constantly creating all this stuff constantly like on a day-to-day basis they produce

amazing branded branded stories as well it's like the whole range from like basic social media to highly produced branded content this is these are just all internal teams as well so it's something I'm just kind of exploring more of now. That's actually a really good idea, Kyril, like bringing on like a content creator. For all of our shoots, because it's like... For a shoot, yeah. It won't even cost that much to be honest with you. Right, right. There's so amazingly talented people, like you she said the barrier of entry has never been lower Right who are raised on shooting recording audio then editing it then throwing in a graphic like they they can do it all and

Once they once they know what the brand is They're you know, they're really able to capture it, you know effortlessly Yeah, because we because one thing that's very popular with a lot of productions is, you know, getting behind the scenes content, which you do need to get, you know, to, you know, use as promotional material later on in in video, right? Like or like as a production company, you want to be able to promote yourself a little bit show a bit of behind the scenes. But you're always kind of like jugs like, okay, who's grabbing a quick social media clip here and there, you know, sometimes I'm like, okay, who's grabbing a quick social media clip here and there?

Sometimes I'm like, Dario, quickly grab something. We're trying to do it with little DJI cameras and things like that. And sometimes just like a dedicated mini DSLR just to get some nice high quality images and stuff like that. But I think just having maybe a dedicated social media person who's there, like you said, Brett, knows the brand, knows what you're going for, knows how to capture it on the day of. Quick shots here and there, posts right away,

and then yeah, like maybe that's the evolution for even video production companies, you know, get those. I think that's, I would say that's absolutely, you know, talking about trends, you know, if we're not there already where it's going I'm not exactly sure how to capitalize on it yet But we have been talking about it because people do want everything more media Yeah

And a lot of lot of pieces of content too, right? Because again with social media you got to keep Constantly feeding the beast, right? Otherwise, yeah. That would be a great add on for clients too, because you're like, not only is that BTS content good for you, it's great for the client. And that's something you can pitch to them with as well. It's like, look, we're going to create this like really high quality content for you, which is obviously needed.

But do you want to also create something for your social media? And I feel like a lot of medium sized businesses are going to especially be wanting to jump on that because the more content that they can get, the better typically. Right. So, um, then literally the social media person has a very specific job that day, which is to capture the essence of like what the client is do, uh, is about what we're trying to do and get creative with that, right?

It's almost like when you're video shooting alongside photo, but now this is like the third role. Third, yeah. As well on shoots. And before you know it, it's like every production is gonna have like four or five people doing different jobs. It's almost gonna be like a wedding, you know? It's like, there's the couple, there's the client,

at the end of the day. There's the planner. And the planner, the florist. You can't get as much as you can out of that day. Oh my God, this industry is just evolving like crazy. Yeah, nuts. But anyways, guys, we've already gone way past the hour mark, but we really appreciate you jumping on board. And I really like some of the ideas and things that we've already discussed

on this. I know Dario and Ariel after this call are going to be like, all right. Honestly, when you said the social media person, I was like, oh my God, that's true. Why didn't we think about that? It's so easy to head on. So there are entire agencies down here that only do that. Yeah. Oh, really? That I know it's like a marketing agency thing.

So as soon as you mentioned, I'm like, we could easily just add it on. And that kind of makes us look more well-rounded, right? Yeah. Completely new offering. And it's definitely not a new idea, but I think it's catching on. I think, no, no, it's not. It's not a new idea, but for like, to have like the video production company, just tack it on, I think this is definitely new, right? It's a new use case essentially, right? It's like utilizing a resource that's going to be beneficial to not only the client,

but also to the production company as well, because there is something to that. Yeah, like we know several people that have their own wedding production companies and the extra social media person is like a 2023 phenomenon or 2020. Yeah. So I know that like this year I've noticed they started just offering that themselves instead of like the couple getting someone else to do it. So it's it makes sense I guess yeah yeah for us the same well gents such a pleasure but I'm glad we got to connect and thanks for having us on yeah likewise thank you if any people want to find you it's bottle rocket media net and you guys are based in Chicago yes and yeah and what are your

socials is it bottle at bottle rocket media bar rocket media 312 suppose most everything that's the area code I'll check that real quick. Everyone is like, what is our socials? It's like I don't know my own office. I don't know the problem with the office. Bottle rocket 312. Bottle rocket 312. Okay.

You're right. I haven't been to Chicago yet, but when I do go down there, I will hit you guys up and we'll grab some drinks. For sure. For sure. It's the season. If you're going to go, you got about a two month window. Only two months? That's it?

This is it. It's very nice here. May and June. June and July. And then what? It just gets really hot? It gets really hot and then it gets really cold and then it gets really humid and then it's nice for two months. It just sounds like Toronto, I would assume. Yeah, that's what I was going to say.

It's not very different from Toronto. You guys aren't that... I mean, Chicago is far, but not that far. No, not at all. Cool. Alright, let's end this episode. Alright, thank you guys. Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee.

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