Creatives Grab Coffee - Navigating the Video Production Landscape  (ft. Leveler Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 68

Episode Date: August 8, 2024

In the latest episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, we sit down with Patrick Blake from Leveler Media, a Philadelphia-based video production company known for its innovative approach and successful projects. Patrick shares his journey from freelancing in product photography to co-founding Leveler Media and navigating the evolving landscape of video production. With insights on industry shifts, the challenges of maintaining client relationships, and the nuances of running a creative business, this episode is packed with valuable lessons for both aspiring and seasoned video production professionals. Tune in to hear Patrick’s story and gain a deeper understanding of the business side of creativity.Chapters 00:00 Introduction and Background 02:56 The Accessibility and Rise of Video Production 06:08 Challenges of Being a One-Man Band 08:26 Navigating Budget Constraints and Client Expectations 11:15 Building Long-Term Relationships with Clients 21:14 Client Turnover and Adapting to Changing Circumstances 26:21 Navigating Budget Constraints 28:46 The Challenges of Editing 30:37 The Importance of the Right Music Track 36:01 Strategies for Effective Pitching 41:23 Building Trust Through Successful Examples 44:46 Researching Competitors for Tailored Pitches 47:39 Challenges and Rewards of the Video Production Industry 48:03 The Impact of the Pandemic on the Video Production Business 49:00 The Unpredictability of the Video Production Industry 49:38 The Excitement of Not Knowing What the Next Project Will Be 50:06 Securing Funding During the Pandemic 52:15 Tech Regrets and Email SecuritySPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140🎞️ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

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

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All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. We got Patrick from Levellerer media and you're based in Philadelphia, correct? That is correct. Yeah, I've been here for 12 years now 12 years amazing. Welcome to the show Patrick. Thanks for having me guys So before we kind of jump into it, just give a little quick backstory is into who you are and who leveler media is Yeah, sure. Um, I I was born and raised in this area. So I went to college here and never left,

which I feel like at the time in 2006, 2007, that wasn't really the trend for Philadelphia. You would graduate from school here and then you would go to New York or LA or Chicago. So I stayed and started my company here with two other guys. And that was in 2012 that we officially got the LLC paperwork all taken care of.

We had been making stuff together prior to that, just as freelancers. And then, yeah, it took the leap, and that's all I've been doing as a career ever since. With the same partners? It's just two of us now, but yeah, same guys. And you mentioned that you jumped right into turning it into a corporation and everything like that.

You just kind of dived head first into the industry or was it kind of like a little gradual insertion? Yeah, I went to school for photo, for photography. So I did like three or four years of just kind of freelance photo work, a lot of product photography. I probably took 10,000 car part photos for like Pep Boys and things like that, you know,

like just like any photo job. Anyone that would have a 24 year old like into their studio to run that sort of a thing, I was doing it. And then I just felt like we could do it, you know, like I don't know if that's cocky or whatever. It was like, it was just like, we could do this. I see the other work people are making that have been doing it for like a decade. And like, I know that we can do just as good if not better. So we all took the leap, which was a big one, you know As you guys know you're never guaranteed to make money or for that stuff to pan out

So feel lucky to be in this position, but you were doing you're doing photography first, right? I was yeah Video like wasn't a thing, you know, like I'm in my 40s. So like video wasn't really a thing when I was in school I learned film on a bolex camera, like shooting film. And then I kind of noticed that the world was becoming Harry Potter newspapers. So like anywhere that a photo would be was starting to become a little video, like the little embedded blog video or something.

I was like, I should probably like learn video. And the Canon was just starting to make the SLRs that would do photo and video capable stuff. So that was very entry level. You could buy a digital rebel and it could shoot 720 footage. And you were like, this is wizardry. This is magic. And that's kind of where really it started.

Yeah, that time when all those cameras were coming out, like the early 2010s, it was almost like a wild west or like a gold rush in a way when you think about it in terms of video production, because more and more people started realizing that, hey, this is something that can be more independent now. And there's a lot of possibilities, who knows where it can go. So a lot of people were kind of diving into it. And we were part of that as well. It was around like 2013, 2014,

when we really started dabbling more into it ourselves. And then it was in 2015 when Dario and I really launched forward to actually like start a company. Granted, we didn't go as headfirst into it as you guys probably did. We thought we did, but as you mentioned. Not even close. Not even close.

It was like, we were basically learning everything about the industry from the start at that point, even like just basic techniques and stuff like that, learning how to put, how to shoot, how to put videos together and things like that. How to light. Oh yeah, I mean, things like that you're always constantly learning with,

but it's like at least the very starting point. But like since you've now been kind of into it with your business partner for a while, like how has the industry kind of like shifted from your perspective, like from back then to now? I think there's just a lot, like you said, it's just accessible now. Like we were even chatting about it before we started the podcast.

Podcast apps make podcasting super accessible and now you're seeing a lot more of that kind of content and stuff. So it's just video has become more and more accessible. Kids are starting to make legitimate video work when they're teenagers. And I see some of it and I'm like, yeah, in like 30 years, these guys are gonna be like insanely good. So I think that's the biggest thing I have noticed is just there's a lot more one-man bands, a lot more freelancers,

a lot more like people trying to make things, which is good. I think it pushes everyone else. It makes you have to be better. It makes you have to be a better business person and all of that stuff. Have you noticed to be a better business person and all of that stuff.

Have you noticed that as a shift and also the requests from some clients, agencies or leads? Because we've noticed that with some agencies where they've gotten used to the idea of like, oh, let's get a video photographer hybrid and they will take care of everything on a shoot, which is really crazy when you think about it, like to put that much pressure. Like we had a lead recently reach out to us

about doing this project where they wanted to get all these like 20 reels done for video content. So they had a lot of video content they needed done and like 20 to 40 photos as well that are like edited specifically for like a catalog and I'm like, this is a very, very unique set of skills that like to try to put it onto one person, right? Like have you seen that too? We should also mention that we've only noticed agencies requesting something like this. Yeah, mostly agencies.

When it's like direct to a client, they don't, it doesn't come up at all actually. Interesting, yeah. I mean, I definitely have noticed a trend in people wanting to pay less money for content. That's the bottom line, is just paying less. Yeah, it's another way of paying less. Really, like when the pandemic stuff like really shook up the industry,

at least here, we like physically couldn't be running sets that had 10, 12 people. We just weren't allowed. We couldn't get that together. If we did, it would have cost so much extra to have COVID specialists and all the PPE stuff and all that and everything. I think during that time period, a lot of agencies and a lot of clients were like, well, we can just hire one person to make stuff in the interim while we're doing this. And then it just became like the default. So maybe that's part of it. I'm not saying that's

all where it came from. I think a lot of it is what we were talking about earlier, where it's just, if you've got the passion and the time and you don't mind working an 18 hour day, like you can do a lot of one man stuff yourself. I have zero interest in that. So I'm fine like when a client is like, Hey, we'll start talking and they'll be like, here's our budget for what we want to look for. I'm lucky to be in a position where I can just be like, no, thank you. You know, and and and a lot of times I think that Client or that person will come back to us a little bit later and be like, yeah Yeah, it turns out you get what you pay for

So like that's the best feeling. Yeah, so that's like part of it But you know try not to turn anything down really like I'll try and find a way to produce But try not to turn anything down really. I'll try and find a way to produce any. If you want to make something, photo, video, animation, podcast, whatever, I'll try and find a way to make it happen in your budget. Yeah. There's a difference between trying to adjust and allocate

the right resources for the right budgets versus saying, yeah, we'll do all of this for your budget. You know, it's a very different kind of toe you're lying, or line you're toeing, sorry. Toe you're lying, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely, that's probably a big thing, you know, for like doing this to teach younger folks

or like newer folks into the industry, Like ask people what their budgets are. Don't have like a hang-up about being like, oh man, I can't talk money with them. Like how are you supposed to make something if you don't know how much money they have to spend on it, you know? Like that's the best jobs that we do, the best clients that we have are the ones that come to us and they say this is how much money we have, what can you do with it? And then you're working in a, then you have your playing field and you can be like,

here's all the pieces that we can put onto that, you know? Yeah. I mean, one thing to also mention is that if you're also undercutting or other companies or you're basically trying to be this hybrid one-man band. The thing that a lot of people will learn this and they will learn it the hard way most often than not is that you will burn out at one point or another.

We have a friend of ours who was like that and he's like a unicorn. He's able to do a lot of things and a lot of things really well. And a lot of agencies and companies have wanted to work with him because of that. And a lot of agencies and companies have wanted to work with him because of that. And what do you think happened after a few years

of constantly being busy, constantly being overworked to the bone? He started getting burnt out, he started getting injured. And it's unfortunate to see because that also kills your longevity in the industry when you start to push yourself that far really early on because what you do to yourself in terms of burnout in your twenties is really gonna give you like a, not a life expectancy, I guess, for your career,

but it's like, you know, you have a certain kind of expiry in terms of like how much you can put into it, right? Over time. So you have to figure out- Yeah, it's just not sustainable. Exactly, exactly. And you really learned how unsustainable something is the second you have to hire someone else to do it, right?

Because then it's like, oh yeah, I can do a one minute video and 50 headshots for a thousand bucks, no problem. And then the second you're like, oh shoot, I'm not able to work that day or myself. Yeah, and you can't find anyone. And then it's like who are you? How are you gonna find someone to do that? It's like not to mention you're also categorizing yourself as that low budget option so that client will never see you as anything more than that and when you do try to

Like get a raise or charge more they're just gonna like, well, I got you for that price. So I guess I can just find someone else that'll do for that price. It's just evaluating the value. Exactly. It's just creating problems for everyone involved is creating problems for them. And then for us, especially because they'll go use them and then talk to us. And then they're like, well, we're expecting that. And then we've got to go like hell no. Yeah. And look, everyone's rates go up. Freelancers rates go up. Everyone's rates go up. So a lot of clients understand that.

Bigger clients, bigger agencies are like, yeah, every year there's going to be a little bit of an increase. And some people don't, though. And then you have to have that uncomfortable conversation with them where they're like, well, we got this same thing from you two years ago for this amount of money. And it's like, oh, well, that was two that was, that was two. That was then. Is that

still common? Because like, everything's gone up so much since the pandemic that I think it's just become accepted that everything's expensive. Like if it costs 40,000, everything's gone up. Okay. Yeah, you'd think that. Yeah, you'd think that. I love it when we get pushed back on stuff that's not even like profit margin for us. Like if we have to travel somewhere and I'm like, this is how much the flights were and there are people want to like haggle and I'm like, this is how much the flight was. I'm not flying out there for vacation. Like flying out there because you need me to be there. That's the stuff that really grinds me like when they're trying to haggle on just the

logistics of it happening. And the one thing we also touched upon about how once, and this is like something that you kind of get reminded of this as you go on through your career, because like, you know this, but then you kind of get reminded of it from certain situations you deal with leads is where once you work with a certain client at a certain price

point, they're always going to think of you in that kind of price range. The second they need something a lot larger, they're gonna look elsewhere. That's just naturally how it is, right? And like what- That goes for companies too, not just freelancers. Yeah.

I'm talking about companies specifically. I'm talking about clients because we have an example of something that we did was there was this one organization that we worked with for a number of years from like 2017 till 2021, roughly. And we did a lot of, it was like a lot of education-based content. They're an organization that doesn't typically

have a lot of budget or anything like that. So we always tried to work with them to kind of get them something decent for what they had. And we worked with them for a number of years, built a great relationship with the team there. And then we got a call, I think last year, late last year. So during the pandemic, they kind of paused work

and then late last year, they finally got in touch with us again. We usually did like their annual. Annual conference. Yeah, event conference. Yeah, it wasn't massive, but it was something big enough where like, you know, we would come in with like a few people

Film it recorded and promo video and then like full conference video So we got hired by the um again to do it and then A day before the shoot. I know I looked at I reached I called dario and I said I just noticed that we're not doing the the main conference. They had two so one Yeah, first day would be like a big one second would be like a smaller one. Yeah just like a small like kind of like question period with one of the speakers and then and then there's like oh that's odd so we went and filmed it and then at the event they showcased this like highly highly produced promo video that was done for the conference and turns out they hired another company to do that video

and to do the conference the day before. And we talked to the contact there and we were like, so wait, if you hired them, why didn't you hire us for this one or why didn't you hire us for the other one? And it's like all the communications, people wanted to do something really big, so they wanted to hire some other company to do this and they were like, how much people wanted to do something really big so they wanted to hire some other company and do this and they were like,

how much did you guys pay for this? And they said, oh this was like $35,000 when we were working with less than $4,000 budgets before that. And we're like, hold on, what? You paid $35,000 for that? And they're like, yeah, I'm like, that was terrible video, like it was bad.

Like in terms of what the value was, it's like, but, but that goes to show in those people's mind, that's what your price point was. It, they weren't looking at the quality so much. It was almost like they were looking at how much they were paying for in the psychological factor kind of came in and that's how they kind of went about it. And then we just realized, all right, I guess that that's it with this client. Because yeah, I think that's good to bring up. That's like a great thing for younger folks too,

starting out. If you're trying to start your own company and you're just two or three people at the beginning, don't let people know that you're just two or three people at the beginning, just straight up. I'm not saying you have to lie to them, but don't necessarily volunteer that you're just two guys Because then like you just said in your in their head, you're just two guys. You're gonna get the smaller budgets

You're not like a robust agency team where So much budgets for those giant agency teams and stuff goes to paying for the office They're in and all the food that they eat and all the giant meeting rooms that they have and everything. So you know the other part of that is also the contact you have because we found this out a little later but I think what happened with that client is that the head of that department got in touch with like the communications people at the university. Yeah. And I and the communications people have the money, right? They have versus

like the specific department only has like a portion of that. So I think I'm pretty sure that's what happened. So I guess another lesson in that is like also know who to get in touch with at these organizations, because sometimes that specific department has pennies and Yeah, you know the apartment communications usually has like the bags Yeah, I mean communications I would say we've done a lot of higher ed work a good if you're looking a number one, I think it's harder to just fish for colds Client work now also than it's ever been because there's such a wash of people doing that.

I think about the amount of emails I get every day of just straight, we could narrow it down to just people that do voiceovers. Oh my God. I probably get 10 emails a day from people that want me to hire them to put me on their whatever roster, V like, yeah, finding places within companies that are going to have the budget and are looking for the work that you do. The alumni associations, here's a little inside tip, almost every school has an alumni association

and their whole job is basically fundraising. They have budgets. Oh, fundraising, they have budgets. Oh, interesting. They have budgets. Let me write that down quickly. Because their job is to make the school look good and to get people to want to donate. Oh, yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah, so there's definitely, you just learn these things working with people. And again, keep an eye on what their titles are, what departments they work in and those are the folks that you can then like, hey, you know, if you guys are ever looking to do something, we can help out with that. The biggest step I got was the communications department has all the money versus the marketing department because I always thought it was marketing. Like you do marketable content, you go straight to marketing and then I found out from another person

It's like no. No, you got to go to the communications people. I was like, oh they give the marketing people their money Yeah, that's yeah, that's what they told me and I was like, oh my god. That makes a lot of sense now. Yeah, but Just sometimes you just lock into it too. You know, it's timing. It's a lot of timing. It's such a huge thing. Man, we've been doing this for myself, outside of the company, 20 years I've been doing media creation in some form or another. And sometimes you just hit right. Someone has budget they need to use. They bring you in to do a tiny project.

They love it. They like working with you. That's why I think try not to be an asshole. Like, they like working with you. And then maybe when they get next year, when the new stuff rolls out, they give you another call to come in and work on some more things.

So. Yeah. And it just goes to show, like the main lesson from before was just that, sometimes if you get a client at a certain price range, it's going to be very hard to convert them into a higher one. Take that client for what their face value is at this stage in your career, work with them, develop, grow,

and then eventually find other ones. Like you're, like, you're not going to work with a $500 client and turn that into a $50,000 client. That's, yeah. I mean, it doesn't have a client. Right. It's not have that kind of overhead either You know

I think if you do get in with a company or a client or a school or whatever that you know has money Tell them that you can do bigger things too. Like I think there's a big Cross the board in our industry people don't want to talk about money And it's like this is all these people talk about all day long in their other jobs Like they're doing this with you because they want to make more money. So it's fine to be like, hey, if you guys want us to work on a bigger project with a larger budget, we can do that. That's a fine thing to say to a client.

Hey, we're going to knock this job out of the park. Next time, if we had a little bit more money, we'd be able to do this, this, and this. We've definitely grown relationships with people that we started working with eight years ago into much larger budget jobs doing that. Also, you've kept long-term relationships that long with students for eight years. Yeah, try not to throw too many actual client names

and stuff, but University of Pennsylvania is one of our best clients. You know, A number one, I love working for them because almost everyone that works there is insanely intelligent, so it's fantastic working with people that have three types of doctorates. You're like, wow, you just soak in their knowledge while you're working with them and stuff,

but then you can kind of grow. They have major university budgets. So you know, like this job might be a $1,800 one-off interview or whatever, but then stay in contact with them. And maybe when that bigger job comes down, you get that phone call. And we've been working for UPenn for like eight years now. For your long-term clients, like have your contacts there stayed in that company that whole time or have they? So U-Pen, yes, yeah, U-Pen we've been lucky

enough to have people there that hire us who have still been there and have actually not just been there but like moved up into higher positions and different departments but it's also good if you have a good working relationship with someone at a company and they move some to another company, just be like, they bring you with them. What's up? You still doing video work for these people? You still hiring contractors for these people? And sometimes that's like a great way.

Because I noticed with us, our turnover rate with our clients is about three years ish. On average, yeah. And I think it's because they'll usually leave that company go somewhere else And then yeah bring us along with them And then either will still stay in like we'll still be able to do work with a new person there Or maybe that person is bringing on their other video production has everyone has their everyone has a guy You know when you think about it, you got to be that person's guy, you know, or that person's a video company. And we felt the sting on both ends of that,

getting work from someone that has moved and also losing work because our contact has left that company and the new person has their people. Yeah, so it definitely can go both ways. Yeah, it's almost like a natural progression where it just kind of works out like that. And you do good work with a company for two to three years and then yeah, people, especially now,

because now in our industries or in those industries, typically a lot of people are trying to job hop so that they could also have career progression, they can increase their salaries and things like that. Or to two years is the average. Yeah, so it's kind of in line with the client turnover and it's just like always expect that if you land a new Client you have maybe two to three years and then if you're lucky you might get more time with them

But yeah people people move around in jobs I've seen it many times where we've had great working relationships with a lot of different clients and Even just moving around in those companies. They get a completely different role So they they're not really responsible for that aspect of the job anymore. Like that I've seen happen actually more often than not because then, because they're too busy like working on their own stuff and you know, like trying to learn this new role.

They don't have time to try to push you with the new communications person or the new marketing person, you know, it's nothing personal. They like, everyone has their own stuff that they have to deal with. So it's, you have to adapt as a production company to those turnovers. Sometimes you just have no, like they're just going to, it's like going to a restaurant, you've been to the same restaurant a whole bunch of times, you're like, let's try something

different, you know, like trying not to take it personally. Cause sometimes it's just that where they're like, let's work with someone else. Cause we want it, you know, we want it to look a little different or we want to see what it's like with someone else. So that happens. And it's hard to not take it personally. You feel like wounded by it, like offended. You're like, oh, oh, man, they're working. You like see, especially now with social media, you like see one of your clients like working

with a different video team and you're like,il sends me those posts all the time. I would be like, look who they are with now, you know? Because I see it. I'm just like, who cares, man? And Kyril's like, look, there's another company there. It's just something that's going to happen, you know? Yeah, for sure. You're curious.

You're curious. That's why. So it's like, oh, who's there now? I've had, you know, sometimes that has happened and I have a relationship that's good enough with the person that's the client to just be like, yo, what's up? Why didn't we get this phone call? Why you do this? There's usually always a good reason. Don't take it personally.

The most common reason is budget. Is that a lot of companies have cut their budgets. So that's like what's the most common thing. And that's why a lot of, that's why we don't take it personally. And that's why a lot of people shouldn't take it personally. It's that you're, you just, they just can't afford you anymore.

They need to cut budgets in certain areas. Like we had one other client where we did a lot of educational content with. It's funny, all my examples are educational. Yeah, I know, right. But it's a good example of like where they might get an influx of cash to really work on a few big projects that they need, but then they don't need any more work

after that and they're not going to be spending 10, 20, 30 grand on a single video if they already have a lot of what they need. And if a lot of their needs are smaller bite-sized content, they're either going to try to hire someone internal or try to do something very bare bones and then like, that's it. And then if they need something big again, then they'll come to you. But again, budget is the biggest determining factor of like how long

a business relationship can go in. Totally. Yeah. We've definitely lost clients because they've hired like one in-house person to just crank out content, you know, and they're paying that person less money for a whole year than they're paying us to make one commercial for them. You know, so it's like, I get, as a business owner, I get it. Like I try not to get mad when I know people are doing things because just like financially that's the best thing for them.

Like that's how it makes the most sense. There are DPs that I would love to work with on like every single one of our projects, you know, it's just not financially viable sometimes. You just can't give them that chunk of the budget and because then everything else suffers, you know, so it's like, you know, and I'm sure that they know that, you know, like people that we've worked with on a bunch of projects, they're like, Hey, why didn't we get called for this one? It's like, they know that we just didn't have enough money to pay for them. You're just too good.

That's true. They're probably, our freelancers are probably going through the same stuff. I didn't even think about that. Especially when you have a list of your go-tos, it's like, you're not able to give it to one of your main guys. It's like either, well, some of the time it's like, you know, they're not available to, it's like, you know, the project was not that big enough that we needed to bring outside help,

especially if you have like people within your team that can handle a lot of aspects of it, especially if the budget is very tight and you wanna make sure the company is also profitable at the same time, right? Totally. That's the biggest growing pain in the beginning. My goodness, man.

I can't tell you how many jobs we did where at the end of everything, I was like, we made like $100. Because the whole budget goes into, you want it to be good, especially in the beginning when you're trying to build your visual voice and build that collection of work that you can then use to get other work. You want it to be as good as it can be. There's definitely that fine line of, well, we lost money or didn't make any money on

this. Was it worth it to get this final piece that we can then shop to other clients or show in a meeting or add to a pitch deck. Yeah, it depends on the project as well. Like you shouldn't be losing money on a quarterly report video, you know? Yeah, no, exactly. You don't need to be hiring Roger Deakins

to be shooting that or anything like that. Imagine that. Yeah. Yeah. He'll make it beautiful. I remember the first time someone gave us $5,000 to make like, oh my God, it was like 11 final deliverables or something like that, but it felt like we won the lottery.

Oh yeah. We were like 25, like we were like, man, these guys just gave us this money. We only had like two examples of commercial work at that point. And you're just excited to do it and do a good job and hopefully keep that. Until you start editing. Oh, well, look, I make no bones about editing is punishment. It is a punishment job.

You have to be a certain sort of sicko to love editing. Find yourself a really good editor and like make that person your world and your best friend and hang on to them and be good to them and send them flowers and do all that stuff. Flowers. Anyone that's like sat in a dark room for four days and then had a client be like, no, this isn't it, like knows the sting of editing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's not easy also communicating that too. a client be like, no, this isn't it, like, knows the sting of editing. Yeah. And it's not easy to also communicating that too.

It's like, when it's like, oh, that's like, this isn't good. We have to redo it. It's like, oh, fuck, now I got to tell them about this. You know, it's like, I got to reiterate this. Yeah, it's tough. Or you'll spend like a ton of time on some, like cutting something and they'll be like, we don't like this music track. And you're like, well, it can't just swap it out.

The whole piece is cut to this track. You know, like, put stuff like that as an editor, you're just like, it's easy as a producer to just be like, yeah, we'll swap that track out and we'll find something else that works. And then the person that was editing it is like, what have you done for those situations when like there's been like pushback on the music? Because normally what we do is like we go into it already having chosen the song with the client

and very rarely after we switch is very rare that process like have they wanted to change a song. It depends. It's on a client to client basis. There are some people I know that will be like A number one I think just the music that's in our work is something we take very seriously and and it's something that I think it's overlooked by a lot of young filmmakers or video makers so just like I'll just grab like a canned track off artlist and throw it in there and it's great and like you can make the crappiest video like 50% better by just putting a track in there that like hits and feels like the right mood and is catchy and is like good.

And so we put a lot of time into that before we even start doing anything. We don't always share that with the client first because sometimes when it's disjointed from the imagery, they don't, they can't conceive of it. You know. Another learning curve thing is, is realize that a lot of people that don't have a creative mindset or a creative background are not going to be able to visualize things or not be able to like understand these

two things together will become this thing. So we will wait a lot of times for the rough cut for them to hear what the track is. Interesting. But it's always, you know, it depends on how much of like actually how brutal I think it will be on the editor to have to swap. You know, I'll make a fight sometimes for an audio track of being like, no, trust me, we listen to 400 audio tracks. This is the best one for this project. Like, let's sit with it for another day. Like, that doesn't always work, but sometimes it does. So I have a process.

I have a process for that. Like in terms of like the music selection, it really is like a skill that you have to develop over time because it's like, you have to hear it. And the one thing that a lot of people don't realize when they're picking this music, you also have to feel that it works. You know, it's like, when I'm picking music

for any of our projects, I have to kind of have like a little bit more of a connection than just, oh, that sounds good. You know, it's like, hmm, I can feel that this is how it can go, this is where it can go, like the potential, right? And to your point, it is a challenge sometimes when you only present them with this is the best song ever, right?

So what I do, I try to find three of those at least, at least three of those songs that either one, I can make work for the project. And it's going to hit those same notes in effect. This way it gives the client, it's not an illusion of choice, you know, but it's like you're giving them choice and options so they don't feel like this is the only thing

and we have to look for something else. And then you can obviously give a recommendations. These are the three best ones. This one I think is the one that works best, but we can make either one work. Most often, 80% of the time, the client will go with the recommended song. And then there are situations like something that happened last year where it took an entire month

for a client to really boil down a song that they really wanted. Where it's just you sometimes get hit with some clients where like they have like one time sometimes. this the one yeah yeah yeah like that honestly Kyril is a specific like one like that's what I'm saying those are outliers I'm joking that there are outliers out there where it's like very big outlier I presented so many songs no but that is a particular type of thing that doesn't happen often yeah I know one thing's rare, some clients are just that way. They're just going to try and feel like they need to get their money's worth out of it. No, it's not even that.

It wasn't even that. It's just I think when you're going into that project, it was going to be very like, anyways, that situation doesn't happen often. I was just joking that it's an outlier. I was just joking that it was an outlier. I was just joking that it was an outlier. If you're in that situation with that type of client, you knew going into it because we knew going into it was going to be like that. But it was one of those things where we needed something with a portfolio.

But one thing we do for the... Music is a music thing for people to be like, I don't like that. You know what we do? We also present it with the storyboard So like yeah, we kind of let them listen to it as we're presenting the storyboard as well Rather than just here's the song listen to it So there's visuals attached to it And then by then we are hoping that their creative side gets unlocked a little bit and they can kind of see the video Yeah, and like usually that's the hardest part is when you get the, to get the skeleton right

is I feel like the biggest hurdle that you have to get with a client. Once you have the skeleton for the video figured out, the meat is easy to adjust in terms of the content. You know, you could always like move it around a little bit, adjust it, you know, make it fit and work. But if you don't get the skeleton right, then you're blind at that point.

You know what we should do? We should probably just create like a video of the storyboard. We've talked about that. It's hard to do that. Just put a song on it as well and record some VO on what's that AI voice website called? 11 Labs? Yeah, we did something like that already. I know, but we could just create like a video Yeah, just do like the images on the video with the vo with the music that could probably be an easier way of showing them Yeah Depends on how much uh depends on how much uh in depth you can go with the the pre-production depending on what that's yeah That's quick. You just put all the the images on a timeline. Yeah, put the song and then anyways just mental note for later after this call, we'll talk about it.

We'll see. We'll see. You were saying Patrick. I was just like, you know, we used to go like all out to in like pre pitches and things before we knew even if we were going to do the job and stuff a lot of time. How, how, like how involved on how to amount of work developed? How developed would your pitch get? We've pitched on some very large projects where you're working on a pitch for like two weeks before it's presented, you know, and then not only is it just one concept, a lot

of agencies will want like, give us three concepts. And you know you have like, you're up against multiple other people that are also bidding on the job. Like that's the kind of stuff that really burns me out is when I like put a lot of mental effort and thought and creative energy and like my soul into pitching a thing or like building ideas that we think are great.

And just, you never ever had a chance out of at the gate like sometimes an agency just needs three bids to show to the client they are you know who they're working with and You just never had a chance, you know, and like those are the ones that really sting Like I never know for sure when that's the case But sometimes you're like we did it like this is good. And then you just don't hear from them. And then like a week later, you're like, hey, what's up? And they're like, oh yeah, sorry. We went with this like other company.

It's like, you just knew you were gonna do that right out of the gate. So you just wasted like two weeks of my life. But you know. Do you ask them when that is the case? Cause Dario has asked many times when we've pitched on projects like that and they've

told us either it's like always between us and one other person or it's like, oh yeah, we had someone pick that up. I don't even ask anymore, Kirill. We did at one point. We used to ask just out of curiosity. Now it's just- Yeah. I have before, I've never asked afterwards just because I feel like it is what it is

at that point. There's no reason in like mucking it up. I have asked before to people that we had pitched like multiple jobs to and never gotten any of them like I have been like candidly sidebar chat. Like, are you guys just asking us for these every single time? Because you need three bids and you know that you're never going to give one to us. You know, like, oh, you call it. This has been like multiple times now where it's not. And the answer was no.

And I believed them, but you know, a lot of it, they're not going to say yes. They're not going to say yes. Exactly. You're never going to tell me like, Oh yeah, I've just been wasted here. But like, uh, who's pitching, who's pitching your bid to the client, You know, in those situations, we're not the ones that are in the room with the client showing them the pitch decks we've put together with the directors treatments and like all that stuff. You know, it's like, who and if that person has a horse in the race, they're like, they're like not going to give you the

same pizzazz that they're giving to the people that they want to do it. So that's another one. You just have no control over that. You got to pass them an envelope. Next time you ask them candidly, pass them an envelope. It wouldn't surprise me if that goes down. But yeah, I don't know. So it's a tough thing. We're in an industry that can hurt your feelings pretty easily a lot.

So you get a thick skin. Patrick, here's what you do next time with that particular lead. When they ask you for a bid, you create a PDF document with your company logo on the title slide. The next slide is just literally is like 50 grand, then the next slide is thank you.

See what they say. It's like, and then it's like, you want more in depth, than reach out to me again. Then you'll know if they're actually curious. No, you want to know a way you send them the previous one you sent and just change the numbers. Yeah, definitely. That's how you know if they looked at it.

Gotten more in the habit of like, here's a really great template for what we're trying to do. Like, let's just rearrange like pieces and text inside of this to make it fit what we're doing. That just comes with doing it a lot. And you like, you find out what works and what doesn't work. Like, Hey, this is a pitch that has been successful for us. Like, let's just repopulate this with the new content that we need to be doing.

Yeah. That's what we do. Yeah. That's what we do. That's an ever evolving thing as well. It keeps improving with every pitch you do. That's the good thing about these templates and working off of one. That way you see what's working, what isn't working,

especially when you're presenting it to a lead or a client, what you find is important, how much you should focus on certain aspects of it. It's like, oh, you only need to, you don't need to show them like 10 examples. Here's like two or three really good case studies that are relevant to the project that can showcase what is possible.

And then, yeah, and then just go forward with that. But there's never one pitch that is gonna be the greatest pitch of all time. Your best pitch is your next pitch. That's the best way to make it. Yeah, for sure. And don't be afraid to show other people's work and be like, we want to make this thing.

Yeah. You know? I've thought about doing that. I always felt weird about like, because then, does that work for you? Have you done that? Yes. It works, huh? OK.

Yeah. Because you're not always going to have like a one for one for what they're looking for I know and sometimes you show them things that again a lot of people in certain jobs don't have that creative Like expansion, you know So you can show some people a video and be like I want you to like just look at the visuals in this Don't worry about the content is different. The music is not right. The mood is not right.

But just look at this filmmaker, this DP's footage. This is why we're showing you this example. Some people can't do that. It is what it is. They just can't do it. So sometimes it is very beneficial to just go find something that's almost a one for one that they're looking for that you have not made,

but you think is good and you can do it in the budget, tell them that. Don't lie. Don't be like, hey, we did this, but then be like, this is what we would like to do for you guys. And that definitely, you can bear fruit from that for sure. I mean, when you think about it, you're also, whenever you're putting together storyboards and you're using reference images, especially from websites like Frameset or anything like that to kind of like showcase, oh, here's a wide shot we're're gonna shoot for this. Here's a medium. Here's a close-up.

It's a lot easier to go and find those reference images on these websites than to literally go through all your videos like, oh, here's a wide that we can use and then screenshot that, adjust it, save it, put it, you know. You have to find ways to efficiently pitch in terms of ways to save your time. Like you shouldn't be spending like weeks on one pitch. You know, like if you're able to figure out a way to pitch at least one, two, three pitches a week, you know, you're increasing your odds of also getting more jobs as a result.

So. Depends on the project size, Carol. That too, that too. If he's doing like big commercial stuff then like you do. Yeah, of course. The client I was specifically talking about where I felt like sometimes we just never had a horse in the race. You know, these are like $100,000. Yeah, it's it's high level stuff. Yeah. For us. It's all relative.

It's all relative. Yeah, for us. It's more like middle of the road. So it's like a lot fat like our our, uh, how quickly it takes us to create a proposal is fairly fast. Cause again, I'm just swapping out like case studies and just some other project information than like the estimates. Right. But I actually just remembered I also, what I'll do is I try to get their, uh, competitors out of them during the intro calls and everything.

And then I might pull references from their competitors. And to like the, um, the pitch just so they can also see like, Oh, okay. So-and-so is doing this work. We can do that, but with our style essentially, or it's like, this is what they're doing wrong. Here's what you can do better. And then stand out from them, right? Which is a good way to kind of the one good thing about doing that

also shows the client that you've done your research, you've looked into them, you've looked into their industry, and they might be a little bit more inclined to trust where you're coming from when it comes to suggesting things, because then it's not like you're just, yeah, it's not like you're just pitching blindly.

Be a little careful with telling people what they're doing wrong, because I've seen that advice a lot and like pitch things or oh No, not the lead. I'm not I've seen that though where people are like, yeah find their pain points Tell them what they're doing wrong to and it's like you want to piss a room of people off like immediately like come into like here's all the things you guys did wrong with your last video project like and how I'm gonna fix them and Oh, no.

We've never talked smack about another video. You can tell them what their competitors are doing wrong and what they can do better than what their competitors are doing wrong. So it's like you're kind of doing that subtly putting it on the illness on them. You just have to be strategic about it. Competitor B is doing something really wrong with their video What we suggest is doing something like this which will really blow them out of the water, you know And then they'll be like, oh, yeah, let's blow them out of the water

Well, most of the time what we're saying is like your competitors doing this and you're not that's that's you that's Majority of our conversations like you guys aren't doing this but they are You should look into that. You should. We should. We should do something similar. I mean, yeah, let's try to make it better. But you know, at least that's a starting point. That's a baseline to that's the, how do you say, the baseline of quality that you should be looking at.

And also checking out the competitors also gives you ideas on what to pitch. Oh yeah. As you can see, it's like, oh yeah, they could do this type of video. I didn't think about that. Great, let me add that to the list. Especially when you're pitching in an industry that you're not too familiar with a lot of the time, because then you're like, what type of video content

would actually be useful for an organization like this in their industry? Like for example, just doing a general promotional video for a manufacturing client might not be as important as say, creating a series of content, a series of videos that showcases their entire process because they need that as evergreen content for the future.

That might be a bigger focus than say, yeah, yeah, or training videos. They might need more training videos versus like say a financial organization that has a conference that needs an event video. So all about knowing what to pitch and how to pitch it to these leads. I want to know more about Philadelphia. Like what's the scene like down there?

It's getting it's getting healthier, you know, like I said, in probably like, you know, oh, five to oh, eight. Like I said in probably like, you know, 05 to 08, if you were at one of the universities here getting a creative degree in production or whatever, you know, you almost certainly were then going to move to New York or LA afterwards. Like that was just kind of the pipeline. Like a lot of people just are here now, are staying here. I think the population of Philadelphia has like exploded since I graduated college. And it's just more accessible to do video work now. So we have like a pretty healthy community of folks, freelancers, agencies

like all the way from like the very best people that are working on million dollar budget stuff down to we need someone that can do the one man band like you know $1,000 in a day job. So there's just a lot more of it which is more competition for us but then it's also more freelancers that can work with us and more clients that are like hey we all need to go to a New Yorker and LA agency to make the thing. We can hire someone that's closer to home. So that's been great.

What are some of the more dominant industries that you work, or that need video in that, in Philadelphia? Oh, I mean, Ed's and Med's, man. Philadelphia is, I was talking to Dario about it. Like, Philadelphia has, it might be the most universities per square mile of any city in the country. So we have an insane amount of colleges and universities

in this area and which comes along with them, almost every one of them has a hospital attached to it, you know, Jefferson, Penn. Oh, wow. So they all have like massive, you know, that world. So there's a lot of Eds and Meds healthcare stuff if you can get into that. We don't actually do a ton of healthcare stuff. We work with universities on like STEM projects, you know, science and education and stuff

like that. But it's not like healthcare based, which I kind of like. Doing pharma work is great and it can pay the bills, but it's also kind of soulless sometimes. It's very dry. Yeah, yeah, it has to like, there's just a lot of things you have to make to to make it not as good. You know, like something worse than when a client's like, make it worse on purpose, and you're like, yes. Yeah. Shake the camera.

you know, like okay. So yeah. Shake the camera. Yeah, we're lucky enough to work with like a pretty wide range of clients. We've been doing a lot more work with the major sports teams, which is awesome. Just growing up in this area, you have no choice but to love sports, I feel like.

You know, like Philadelphia has a stigma about it of being like a rough, tough, gruff sports town and is like, there's a lot of truth to that. So doing work for the Phillies and the Eagles and the Sixers is like, man, like that's like, if you told 11 year old me, you'd be in the dugout at a Phillies game during a game producing a video for them.

Like while it's happening, I would be like, cool, sign me up every single time. You know, so like stuff like that makes it worth it. Yeah. Oh yeah, doing any kind of like sporting event, a lot of the time those Those are always those are always exciting projects because there's a lot of there's a lot happening constantly and especially It may not be so much, you know, if you're from the fan perspective, you know You're sitting you're watching the game and you're focusing on everything there

But when you're filming something like the behind-the-scenes aspect of it, there's a lot of like, okay This is about to happen. We have to go and run over to this side of the field We have to go here. We have to run here. Like we haven't done a lot of those, but we have done like some sporting projects mostly on the freelance side of things. And you know, those are a lot of fun. It's harder to kind of break into that though in Toronto because a lot of the time they go to much bigger agencies

in terms of what their needs are. But you never know. It could one day just be a matter of timing and getting some other kind of work. It depends. Like some of our, we've done a couple videos for the Phillies and for the Eagles that came through a larger agency that's in Philadelphia who we love and we work with and they're great to us

and hopefully continue to make things with us into the future. But we've also just like, you know, the Sixers, we make stuff we're currently working on a project for them right now that I can't talk about because of NDA stuff. But like, they just come directly to us for that. So there's no middleman there, you know, like, so that's that kind of stuff is I'm a big sports sports fan. So that stuff is great to me. And the budgets aren't always great, if I'm being honest, because they know it's a cool job and people will want to do it.

But we love it because it is a cool job and we get to go meet a bunch of athletes and celebrities and talk about sports with them and that's great. Nothing makes me happier than doing that. and talk about sports with them and that's great. Nothing makes me happier than doing that. There's nothing like doing a project or doing work that you're super passionate about at the same time. I guess you could call that the cool tax for the work that you're doing.

Cool taxes exist, absolutely. It just sucks when the clients know it and they leverage that to their advantage all the time. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it's almost like to an embarrassing point where they'll ask you about a project and then tell you how much money they have to spend and you're like, guys.

All right. Let's make it work. You're pushing the cool tax pretty hard right now. But yeah, but you want to always say yes to the stuff like that if you can. That's the hard right now. But yeah, but you know, you want to you want to always say yes to the stuff like that if you can. And that's the high profile stuff. You know, we won a gold Addy Award last year for one of our Phillies pieces and stuff. And like that's nice. A Go Daddy Award. A gold Addy.

The Addy Awards are something I guess maybe not in Canada. I don't know. I feel like I've heard of it. I thought you said GoDaddy. I'm like what? No, I mean, yeah, they probably sponsor something. I'm sure there are like a website GoDaddy Award. Best website. Do they still exist?

I remember the Patrick Munchles. GoDaddy's still big. No, no, GoDaddy's still big. Yeah. I don't think they're, I think they're too big to disappear at this point. They own too many websites. Too big to fail.

Yeah. They're like the bank set. Internet landlords, so. Internet landlords, yeah. Oh my God, yeah. That's a good way to put it. Internet landlords, internet real estate agent. Yeah, that's what it is.

The internet real estate guys. That was the thing for a bit with the Metaverse. Oh, right. For like two minutes. Can you imagine that there were people who actually spent like millions of dollars on Metaverse land? Yeah.

What do you think of it? It's called money laundering, Kirill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, hey, there's a sucker born every minute, right? So you just gotta find- You can just play runescape. There's a sucker born every minute right so you just could just play

Zuckerberg born once a lifetime he spends two trillion trying to set the metaverse up Those guys need to just play runescape and call it a day or Sims, you know, and that's Patrick what's next for you and your company? Hmm. Well, um, I don't know. That's a good question things changed a lot in 2020. We went from like, we were expanding, you know, we had a studio that was like two story building with like a full basement, like awesome. You know, we had a studio manager,

we had, there was like people in and out all the time, clients were coming in and screening things and doing all that. We were traveling, seemed like every month we were somewhere else doing another big project and then just like full E-break just like could not have come to a more of a grinding halt in March of 2020. So that was like tough, honestly, like just for my mental well being as well. It felt like the thing I had been building for a decade was just like Don Claude Van Damme leg sweep out from underneath of me, you know, like I had no choice in the matter, just like we were working with two different clients that were in

China, like big tech companies at the time, lost both of them just because they literally couldn't come here to do the shoots with us. It was a really weird time. We lost. We had to let go of our studio. We had to lay people off, slimmed it back down to the tightest way that you could run the business.

How much did you go down? How many employees were you at? And then what were you at? back down to like the tightest way that you could run the business. How much did you go down? Like how many employees are you at? And then what were you at? We were at four people that were at the studio every single day all the time. Now it's just, it's back to just the two partners. And honestly I don't, there's pros and cons. Like I, I missed the social aspect of having the studio. I miss having like my music equipment set up at a studio and not in my house. I miss like storing all of my gear in the studio

and not in the basement of my house. Like I miss clients coming in for screenings and going to lunch with them. Something that just straight up does not happen anymore. Yeah, it's a shame. This is the way that everyone does meetings now and communications and stuff. So it's different. I like being at home. I like working from home. My house is where all my favorite things are. So I kind of like that about it. I definitely get more done.

Absolutely. 50 to 60% of my day at the studio was just bullshitting and joking around and socializing and going to get lunch and then going to get a coffee and then you know like uh so I absolutely get more done at home um but I do miss it a little bit and and we did we did two jobs after the shutdown in 2020 for the whole rest of that year. That's it. Yeah.

Only two. It was rough. Two. We were in the same boat. We were in the same boat. I mean, we had a few minor ones. I think we had maybe two or three proper jobs. Yeah, everything else was fine.

Two or three decent ones and everything else was just like a little quick, come shoot here for half a day or come shoot here and you did what you could. Yeah, right. Exactly. We were taking like any post work we could get sort of a thing, any little thing, but then we only did like two proper shoots that whole from the whole rest of that year. I would say like not until honestly this probably halfway through last year into this

year has it felt like we're kind of back to the pace that we were at before everything shut down. Just because it was like building a whole new business again, a whole new client, like we lost clients to other agencies and to other for reasons that were not anything to do with the work we were making. So it just felt like a real gut punch. Thankfully, we have an amazing bookkeeper. Thank you, Sandy will shout her out by name. She was able to like get us PPP money, which I don't know if you guys know that was like the United States government was like, Hey, we're forcing you to not work. But if you can get an application and to get like basically money to not fail as a business, we like you can get that. But it was incredibly hard to do. We tried doing it through the bank that we already were like using for years and they wouldn't even return our emails.

Like we had to go, our bookkeeper had to go through someone that she knew at a completely different bank system to get our application pushed through the process to then get some money just enough to like not fail as a company. It was a mess here too. Like there's a, someone that came on the show that mentioned they applied for the money to keep people their employees on board. I forget what it was called here, but they said it took like months to get it. Yeah. Yeah. Like immediately and then it took months and then anything and it was gone again as soon as we got it. You know, it was like we still at the time we're still paying employees and paying rent on our studio and paying all these.

So it was like, as soon as that check came in, it was gone again out to these other people. I wasn't making any money at that point. It was just keeping the business alive at that point. Yeah, we couldn't apply for anything because we weren't incorporated at the time. I was like, fuck, if only we did it like, like 2019, we would have been good. But the funny thing is 2019, like you said, we were on our way to doing that. And we were we were growing. But then but then, yeah, the pandemic just shifted everything.

And, you know, we were we were we were plateauing in 2018, 2019. We were plateauing, Carol. I don't know if you remember. Yeah. Oh yeah, maybe a little bit. We hit a plateau. We hit a pretty strong plateau. Yeah. And then after 2021 is when things went up. Yeah. 2021, it started to kind of like slowly come back a lot more of the work. 2022,

it felt like we kind of got better better Like actually better than before the pandemic which was which was great and then 2023 same thing It was like no no no no no Carol 2021 was like We were we surpassed our 2019 numbers 2022 was wild We yeah, that's what I'm saying 20 2022 was a was a big one for us, but to be fair We had like a few, we had a few unicorn projects that came through that were like big budgets that really helped. But yeah, it's still counts. I mean, that's how it goes.

It's different every year, you know? Like I would never sit down and be like, we're definitely gonna make this amount of money next year. Like there's just zero, guess not how our industry is. Yeah. I still am trying to convince myself to not be worried when it's been like three weeks or four weeks and we don't have like a new like pre-production thing

getting ready to happen, you know? I'm like, all right, this is it. Like pack it in, start looking at full-time jobs at other industries, you know? You know what's crazy? You've been running your business since like, you started in like what, 2006, and that's still like something you experienced

where it's been like three weeks, nothing's come in. Like, wow, it never goes away. It happens every year. Yeah, there's always a lull. It's never at the same time. I would love to try and be able to predict it. Sometimes you can suss out in other industries when they're getting their new budgets at the end of a quarter Or like all right, just use all their money because then you'll get hit for like four projects all at the same time

so we've kind of learned to like read the tea leaves a little bit in that sense, but There's just no way of knowing you Last October, we did three major jobs. I was ready to check out for a month. I was flying all over, I was in so many different time zones, I was like, man, I'm so tired. I, in a three hour rental car drive by myself, like listening to the Beatles station on like the XM serious radio, just like trying not to have a meltdown. You should have been playing that Pink Floyd song, Money.

Yeah, right. You always think about in the back of your head, you're like, it'll be over and then you'll have money and you'll have all the- Just think of the paycheck. You'll have the final products and you'll forget about all the pain and like time and sleeplessness and like all the stuff that comes along.

Like that goes by the wayside and then you just remember the good stuff. It's funny, cause it's like when you don't have a lot of the work coming through and it's like all of you don't have a lot of the work coming through and it's like all of a sudden you have a lot of free time, you know, or it's like, it's not as stressful work-wise, but you're stressed about getting work. You know, you're thinking about getting the work,

but then when you actually are super busy with work, you're like, oh man, can we just have like a week, like in January where there's like nothing, but without the stress of thinking that when am I gonna get the work? When is the projects gonna start coming through? It's kind of wild, but that's our industry. That's what we've chosen.

We gotta live with it. We've signed up for, yeah, sometimes you're doing four jobs at the same time. Sometimes you're hoping that someone sends you an email asking you to do work, because it's been a bit. Yeah, so like that's the way it goes. Save your money kids, you know, like that sort of a thing. You know, there's no guarantee that that next job's like coming down the pipe either. I always try and remind myself that so

stay hungry. The one good thing though is that you that it's exciting to not also know because then it's like, Oh, I don't know what my next project will be. It will be interesting to see what it could be. Right. Carol, that's not exciting. Okay. We'd much rather know. And I know we'd much rather know, but. I had employees I'd want to know 10 years in advance what's coming in. Yeah. But I'm also being realistic.

But that's, yeah. Yeah. But also at the same time it's like, you know, know that that's not realistic so you got to try to look at the positives there and there when positive bro we all want to know what's coming in to my know but come on you know it is what it is you know you're not gonna know so go with the aspect of what could it be hilarious okay I think we should end it there because it's already been an hour guys if you want to see Patrick's website, it's Lvlr.tv So levlar.tv, but you know just Lvlr. Take all the vows out exactly

And what's your what are your socials same thing? My Instagram is just my name If you're looking for me personally, it's just Patrick Lee Blake. Leveller's is Leveller underscore media. With the vowels or without the vowels? With the vowels. Spelled all the way out. Yeah. Should have kept consistency, you know?

I think it was probably taken. It was probably gone. Yeah. Oh, okay. It was probably gone. Anything that's shorter on any kind of social channel, it's going to be snatched up very quickly I've noticed. Talk about tech regrets.

I was one of the first people to get a Gmail account. I could have just had patrickblake.gmail.com if I wanted it, but I was a child, so I was like, how about something cool, like noform at gmail.com and now I get all kinds of insane emails especially from like school administrative boards that are running tests on systems where they put noform at gmail as the test email and I have to tell them like hey you just gave me access to the personal information of every teacher in your school dish. You know you could always sell that information.

I could, I could blackmail them, but that has happened more than once actually. That's wild. Which is crazy. That's some terrible security breaches right there on those organizations. Or it's like, what is it? That's like the recovery email.

It's like, I need to change my password, go to no form. It's like, yeah, I'd love to change your password. Here it is. I suck at my job. Duck one, two, three. That's hilarious. All right. Well, thank you again, Patrick.

Thanks Patrick. Thanks guys. 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.

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