Creatives Grab Coffee - Pivoting Your Business (ft. Bee Video Productions) | Creatives Grab Coffee 16

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov. This weeks guest is Brigitte Sachse. Brigette run Bee Video Productions, a Toronto based video production company that specializes in short-form digital content – both animated and live-action.To learn more about the show, please visit https://www.lapseproductions.com/crea... Subscribe and follow for future episodes!Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8Bd...Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgr...Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.com

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast where we talk about the business of video production. So Bridget, it's very nice to have you on the show. You are pretty much the first guest of 2021. 2021 or 2022 forgetting that yeah no matter how how many times it happens every every year it's like one of those things where like the first two weeks of january it's still you're in the previous year mode and then all of a sudden it just kind of clicks in right after yeah no kidding no kidding yeah it's 2022 whether we like it or not yeah I don't know where 2021 went it's it went by so quick did you feel like it kind of just went by the wayside for you like in terms of like did you manage to like keep yourself busy where you know it kind of like

moved right through it um or was it something kind of like a little bit different of an experience it something kind of like a little bit different of an experience well I heard somebody say somebody said to me these days when I want to say last year I realized I actually mean two years ago because from COVID I think people still have this idea that it can't possibly be two years like it can't be two years like that's crazy and and i think i catch myself doing that sometimes too like uh um but uh for me yeah it's actually been really busy um i can tell you my i'm sure everybody has a covid story like covid origin story but i do superhero thing now my pivot everyone had a pivot, right? So for me, basically, so if we rewind like almost two years to March 2020, when COVID hit, we were primarily live action production company, like, well, 98% live action. And, and so I'm sure you guys would agree,

would you like that was a terrible month? Like, that was devastating. Yeah, the first the first month or two, I think the first two months, it was like, it was almost like, it was just completely dead. Nothing was happening. Like more so before the pandemic for us, we were doing also a lot of event-based projects. And, you know, as like you said, everyone had their pivot. And so for Dara and myself, it was kind of like leaning a little bit more away from the events, kind of focusing more on branding, corporate, and those types of projects. Yeah, we started the year off really strong as well. Like I remember 2020 2020 i was like oh

finally we're not we're definitely not going to hit a plateau this year that's for sure yep you guys did pretty much started the same time no i was 2017 you said you were 2015 2014 2015 2015 was like was like officially launched. But yeah, oh my God. March to, I would say, middle of July was like the desert. There was nothing, nothing in sight. Nothing. The desert. I agree. And like, we'll get real right away. But I was like really, it was hard.

I felt really knocked down because I was I had worked so hard um and I because I started in 2017 you know 2017 was tough like you know when you start a business you're trying to figure stuff out and like everyone says like in your first year you probably lose money but in your second year you break even and then your third year like hopefully you figured stuff out and you're turning a profit and stuff and that was me like textbook that's exactly what was happening with the company I was figuring stuff out everything I was like I'm not I feel like I'm not faking it till I make it anymore like I actually know what I'm doing and like I had some really good clients like I had some prestige clients and that it works really hard to get and so those couple

of weeks when the phone it felt like everything got canceled all at once it felt like everything I worked for um like was falling through my fingers like I just it felt very dramatic because also like I have kids so like my kids are home from school and um my sister has her own business and she like so she had a gym so between the two of us we were laughing kind of like dark humor but like we couldn't have picked the two worst industries yeah like except maybe restaurant those are like the two hardest hit industries, events and, um, and, you know, gyms. And so anyways, uh, so then like, I thought, well, okay, enough with the pity party. Like after a little while, I was like, I'm going to have to pivot, like have to pivot,

like what's your pivot. Everyone kept saying that. And so I was thinking, okay, well, I've done mostly live action but I have done some animation and I mean animation can be done from home animation can be done remotely and uh um I do have a couple of examples of stuff I've done I don't really understand animation but I feel like that's got to be my pivot like and pivot. And so that's what I did. I just started business development. I just started networking. I just started asking friends,

doing some work for free, doing some work just for cost. Like just had some great friends that understood animation really well and helped me. Carlos Darcy in particular, just really, really patiently worked with me to like he created a lot of the animation, but at such reasonable rates and stuff just to help me understand and get through he i don't he was so patient i didn't understand what i was asking him and he anyways that's some good you

find out who your friends are a little bit yeah did he like did you learn animation is that what you're saying no like i don't do i don't i know to this day i don't do animation produce animation work with anime right that much different from live action? Because we've done a couple of animation projects. Like, I guess, yeah, the animated does kind of guide you a lot through it. But was there something that you had to learn to be able to properly produce animated videos? A little bit. Like, not as much as some.

Like, I understood the production process and you know i had worked in i had worked on some animation projects before but i mean i just call it like i had to learn the language like so i could have conversations with animators there's a lot of learning the language and um and i mean like things like pricing like schedule how long things took to do you know because i'm sure you guys would agree like your most clients want things quickly like they just want things like yesterday and so not to over promise like just understanding like how long each phase took and also yeah understanding what i'm asking the animator to do like i can pitch something and what i've learned since then is like sometimes they get mad at me so why didn't

you tell them you could do like that's so hard so and now i know when i pitch stuff what's hard and what's not the value anyways so that's my anyways that's my covid story i i i just my pivot was to animation and honestly in the last two years we've done a ton of anime now we're almost flipped around like now we're almost like 95 animation five percent live action oh wow okay that's great to hear honestly like to be able to make such a huge flip and and to be that consistent with it and completely change the business model is not an easy feat. And now, you know, that, you know, if any other lockdowns happen, you're at least set up so that you're going to be fine for the future.

And, you know, it's, it's funny hearing like what you're talking about with, you know, learning the whole animation process, you know, the biggest thing that happened this year was also that Darren and myself also started producing some animation videos for some of our clients because same thing that was the biggest thing we learned in doing that was the the importance and the focus of the pre-production like with live action there's a little bit more of a leniency where you know where you have an idea of what to do in the pre-production so there you don't have to spend as much time because you figure a lot of things out sometimes even within the production process, you know,

depending on how big the project is, obviously, but with animation because it's so specific. And like you said, with pricing, you know, like the day rates and everything, and if changes need to be made, the budget gets inflated. You really have to nail down the pre-production so well that when you get the animation done it's just minor adjustments at that point yeah totally yeah that's a great point yeah i totally agree understanding that process um which is kind of like it's kind of a nice balance wouldn't you say like between live because as you say like live action is kind of the opposite, but more on the fly. And so if you,

if you have a bit of both, it's a nice, it's a nice diversity. You can, yeah. So anyways, but, and then, and then there's clients that want both within the same video, right? Live action and animation. We've done a couple of those and those are really cool too. So the ability to offer that is really neat. You, you to offer that is really neat you you had when you started off you had 95 live action and now it's flipped the other way around did you end up getting like a whole new set of clients for that because oh okay okay so your old ones are pretty much well i mean again you might agree well with events there's recurring like we always joked like we don't do weddings because they're not recurring. At least if you're doing it right, they're not recurring.

But most events, like they would, they're, you know, you can go back. Like if it's a conference that happens a couple of times a year. With corporate video, which is a lot of what we did. And when we're starting out, we have mostly small clients. They're one-offs anyways. They usually don't have enough of a budget to do more than, say, one video a year. So I didn't lose any clients, I don't think. Maybe at the very beginning, we all lose a few at the beginning.

Yeah. But I've had my live action clients. And we still do live action. It's more COVID that stops us. We had a pretty busy summer live action clients some like some of them and we can do like like we still do live actions more covet that stops us we had a pretty busy summer live action uh and then we were shooting um back on set uh for the last couple of months right up until i guess mid-december uh we were shooting a lot so we do still we're we're back a bit but now we're this is ontario for anybody that's watching ontario so we're like the most did you know we're the most locked down city we we've endured the longest lockdown of any city in north america i think it's in the world actually no it could be in the world yeah

i think that quebec is even worse well i was just talking to a client in montreal today we were just i had a video call with montreal ontario and then florida and so montreal and we were comparing notes and they they were saying i think we're heading towards you guys you know being most locked down and then and then the client in florida said and i'm coming to you from florida where there is no covid yeah a similar thing happened uh last year i think early or like around january february one of our clients who predominantly does a lot of events, wanted to do with their clients, some kind of like interview videos, you know, like typically what you would do it in live action,

but because of, you know, the restrictions of COVID and everything, and not to mention a lot of the interviewees were in the States in different cities, we ended up doing it all over Zoom. I don't know if you have had any projects like that as well, where literally we were hopping on calls every other day interviewing a different person from different city like you said and we were comparing notes of oh so how are the restrictions in your city you know compared to ours it was it was such a culture shock almost yeah yeah no kidding no kidding yeah yeah it's crazy yeah so anyways yeah i think that the question sorry i think your question did i answer your

question well yeah i was like if you i was asking if you also had similar types of projects where like you were doing kind of like the live action element but adapting it to the covid model you know like you know incorporating zoom a lot like when there was so much zoom happening last year especially in 2020 as well and i feel like everybody just got uh zoom burnout as they call it you know well have you guys um had anybody direct remotely via zoom because we've done that a few times yeah i did yeah freelance for a person i know and there was the the director was uh on zoom and he was just kind of overseeing everything it's a little weird though that's interesting yeah it's a little strange i don't think it works that well

we've had clients over zoom which is which seems a little bit more normal because like some of them are in montreal they want to see what's happening at the very least they're there observing you know and we're doing the project exactly how they need it and then if we ask them if there's if they want to chime in there's any little adjustments they want to want us to do but directing not not so much I haven't I haven't experienced that yet yeah yeah it's happening more and more yeah for sure yeah are you doing a lot of that as well or is it kind of like you're basically overseeing everything in your projects no I mean the small silver lining i don't know if you can even call it a silver lining but like um people can't cross the border into canada right so they where they normally a big company might

have flown somebody in to shoot they literally can't so they will hire us as a proxy to to film but they want to be they want to be considered the director or producer and so sometimes we're only shooting a part of their wider videos and so they're yeah so so they very much want to be present on zoom before and and i mean they're literally like okay move the move the light five inches okay now sit now like they're directing like they're telling the subject like okay move back now move forward like they're directing they're directing and we're just kind of there we had several projects uh where it was uh you know companies from video production companies from the states that hired us to shoot for them here yeah i like well for us we kind of just showed them like okay this

is the final framing we're gonna do they're like okay yeah go ahead shoot it and then let us know and then they would just monitor it like that yeah we had a south african company that was like that they're like it's great and i was almost like are you sure like don't you want more feedback but I find some of the American ones know they're very like very precise and want to be very very present because they hate that they're not there Bridget why don't you just tell us a bit about how you got into the scene? Sure. Yeah. So I worked in the film and television industry for a long time. And I just always had a dream, to be honest. I just always wanted to have my own business. And the truth is, I just was a little chicken. i i'm by nature not a risky person and um

i so i worked you know i had the golden handcuffs or whatever like i just always i had a good job in production and i for a long time i just kept it as sort of like a dream and i always thought well if i got laid off or fired like I would start my own business. And then the kind of the joke is, well, I never got fired. It didn't work out. I didn't get fired. So then I had a bit of a health scare, a little health scare.

And when that happens, then you kind of realize like life is short and you realize that there's a possibility you could have big regrets if you don't try things and so basically I quit my job I quit my job one day and I had some idea of a business plan I did have I and yeah but I I figured it out I I just figured out I never looked back and and I and I am glad that I took that chance I think you guys would agree kind of like if you're still doing it that entrepreneurship

is just kind of better than being an employee well yeah it was for us we started the company while we were still in university dario and i actually went to school for for business not for film or anything yeah i was on the business side of production so yeah my background's business too yeah right and but like him and i had a lot of passion for film filmmaking and television and things like that. We didn't know where our direction will go, but we knew we wanted to start our own production company and just kind of take it from there. And so as soon as we graduated, we just stuck with it full time. And it's been that's been it. Like aside from working as tellers at the banks during our uni days, you know, we haven't had like one of those types of formal jobs the 905

experience i just had rogers cibc teller and that was that was it i was like i don't think this is for me yeah that's great that's great um it's a grind it's a grind though like don't don't don't get me wrong and i'm sure you've already experienced it yourself as well like the first few years you don't know really what's happening for us it might have been a little bit of a longer burn because we were still learning the industry too I was just like what like we we really didn't know what we were doing till like until the pandemic happened and we kind of just sat down and did a complete audit and we're like oh yeah yeah what are we doing yeah yeah but having a business background is pretty key right because um like so did you go to business school and also go to film school like how do you know to hold the cameras and stuff like that carol actually did it as a hobby and i

learned off of them oh okay self-taught yeah like i guess youtube taught us yeah yeah we call it the tube of you i like that tube of you that's a good one it's the new film school now yeah no kidding no kidding i i thought about doing film school because when i decided to do to jump into video because i jumped into it for a little while before Dario did and I was trying to think to myself I'm like okay should I drop out of business school and then do film school or should I just stick with because I was halfway through my degree at that point and I was thinking to myself should I just finish it and then see what happens afterwards and I heard that film school a lot of them are just know, it's a lot of it is a waste of time.

And the most important stuff is like in the last six months of the whole of the whole four year program. And I think we were doing ourselves. So exactly. Exactly. We were doing ourselves at that point. Yeah. And it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because while we were there, no one else was doing video at the business program. So everyone came to us at that time and that's how we built our first very quick

portfolio I would say oh that's so great you guys that's awesome and it's awesome that you found each other that you both had sort of relatively similar goals like if to partner together yeah yeah that worked that worked out well you know what's good the the good thing you did though is you actually created a business plan at the beginning we never did that like did that help out or no no it was more just to convince my husband that i wasn't doing it on a whim like i was like uh no it does help a bit and i don't know about you guys i would be curious to know like at the beginning of each fiscal year or like like as each year kicks off do you like do financial projections do you like revisit do you do swats or anything like that or you're laughing no because

the first few years it was nothing like that and i think 2019 was when like 2019 was around the year where we actually started to really like get more focus into the business and things were starting to be on a growth trajectory which was nice and we were still kind of learning it like the first four years of the business was us learning the industry more so rather than the business skills like finessing the video well making skills that's what we're really doing yeah operations yeah exactly and like dario mentioned as soon as the pandemic hit that was like a complete slap in the face to us to wake up and figure out okay what's what's what are we doing what's working in the business what isn't working and the first thing we did to kind of get ourselves out of the

rut of not working for a few months was this show. Cause it gave us a little bit of a consistency every week and then slowly work started to kind of pour back in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's cool. So, but, but do, but do you do like your projections for the year yes now we do in 2021 i've i finally got my accounting skills in order and i started going like okay carol like these are our projections for the month this is what we need to get in and then yeah as more and more projects came in we were able to do like statistics from that too so yeah just like a cost breakdown a basic like oh i make money on voiceover i don't make money on whatever. Yeah, it became very, very technical.

So we actually just finished like all of our accounting numbers for 2021 are done. Like we could go file our taxes tomorrow morning. So we actually like earlier this week, we kind of sat down and went like, OK, this is what we did last year. This is what we need last year this is what we need to do this year this is the increase we're going to do based on the projects that are coming in right now we're pretty much on a good track so yeah we're on the financial side we're definitely like doing properly this year um on the others um all the other stuff like the marketing and everything we have planned it out now we just have to execute it. And we're still doing that now. So.

Oh, that's good. Did you start right off the bat doing all those like financial projections or marketing plans? Or did you just kind of same thing? First year was completely just trying to figure out what your model will be, how you will pitch to clients or like, I'm assuming it's just you, right? That's running everything yeah it is now I used to actually have a business partner but I only had it I only had she was my business partner for like less than a year and then entrepreneurship is not for everybody and she knew pretty quickly that it wasn't for her and um now she works at a bank so I think she's was she your friend was she like someone you knew that was kind of in the same boat as you were at the time well I guess I would kind of say luckily she wasn't my friend because only because then there was no um there was no over a rupture of a like yeah you know it would

have been more awkward but at the time um she that's why I was curious about you guys. Because for us, I had the business side and she had the technical. So she could shoot and edit and I couldn't at all. So that's how we started out. It was great because she did all the shooting and editing. She just didn't really like the running business part. And being an entrepreneur wasn't really for her. Yeah.

How long did it take? Oh, you said a year before it broke down less than a year yeah yeah yeah but i mean i think we kind of knew i think earlier than that um it just what it um yeah so so did we have a business plan yeah we had a business plan but life happens happens like you gotta the business plan only doesn't take the great idea i think a video like of making short form video for businesses i mean that's like what do you call that like your value proposition kind of thing that's important to have but business plan i mean if you have major investors i guess you really need one but i mean it has limited mostly for yourself if anything yeah yeah yeah totally am i doing everything right and i guess yeah for our business it might be slightly different than if you know

you got a prop like i guess it would be similar to other businesses but it's slightly different because we're more so showcasing like our talent and expertise in a way yeah yeah yeah so product always changes our product depends on the client we have right exactly i know and you just kind of find your way and learn from each different project that's kind of how i evaluate projects like sometimes i'm sure you guys would agree like pricing is tough like because you hate losing work because you overpriced stuff but then you got like you also have to try and make money and build the business so finding that sweet spot I find is super challenging um but how I evaluate a project or not is partly if it's profitable but partly like based on portfolio and the ability to learn something new and do i get to try a new type

of animation here like so those are all and then as i do that stuff and learn that stuff then you know that's molding the business plan in real time kind of thing. Oh yeah. The business plan evolves constantly. Like anyone who thinks that they make a business plan at the beginning and that determines the next 10 years, it's not true. And it's just meant to help you kind of get started to give you a nice structure baseline or foundation. Right. And then it'll change over time. One thing you mentioned also is that, you know,

like when you're working with clients, like you're also doing a lot of like customized type projects based on their needs. Did you ever try to go the approach of like productizing the videos, you know, kind of like making a standard? Because a lot of video production companies try that where, for example, they say, okay, in this package, this is what you get, this package, this is what you get this package this is what you get this package this is what you get and this is what you get i feel like everyone's tried that at one point and rarely it works is have you tried something like that as well yeah you're right that's exactly it i i got on the bandwagon because i think it started with just i don't know did you ever listen to the podcast called how i built this

right it's fantastic so the guy from shopify was on it and it just um gave me the idea that i have to have something that people can put in a shopping basket like that somebody can buy from my website like i i don't know why but I I just had this idea there has to be something somebody can just buy like and and put in a shopping basket and check out and I and so I had all these ideas like that like could I do a standard video or something like that you just customize a tiny bit um and i even set up a website that like based on this principle like where you could purchase one or two luckily it wasn't my main website and now that website is gone i don't know if it but it no longer exists but yeah so i tried

it and yeah it didn't work it doesn't i don't know how you I think it should be really big, like really big before you can start doing templates and stuff. Yeah, for us, the same thing. It didn't leave our Google Word document. Yeah, we were brainstorming and we're like, okay. So the only companies we've seen that do that are wedding companies that you know are video based it's only the wedding video companies that are able to pull that off and you'll see like they'll have their bronze silver and gold package so we were trying to get cute at the time we're like

we'll have like the martin scorsese pack as you were trying to break down the numbers are like but wait what if they want to do this with that and it's like but if we add that that one if and they don't need it then that doesn't make sense like we're trying to make it work but it wouldn't work and then later on like we were trying to um uh bring on a salesperson to our to our company and he was telling us the same thing he's like yeah create these packages blah blah blah and then we're like we're trying to do it again we're like it's not working like it just doesn't make sense it didn't make at all any sense like like the way he was

explaining it it we could tell it made sense in his head he's like how much do you charge for a shooter to come out how much do you charge to edit a video and that's your package right there but there's so many other variables that still go into it it's not that black and white right yeah yeah yeah I talked to a business guy really smart guy and I explained that concept to him and he he said you're in a very high touch business that's what he called it high touch high touch business and what he meant was you gotta touch like you have to touch it somebody has to touch it a lot like not physically touch it but like put eyes on it yeah customize it and i i like that word like we are we're just in a high touch business like it and that's otherwise you know somebody what are those like people can

buy cheap um videos from overseas you know from fiverr or whatever and i don't think we want to compete with that no you know we can't compete with that so i think we have to just stay high touch and just move up to with clients that can afford to pay for high touch yeah I think there's some companies that are able to figure it out I think companies that do social media for like restaurants or whatever like they have like a very packaged system and I think that makes sense though I think it only works because they might have like salaried staff and it's like, we got to keep them busy anyways. So just, but have them go out for like two hours, shoot that stuff. And then this guy's going to edit it anyways. So it makes sense.

Dario, it's also the niche, right? Like the, the biggest thing that I've learned is like you said, there's the niche of weddings where that works for right. Productizing packages. Very, the reason it probably also works with restaurants is because what do the what does every restaurant or food company need product photos of all of their food all that menu items yeah a little short like maybe snippet you know to to showcase where they are that one's a little bit more possible to productize but you can't do it with corporate

videos you can't do it with music videos you can't do it with music videos you can't do it with events it doesn't doesn't work no no i don't think so we haven't figured out yet anyway we're still working on it yeah yeah yeah would be nice how did you come up with the uh the name of the company oh my goodness so okay all that happened was um it's i my accountant was in line at city hall and he called me because he was about to incorporate my company and it was a numbered company he called me and he said are you sure you don't want an actual name as opposed to a numbered company and uh like as as quick as that, I was like, okay, well, I know you should have your business start with one of the first letters of the

alphabet. Like, you know, like AAA plumbing or whatever. I also knew for SEO that you should have what you do in the name of the company so that your um domain name is what you do because apparently for search that's good it used to be uh it's not no like they well i mean google always changes their brand their um uh their requirements so from what i've i've read back in like earlier 2021 like it's not it's no longer a big a big thing because yeah we do have people approaching us emailing hey we have Toronto video productions available oh yeah I get that all the time but I didn't want to be like media co or something like that like I wanted to say specifically what we do which is video production so that was my second thinking thought bubble, I guess. And then the third thing was I wanted my name in it, but I didn't want my, I didn't want

my name to be the name of the company. Because if I ever sell it or if somebody takes over, I didn't want it to them to be like, wow, Bridget's video company. Like, so I thought B and then afterwards everybody's like oh because they then they connect like busy bee and like you know pollinating ideas and stuff mind and all this stuff like i didn't think any of that i was just literally i think i had like five minutes i was like i'll call you right back i just need to think and then i thought of those things like b and spell it b e e instead of the letter b video production he's like good that so that's not very sexy way but that's how i came up i thought it was like maybe that was like your nickname or

something right well now people call me all the time like uh people will and I don't correct them but that's not my nickname but you've donned it as part of the brand basically yeah I guess I'm the brand now yeah yeah with us we had a we had a tough time coming up with the name I remember we made a list of like it must have been at least 100 names over the course of like two weeks no but but actually the first name we came up with ended up being the name of the company yeah carol wanted more options i was like i like laps productions let's take our last last productions he's like no we got to come up with something better something different i didn't i liked it i really liked it but i didn't like the idea that it was literally the first idea

that popped into my head i wanted to do the due diligence of trying to find other names, which we did, but they, none of them had like a good kind of lasting impact, you know, in terms of like how it sounded and how memorable it was. And we've always asked like a lot of our clients over the years, you know, about the name and a lot of them really liked the idea of it. So we thought, you know what, like, let's stick with it. Like over the years, we've thought about changing it many times, but you know, we were just kind of grown into it even more now. And it just, that's us, you know, we're laps.

It's a great name. Yeah. We had a hard time whenever people asked us what it meant, what like what it meant, what it like stood for. We're like, Oh boy, here we go. We got to pull a rabbit out of our, it just sounded cool yeah it's like um the part about the letter in the alphabet is again advice that i got from somebody else my old boss he said like if you're going to a conference and somebody's setting up meetings they're going to go through the list of delegates and they're going to get to about like K and then they're going to give up.

Like they're just going to set up meetings with the people and up a little bit of the company, JKL, I'll say L. We were like, just set the cutoff. And he said that and I was like, I think I've done that. I think it's true. I think I've gotten a giant list of companies and just gotten bored after about half and just not and not reached out or like say you're doing research and you're just trying to find a video production company like you just

might make them so anyway so that's why i just thought well i'll like be i'm always so curious to see what people search to find our companies because i've started asking our leads at the end of the call like at the end of the first call i was asked them like okay so which kia search terms did you search on google to be able to find us and some of the ones i hear just make me go like how did you even come up with that one yeah half the time I'm like no that's like so like it's like yes but like not really like you know no one's really searching for that but I guess people are it just it's such a it's so tricky so tricky videographer company no something like production media or like something really strange where like and you know you when you go on your google adwords uh profile and everything you're setting up the keywords like those keywords get like no hits ever yeah and yet somehow like those

that are being searched yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i know it's true but you do want to get found i mean that's a nice way to get found so like do you focus on uh seo at all i i do because of that because well again we all know like if you're an entrepreneur like you gotta hustle you gotta network you gotta do all that stuff but um imagine if you didn't have to do that imagine if all it took was somebody reaching out to you and giving like that would be that'd be great and so um so i definitely dabble in seo and i understand like i don't i say i do more than dabble but um i understand like most of the things that get you up there um I try and focus on them but not obsessively and I don't spend a ton of money doing that but

what about you guys we focus we we like under we we started learning about it in 2021 and that's when we started to like focus on it yeah we spent I would say like a bit of time just understand it I think we like two three months just to understand and implement some of the techniques and so I'd say like from March to June we kind of worked on it a bit and then we just kind of we got busy with work but like later on like in, we started to notice like, oh, the stuff we did back then is paying off now. Yeah, we were getting leads from places that we never would have expected. People with like good budgets to like reach out for projects. And we're like, oh, OK, so this is going to keep us busy for the next few weeks now.

This is good. Yes. to keep us busy for the next few weeks now this is good yes so that's kind of like we learned the importance of it and how whatever you're doing now is not going to pay off right away it's going to pay off at least six months from now so that's always the silver lining and that's why we're jumping back into doing more of our own content like we also do our own vlog videos as well um that are helping with that too. Good stuff. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, it does. It really helps. Yeah. Going back to the SEO.

Like I remember when we first started it based on what I was learning, I was telling Carol, I'm like, look, it's going to take a lot of work. Maybe in like one to two years, we'll start to see like positive results out of it. And it was like, no, it's like right away. We started to notice like a quick turnaround out of it and it was like no it's like right away we started to notice like a quick turnaround because up until that point like we we did like next to no seo work and then after a little bit and already like like oh okay wow this is like five years ago we could be chilling right now yeah like i i admit that when I started my business, I did not know the word SEO.

Like I think I even remember the day somebody said that word. Do you ever get into these meetings and somebody says a word and you like act like you know what they're talking about? You got to Google that. Totally, right? Yeah, we know what SEO is. Why don't you just spell it out again? I just want to make sure you know. So I think I remember being in one of those meetings that are like SEO, SEO, SEO.

And afterwards, I kind of looked it up. Search engine. And then like from that, like that's how like that's a little. But then and I'm sure you went down the path of like talking to SEO companies and that can be a shady business too. Yeah, we didn't go to any of those SEO companies. You didn't, eh? They reached out, but we said no.

Yeah. Initially, you know what it was? Initially, we were going to team up with, we were going to approach one of these companies and just say like, hey, we'll give you video services. You give us SEO services. We had a meeting with them. video services you give us seo services we had a meeting with them and then i remember this was like the day after i just like did like a little i peeked into like what seo was all about and the stuff they were saying i was like from what i read yesterday that's like outdated stuff already i was like i don't know kira let's just try it out ourselves and see how it is and it's really not

complicated it's just time consuming that's all it is that's it's really not complicated. It's just time consuming. That's all it is. That's right. The thing that I learned, a lot of people say when running a business is that you need to learn to delegate, which I agree. You need to learn to delegate in order to expand and grow.

But I feel like if you're running your own business, you need to be able to step into whatever role is required. You need to know that side of the business so that when you bring on people, you can show them how you do it and then they can handle that aspect of the business. If like people think that you can go into business and then bring on other people and then that's it, you don't have to worry about that or anything else, but but learn it get people that are better than you to execute it and then that's how you will find success and expand yeah i couldn't

agree more i couldn't agree more like and for me that means like i had to teach myself painfully how to use um after effects and premiere pro and a camera like so that i can shoot edit and all that i can do tiny effects i never which is good i guess in a pinch like i could go in and fix something if i had to exactly i do have the software on my computer but more importantly as you say you then understand what you're asking of somebody else and that was my huge just learning curve with animation was of somebody else and that was my huge just learning curve with animation was I didn't know what I was asking and I hated that feeling and I and I so now I feel comfortable so yeah so on the fly when you're talking to a client like in your head you can think like okay that'll take that's not too hard that'll take about a week or whatever you know and uh yeah i totally agree you

have to understand and seo i think is the same although i've i've i have to pay other people because there's also a point when i think you look at your own strengths and weaknesses yeah i like i'm just not i want to write blogs but i don't have time to write blogs. I don't, I'm not going to maintain my website. I don't, I just, I want to, I think I know how, but you know, there's just certain things, certain blocks that you just know you won't do even though you can. The one thing I I'm noticing is that like a lot of people who are running things on their own.

What I hear a lot of is how it's overwhelming to be able to do a lot of those things which I do understand completely and that's why it's like like you said you understand SEO a little bit but it's you have so many other things to deal with it's hard to kind of do that whereas Dario and I luckily because there's two of us we're able to kind of divvy up a little bit of the work sometimes to kind of relieve some of that like uh like pressure to learn all those things and then we can kind of do double the research but um like as being on your own like what is like probably like one of the biggest challenges you've found over the last few years like something that just sticks to your sticks out in your mind that you still are trying to kind of figure out or have figured out luckily already uh it's a great question and um because i had a business

partner i've seen both sides of things and um i think that well like it's hard i mean it's harder to grow to grow the company, I think, when you're on your own, because, yeah, because of just what you described. Like you guys are, you can divide and conquer and you have aligned goals and stuff like that. The thing I miss is like having somebody to high five like or just and i'm i'm a middle child like i'm an extrovert i'm like covid's kind of hard for me because i like being around people and i'm i'm literally like a hugger and such and like so like i miss like if something goes well or like I land a big client, I'm like, oh, my dog's here. I don't know. Yeah, I know.

My sister's an entrepreneur, so I check in with her, but she doesn't. We're in completely different businesses. So what I've done to address that is that's why I have my own office because my office is in, I have an office, but my next door neighbor is another producer and there's another producer right next door to that too. And then another person that is in digital marketing. So those are sort of like my colleagues and people that I can and like sometimes we go to conferences together and stuff like that. Somebody to talk to. So honestly, as flaky as that sounds, like that's what I miss.

But the nice thing is like if I have a gut instinct or if I have a feeling about how things should go i don't have to explain it to anybody which is pretty nice and i found that my gut instincts they they see i they're okay like they you know work and so um sometimes i can just fly at my own i can move really fast um so that's cool but yeah yeah luckily Carol and I are always on the mostly I would say like 99% on the same page with most of the stuff so it's kind of like oh yeah like I have this feeling about that and it's like oh yeah I had that too I was like okay cool let's let's go yeah we shock ourselves sometimes

when we're already on the same page of stuff we find that a lot of the sometimes we're arguing about the same thing we don't realize it yeah at one point i'm like dude we're we're saying the same thing just in our own violent agreement they say yeah exactly he changes the words like i'll say something and he'll rephrase it but it's rephrased improperly. So I'm like, what are you saying? That's the opposite of what I'm saying. No, no.

Like, a lot of it is the same. But anyway. Well, guys, I'd totally check out how I built this as a podcast because that's one thing. Because a lot of these big, big successful businesses, they almost all are like two or three or four people that have built the company. I mean, there's lots of people, but there's a lot of partners that have built great companies. So it's a cool podcast. It's very reassuring to hear other people's struggle.

Yeah. That was kind of like one of the other things we kind of put this together is to like during a time when no one went out, when no one was working, you know, people can kind of get together and just share and discuss ideas. And one other thing you mentioned how a lot of big companies, the reason they're so successful is because of how many partners were there to build it. I noticed, or Daria and I both noticed that as well, but we noticed also that a lot of these partners also had their own careers before starting the business, right? So they kind of had a lot of experience already kind of going into it. Whereas Daria and

myself, we kind of went from, from school. So we were learning as we went we didn't have a background to lean on or anything right well as i'm right now listening to spin master toys uh on hawaii belt you know spin masters like one of the biggest toy companies in the world but they're from toronto and they started right out of university as partners oh cool yeah what are they called spin masters spin master yeah like they're they did um um bakugan if you remember that and they did oh yeah which game the which toy and uh air hogs and um air hogs i remember that remember air hogs wow western and they both went to western and they like it's a cool it's like similar to your story they came right out of western and just kind of faked it till they made it they

didn't really and but just built a huge empire eventually huge billion dollar b yeah yeah hey hey bridget when you in court did you incorporate when you start like right at the beginning or after you got to a certain like grossing? Like, how did you decide when to do it after one year? After one year, like I'm going to incorporate that like that was the reason for it. Well, the reasoning was I was like, I didn't know anything. I just I wasn't. I just, well, I guess the reasoning was fresh start, because Sarah, my business partner had moved on. So I was like, I'm definitely going to do

this. I'm not going back into the workforce. Um, so, um, so I'm incorporating the company, like I renamed the company. So it would be, um, like it was just a way to like solidify and like move forward as a, as like, I'm, I'm going to do this and this is gonna be a big company someday. So I'm going to start from square one now. Incorporate a company, get an accounting firm, get all the things that I need to do to properly build. That's when I kind of really started trying to figure out SEO, do some marketing.

Yeah. We're thinking of, we haven't done it yet. I remember earlier on like our accountant was like when you guys get to this amount then do it oh you should incorporate because you can't yeah you're not incorporated not yet like this based on our numbers last year we should have done it but we just kind of wanted to see if we could uh replicate last year's results a little better this year just to make sure uh but i don't know like we're thinking about it i know it's going to cost a bit more to do it because right now we can kind of just do it ourselves but i think if

we incorporate we'd have to get like an accountant for sure do it and everything yeah yeah ability thing right because like if we incorporate we don't have we have limited liability that's the positives and then we are planning to do it probably by at the very latest by next year this year was more so about starting to learn about the ins and outs of it and finding the right type of accountant or the right accountant going to help us learn about it and how to properly do it and um like we're in the midst of like a few big projects at the moment so we'll have to wait a little bit on that but as soon as we have a little bit of time that's probably going to be like one of the first things

we do because like daria said we managed to do it last year we're all good so now it's time to start getting that process going like i got i don't i don't really look for government grants very often, but I did get one from the City of Toronto just during COVID, like a retraining grant or something like that. And I know you can't get grants unless you're incorporated. That's a good point. Yeah, there are some small grants for rebuilding after cobit that you know if nothing else like the city of toronto offers some pretty good ones um didn't know that wow yeah yeah yep so i was kind of i did it and then not exactly knowing why or how my accountant said i should and i trusted him uh but then looking back i look back on it I go thank goodness I did okay you don't look back

and said I could have waited a year or two you're like no it's good I did it right off the bat huh yeah and even there's like a an optics thing about it a small optics thing like when you're I don't know filling out forms and stuff and it says like I don't know it just says b video production inc i don't know yeah look more professional like i don't know i'm definitely glad i did interesting yeah one one question we we like to we've asked all the the other people in the past was uh like what was one moment you had in your business that kind of launched you to like who you are like what your company is today because everyone we talked to in the past like they always had this like one interesting moment that kind of allowed them to expand Well, like a turning point, I guess I would say, actually, I wonder if I would just say

like, when I incorporated my company as and gave it a name. And that was a bit of a turning point. I think, well, I guess I could also say COVID was a turning point in getting into animation. Yeah. I guess I'd say I'm kind of proud of myself for rebuilding, reinventing. The company is an animation company. So, like, that could have been a turning point. And then, yeah. animation company so like that could that could have been a turning point um and then um

yeah I guess I'd give those two things I think it could be that incorporating was bigger than I really have considered before because all of a sudden it felt real um like like more real. And yeah, a turning point for sure would be when I delivered my first animated series of projects that was fully animated and that I had actually, yeah, for a client, I think for a paid client, I think that was pretty exciting. Yeah. The first bit of money that you make doing this is crazy. Cause I remember when I first decided to jump into video, client I think for a paid client I think that was pretty exciting yeah the first bit of money that you make doing this is crazy because I remember when I first decided to jump into video I was ready to accept the fact that I wasn't going to make money for a few years yeah that's what I thought at least and then to my surprise uh things just kind of started rolling and then before I knew it I was making a couple hundred dollars off of videos like I even started small like 150 for every video I made and then it got

more and more and then we started laps and then you know just with every increase it was just like wow like this is actually happening now this is kind of crazy to never expect it to get to this point so soon yeah yeah actually do you you must remember your first customer do you remember your first you did a video for yeah um my first good paying customer was this um was this student group at our university uh where they were like this big events um uh events group and they had a big conference every year and that was like the first one that took the chance to uh to pay me uh tmc dario tmc yeah and and so that was like the first one where i was like wow i'm actually gonna get paid

this much whoa really and like at that point i had a few videos under my belt i didn't have that many and uh like halfway throughout that year that's when dario jumped on board and we started collaborating and working together and then more projects started rolling in and it was just it was it was almost surreal you know and then because people think like uh people would always be saying it's like oh you're never gonna make money doing video like come on and then it happens yeah yeah yeah yeah that's so cool yeah i same thing for me i remember because networking like when you first started networking and you had to kind of say out loud like i'm a video producer and i have a video production company like the first couple of times you say it it feels like i don't know for me it's like i guess i am but i remember

my first customer because i said that in a networking group and uh and he goes oh i need a video and i just remember him saying that i was like well okay so i kind of put on my sales hat him saying that i was like well okay so i kind of put on my sales hat and i like all my little spiels that i had practiced about like how we could do this and uh and he's like okay let's make a video and that was my first video and it was thrilling and exciting and um and actually the video turned out pretty well i was pretty proud of it so yeah yeah like like a tv background like oh but you were producing in tv like so you're already used to like the whole i guess what i'm asking is like was there a big difference going from doing tv work to doing corporate video work uh yeah because uh well the budgets like the budgets but also i was not in production i was on the business side so i was like an

analyst like i worked at telefilm if you know where that place is i've heard of it yeah yeah telefilm and so i was i worked at a broadcaster i worked at a financing firm that specialized in film and tv so i was really like looking at budgets and things like that but like could i didn't i could never held a camera or anything i was rarely on set yeah so what was that like the first time you're like okay i got this guy as a client now i actually have to deliver on it exactly i know yeah yeah yeah google videographers at the time like i had my business person she could step in oh right right oh yeah yeah yeah yeah that's why the big turning point when i incorporated was can i do this on my own like that i had to learn all that stuff that i had really not needed to learn before

did you have like a moment when your partner back that where you're like okay i guess that's the end like what made you go like okay nah screw it i'm trying I'm I'm gonna go ahead with it because I mean if I had like no experience and like luckily I had Carol to learn from but if I didn't that would have been like very intense right yeah oh yeah um like what caused me to, I think, okay. So I think what it was is that we had a few projects still going. And so I just thought, well, I got to finish these projects. And then, and then the phone rang and I would get more projects. And I was like, well, I guess I'm still doing this then. I just had to figure it out. it out I had to finish the projects that

we had halfway through and then actually that is a pretty point too I remember answering the phone one day with my head on my desk because I was like so down I was like I was like that and I answered the phone like this just telling you the truth because I was like so and I answered the phone like this, just telling you the truth, because I was like so thinking like, what am I doing? I don't know if I could do this by myself. And so I answered the phone like that. And it was the Toronto Star and they wanted me to do a series of videos. And so with my head on my desk, I kind of lifted my head. Okay, I could do that.

I ended up doing a bunch of videos for the Toronto Star. And then I guess I almost built the self-confidence because I had the work. Like the work proved to me that I could do it. So then I just stuck at it. And it does. Yeah, it tests you as a human being sometimes when you're when you're running things on your own, because the things you thought you couldn't do, you just do. And then I can actually see why like business owners could become like super egomaniacs. Because they have to do everything so yeah by the end of it they're like i can do anything superheroes basically when they become egomaniacs and they

start then they start doing things that they really can't do right and they start they can do anything and then but i kind of because like your ego kind of gets attached to the ups and downs of your business i find anyways so like when things are going badly you're like oh why did i even do this and then when things are going well you're like i'm brilliant like an internal battle sometimes right especially when there's no work happening you're just like what next like what's the next step but then like covid kind of forced dario and i to figure out a way around that where if something is there's like the in-between time there's always work for us now like we've all we figured out a way like we're okay we're not

working on a project for a client we work on a project for lapse we treat almost like lapses our own client even as well so with seo and like that's so smart like you're investing yeah absolutely for sure yeah it's definitely changed because i remember at the beginning we did have that mentality of like damn it how can we get more work and now it's like okay if we're not getting more work we're doing something wrong on our end that's like the mentality we have now so it's just like yeah no work from clients we got to do our own stuff that'll help get more work from clients that's that's been a big shift in our in our organization it helps with the confidence as well to keep fresh yeah so with now 2022 kind of starting Bridget is there what's like one thing maybe you'd say that you kind of want to do this coming year like what's like a like a personal goal or like a

goal for the business more so that you have in mind that you want to do okay so there's two because I I do like I do like thinking about my goals for 2022. So I've already thought this through. One is that I want, I want to try and develop something for television. Like I want to see if I can. Yeah. And I actually have, I've, and to your point, like I did create a sizzle for a kid's show. So with a partner, not by myself. So I have that, but I want to try and get a few more things and see if I can develop that side. That's one. And then I just, I have like revenue goals. I just think if I hit certain revenue levels, I just have this idea that um that's that's what success looks like so i want to try and hit certain revenue goals this year um but those are the those are the two big ones and then how you work backwards from that is um like i i really want to go to a few more conferences. I know COVID is like crazy, but I really think to your point,

Carol, about momentum and like, you know, like getting in the rhythm. I feel like when you go to conferences, you get this, you get invigorated and you get energized by being surrounded by people that are frankly successful you know and done cool things and i really like i really try and go to a car at least one international conference a year so i i bought tickets to a conference in miami in february which i don't know i've almost for sure come back with bovid but um i still want to go almost for sure come back with COVID, but I still want to go. So yeah, that's kind of a goal that I think will help me.

That's a smaller thing that'll help me get to my bigger goal is to go to a conference. That's great. Yeah, that's great. Like we, Daria and I have been hungry for conferences for a while. The last in-person networking event we did was the day before the lockdown which was crazy there's like a photo of us together at that event remember dario the ama one the ama one it was like at that gallery that art gallery yeah oh wow yeah that was literally i like meeting conferences i don't like participating in conferences. Yeah, you don't.

No, I hate networking in a group. I like like one on one stuff. Yeah, it was good at the group stuff. So I let him take over for that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, but no, that's that's great to hear. Yeah, like for us also this year, you know, there's a lot of a lot of our like smaller goals that we're kind of hitting, you know, and one of the things that I know we want to also do is kind of at least dip our toes again in documentary work. Because we did one shared doc four years ago that has been like a good staple of our portfolio because of like the type of story that it was. our portfolio uh because of like the type of story that it was and i i have a huge passion for that and i know i want to do something like that again whatever it might be let's see what what it's like

when we get there because last year dario right like you said it was our technical year figuring out the nitty-gritty the finances the seo this year is technical too because last year was figuring it out this year is like really honing in on it. Because we've got to get the creative a little bit more back in. So like our plan is like, yeah, obviously we have revenue goals like any other company. Then on the marketing side, we have, we want to do like at least 20 to 30 of these podcast episodes. You know, try to network with as many people as possible. Then we have like the vlog videos we're working on we have a lot of those planned um and then yeah for

for the creative stuff we do want to create like another doc that'd be really fun and then we're also trying to create some spec spots but those are so difficult to do. Especially when other projects start rolling around, right? Have you tried to do those? Well, what do you mean by spec spots? I was going to add, I think I know what you mean. The way we were thinking of doing it is like, maybe we could choose like stuff like, okay, there's like Valentine's day coming up in February, right?

Why don't we try to create like a fake company and then do a commercial for that company? Right. Oh, I see. I see. On spec. It'll be like a fun thing for us. Yes. Also something creative and then something we could also showcase to like other clients. Right.

God. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I mean, yeah, those are always like fall down in priority. Right. When, when, but yeah, those are really, really fun to do. So, um, yeah, I mean, yeah, those are always like fall down in priority, right? When, when, but yeah, those are really, really fun to do. And, um, usually I, I try and that's when I would rather take like, um, a charity, like I've done a lot of charities. So like, yes, they'll pay me, but, uh, the win-win there is they'll pay me just a little bit so I get paid to learn so I will do a project for a charity but on the condition that I get to do something really cool and that's outside of my box oh okay yeah yeah so to me that's a total win-win because the charity I could send you this now I'm just bragging but a beautiful gorgeous video that we did uh for a company a charity

called Stepstone it's beautiful yeah send send it over I will uh and so for me um that we get to showcase our abilities and they get a video and that we got paid a little bit and that's better than spec. Yeah, we had, we were planning something similar in, uh, I think it was 2020. Um, cause we, what we, what we started back then was we called this, we called this program five for five, where we donate 5% of the profits to five different charities that we chose. And then I remember getting in touch with them and saying maybe we can help you guys create like a video or whatever because that was our initial idea as well it's like okay we get to like flex more creative muscles and then they also get something valuable for them right but yeah COVID like really slowed those plans down because we were actually like supposed to do some

stuff and then they had like more restrictions so it just kind of got sidelined and i guess i got lost so i guess yeah i should probably reach out to them again and just tell them like you just want to cover your costs so like you shouldn't do it for free but and because most of the charities do have budgets and they have grants and some of them have significant grants that they have to spend like so they so they don't even, they're like, I need to, I need to spend this on marketing so you can all year. Like I've had a couple of charities that actually have like the, I won't name names. I can tell you after the podcast, a couple of charities that actually have a significant amount of money that they have to spend on marketing. So it may as well go to you.

That's interesting uh do you have it what's your outlook for the uh the industry in 2022 and beyond oh my gosh you guys like we're in the right industry right like we need to get past covid but like what's anybody doing what's anybody doing but consuming video right now like what's any like like that's that's kind of my pitch line a little bit it's like text is going to be dead soon like there's not a pitch line but between us like people are going to stop reading i think in our lifetime that's what i think people and all and our brains are literally being rewired right now because of COVID where all we want to do is hit play. Like, don't make me read anything.

Show me. I'm not reading a blog anymore. I'm not going to. I don't want to know about. I don't want to read about your team with a still photo. I want a video that just tells me who works for you, what your values are. Like, I just think that's the future is people want to hit play. And they don't want to read.

And so every piece of text that's out there eventually will be transformed into video. And so like, we, we just need the crumbs of that. It's like we're indefinitely in the right industry um and just stick at it and pivot your business model so that it's like so that you're figuring out what your little niche is and what your piece of that massive pie is um you know but that's my outlook it's super rosy of course like uh how could it not be it's super rosy, of course. Like, how could it not be? It's super rosy. You just have to find your particular niche and wait out this little bit of nonsense that's happening now. I think that actually helped, if anything, because I guess it showed companies that were kind of dragging their feet on video and just video marketing in general. They're like, oh, shit, we can't we can't do that anymore.

and just video marketing in general they're like oh shit we can't we can't do that anymore how like we can't invite people to meet in person so we got we actually have to create some content for them so i think i rated it yeah i mean i i like to say like video marketing is just marketing like there's no that you don't even need to put the word it's you have got to use video to market well it doesn't matter what industry you're in like um post-secondary whatever like every industry marketing is video marketing yeah no i completely agree so 2022 the sky's the limit it's january right now so let's see what we all uh create over the next few months over the next year and you know we'll keep in touch obviously and uh and see how everyone's doing well guys i had so much

fun oh my gosh i hope i didn't crack your ears off but you guys are lovely no no it was great it was great conversation yeah no no good i honestly like thank you so much for jumping on with us you know and i feel like we got to discuss a lot of things that a lot of people are also thinking a lot of the time you know and then like that's the other point of the show you know is to kind of show that not everyone's alone especially for those other solo entrepreneurs where they're like am i the only one dealing with these challenges or no it happens to everyone you got to greet your teeth and push through it. Right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Cool. Well, thank you. Okay. Thank you, Bridget.