Creatives Grab Coffee - Partnerships and Smaller Markets (ft. Enjoy Creative) | Creatives Grab Coffee 25

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

This weeks guest is Trevor Hnatowich and Scott Anderson from Enjoy Creative. Enjoy Creative is a video production company based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. They are passionate about helping brands use video to overcome challenges and achieve outstanding results.To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/creatives-grab-coffee/Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comInstagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/

Welcome back everyone to Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we have Scott and Trevor from Enjoy Creative. They are a full-service production company based in Winnipeg that's passionate about helping brands use video to overcome challenges and achieve outstanding results. Guys, welcome to the show. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. We're excited to be here. So I guess just so everyone knows who you guys are, why don't you give us a little background? Sure. Yeah. So like you said, we're Enjoy Creative out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. We started in 2018. Scott and I went to school together at a college here.

Yeah, we're a full service video production company. So we work with commercial clients across all kinds of different industries and sectors. We're really passionate about working with our clients to truly understand what they're trying to achieve and how we can help them with video. That's pretty much our focus. We try to avoid, I guess, just, you know, making videos that go out to kind of die, so to speak. We, we would really love if the videos we make actually have a life to them and actually help the clients we're working with. So that's what we kind of strive to always do with our projects. I like that. We don't want to make videos that go to die. That's such a good way of putting it. In a way, YouTube is the place for videos to go to die. You you know if you don't know what you're

doing with it because you're basically putting it up it's like a video tombstone and then it's ready to go yeah just lives there it can certainly feel that way sometimes for sure yeah so you guys started the company in 2018 yeah 2018 i guess we're actually very close to our fourth year in a couple weeks actually yeah yeah okay wow congratulations yeah yeah thanks yeah every every year is a nice little milestone you know like i remember when we hit the the first like four or five years as well we were just like wow has it really been that long? Yeah. It's hard to believe sometimes that time kind of just flies by and, uh, it, but it definitely does, uh, feel, feel good. You know, you hear those stats about how many businesses fail, you know, in their first year and then they're by three years, how many more

fall off and don't make it. And, uh, so it does, there's definitely a little sense of pride there for sure. And making it, making it another year and growing. I think that's, that says like, if you can make it to five years, you can make it to 10. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. Well, they usually say that the companies or any business, if they don't make it past

three years, that they they're typically doomed to fail at that point. The funny thing is most of the companies we've we've had on the show have been at least five years plus in business so i think you guys are probably one of the youngest businesses that we've actually had on the show to date and uh you know like so kind of like tell us a little bit about like uh you know how you guys got kind of started in terms of like what made you decide to jump into being a business and how um how it's been so far on that, on that end. Well, yeah, I think, so we were both working, we were both working in video right out of school. So I was in commercial video work and Trevor was doing documentary work. But we stayed in touch. We were, we were good buddies, I guess. So we, we, we hung out quite a bit and we chatted,

we were often talking a little bit about what we were seeing in the industry. And, and, you know, I guess this, by that point, video production, commercial video production, social media, all that kind of stuff was just, you know, already really popular video video was it was kind of easy to spot that video was growing in demand. There was a huge need for content basically. it was kind of easy to spot that video was growing in demand. There was a huge need for content basically. So we, we, we saw that and we felt that, you know, a, there's an opportunity there, but also, you know, there's an opportunity to have a little bit of creative

control over, over it. If we, if we start our own thing and, and try and make our, you know, our own mark and, and, and, and do really good work. So that's kind of what uh kind of what's what sparked our interest in taking that leap into starting our own business and uh um yeah i don't i can't say like i wouldn't never look back like it it was a great it was a great decision it was a big decision at the time but uh it's worked out really well and it's been a whole lot of fun did you see a need did you see like a need uh sorry did you see a need? Did you see like a need? Sorry. Did you see a need in the Winnipeg market? Like how big is it there in terms of video production? Like, like,

did you feel like there was a good opportunity for yourselves to kind of accelerate and grow quickly? I think we saw there was, there was room. It's Winnipeg is really tight knit, but very active. So it's, there's a lot going on here, but it's all kind of part of a pretty tight community. So we already had some connections within that community. So it felt like we were kind of just like taking a step, kind of establishing ourselves amongst our peers at that point. And it felt like there was definitely room to kind of still fit in there and

differentiate ourselves and make a mark with what we do. So, so yeah, I think, I think we saw that there was an opportunity there to still kind of do something and stand out within the market. That's interesting. Cause I was looking at production companies in Winnipeg and like you said, it is kind of like a small, smaller market. And it's interesting to see that you guys are still able to fit into that market because again, it's small, it's tight knit.

If I was, if I was in that situation, I'd feel like, Oh man, how do I, how do I compete? Like, is there anything left for me? You know, like, especially because, um, there have been times where like, we've been hired out on freelance with some other project, uh, with some other companies in the past where they've actually even flown us into like some of the inner provinces where there's not as big of a marketing and video production community. So like, you're also not only competing with those there, but also because of those organizations that have to bring in other people, you know, because the, you know, they're more international with Canada. So it's good to see that you guys managed to kind of still break into that, even, even,

even with that challenge. Yeah, I think it's an, it's an interesting perspective, I suppose. I guess like we it's, I'd say it's like quite regional here. Like we, a lot of the companies that we, that are in our industry are working regionally within Manitoba, within Saskatchewan, Northwest Ontario there. So I think that's like a prevalent component of our industry. There's some, there is some kind of national component to it, but I think at the end of the day, like most national stuff goes to Toronto, goes to, you know, Vancouver or Montreal, that kind of thing. So I think there's, there's that reality to it, but I think it also,

it doesn't, it, there's still like a, a thriving need, an industry and a need for, for video work, even within a regional kind of on a regional level, I suppose. So in some ways it's kind of like to counter what you said there, Dario, like it's, it's, it's, it was, it's also not as it's, it's could be, I could see going to Toronto and trying to start a business and trauma being scary because there's just so much, so much work going on there. And how do you make, how do you stand out in there?

Whereas here it's a little bit of like, you know, a big, a little smaller pond to kind of like, to kind of work within. And, and in some ways I think you know it make it made us you know being seen and heard a little bit maybe a little bit easier so it's there's I could see both sides of that yeah yeah I I heard from a Toronto transplant um who was freelancing in Toronto came here and and kind of mentioned that the biggest kind of eye-opening experience for them was they don't have to be laser focused on the job postings on Facebook and bidding, like

immediately seeing 30 comments on every job posted and saying like, I'm good for this. I'm good for this. And you know, everyone's undercutting on that entire list. Like, it's kind of like you just start working and make a name for yourself and and um jobs will come if you're talented i suppose i mean it's harder than that but you know what i mean yeah yeah it's funny work to go around yeah here in the producer yeah it's funny that here in the producer group you're right like as soon as there's a job posting there's like 50 comments we've even done uh listings on on that facebook group and within like 30 minutes there's like 30 people and i'm like i can't even go through this many i just need like the first time

the first time we did it we actually gave our email which was the biggest mistake of all time and that inbox just got flooded so badly not only that but also also our DMs. Private messages. Yeah. They just kept messaging. Like they would email and DM and comment and everything. And so at one point we just said, all right, let's make an Excel spreadsheet. No, no, no. We did. That forms. No, we did something else first.

We did a dumb thing. We created a separate email handle for it. And that was like an extra 50 bucks we had to pay for. Oh, yeah. Then we got smart. Then we got smart. a separate email handle for it. And that was like an extra 50 bucks we had to pay for. Then we got smart. Then we got smart. Then we created a Google forms for it. And then it kind of expedited the process for it.

Yeah. And then if people DM'd you after that, you know, when you explicitly told them to put stuff onto the form, it's like, okay, so you didn't read what I said. That's, I mean, in some ways it's got to be kind of nice because we we there have been scenarios where we've been trying to find crew and it's tough because our our um our film industry is kind of kind of starting to have

a bit of a boom I guess you could say that there's a good film subsidy in Manitoba so a lot of uh kind of like TV shows and movie productions are starting to come here so that's like drawing a lot of you know the you know traditional crew towards those and then in the summer you're you're kind of like oh who's available right now yeah every everyone everyone who you regularly turn to is often on big productions on the film side of things right now. So sometimes in the commercial world, when you're like, hey, I have this two-day production, can you interrupt your three-month commitment

to come do this thing? Yeah. So you guys are skeletal crews, not by choice, by... Yeah, that's right. So you guys are skeletal crews, not by choice, by... It's a bit of both, a bit of both, yeah. Yeah, like here, it's a matter of like, you know, like people can kind of like choose almost like how big they want their productions and projects to kind of be.

But they're like, I can imagine. I mean, talent, to be honest, talent even here, believe it or not, is really hard to find. Good talent. Like good, well, to be honest, talent, even here, believe it or not is really hard to find. Like good. Well, yeah. Good talent. Exactly. So like you get like a hundred people applying on something and then maybe five are okay. Two are really good. And, and, or like, like that's roughly the ratio. So if that's what we're struggling with. And then one of the two,

one of those two is very overpriced and you're like this is yeah this is a lot too busy like yeah yeah the worst is when people who apply who are way too busy and then it's like okay but i what now so imagine like with it being that difficult here I can't imagine how difficult it is sourcing talent in in your area it it can be um I think there's like there's busy seasons and I think I think Winnipeg is a is a big um for better or worse it's a big word of mouth town um so there are there's lots of talented people here um and you have your go-tos to kind of turn to you. And then kind of when those don't work out in your favor, like finding, finding fresh people can be sometimes a challenge or a great opportunity to kind of bring someone on and kind of show them the ropes. But yeah,

I guess that's kind of where it lands. I think relationships are really important here like you gotta it's again smaller communities so you know everyone knows one another and and uh and in some ways once you kind of develop those relationships it becomes a little bit easy because as long as available availability lines up then you kind of establish that roster of people and you kind of work with them from from there on in but uh but yeah there's been times where and and and not even us like you hear from other people who are like do you know someone who does this anyone we need them like tomorrow kind of thing you get we get those kind

of messages every now and then but uh it's it's it's it's pretty good still at the end day yeah yeah like that's that's because of this like big challenge of like being able to find the right people, you know, and have the timings aligned, you know, that's one of the reasons also why we, we started this show is to kind of like help like create like a little bit of a community between all the production companies where, you know, sometimes you need someone in another city and, but you don't know anyone there. That's good. You know, you want to have people that you can reach out to that you know that can uh reliably either recommend someone or even uh help at the same time as well which has happened with a few of the the guests that we've had on the show already you know some that are based in montreal needed shooters

here in toronto for like a certain project you know and like this is like one of the ways that you know you can kind of um uh filter out like, you know, like a really route rather quickly, especially with the nature of quick commercial type projects, right? We all have those days where the clients are just like, Hey, you have someone that can shoot something tomorrow across the country. Yeah. Yeah. Like that happens all the time. Right. And so now it's like, Oh, maybe now there's opportunities for it right yeah yeah 100 we're often on uh on the receiving end of that here in winnipeg we find ourselves being kind of uh sourced to kind of shoot different things for for production companies across canada and the

states and and outside of that actually yeah um just in the last couple months i think we've had like five or six just day shoot kind of like go interview kind of thing, uh, just from across North America, which is, we like them. They're kind of, they're kind of, uh, fun and easy to, you know, they're kind of stress free in some ways, but, uh, yeah, they're, they're quick. They're quick and simple. Like, uh, they're very straightforward. You know, you're working with other companies, you know, who have a specific kind of thing

in mind for what you need to do um but it's interesting that you mentioned that you guys do a lot of that in winnipeg is that how much would you say that has been like a like in terms of your business like 20 30 percent of like the work that you're kind of doing over there now or or is it very i think we're thinking because it so we had um in our first couple years it would have been a good chunk but it was because of special circumstances since then it's it's pretty small it's like it's maybe yeah it's like it's here and there um but in the first I want to say our second year um yeah just through crazy circumstance um we were contacted by a production company in South Korea um called You've Got Pictures amazing people um basically they were filming um A Dog's Purpose that it was a movie they

weren't filming that that sorry was being filmed here yeah yeah Dog's Purpose that it was a movie. They weren't filming that. That movie was being filmed here. Yeah. Yeah. Dog's Purpose was being filmed in Winnipeg. And one of the actors on that film was this K-pop artist as well. And this production company from South Korea, the only time they could fit in this music video shoot with this K-pop artist was when they were in Winnipeg filming A Dog's Purpose so uh it turned out that that he had a week off a week break and we were kind of sourced to like essentially like line produce this this k-pop music video um which was like the biggest production that we've ever done at the time because it was it was a fairly big crew it was in a remote location the logistics of getting gear to this like cabin on a lake in

the middle of nowhere was just kind of a giant headache there was like a giant blizzard that happened it was supposed to be this fall scene but of course we're in Winnipeg and the first snowfall of the year is blizzard and oh yeah. Anyways, it was a ton of fun. The production, it went off smoothly. For all the hiccups, it went off well. And then after that, they kind of turned back to us a couple times to do commercial productions in Winnipeg

to kind of be an alternative to New York because we kind of have similar architecture in certain areas. Oh, really? Sort of. More like any American city, like Chicago or whatever we can like there's like just there's like pockets of it that work for that yeah so so they kind of turned to us for two more for um for relatively large productions that took up you know months months of our time um so that was kind of in our second year so if you asked us that question then

it would be a larger portion of what we did but uh since covid that's that's kind of dropped off i wonder how many how many shows are out there like maybe 80 or 90 percent that are based in new york but are actually filmed in random cities across the world most of it is toronto toronto yeah we always like to see them try to hide like uh some of our street signs like young street or big street or taxis when we see the yellow taxis or the fake subways yeah you guys must be like the manhattan like stand- Exactly. All they got to do is Photoshop out the CN tower and then they're golden. Right. Yeah. Which we've seen.

Oh, I've seen it in a show once. I was like, did they really just try to remove the CN tower? And, and here in, in Winnipeg, we noticed with what we did with them instead of photoshopping out the cn tower they were they were putting in putting it in bombs and stuff yeah let's make this look a little warmer yeah that was good it's like why is everyone trying to base their shows in new york like everything has to be in new york but none of it is filmed there it's like what are they gonna realize taxes taxes oh my god no i mean like just to base it somewhere else it's

like enough with new york we're sick of it because no one knows anything else they just know la new york and that's about it that's it right it was kind of refreshing seeing the new uh turning red the new pixar film is set in toronto and it just oh yeah it's toronto whole the whole way through it was pretty neat yeah down to the metro passes right yeah uh so how long how long uh just going back a little bit how long were you guys freelancers for before you guys decided to partner up and create a business sure yeah so I freelanced for about a year and a half I graduated we both graduated in 2015 um I freelanced for about a year and a half and then I was hired by a French television documentary production company here called Wookiee Films work there for three and a half years

before doing this so that was kind of my path here um I didn't freelance at all actually I was lucky to get hired right out of school I uh I went to a yeah small commercial production company I was there until we until we started uh started uh joy so how that must have been very like uh interesting because you guys um were basically already in jobs for a little while did it feel kind of scary to kind of leave those jobs to you know basically start your own thing and like usually it's easier for freelancers because they've they're already kind of used to that type of lifestyle it's just adding a name to the to the freelancing essentially

but when you're when you're already working at another company like to make that switch like um what what was like some of the first things you you guys did to to do that transition save save some money I suppose try and try and have a bit of a safety net there yeah no I think it definitely it definitely was a little scary at the beginning there. I think part of it was that we felt pretty darn confident about our network, I suppose. We had through school and just through the few years of working in the video industry, we kind of got a sense of like what the what the demand was like and where the opportunities for getting some work were and and we I think we felt fairly confident that you know like you know if there's a chance that this could just flop and fail and like that's

fine and it's better to do that now at like a younger age we didn't have like neither of us have kids and you know neither of us had a house at that time or anything like that like we were pretty you know not a lot of responsibilities so like if things totally failed you know that it wasn't you know a drastic fallout but at the same time you know we felt really confident that uh you know we would we would be able to make it work and and uh and we definitely work you know we basically said yes to everything, you know, in that first year, you, you, you just, yeah, you do what you can to get that next project. And that's, uh, that was, that was a big part of it.

Yeah, it, it definitely was, there was, you know, it was, it was a tough decision. Um, like as, as excited as I was for it and, and as confident as we were, like it would, it would be a life. I said, it wasn and as confident as we were like it would it would be a lie if I said it wasn't a tough decision like it was scary leaving some stability in in regular income in you know the lack of stress of just having someone else kind of manage everything um and kind of tied to that is just the the personal relationships that you kind of build that at your jobs like I'd um I'm close still with everyone at at my job at Wookiee Films and it was really scary you know even just leaving that

like bringing up that I'm about to go do my own thing was was a big step but um luckily everything everything worked out great and like we're still really close and and I I'm super happy we did it. And, and now we're here. So one thing I really like what you guys mentioned, uh, when is that one thing, a lot of companies typically do, or people that give advice when they're starting a business is like, Oh, they wanted to make sure they have enough savings, which is the standard thing. Everyone wants to have, you know, at least a little bit of a safety, uh, nest egg that they can, can, you know, kind of fall back to if they need to. But what you guys what I really like what you guys did was you had, you felt confident in your network, like very, and you had you were kind of like almost like taking inventory of that. It's

like, how big is our network? And does that can we leverage that in a way that we will be successful over the next few years. And I think that is something a lot of people don't typically take too much into consideration when they're starting a business. You know, technically speaking, when Dario and I started the business was the worst time in a way we were basically from zero, completely from zero. Like we started the business while we were still in school. We were barely in the industry at all. So we didn't know anything about it. So essentially the first four or five years was like us almost like freelancing for a little bit, you know, but under another,

under a business name. And then it was only like until the pandemic hit was when we actually started to treat it more like a business. Whereas you guys, you've already been in the industry. You learned on your own from different experiences. You came together, you leveraged your own individual networks and you knew that you guys will be successful from that. And I think that's what a lot of people need to think about. It's like, sure, you have a nest egg, but how quickly will that nest egg go if you don't have the connections or the leverage to kind of prop yourself up in the future, right?

So kudos to you guys. Yeah, I mean, I think it's funny, you know it it's so i think what we hear often is when someone's like i'm going to start business on my dad the first question is okay like where's your first sale going to come from and that that's like that's like a scary question that sometimes at that early stage because you don't necessarily know but i think just knowing that you have people to turn to and people that you can say like, Hey, this is what I'm doing now. You know, you're not necessarily going to jump into like cold calling or anything like that.

That's, that's the most scary thing to do, but being able just to go to people and say, Hey, this is what we're doing now. We'd like, love to, you know, help out in any way possible. Like we, we, we did that very much like a big part of our, our, when we started was a big push just to let people know that this is what's happening now we're available and we'd love to help and and yeah we got a really strong response from that you know people people you know spread the word that kind of thing so word of mouth played a huge factor yeah and our the the like list that we made to contact people right off the bat there they weren't necessarily um you know like hard business contacts they were

just like everyone in our network, we're just saying like, listen, this, this is what we're doing now. We just want you to know. And, you know, the large majority of that list just said like, oh, hey, cool. Like, congratulations. Good luck. But just by kind of putting the word out there that we were doing this thing, I think we got some projects out of those relationships. Like we definitely got projects out of those relationships. Still to this day, we, we are still getting projects from those initial kind of feeler emails and calls that we did. So yeah, it was an important first step. And maybe like a bit of a, another kind of component to it is we, we, we didn't go to like,

we went to a communications program for our school. So we, we, which had like a media component, but it also had a marketing component, a PR component and a journalism component. So the benefit there is that we like, we, you know, we got a pretty, we got a pretty good media education, but we also got a really good communications education. And, but we also built a network of communicators now. So a lot of our past, our like colleagues from school are now in marketing positions in communications positions throughout the city. And that that's like been super valuable, where, you know, those are the individuals who are now hiring us for their companies or for their organizations. So that, that was, I think there's a lot of weight to that,

that like maybe it's easy to gloss over. We weren't just like strictly video people. Like we had that other side and that is what our network was made of in a sense. So that certainly helped, I think. Yeah, when you start your own business, you got to leverage just everything that's at your disposal like you guys were never leveraging your network which is which is really good and i guess you guys were at an age where like they were already kind of moving up in

their careers and everything we unfortunately for us when we first started first of all we were just trying to learn the the skills to be able to become filmmakers right like we spent like several years just trying to fine tune those. And like Carol said, it wasn't up until the pandemic that we really kind of just sat down and tried to develop our business skills further. So I'm kind of wondering when you guys first started, like you kind of went from, you know,

being employees at companies or freelancing to now you have to run your own business, right? Like it's a whole different skillset. So how did you guys adapt to that? Cause it took us, it took us many years to, Oh, not many years. We're still learning. We're still learning. Like I'm a professional now, but it never ends the learning. Definitely. Yeah. Um, I think there was, there was probably like, I mean, you just said it perfect. We're always still learning. There's always like stages. Like, I think when we first started, there was like a, like an independence and a kind of like, exciting freedom that came with not having the most work at the time. And just, you know, dreaming about the prospects of what could come and,

and the projects that we did have, we could give, you know, a hundred percent attention to all the time. And then, you know, as, as you kind of work on more and more and you get busier and busier and you, you hire that first employee and that second employee suddenly, you know, there's, there's very new stresses. There's, there's managing a team. There's you know,'s there's very new stresses there's there's managing a team there's um you know like client the the process the client goes through to make sure that nothing slips through the cracks um these are all things we're always kind of working on and

and I've found personally that I've learned or like I've I've really started enjoying that side of things um I still really love the filmmaking side of it all. That's why I do what I do. But as these things kind of come across my desk, it's been really interesting seeing, you know, the kind of things we have to do to make sure that we're still in a good position. We're still growing.

We're still on top of things and we're still producing great work. It's been a challenge, but it's been really kind of fun how do you guys uh do you guys how do you well like what do you do like what what does like trevor do versus like what scott does you guys kind of like split everything half and half like are you guys both taking care of like the business end and the creative end or is one more business focused one more creative focused yeah that's a funny one I think we uh for the longest time and and still to this day I think very much have split things pretty pretty 50 50 um we've I don't know I think like when it comes to like more of the business

stuff the admin stuff managing that kind of thing like we both wanted to be like aware of it and learning it you know and understanding it and I think, that's what we've done to, to this day. And I think, you know, as, as we grow at some point, that's going to like split off and it doesn't make sense anymore for us to be like doing all the nitty gritty stuff, but we really, you know, both kind of, neither of us were just kind of like, no, I don't like it. You do it kind of thing. We were lucky that we both kind of committed to that and worked hard on it um and uh and so far it's been good i think uh makes you know we make a lot of decisions together where we you know discuss things and and and neither of us are kind of going rogue or anything like that

um i think uh creatively there's like a bit of a split there. We have in the past shared a lot of responsibility and both across our productions, but somewhat recently now we're doing a bit of a split in our specialties where I'm taking on a bit more of a focus on animation, whereas Trevor is focusing a little more on the live action side of things. So that's probably, I think where we'll see our roles maybe splitting a little bit on the live action side of things. So that's probably, I think where we will see our,

our roles maybe splitting a little bit in the, on the production side, but yeah, it's it's interesting. Cause I think the classic, like you, you hear all those examples of like past like teams and what, like how they had like different strengths that kind of like were compatible together, like Steve jobs and Steve was in the act story and all those kinds of things and you and you kind of like you're like it's definitely but in my head i'm like oh man you and i have very

similar skills it's very similar like uh strengths and that kind of thing but at the same time it's made it like to be like a really compatible it's been easy to work together on things and very like very few of any conflicts that we've ever encountered or anything like that along the way so yeah yeah okay so we're talking about partnership how do you guys how do you guys uh mesh together like you guys have a good uh like how you guys were friends before right has that like friendship changed as you guys became a business good question yeah i don't think so i think yeah i think um i mean we're good friends before good friends now um yeah no no crazy dramatic business stories about um

yelling matches or big disagreements or anything like that we're usually always on the same page and if if uh if there are problems, we're pretty good at working it out, like not problems between us or anything like that. Like, just like stressors in, in the business or situations going on. I think if anything, we're pretty good at just like chatting with each other and just calming ourselves down and kind of taking another stab at, you know, a fresh look at whatever is in front of us and going from there so no it's it's been great yeah we when we first started and we're telling people like oh yeah we started this business and we're partners we used to be friends we're used to be

friends we're still friends like we're friends you know we're friends and everything they always told us like oh that's a terrible idea it's not gonna end well five five plus years later here we are talking about it's been seven seven years later here we are but look the thing is like with any partnership you know like any business you're going people are always gonna bump heads you know on on some things nothing's ever completely seamless you know know, like sometimes you're going to have disagreements on certain things and what do you do? You have to figure it out, talk it out. You know, you both make points of like why something's good, why something isn't, you know, and then you come to an agreement and, you know, you provide a collective front on, you know, what you do

with the business, right? You know, like nothing's ever going to be like, you know, without any like kind of like confidence. This is how business actually evolves, right? You know, like nothing's ever going to be like, you know, without any like kind of a confidence. This is how business actually evolves, right? You know, if everyone wasn't, you know, at least like kind of like bumping heads a little bit at times, you know, like businesses won't progress. You know, I mean, look at what happened with some of the biggest companies in the world. There was so much drama that was happening behind the scenes. You know, it wasn't great, but, you know, to that, to their credit, the businesses did thrive and grow as a result, right? So it's always good to have someone that you can bounce ideas off of.

Like you guys have, it's like, hey, what do you think about this idea? It's like, oh, I think it's good, but let's try this. Or no, that doesn't work because I've seen this. It's good to have that kind of internal filter within the business. We know some people who are by themselves in a business, you know, and they unfortunately don't have that internal buffer within the business that they can kind of bounce off of, you know, and, you know, it's not a disadvantage necessarily, you know, they have other advantages, but, you know, it's, it's a different type of dynamic. Yeah, definitely. I think the, I think that was

definitely one of the appeals of like, as opposed to starting something solo, was to have like a partner in it where you can kind of share those decisions and get a different perspective. And I think that's been so valuable throughout like the past few years. And even as we've grown and added people to our team, like adding those perspectives as well has been really great. I think it's nice having, it's important to have different voices in the room. And, um, uh, it's definitely, I think in like, without a doubt been far more of a strength to like work as a partnership, as opposed to going solo or anything like that. It's been.

Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned you have a team of people. How big is your core team now? There's five of us in total. So three, three employees. Okay. Yeah. And what are like their roles within the business at this point? So we have a shooter editor. We have a motion designer and then we have a project coordinator who really has helped

us take off a little bit of that production load or production management load, I suppose. And we've been able to continue to work more hands-on with the projects themselves. Yeah. I think that's a good kind of balance in terms of like the roles you guys have basically checked off all the, like the key ones that we typically all look at look for when projects tend to scale, right. You know, you got the, the, the hybrid shooter editor,

you know, who can, you know, take on a role depending on what is needed, you know, and then you guys can hire other people, you know, depending on the scale of the project, you have your motion graphics designer, that's the hardest to find, you know, most of them are very, very freelance based because of like how complex those, those are i mean we don't necessarily get uh a motion graphics project come through the door that often where it's it warrants that kind of need but but yeah then like you said the production coordinator who manages all that because when you're managing 10 clients at once you know it's just like oh my god how many emails am i going to send out today yeah yeah i think i think

there was a point we had like this collective epiphany at one point where like it was a crazy busy week and like at the end of the day we realized like i don't know if we spent like a single minute on anything except just client communication for the past two days like it's that happens so much and it's like okay cool like what do we what do we do about this like this isn't this isn't necessarily sustainable if um i mean for our goals like what we want to do like this this isn't necessarily the world we want to live in so um yeah it's been it's been a huge huge help uh on that side of things so it's's been great. Yeah. Especially when there have been, I remember there was one particular project where it was just like a simple type of a corporate

style shoot, but they wanted to do it in a, in a studio. They had a very specific kind of request for it. And they had a very quick timeline that like, we need you to do this in like a week. Right. But then you have to go check the studios that are available, see if they're any good, if they can provide you what you need, you know, just even doing those things, you know, it takes so much time. It's like a half hour to an hour to drive to it, half hour to review it, hour, hour, half hour to an hour to come back. If you have to check multiple, there you go. That's a whole day gone that you couldn't been working on other things, you know, briefs you know outreach you know uh networking you know uh that's why you need more and more people uh to join over time to just kind of help alleviate that load

there's like a point when you're running a business where it just the the pre-production work or just communications just starts to snowball into like a big pile of work and it's so time consuming and it's like because you're so used to doing it doing all that stuff by yourself but like I feel like there's like that one moment where you're like I can't I can't do this by myself anymore it's just taken away from other things that I can't do other where I can't get other projects because I can't I don't have enough time to create a proposal like work on my pitch just crazy how quickly that happens like we're in the process right now we're I think we're quickly approaching that stage so pretty soon we'll probably have to start thinking about maybe bringing on like a production coordinator or someone else to help us out with that

yeah I mean the first talent that we started to hire out for was having an editor right because before we were basically just taking turns editing based on the projects it's like when you're editing i'm sure you guys have felt this before when you're editing a project for you know eight hours or seven hours in a day and then the other guy calls you it's like oh we got to work on that proposal for that other client it's like get away from me yeah yeah don't talk to me it's the the hardest thing in the world is like exactly what you just said especially when you like look at your schedule too and you're like okay i have three hours to edit but it's like it doesn't always work like that you know like you need to need to get in

the groove of editing like you can't just schedule three hours to edit and expect like a good product in the end like it's been tricky yeah our shooter editor was our first our employee and yeah big time there like you know getting that assistance on the editing side of things was so so crucial and um I think uh yeah it's it it becomes quite challenging to like pivot from one task to another like you go yeah go from a proposal go from uh like some emails go to edit and like if you're trying to squeeze editing in within an hour or two like that's not not a good recipe for editing. Editing, you need to sink your teeth into it a little bit, right? So having that extra help on the editing was so crucial for us to grow.

I think we were afraid to, you know, because at the time we probably weren't making as much money to the point where we thought we could afford to start hiring editors for projects. But then once we started doing it, we started seeing how much more time we had to generate new business to, to contact people, to improve our briefs, to improve our website, to improve our, our marketing material. It's like, Oh wow. Like now we have more business so that we can bring these people in. And so that's the one, uh, the one thing a lot of people need to like, uh, you know, remember it's like, don't be afraid to bring in help, you know, because that gives, it opens up the most valuable resource, which is

not the money. It's the time. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. I think, and I think we like think of it, you know, as we grow, it's that question of, do you want to be more hands on, like remain hands on with the work and like truly do kind of the craft of a video or, you know, are you prepared to kind of maybe give up some of that to, you know, manage a team that can do it? And you still, you know, ultimately you're still part of a team that's making really incredible content, but you're now a little bit on the outside of the creative process, maybe, and you're more on the managing side of things like that. Those are two kind of competing

components there, but I think, um, um, and there's not really a right or wrong, right. It depends on what your personal preferences are and what you want to get out of like your day-to-day, but, uh, it's, uh, a part of, it's a part of the day-to day, regardless of how you, what you do, I suppose. So absolutely. It's like the first steps to growth, right? Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Well, I think, uh, that's, we should probably end it off there now. Like somewhere right there, but yeah, like I honestly guys like that, this, I really liked the kind of direction that this conversation went, where we were talking about the importance of talent and bringing in the right people. It's always nice to hear other people's perspectives, especially in places that not

many people get a chance to hear from. And we really, really thank you guys for joining us. But before we end the show here, one question we like to ask a lot of our guests is how did you guys come up with the name? Enjoy creative. Oh man. A lot of lists, I guess. A list of words. Sounds familiar. Yeah. We had a, I think a notepad. It's probably still,

I think we ripped the page off and put it somewhere, but it's of all these kinds of names, some better than than others and uh i think just kind of like workshopping them url availability yeah yeah does the website exist yeah uh yeah no i i it's not the most glamorous story but it was one that we kind of we kind of liked and and uh we thought it represented i think we all part of what we've always wanted to do is to be like to have fun like trying to have fun with it we are in a fun industry video you know video is extremely stressful without a doubt but at the same time it's really fun like we're making we're making really cool content so um trying to like encapsulate a little bit of that fun in it i think was a part of the appeal to enjoy yeah nice was that

like the first one on the list or was it like number 10 15 i don't know i don't know yeah yeah i think we i i think we like we um there was what we like we had like a pro and con we gave a pro and con list there was like a like what was the science like if you're if you could give your business a personality what oh yeah what do you use to describe that personality and then like using those words like what you know what kind of um what's the word i'm looking for a word map or whatever yeah um around those words kind of like come in your mind so yeah there's a bunch of we had too much time and then you know the the like the creative component of it you know there's like there's

media there's uh creative there was video there's films there's uh what else could there be i don't know all those options yeah enjoy productions exactly yeah but uh yeah that was another component to it well that's great well guys thanks again for joining us on creators grab coffee you know uh we'll definitely be keeping in touch with you guys and who knows maybe in another year or two we'll have you guys for a recurrence episode yeah all would be fun thanks so much guys yeah great yeah thanks for having us thank you amazing all right take care guys.