Creatives Grab Coffee - Navigating the Future of Content Creation, Strategy, and Innovation | Creatives Grab Coffee 57

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Summary: The conversation explores the impact of AI on content creation and the challenges and opportunities it presents for businesses. The hosts discuss the benefits of AI editing capabilities and the ease of creating podcasts and reels. They also delve into the importance of setting realistic goals and refining processes to maintain a consistent workload. The conversation highlights the limitations of scaling a service business and the potential impact of AI on various industries. The hosts emphasize the role of human expertise in an AI-driven world and the need for creatives to adapt and teach clients how to use AI tools effectively. They also discuss the potential of AI in pre-production and the importance of keeping up with evolving technology. The conversation covers various topics related to working on fun and bold projects, creating a custom GPT model called Hook Hound, thriving in a challenging year, shifting from video production to strategy, dealing with price competition, pitching to the right people, and paying for certainty. The hosts also discuss the importance of sparking curiosity in the sales process and the lessons that can be learned from dogs.SPONSORS: Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.com Audio 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.com To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/ #CreativesGrabCoffee #videographyhacks #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #videomarketing #videoproductioncompany #videoproductionservices #openai #sora #soraai

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creatives Grab Coffee is hosted by Daria Nuri and Kirill Lazarev 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? Do you need crew or a strong production

partner to help you with your project? Laps Productions is one of the top production companies in Toronto and your go-to video partner. With our strong creative skills and extensive network, we can help you achieve your goal. Laps Productions is able to offer you production services,

white label services, or finder fees for project handoffs. Reach out to us on our website at LAPSProductions.com to learn more. My name is Mehran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages, or lighting and group plan packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out.

Make sure you follow and subscribe to CreativeScrapCoffee.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. We got you covered come on down audioprocess.ca. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you. I'll be waiting for you. And we're all going to have a real good time. And now, let's begin the show.

Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode. And today, we have a guest that's been on already two times. That's Chris from Signature Video Group. Chris, how's it going? Great to have you back. Good to be here, fellas. Good to see you guys as always. Yeah. How's everything with you?

It's been going pretty good. It's going pretty good. I know this is a little bit of an impromptu episode. We figured, you know what? We had a meeting already scheduled. Why don't we also record it at the same time? You know, you know, the create create content from from everything, right? The impromptu podcast. Why not? AI editing capabilities that, oh my God, it's so easy to pump out podcasts now. They even create reels for you. They created the transcript, the key takeaways.

I mean, it's not perfect. It's not perfect. It's pretty good. Let's be honest. It's not perfect. Okay. The reels are not perfect, but everything else is fantastic. In fact, this is episode 57 we're doing. Episode 56, we shot it we did yesterday and released i basically like

did all the stuff on riverside and like scheduled it for release the next day like it was seamless it was amazing it's wild it's it's speeding up everything i mean last time we chatted ai was nowhere near what it is today And that's probably something we should talk a bunch about is how quickly things are changing. I think, you know, the big elephant in every creative's room right now is Sora. And what will it be? What will it do? What do we do? And so, yeah, I'm curious to jump into that with you guys, but all in due time.

Absolutely. Actually, the episode we just released was on sorrow we we spent like a good hour just going over our thoughts on it but definitely we'll pick your brain on what you think about it because it's definitely going to change the landscape and everything but we were talking earlier before we started recording about like what we've been up to since last year and you as well as why don't you tell us a little bit about what you've been doing gosh yeah so it's been it's been a wild ride uh we you know we're we're pretty much at or near max capacity at all times as i mentioned just a few minutes ago uh this next week we've got two big projects at the same time so we're having to really divide and conquer on this one so that's taken a lot of

planning and logistics and calling in some some some of our favorite hired guns but uh yeah it's growing pains right we're also talking about like our goals for the year i was telling you how carol and i were talking about our every january we sit down and we kind of go through what our goals are for the year as i'm sure you do as well and what we were going through it this year we decided that you know we're not really our goals aren't really that big to be honest to you i think that that only really happens maybe when you're early on into the business, but we've been at it for such a long time now. Define big, though.

Restructuring. Well, big in terms of like... Define big, yeah. Okay, why don't I just say what our goals were for this year. For us, all it was was really just belt tightening uh and redefine like refining our processes so not even redefining just refining them improving and basically just being able to maintain like the same um amount of work that we had last year like when we were first chatting about like our financial goals, Kirill was like, yeah, if we got that much last year,

then we should also be increasing it by even more to hit this new goal. And I was like, Kirill, state of the economy. I'm not saying by a... Dario, Dario, stop putting words into my mouth, okay? Listen, I think it's healthy

to always try to go for some incremental growth. You shouldn't be obviously going for unrealistic. It was a big jump. You shouldn't be going for unreal. Can I talk? We can't go obviously for major goals. It's nice to strive for something bigger.

I'm sure, Chris, you would agree with every year as you go. You see how you've done. You want to try to strive to do better. And sometimes the more realistic approach is to go for something in terms of smaller growth in certain areas, maybe not drastic ones. But you have to you have to try to make work towards improving your business year over year. Because if you don't, then you're just going to be stuck in the same place as always. Yeah, I would agree with that. And I, just like most creative

business owners, I get caught in that trap too, of now having to grow the business every year, because that's what businesses are supposed to do because of capitalism. But it's, you know, I don't think it's the real reason any of us or anybody you talked to really got into this business. Uh, it was never the intent to like make a ton of money. That's a nice by-product, uh, of being able to tell stories for a living, but yeah, it's, it's tough, right. Getting, getting caught up in that, that trap of always having to grow at what cost, right.

of always having to grow at what cost, right? At the cost of time, of lifestyle. What are you sacrificing to get there? So the way I saw it was- Healthy to have boys. Yeah, yeah. The way I saw it was like, look, the economy is not doing too well. I think we should just try to hit

the same amount we hit last year. Obviously, we're not turning away business. More business comes in, fantastic. We'll increase the numbers. But for me, I was like, if we hit last year's goal, I'll be happy, to be honest. That's how I saw it. And I was like, I'm preparing for that.

But I'm a little bit more cautious when it comes to business. I'm not too, you know, sometimes I do need someone to push me. I'm pretty cautious myself and very conservative. And what's interesting is as we've grown our team, that's kind of forced my hand to be a bit more aggressive and, you know, much larger overhead, meaning we've got to keep that pipeline deeper and more robust and bring in bigger projects and better margins and uh yeah it's it's tough it sometimes take you takes you away from what we're here to do which is tell stories yeah we were talking about in goals in terms of like how yeah we were talking we started this off with goals and yeah we basically this year we found that our goals aren't too big they're just very a lot smaller so like do you find realistic more

realistic than realistic yeah it's kind of like basing them based on like as dario mentioned how the market has been going what advancementsments have been going, what has it been like over the last few years for us as a business. And obviously, in terms of our business, we haven't changed anything major that would warrant a huge change in terms of what we should be doing with our goals. If we were to, for example, say, have hired someone, that's going to change a lot of things about the business. I'm sure you're still with your team, unless you hired like say double your workforce or changed the amount of people on your team, that would force you to redefine your goals and strategy for the next year. And because Dara and I haven't done so much of that let's figure out a way to improve the business

as it is right now in terms of its status yeah and you know what's what's really interesting about what we do like creative custom bespoke work it's not truly scalable right like every great person is a one-of-one and that's not instantly replicatable until Zora comes out. But no, it's yeah, it's hard, right? Because, you know, I'm sure you guys are just like me, like sort of obsessed, always watching entrepreneurship content and the business of creativity and like all of that beautiful stuff. But that you're a one of one there's only one of you and yeah infinite scale is just not part of this business model and sometimes it's okay to accept that right yeah it's because we're a lot of people get into thinking you can

scale it but you you really can't scale a service business that much. And we are a service business at the end of the day. Yeah, there are things you can do. Yeah, you can productize some of your services. There are certain parts of what we all do. Something like a tool like this, Riverside, now expands your reach dramatically where you can create good content without having to pack up a bunch of cameras and

go somewhere physically you can you know produce meaningful content remotely remotely now and so yeah it's about finding finding those efficiencies as well i i i can't believe that only just a few years ago we would meet all of our prospects prospects before they were even clients like in person like hop in the car and drive 90 minutes to go sit down for 20 minutes with a stranger um now again like there's there's beauty to that as well right and you know there's certainly something to be said about you know people do business with people and business to some extent is done in person. But I mean, Zoom is pretty great. We can take a lot more meetings and one meeting doesn't kill an entire day now.

Yeah, that's true. Well, a lot of the time also the leads are also not interested in taking a lot of time out of their day to meet with. Imagine if they're talking to five different production companies, what are they going to do? Meet with five different production companies at different locations all the time. It kind of like goes back to the, to the other point of like, uh, what's, what's the purpose of having an office for ourselves as a, as a production company. Sometimes a lot of times clients would want us to go to their location to meet with them if we have to do it in person anyway because the clients they also only have so much time and to take more time out of their day to travel when they already had to bust their

asses to travel to their location you know it's definitely what's happened since the pandemic is everyone has figured out a way to maximize their time and be as efficient as possible when meeting and talking with people. Because now talking like this virtually, it's become the standard. It's become the norm. It's a great first impression. It's an improvement from a simple phone call where you don't get to see the person. At the very least, you can kind of see people like this. person, at the very least, you can kind of see people like this. It almost kind of takes me back to some of those classic science fiction movies where people would be talking to each other on a

TV screen. And even back in the day, it seemed kind of crazy. But yeah, that's where we're at now. That's what we're doing. And that's how we conduct the podcast as well. It's true. And like even, you know, like calls like this, Zoom, whatever, now there's all sorts of add-on ai enhancements to like take notes condense everything do follow-ups i i kind of i got most of i still take physical notes but you know gone are the days where i can't finish a brief because i can't read my own handwriting anymore stuff like that yeah so what else is the new with you then like in terms of your business like uh have you noticed have you gone through anything in 23 that you want to talk about i think uh let's let's see here what's changed um we do have a couple of like good anchor clients now who, you know, bring us on for

good, consistent, high level storytelling. Um, so that's been nice to know that there's some, some certainty in the year. Uh, but just like most other years, there's a lot of, you know, excitement about what's, what could come in the door tomorrow. Right. You never, you never really know. But yeah, we've also been spending time in enhancing our processes, our workflows. Again, like you said, trimming the fat where possible.

I spent a couple hours last week going through all of our credit card statements and realizing how many subscriptions I've yeah i've signed up to and i'm still getting billed for that i haven't used in like two or three years yeah um oh my god i just notorious for trying out a subscription and again the good ones uh do a good job at making sure that they still bill you as long as possible so yeah yeah, things like that. You know, saving pennies. Yeah, you always have to look through kind of like see part of like improving your processes is that finding out what services and subscriptions you use that are actually helpful. See if there is a better way to do it, if there's an improved way to do it, and then

really cement yourselves with the ones that you use all the time. Like for us is Riverside, Artlist, Adobe. Those are like three of the key ones that we use on an almost day-to-day basis. Chad GPT, what are you talking about? Yeah, Chad GPT now. You're a goat, goddammit.

Yeah. Yeah. It is the, I actually, I spent all week um i was supposed to be working on this presentation that i'm giving down in vegas next week but uh rather than procrastinate like a normal person like watching netflix i spent the entire week building a custom gpt like training my our first uh sort of like you know custom GPT that essentially is trained to write really engaging hooks for any topic. And I'm, I'm amazed at how much better you can make a custom GPT than the general chat GPT module, like the outputs can be considerably better if you train it the right way so that's

been sort of like a brain explosion aha moment uh that really i'm still going through today i'm sure right after this podcast i'm going to jump back in and train that model a little bit more have you tried out google gemini which is the rebranded Google bar? Because, you know, Google just rebrands everything after two days. Yeah, I I did check it out a little bit. I, you know, I tested it out on a few prompts and I got some interesting stuff, but I'm just so familiar and comfortable with chat GPT in the open AI tools. So I've really sort of, yes, stuck to that. Although, you know, I really, I keep wondering, when is Google going to come with the fire?

Because, you know, as we know about these, like large language models, whoever has the data is going to win. And Google has all of the data. I look at something like Sora and those demos, and I think, what if Google was able to train a text-to-video bot that used all of YouTube as a resource? That's like an infinite amount of data. And so what's that going to look like? The crazy thing is that Sora, we were talking about this on the other episode, was that

Sora basically trained its AI model through Shutterstock, through their partnership with Shutterstock. So it's limited to that database of knowledge. And to your point, yeah, if if they go with youtube it's a lot there's a lot more potential because it's a lot of real content too not stock focused based content so it could be it could be a scary and exciting thing as well about did you know what could come from there did you know that for sora i might be wrong, but I remember hearing that it was, aside from being trained on Shredder stock, it was actually Google that did the bulk of the work for Sora. And then OpenAI came in.

It was in that ColdFusion video. They mentioned it. So it was Google that kind of started it. And then OpenAI just kind of took over it or took it. Right. Yeah. So it was Google that kind of started it and then OpenAI just kind of took over it or took it. Yeah. I'm hearing all sorts of like different rumors that, you know, that Sora was actually ready last spring and they didn't, you know, tell the world because the world wasn't ready to hear it yet because they were still coming to grips with chat GPT. And who honestly who knows what's going on behind the scenes i think there's probably but then they release it during an election year it's kind of suspect you

know yeah i know it's if we could peek behind that curtain i mean this is i remember seeing that that first source sample somebody sent me it was the one where the girl's on the train taking from sort of like a cell phone perspective. You see that one and she's on the train and she goes through a tunnel and you then see the reflection showing the person taking the video. And so somebody sent me that video without any context. And I was like, okay, great video. And then when you find out that was made by an AI, that's when sort of my heart skipped a beat, you know, and then all of the other demos started filtering in. And it's, it's just like, it's hard to,

I think every creative who's paying attention, lost sleep over the last couple of weeks over out of maybe fear and anxiety or excitement about what they're going to be able to do with these tools. And, you know, as the times pass, my my fear is is transforming into excitement. I think that this is like the biggest thing to ever happen in content creation. You know, definitely since the cell phone but maybe ever it's gonna be interesting like uh we we mentioned that for us it's we see it as like a tool that we can use for our productions that's how we see it i think it's definitely gonna cause it's gonna cause a loss of income at some point in some areas for sure um girl mentioned

events are probably going to be left untouched obviously because you need to be there in person but for most of the things it is leveling out the playing field so it might seem like we're losing money but maybe it's just more people getting into the video content space in terms of like and i mean from the perspective of a client. So could look like a lot of revenue, but might not be at the same time as well. Because people that do understand the value of hiring a production company would still, I'm hoping would still do that.

But even as production companies, maybe we need to start, again, looking at how we charge for things and then seeing if clients are just able to do this stuff by themselves and where do we fit into that pipeline? We have to really see how good the technology will get to see if we are replaceable. Because think about when Photoshop got released. I'm sure a lot of photographers were feeling the same way, right? But now look at it

like even though photoshop is out there you still like regular people don't know how to use it that well like you still need to have someone that is trained in the technology to be able to use it yeah yeah it's like video editing see a few things okay yeah yeah i was just saying like yeah i mean like there's also video editing software out there. There's a lot of the same tools that clients can download themselves if they really want to and then go through it. But it is a time. It's a timely process. You know, it's like just because like even on our end, right? Like I may know how to use Adobe Premiere, but I'm not exactly the biggest whiz to create an animation video on after effects so we bring in people to help us execute based on that right sure yeah maybe i can do it but i'll have to i would have i would have to sit down and take hours and hours and hours to try to figure out something simple to execute that would be easier for them ironically the one of the things we talked about was that unfortunately the animation um the video animators are going to probably be the ones

that are hit the hardest by this AI video. And so they're going to have to become really well versed in it so that they can adapt with it. But yeah, at the end of the day, a client, if they could figure out a way to save time for themselves,

they'll probably take that than anything else. That's what I'm that's what I'm hoping for. Yeah, I see kind of a few different things happening. I my prediction is like, like you mentioned, like the in person elements of what we do telling stories, that's not going to go away. In fact, there's going to be in some cases, like a demand for more human storytelling, I guess you could say. Like, you know, stories made by verified humans, told about humans, that sort of thing.

I also see like, and we've actually seen this in our business a little bit, where there's like async opportunities where we will now do the strategy and creative, and then we'll teach our clients and equip them to capture a lot of content themselves on something like, you know, like the Osmo Pocket 3, where they're already in the places and opportunities where great things are happening, you know, pull this out, capture it, and then throw it on, you know, the NAS and we'll do the post-production. So, yeah, we're doing the strategy and creative. They shoot it under our guidance and then send us the stuff so that we can still package up, you know, something that's cohesive and on brand and, you know, has an element of polish to it. that's cohesive and on brand and um you know has an element of polish to it but uh yeah i think i agree that animators and illustrators are sort of you know gonna have to rethink things um i

think anybody who's in the business of stock footage that's i think that's gonna be a heavy burden on them because you know i look at you know there's levels to be a heavy burden on them because, you know, I look at, you know, there's levels to stock, as you guys know. And I always regret when I'm like researching stock for a project and I go to say film supply and I fall in love with everything. But it's 10 times the cost per clip. soon I'm going to be able to if I'm good enough at describing what I'm looking to see it's going to be able to create that for me and be indistinguishable from stock

or at least as good right so we keep talking about the potential the potentials of this technology but if it gets to be really good we our livelihoods would probably be at stake because right now like you still need to prompt it I mentioned the example. But after I mentioned I was thinking about it's like, OK, what if this AI tech gets to the point where it you've done, that's when it gets to be problematic.

But to be honest, if it gets to be at that point, think about how many other jobs would be in trouble, right? Lawyers, for example, those guys would be gone. Think about how many jobs within a company would be redundant. Like probably 90% of them wouldn't be that necessary, right? So it's going to be a wild and interesting time in our lifetimes. Yeah. It feels like we're in an episode of Black Mirror a little bit.

Yeah. A little bit, definitely. I mean, to your point, Chris, I do still think that there's going to be a need for some human element to be present at some part of the process because if it's not, maybe even more so than we realize because, yeah, you can be very good with describing certain things that you need for this content, but it may not always spit out exactly what you need. And then if it gets to the point where people are spending more and more time on it, they're going to need specific AI prompt engineers as we were talking about, right? That's

essentially what we might end up becoming in our our industry and that's assuming that's assuming there's no like tech like no future improvements where you don't need to be like a prompt engineer that's the thing of course kind of move away from that too right so it's like oh my god it's gonna be interesting you know i did an event yesterday where i did an event yesterday where they were kind of like going over AI for, it was like a workshop of AI for coding. And they were talking about how you need to be very specific about the way you're prompting things for it to give you that information the way you need. And I think like any other tool, it's going to be helping people become a lot more efficient in cutting out the fat or trimming out the fat in terms of the process. But I still think it's almost going to be like a final, it's like a,

it's a good way to get your first draft. I feel like the whole first draft process is going to be eliminated. But it's right now, it's right now, Kirill. Like look how far it's going and like, like month by month basis. So just imagine like one, two years, like think about this in the future. People that are doing, how common work from home is. Imagine you might be working with another employee that might just be an AI chatbot and you might not know it. That's that's definitely a possibility at some point, because, you know, these corporations, if they can cut out costs, they'll do it. It's true. it's true there's whole big companies have have whole floors of uh strategists looking to you know find efficiencies uh but you know and thinking about you know the human part of this

um i do think that you know like for example i like i look at this gT we've been building and it astonishes me how good like the hook the hooks it writes already just a few days in and but uh the whole process of understanding what we're making and why we're making it and for who and all that stuff you know like we've talked many times like you know we're not in the business. We make videos are what we make, but really we're delivering business results or solving business problems. And still there's a huge part of understanding what is that problem and articulating it, coming up with a strategy of how we're going to tell stories to engage people to solve that problem.

And, and then we're still going to be the ones like prompting and approving and compiling and revising. And, uh, yeah, also I think it's, it's notable that we all, the creators seem to be on the cutting edge of AI because, um, I think just by nature, learning new tools and that's going to create an opportunity to, you know, as we learn these tools just in our everyday business, there's going to be opportunity for us to teach our clients on how to do that. You know, maybe things will shift to that situation where instead of giving a man a fish, we'll teach a man to fish so that he can eat for a lifetime sort of metaphor. So our clients are going to eventually start using those tools. We should be the ones teaching them on how to do that. I think that's part of our strategy that we talk about a lot here is if it's coming for our job,

that we talk about a lot here is, if it's coming for our job, let's make sure that we're... It's part of the job. Yeah, exactly. Make sure it's part of the job. It's a good way to do it where you kind of bring it to the client as like an aid to the whole process.

I think they will be a lot more comfortable integrating it and also understanding how it can be helpful. Because at the end of the day humans always want to go and seek advice from real people and experts right when you go to a mechanic you know you want to make sure that the mechanic who's working on your car knows what he's doing if you're going to someone if you're going to a barber you want to make sure your barber knows how to how to cut hair properly you know there's gonna barber, you want to make sure your barber knows how to cut hair properly.

There's going to always be that need to trust the expertise from someone. That's a bold assumption, Kirill, because I always go on Google right after I hear an expert talk just to fact check it. Well, okay. I mean, I guess it depends on what it is. Especially mechanic, it's like, oh, you need to get this fixed. It's like, okay, two seconds. Let me just Google that. Let me see if I'm being scammed or not. Yeah, your rotator splint is acting up right now. You might as well have told me like a Newtonian formula. I don't know what that means. Let me go Google that quickly. At the end of the day, though, you're still going to other experts

to see what was right and what wasn't when you're doing that, right? The common section of Reddit. day though you're still going to other experts to see what was right and what wasn't when you're doing that right the comments like what other people have see that's the thing there's that that's not ai right there those are real experts according to dario he lives his life on the reddit comments so you just proved my point but at the end of the day, though, it might be chatbots. Who knows? Yeah, it is true. I mean, you think about the first time you went on chat GPT and the outputs it would give versus what it can do now. And then also we've all learned that we can use chat GPT to literally help us write the prompts or reverse engineer other things.

And so, yeah, it's... Do you like it more now? Because I feel like it's been dumbed down so much. Like I have a tough time with it now, to be honest with you. Well, I use it just sometimes to just like for inspiration. We never use it for finished work. So give me some like ideas. And then from that, we'll pull from a nugget and add to it.

But what we've been really excited and using it effectively with is when we're building like pitch decks or treatments now I can instead of going and trying to find like an image that represents this I can create something from scratch uh we we pitched something a few weeks Yeah. I used Dolly, Midjourney, and a number of other tools, but you know, we just, we were actually able to pitch a really wild cinematic, like sci-fi concept to a client that six months ago, we never would have had the confidence to do. And so, yeah, we created like this massive world with like rich visuals so that I didn't, I wouldn't have to tell someone about what we're looking to make. I could show them.

And, you know, there wasn't any additional massive budget for storyboarding or concept art because you would normally have to like hire someone and spend a very long time getting to what those look like now in a few hours i can create stuff that is amazing and tells shows the client exactly what i have in my mind and uh that's been a lot of fun yeah that was that was one thing we highlighted how it can really improve the pre-production process specifically in storyboarding and creating mood boards and visual references because those are things that do take quite a while and there are tools out there like frameset which can help you find specific uh reference images but those are coming from real movies and past projects so maybe you need to get something

more specific that gets uploaded i mean i wonder though if you're pitching something that's sci-fi and it and it spits out something super elaborate will you be able to recreate that in post though so yeah this one we're kind of double diffing on the text so we we actually pitched this project to shoot in a volume studio as like a big like Dune inspired world. What's a volume studio? Volume like an LED volume studio. So a studio where they shot like the Mandalorian. Yeah.

Long story short, you know, traditional visual effects, you know, shot on green screen. All of the post work is done after the fact. Now with a volume studio, you can do all of that visual effect work in advance. And then everybody on the day on set can actually see what the background looks like. And you can swap background instantly. And it creates a lot of advantages, but still carries some disadvantages and also an immense cost. But it's, you know, you use Unreal Engine 5

to generate these, you know, these stereoscopic backgrounds now. And so that's another tool that we're trying to learn. And so, yeah, it feels like half of our job is just keeping up with what tomorrow looks like. And you're working on some fun stuff, eh?

Like in comparison to what we've been doing. We're trying. We're working on space sets. Yeah, you know what? This is a client we worked with last year. And we did some bold stuff with them. And they really liked it. And it's amazing to see them come back and ask for even bigger, bolder ideas. across that this one goes through because we've all become so in love with the concept and learning how to pull it off that uh we hope we get the the chance yeah get the the nice reward for all that experimental research and and testing right for sure and like you know and like learn new things um yeah like building this custom gpt i got that

that feeling that i haven't had in so long where like new skill unlocked um that's gonna you know bring a major benefit down the road it's uh it's cool you can buy custom ones too the there's people there's people that sell them you mentioned feeding information i like i i was trying it out a while ago i don't know if they changed some stuff like what do you mean by like feeding it and customized like what did you add to it yeah so in in this case um you know i'm basically training this bot to do to do one thing only which is write bought to do to do one thing only which is write world-class compelling hooks right now it's for one medium video but you know the ultimate goal is to create a tool that people can use um to create more impactful first impressions anytime anywhere you know in this attention

economy how do you capture someone's attention and hold it so that you can accomplish your goal? And there's, you know, short attention spans, infinite competition. But anyways, back to training the model. specific model and specific instructions with you know things like all of the viral hooks that are currently trending and all the great creators like you know what is mr beast doing and alex hermosi and gary v and casey nice that but then also what what's happening in asmr and what kind of things have traction there and training it on, um, all of the great copywriters who have ever,

wait on, on ASMR. Is it on chat GPT? Is it on chat GPT? You're doing this bot? Yeah, yeah, yeah,

exactly. Yeah. You can actually, it's, it's actually currently available, um, in the, uh,

GPT store. Uh, it's called hook house and, yeah, you can check it out if you have a premium subscription you can use it for free right now um this is your custom one yeah okay hookhound yeah like that the idea came from uh it's just inspired by you know our our our late dog frankie and just the the way a dog can hook you immediately they're just so good at immediately getting your positive undivided attention they're the very best in the world at that and that sort of inspired me to try to create a bot or a tool that generates really good first impressions. It's a great business almost on its own.

Just creating hooks. It's like you have a backstory and everything behind it for the name. Yeah. Instead of working on a presentation, I built an entire brand as a procrastination tool. But it's fun, right? Is it is it real is the story real or did chad gpt make it up for him did he really have a dog named frankie i did yeah don't hit him where it hurts don't hit him where it hurts now man he was we lost we lost him in january he but he lived a good life. He was 14. Wow, that's a lot. Yeah, he's the bestest boy.

Yeah, he was just under 100. I think he was like 99 and change. Oh, wow. Yeah, we can learn a lot from dogs. I remember one of my favorite business improvement books I've ever read. I recommend this to anyone. It's How to win friends and influence people one of those classic yeah tail dale carnegie or something right yeah but

there's a chapter in there um that talks about basically be a dog greet people with genuine enthusiasm like the way a dog does uh because look like you know most dogs haven't had to work a day in their life they just get love and attention and so you know take cues from that and be a dog and greet people with genuine genuine enthusiasm and curiosity and next thing you know they like you and then you like them and you like each other and now we're friends and now we're doing business together forever and uh yeah, a lot we can learn from dogs. So, okay. Just approach people in the GPT store.

Pretty much, yeah. That's the secret sauce there. Kind of like switching gears a little bit. You mentioned it's been really hectic for you, like practically without any free time over the last year where we've heard from a lot of different people in our industry that 2023 was a pretty challenging year in terms of the work, like of mixed work and kind of like how business has been going, but it sounds like it's really been thriving for you. Has it been a lot of like recurring business from past clients or has it been a lot of new business that's been coming through the front door for you?

Yeah, so it's a lot of recurring business, but some of that recurring business is becoming like more static. So we're doing more work for some of the same clients um you know our our pipeline is is built out over you know six to eight months we did notice and at the end of uh last year in 2023 q4 was really slow when it came to like new leads new opportunities stuff like that, it was like astonishingly quiet, actually one of the,

one of the quietest, you know, Q4s that I can really remember. Lucky enough, we, you know, had a decent pipeline that carries through to this year. But yeah, it, I'm also super sorry. I've got two kids, two young girls, you know, three'm also super smart. I've got two kids, two young girls, you know, three, three and one. So that's that's just keeping me crazy busy. That's also motivating me, too. And like I've got I can't I can't take I can't take a break anymore.

I've got to keep pushing. I was reading an article about how much money is leaving Canada right now, like investment money. So it's kind of worrying about the future of this economy. Yeah. I mean, we're seeing like, you know, crazy inflation everywhere. A lot of big brands are starting to, you know, tighten their wallets. They're putting on hiring freezes, in some cases laying off part of their staff, rethinking their budgets. But, you know, with that presents an opportunity where, so for example, you know, maybe looking at big tech where maybe they laid off a fleet of salespeople while creating content, telling stories, that's now creating sales assets that they can use at scale. Make it once, use it forever, and you can track its success and you can tweak it to improve.

And, you know, it doesn't take holidays, vacations, doesn't call in sick. It just goes to work every single day for your business, creating value. And so that's really what we're trying to push. Like we're really trying to move away from the story that we make videos and that we're the video people. Video is just how we solve the problem. and that we're the video people. Video is just how we solve the problem.

And, you know, the right video can add tremendous value to a business. And so that's, you know, that's what we're looking at doing. Yeah, you're going more so for the strategy approach. I found that I was testing that out previously, but I found that lately it's just so much easier to pitch just

the video side of it right and i've actually noticed that we're closing a bit more just by doing that granted our market positioning it could be because of the leads coming through it's because of the leads but it's because of leads but our granted our marketing positioning market positioning is slightly different from yours because yours is like more boutique. So expensive, you're probably like low to mid-volume, boutique, high quality, right? Ours is, you know, we're mid-level pricing, high quality, but low volume. Low volume because it's carol and i can just run it's not we don't it's not like we got that much small team yeah it's a small team for

sure so for us i found that it's easier to just okay like and also for me in terms of this our sales funnel i just okay they come in quickly go through our pitch by the end of the meeting they got a price great let's go a lot of the leads the end of the meeting, they got a price. Great. Let's go. A lot of the leads that are coming through know what they're looking for. That's probably also what is the case. Do you find that a lot of the leads that come to you are in that same position where they're very much in the know of what they need, are very specific? Or is it like, hey, this is what's coming up. We want your thoughts on what we can do for this because we don't get too much of that. Unless, Chris, are you doing these strategy sessions, are you doing it with your recurring clients?

Is that, because I can see that being easier to pitch versus with someone that's fresh. Yeah, so to answer the first question it depends on you know where the lead came from and you know what they're looking to do if you know most of the time if a lead comes in through you know organic search and seo it's probably for for us some sort of you know video production related term and so which is like a high intent search term. So usually when they're found, they find us that way. They already know that they want video. They most likely know what kind, when they need it done.

It's much more transactional. And we actually have, we found those to become the most challenging leads now. Even last year, we especially noticed that there's way, way, way more competition on those bids. Nobody ever wants to have an info call. They just want a price. Yeah. And it's becoming almost like- That's why I had to change my strategy because they just wanted a price. And I understood that. I'm like, okay, let's just make it easier for both parties, right? And what I'm hearing too is from like sometimes these prospects will tell us, say we get a no from them, they went a different direction.

But we always follow up and ask, you know, who did you go with? What was the decision? You know, what know what you know sort of what prompted this and sometimes they'll come up and they'll come out and tell you and say well you know you guys we loved you we would love to work with you but you were here and someone came in here and you know we're not we're not used to hearing the numbers be so low of what somebody who got the same brief as us was willing to do that project. Making almost like the error of dropping your price and racing to the bottom because it turns this whole thing into a commodity. Without saying a name, was it a big company that did that? Or have you noticed big companies doing that? Without mentioning names, obviously.

There's been a few. There's been a few of those. And those are incredibly frustrating. That means they're not doing well. That means they're in... There's always someone who's going to do it cheaper in that sense. But, Carol, if it's a big company doing that that means they're they got some bad debt that's usually the case it could be or it could be the nature of of the project where you know like the way

we found best to win in things like strategy and solving real problems, the only way you get those gigs is if you're talking to the right people. And what I mean by that is someone from that organization who is actively interested in growth or results or creating value versus maybe somebody further down that chain that's more transactional. They were hired to

yeah to get three quotes they don't they don't care that you're the best storyteller or strategist in the world they're like look dude i just i need this thing shot and somebody's willing to do it for one-tenth of what you quoted so we're gonna go with them right i got lunch in like 10 minutes it's a balancing act because you could do chris's approach and like push to get to the to the you know the director or whatever director of marketing or wherever you want to get to but they might just say you know what this is too much work scratch and that's what they always say yeah but on the flip side steps yeah exactly yeah i was just saying if there's more steps in the beginning, then it can get... There's more

points of where you can lose the lead if you're trying to get in front of the right people all the time. And like as Dario said, and you said, it's a balancing act. You have to really figure out if this is one of those situations where you should be pushing for the higher ups to get in touch with, or if this is, it is what it is type of project right exactly yeah and it's about figuring out what that opportunity is as early as possible uh yeah that's that's that's really important yeah and projects like for example events event highlights and things like that it's very those are the types of projects where it can be very straightforward where yeah you you know what usually this entails and you know whatever this person is telling you the

same thing's going to be mentioned by the their suit their directors or their vps so you can confidently pitch based on that and based on past experience. It's when it's much more tailored content that's very specific, like probably like these types of projects, Chris, that you deal a lot of. That is the situation where you need to get in touch

with the right people, where if they want to create a campaign to promote a lot of different things. How do you know if like that will only work with one deliverable? Cause it's like, it goes back to that kind of classic approach where sometimes people try to jam pack 50 different messages into one video and that never works. Sometimes you, uh, it's better to let them know. It's like, Hey, your budget will be better, um, put to use if you plan for two or three deliverables, each with a specific message.

And this is how it can be done. Those are the situations where you need to be talking to the right people. It's not like, hey, how much can you make a video for that's 30 seconds? It's like, that's no information. You could do that later in the sales process, Kiril, after you close them, because then you will be put in front of the higher ups and everyone else. You always have those introductory meetings, those onboarding meetings. That's when you can start to lay the seeds and just water them slowly throughout the process. And you can create opportunities from thinner. So like, let's take the, like the event coverage thing as an example. You know, a lot of the times they, they, they know what they want.

They want the standard. We want a small team to come and capture everything and capture this speaker and this and this, and then make a highlight video, you know, which is a piece of cake. But we find, for example, at events or conferences that have been planned for a very, very long time. Well, this is an opportunity where this host or this brand

is going to have all of their VIPs in one place at one time, which in today's world never happens anymore. So there's a huge opportunity for us to have you know a small but skilled component of that production be there to you know capture case studies or testimonials or what have you um where that's really good now it's not just an event video you're you're using that

event to give them a year's worth of content. We had one a few months ago where they were hosting their sort of, you know, their annual C-suite get together in Toronto. And, you know, the initial conversation was, hey, we're all going to be together. Can you come and get a few quick shots? And like, I don't have any budget. can you come and get a few quick shots? And like, I don't have any budget. But it quickly turned to the entire C-suite is going to be in one place at one time. Let's grab 15 minutes with each one of them, ask them a series of questions with a general lens of recruitment, retention, culture,

what it's like to work here. Tell us about your favorite thing, getting to know these people. And from that, you know, we were able to make like 15 really valuable videos that they use for recruitment, for biz dev. And so we turned that into a ton of content for them that they're still leveraging today. So you can turn those like

transactional things into deeper value but again if you're talking to a coordinator who just needs a quote you're not going to go very far with that threat yeah because they don't have the authority and the and the push to even do that or even to have the time to think about it. And the other unfortunate thing is even if you pitch these ideas to these people, they're only going to remember a portion of what you pitched and they're not going to have that. Well, that's why you send the proposal. You got to send that proposal, Kirill.

Well, no, that's part of it, right? But the idea is also you're pitching to the wrong person. So it's not going to have the level of in-depth ideas and enthusiasm even sometimes as if you do pitch it to someone who has the authority to make those decisions. It's always better to get in front of the right people, but you got to know when to be pitching to the right people. Absolutely. Yeah. to the right people. Absolutely, yeah.

And the last thing they're going to want to do is create friction for themselves or risk in their role where they're, you know, they were tasked with, say, getting five quotes for this event coverage. And next thing you know, they're trying to get a meeting with the CMO to pitch something way more expensive. That's just, that's unlikely to happen.

But if you are having to deal with a senior level decision maker who's growth-minded and thinking about how they can grow that business you know a cmo is going to be focused on how do we get you know better kpis uh make our marketing dollar stretch further, gain market share, whatever they are focused on. If you can help them do that, they are receptive to those conversations. Yeah, and it also varies. Got me thinking again. It also varies sometimes.

I might have been leaving some ideas out. Yeah. Dara, we always got to try to keep striving for more if possible. That's essentially what Chris is saying. And yeah, the other case is also the, like, it depends on also if you're being brought on through like a third party, right? A lot of the time is also if you're working through a marketing company, an ad company, or an events company, which is also a lot of the time the case because brands need events, event managing companies to handle all aspects of it. And video and photo usually is just one portion of that. So yeah, all, all varies for sure. You know, but you know, even just again,

like back of the napkin creative session here so say um you're being brought on by or requested to come on by an event company the company that put on this really big impressive event that their clients paying for and they just needed you know it was probably in their mandate from the client oh we need video coverage of xyz but if you are able to speak to the decision makers of the people putting on that event, you have some, some goodwill there saying, look at this amazing thing that you spent months and oodles of money creating. You should have somebody there to help tell that story and let the client fund that essentially. So, you know, depends on who you're talking to, but playing to, again, like the amount of work that goes into like

a big event is obscene. And so play to that when you're talking to those people. This is why I love, I love having these conversations with you, Chris, because nothing is ever black and white for you, you you know and you find these opportunities in places where a lot of other production companies and people don't necessarily think to even up attempt to pitch for it it's like uh the way you're phrasing it is like look at all the work that you've done uh to to put this together don't you want to look in you spark curiosity which is which is a good which is something you kind of i think is necessary especially in interaction with leads and in the sales process like make them curious about what could be done don't just be like you need this

you need this like have you thought about this totally is that even cross your mind? Yeah, if you're dealing with those senior decision makers, having the value conversation is a good one to have. Like, again, back to the example of like an event where everybody's in one place at one time. Just the sheer cost of what it took to get everybody in one place at one time whether people paid for their own travel or think about if you were flying in 15 executives to any one location what would like hotels and flights and meals and logistics what that would cost that's that's massively over exceed for sure and so you kind of can tell that story saying well this is great news. We don't have to. We don't have to fund that part at all. We just need to show up to this one place with a few cameras and talk to everybody important in one day.

So it's immediate. It's high value. value and there's a long-term benefit there where i mean truly in one or two days you can shoot enough stuff with just interviews to give them content for months or longer months yeah yeah so you hear that there make them curious make them curious no i always i always pitch x or stuff but I like how... It's the approach. Chris, well, Chris thought outside the box, right? Like they're coming to him for that and he... Like the whole, hey, if all the C-suite leaders are going to be there,

might as well do extra stuff with that. I like that idea. That's a clever one. I didn't think about that before. It's a no-brainer. And then if you want to even bolt another layer on top of that, it's not. So now if it's going to be all of the C-suite is going to be in one place at one time. Great opportunity. But now there's like a risk element. sure that they're going to hire someone that's not going to embarrass them in front of the C-suite, or that's not going to create a bad experience for the CEO of the company or what have you.

So that's where now the risk has gone up and there needs to be a cost for that because there's a lot of people that can go and shoot an event video but that list gets a lot smaller when you have to sit down with you know the ceo of a fortune 100 company for example yeah the what's it called the the filtering process becomes more strict from the client from the client side at that point because then they have to start to really think about like who can we afford to put in front of these people you know like originally if it was just like you said a simple straightforward event video it's like okay we could just hire this company you know this decent price and whatever it's like wait they have to go in

front of the client in front of our ceo okay let's make sure that everyone that's coming in from that company is they have a head on their shoulders so that they don't embarrass us. Totally. And it's, yeah, it's not to say that, you know, a smaller company can't do that thing or won't do an amazing job. But when you get really high up that chain, now they're willing to pay for certainty.

Hiring a firm that they're certain will execute, that has a plan B and a plan C and the experience and the cash and the insurance. And they've done this a thousand times. But again, when we all started out, we pushed for those opportunities when we didn't have the experience. And so that just leads you to have the experience and so um that just leads you to to have more confidence and win more stuff paying for certainty i like that that's a good way to pitch for stuff too right hey you're paying for that i mean we do that in our business all the time when you think about it there's that classic phrase the buy once cry once approach you know when it comes to some equipment that you might need, you know, like buy an expensive tripod, you know, with certainty it will last

you more than 10 years rather than spending a little less longer than the camera. Yeah. We still have even like, we still have tools that we bought like back in 2014 that we're still using to this day. And it's same it's it's that same approach that's their version of uh paying for the certainty right yeah paying for certainty lowering their risk um all of that good stuff you know i'm always fascinated when i hear stories of like how a branding agency was able to charge like let's say a million dollars for a logo refresh that looks pretty much the exact same. And it's not that it costs anywhere near that

to do the work. Yes, there was a lot of thought put into it, as we all know. But it's the risk of what if this is bad and also the economic value that that logo for that mega brand provides. And so you're the, if you're the people hired to shape that vision, um,

you should be rewarded. You know, they, they could just go on and ask an AI to, to make that logo and it would probably do a good job eventually. But there's still something to be said about being able to trust legends at what they do. Also, the AI logo wouldn't have copyright. There's no copyright protections on the AI logo.

So there's that too. That's right. That's another thing. Yeah, exactly. And for all of your copywriting needs now, use HookHound. Yeah.

HookHound. Yeah. This episode of Creative Grab Coffee has been sponsored by HookHound. Get your prompts, get your hooks.

Get your prompts now. Use code Chris for 10% off. Exactly. Of free. So it's free so it's free it's free all right well i think that that was a good point to end this conversation to end it off on so yeah chris thank you for coming on always a pleasure to have you and yeah yeah catch you on the next nice to see you guys always nice to chat and uh we'll grab let's go grab a cold one as soon as humanly possible. Absolutely.

You mean we can't grab a cold one with an AI or something now? Listen, maybe one day, but not this day. One day, but not today. Exactly. All right. 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 Marouz Mehran. Welcome to Canada Film Equipment. We are a boutique rental house based in Toronto. We are here to help you guys out with all production sizes. Feel free to contact us to get a quote if you are a production house and you're looking for lighting, camera packages, or lighting and group band packages. You can see our contact information in the link below. We are more than happy to help you guys out. Make sure you follow and subscribe to creativescrapcoffee.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. We got you covered. Come on down.

Audioprocess.ca. Don't forget to like, follow, subscribe, and all of the other internet things to creativesgrabcoffee.com. They'll be waiting for you, I'll be waiting for you, and we're all gonna have a real good time. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you on the next one.