Creatives Grab Coffee - Proposals, Sales Strategies, & Remote Shoots (ft. Signature Video Group) | Creatives Grab Coffee 18

Episode Date: March 22, 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 Chris Stasiuk from Signature Video Group.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 to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast where we talk about the business of video production. Well, let's all kind of jump right back into it. Welcome everybody to Creatives Grab Coffee once more. And we welcome back Chris from SVG. The man is back. My goodness. Good to be here, guys guys good to be here i wish we could have uh celebrated over the holidays that party that was a tough one to call off but uh i'm certain we're

gonna get it in in like june or something yeah i i remember i remember that day you were just like the email you sent off uh it was almost like I could tell how defeated you felt. Sending that email out is like, no, we can't be canceling it. Why? But we have to just in case. Like I felt the pain, man. I felt it. Yeah.

Like it was, yeah. Cause that was like two years in a row that we've had to call it off. And yeah, it was tough. Cause you know, no, nobody had like called me or emailed me to cancel like everybody was pretty stoked about it yeah but you know at the end of the day you got to do uh the responsible thing as a business owner so it was and uh you know don't worry we'll get it in fellas oh for sure hey that that zoom call we did in the evening though that was that was hella fun and we all surprised you too you were like oh no something's happening yeah like yeah my wife she went down just like go get get her computer from the basement popped up i probably already had a few drinks at that point

so uh because i was feeling pretty low you know not to see everybody uh but no that was a great surprise and it's nice to see you guys on that so appreciate it yeah it was nice to be invited we were we kind of weren't expecting but hey it was pretty nice yeah yeah we got to do we got to do at least something together in person you know hopefully soon you know when the weather is a little less snowy like it is right now for sure yeah absolutely so how are you guys doing we We're doing good. I was actually going to segue into like what you've been up to since we last spoke to you, because we spoke back in end of 2020 or something like that. Right. talking about it on our first episode back about how we started focusing a lot on our marketing our advertising our seo and as a result of that we started getting a lot more consistent work and that was that was really really nice so this year we're just doubling down on that like like we were saying before we just uh we spent after we did the show in 2020, we kind of got a good idea of how to lay the foundations for a business.

So then 2021 was just, you know, bricklaying that foundation, you know. And you know what, man, like it never, it never stops. Like as entrepreneurs, you kind of just, you're always building like a new skill set each year. So, you know, figure out search marketing and then it's SEO and then maybe it's social or a content. Uh, then it's like digging into your accounting, like knowing where all the money's going and what's bringing you an ROI and what's not. And so, you know, you just build that skills, just like same as a filmmaker, right? You get a little bit better at maybe sort of every task, um, on set. And so, yeah, I just get a little bit more knowledgeable each year, which, uh, that's how you grow a business.

Yeah. Like we remember, I remember we mentioned before that, like, uh, in 2020, because we had all that time of no work, we got, we got the chance to really reflect on the business. And then after, you know, like, uh a meeting and talking with so many different people, we started to realize where there were gaps in the business. And that's what we kind of focused on over the last year. And wouldn't you know it 2021 our most successful year to date, which kind of shocked us, but you know, yeah, that's great. Yeah. And I mean, I do think there's going to be more and more demand for for good quality content but i saw you guys kind of you know i would say pivot but like reposition

again that you're experts solving problems video is what you do but problems you're there to solve problems right business problems so um that's that's once i figured that inside out a few years ago with things have you know really been different it just clicks right like um and like you said like like it's been like such a crazy shift in the year you know you've gotten even a lot a lot busier than when we last spoke as well uh and it's like every time uh i talked to you on the phone you're saying oh well yeah we were just getting back from Mexico. We're just getting back from this place. You know, this guy's gone international now, too.

Yeah, we're we were in Mexico like 10 days ago. We're in Vegas next week. We're in Arizona shortly after that. It's amazing. It's good. It's I will say the traveling, especially like a bog board right so we car nail our gear um but so mexico was really interesting it was down in um cabo but it was a pretty like high gloss like lifestyle sort of piece of content a lot of it and so um we were

hoping to just bring our bring bring a few crew down, rent most of our gear down there and hire some local crew. And after doing the deepest search imaginable, there wasn't really any qualified crew down there. They were all on a Netflix show that was shooting in Cabo called F boy Island. So there was no gear, there was no crew. So we had to fly in everything and so like lights stands wow um extension cords like you name it so that was a that's so stressful you know

and the funny thing is i remember early on when we first started doing video we weren't too we didn't know too much about like the rules and like what we needed to do if we needed to like travel for we just knew we couldn't do it for sure the way we were doing it well at the beginning we were still we still didn't realize that we whether we could or no no we knew it was wrong we're like let's just try to get away with it yeah this was early on though this was like seven oh for sure yeah my first few years for first years first many years were done that way as well to start going as it as it i'd say we declare business but we wouldn't you know claim our you know we wouldn't carne our gear again it was like dslrs and yeah back then so it's it's just crazy to know like uh

like you really realize how much stuff you need when you start to travel somewhere where it's like you know usually when you're going to a shoot here, uh, that is locally, you know, you kind of throw everything in the car or, and then you just bring everything with you. And then once you need to go to a, she was like, okay, do I need to bring this? Cause if I have to bring this and this, I have to then get an extra bag or two to bring it over. But the funny thing is though, early on, we used to use this very terrible, uh, suitcase to travel with all of our gear. And this was like, you know, when we were maybe one or two years into shooting. And we went to Houston for a shoot.

And a funny thing happened when we arrived at the airport. Dario, at one point while we were waiting for the luggage he points over to a luggage in the in the corner saying like oh look at that poor guy over there he has that suitcase busted wide open and there's it was in a it was in a cardboard box i was like look at that poor guy i feel so bad for him because it was on the conveyor belt right and carol's not laughing he's just he's just staring at it and he just slowly starts walking towards it it's just open with all the tripods and light stands and everything in there with like a tsa form that says like this has been inspected for further uh because no no it wasn't even it wasn't even that

like the the zipper had just ripped oh yeah yeah the zipper just busted wide open yeah but you know ever since that we know we realize how stressful it is to like to go about like traveling for projects and things like that so like whenever possible we try to like uh bring on board you know like remote or local crews yeah um otherwise for sure travel travels a lot more difficult especially to like adding the expenses of like having to get all of our covid tests to come back like we had that was what about the quarantining did you have to quarantine or anything like that or didn't need to quarantine um well so when we got back they were doing like

random tests at pearson and so there was uh five of us and we all got randomly selected so um i guess technically we had to to stay at home until we got our negative result which i think it took like three days it was pretty quick but uh three days wow that's that actually seems kind of long uh to be honest from what i unless it depends on the test that you guys took but it was a i believe was a pcr test so we had we had to show a negative test to get on the plane right in mexico to come back to toronto and then uh we got randomly selected at pearson to double down yeah that's why that's just such a stressful uh thing especially now so like i think we had like maybe one inquiry about us going over to the states um for just one or two days. And then we were just like, no, no, no. The amount of, it's not worth it.

The amount of like pain and effort that it would take to kind of do that. It's like, no, if you guys want, let's, let's find like some remote crews and then let's just kind of work with them based on direct them, direct them through zoom or something. That's the easiest solution. I mean, we could have gone there, but it's like, it's going to cost a lot more. So I don't know if you want to do it yeah and you and you honestly can't even really charge the client for all of the time you're gonna spend in prep and your travel days and it makes it like prohibitively expensive

for them and that's then you're not delivering the value yeah they like and it's yeah it it leaves nobody feeling great have you uh done a lot uh a lot or a few shoots where you've hired remote crews and you've just directed like remotely yeah yeah we did a big project last year where we had remote crews in like five or six different u.s cities um most of them it was collecting b-roll but when it's like interview stuff, usually we'll, we'll direct that via zoom. Um, it just, it helps the client feel more comfortable knowing that, you know, cause we know their brand and their messages and things like that. And then hire a local crew to, to, to execute that.

So yeah, it sounds similar to what we, we, what we were going to be doing. How did you go about like hiring the crews like did you go like just find like a freelancer and then see if they like knew other people that could help out or did you go and hire like a production company down there we've we've done it both ways um we've hired sort of uh small production companies uh and some freelancers. And it just depends on like what the case was, but we find that if it's, if it's B roll, finding a great, like a great DP is usually like every major us city has a lot of them. And, you know,

make sure we just check their references and that their work looks good and that the stuff on their portfolio is actually their work because, you know, make sure we just check their references and that their work looks good. And that the stuff on their portfolio is actually their work because, you know, you never know when you look at somebody's really, sometimes you have to ask them, okay, did you shoot this? Did you cut it? Did you color it? Like, what was your role in this? Right. So just asking all those questions up front, but yeah, it's worked out. And in fact, we're working on something where we're gonna have to hire some european crews uh to like repeat an exact uh like frame that we that we're shooting in toronto next week so um yeah we've got a little bit of time to solve that problem but

that'll be interesting it's funny like sometimes it almost seems like if you're trying to exactly replicate something like detail for detail but like in another in another country for someone else to do is much harder than just to kind of give them general direction to deliver something that's still high quality but even though it's a little different but it's like no it has to be exactly the same the the light has to be right at that angle with this soft box with this. 58% and it's daylight today. Yeah, no, it's it's, it is a lot more. Yeah. So we're going to really like document, you know, do a, do a setup of our lighting grid. What does it look like?

What's the intensity of course, they're going to have to adjust on the fly overseas, but if you hire good people, they're going to make it look like what's the intensity of course they're gonna have to adjust on the fly yeah um overseas but if you hire good people they're gonna make it look good of course yeah that's that's the hardest part though just being able to find the right people for it i feel like it's like it's tricky enough when when when it's in your own hometown but then abroad it's like you got to put a little bit of faith in that eh you have to put faith and and it's like a full-time job finding find that time especially with like time differences and getting on you know getting everybody on board but uh good problems to have i guess yeah absolutely it's

funny though with like when it comes to finding talent as you mentioned you know sometimes it's hard to tell you know like what level of quality of work they might have, because like we've, we've done the same where we've looked for different kinds of like shooters, editors and everything. And it's really hard to kind of, uh, get a good sense of, uh, their work. I found that the best way is just, you know, like, you know, see who you can find is like the best possible option. And then you learn as you do more projects with them, you know, it's, you never can really tell a hundred percent what someone will deliver for you unless you actually start to work

with them. That's what I've learned at least, or, or seen. Cause it's, it changes. It varies drastically. There've been times where we've worked with DPs where like their portfolio looked amazing. And then we put them on like a very simple corporate shoot and the work that they delivered for us was, it just wasn't up to par compared to what they had on their portfolio so it's i think it's because sometimes we we expected them to kind of do the role that we do because when we're on set we're all and we're shooting we're also directing and producing it versus like if someone's just strictly a dp you can't really expect them to have like a vision for the project. Right. Cause they're not in the whole process from beginning to end. Right.

Yeah. There's definitely variables like that. There's definitely variables like that. But that's why direction is very key and you have to really communicate. And that's another thing we've learned, you know, working with talent is that keeping communication like constantly and then, and thoroughly with's another thing we've learned, you know, working with talent is that keeping communication like constantly and then and thoroughly with them just to make sure that, you know, everything is done exactly to the vision, right?

Yeah. And if they're dealing with clients on your behalf as well, like that's something you really need to think through is like client management, client relationships over there. It's always best if that client has some sort of, you know, boots on the ground, some sort of liaison that boots on the ground some

sort of liaison that can help you because um the last thing you want to do is send somebody who can shoot a great frame but maybe they don't know how to talk doesn't have the the social or personal skills to maybe you know deal with like a c-suite executive uh yeah so one the one good thing about liaisons is that they can let you know sometimes what you can and can't shoot on at these locations and that's like the biggest thing because yeah there have been times where like we've come go out and gone on and it's like we've we filmed stuff and then luckily we had liaisons who said oh that looks great but can you try to avoid that thing that's on the wall because we can't show that in the video it's like okay thank you for letting us know now we can just

reframe and readjust that's why you always need at least a producer a producer and and dp is like the smallest you could ever make a video team right absolutely very bare bones and that's that's the most bare bones you could really get yeah we'll do our barest bones will be like a three person it'll be like a dp a producer and like a pa who can also do a bit of swing or maybe run a bit of sound you know carry lots of gear stuff like that yeah yeah uh so chris in the in the year since you've been on this show tell us a bit about what you've been up to yeah um well similar to you guys last year was our, our busiest year yet as well. I feel like we never had a, like a moment to even breathe really.

It was kind of, it was a lot of bigger projects that came with really short timelines. So it was like lots of scrambling and it felt like it was constant fire drills, but we managed to pull it off. We, we grew our team. We're, we're five full time now. Yeah. So it's been great. And you guys, I know you guys have met Rachel, who is our producer and we've hired now we have two full-time editors and we did hire like a senior account manager now,

And we did hire like a senior account manager now, which has really helped us get things going very aggressively this year so far. Just having somebody that can reach out to new leads and maintain client relationships when we're on set. Like we were on set the last two days, for example. the last two days, for example. And, you know, everything is still getting done in the background, which, you know, it was a bit of a risk to hire that position. But I knew we had to because we were being too slow on getting proposals back. And, you know, we just, which, which was a huge problem, because sometimes, you know, first one, first one to respond wins the project, not always, but sometimes the one we shot yesterday, we got the lead when we were down in Mexico and had it been a year ago, it would have taken us a week, two weeks to get that proposal done.

And instead it was done in two days. And so we ended up winning the project. Nice. Yeah. We shot it yesterday. So our two days or the last two days. Yeah. And I think the more and more you do these types of proposals and briefs, you know, yeah, I usually might take like a week or two, but once you have also someone who's dedicated to it and you guys have turned out as many as you have, it becomes a lot easier and easier. I feel like every time Dara and I go through a brief or a proposal, just every single one, it's better and better than the last. And it's just,

it's just that process of going through to the point where, yeah, like you said, it can be done in one or two days if you know what you're doing. Yeah. And if you ask the right questions upfront and again, like each, like exactly your point, like those proposals, they're really templated. You're just sort of swapping specific information, but your general stuff all stays the same. So, um, yeah, I think proposals are really good to kind of like, they shouldn't be a surprise when a client gets your proposal, it shouldn't be a surprise. So it should basically be just a sort of rehashing of everything you've discussed in writing yeah

we had judah from uh black white media come on for as a second guest for uh the relaunch and he actually mentioned that uh upping his proposal game was the thing that made the biggest difference for his business he said as soon as he like just focused on that and made like some really solid proposals it it just he started closing down much like way more projects than before and it's something that we've started to notice too because like our proposal game our proposals are good like they i mean they're never perfect right but that that's one thing we're really going to focus on this year is really just upping the quality of

them and yeah it's uh i think one thing we probably didn't do a lot in the past is try to see it through like the client's eyes yeah like if they're looking at this what would they want to like see and what do they need to understand right because I think you said something interesting uh the other month about that about how uh the proposals really need to be able to convey your pitch really well because essentially they're just going to pass that on to their superiors right because they're not going to be able to sell you as well as because cause again, once you're dealing with a client, they still need to go to their, uh, upper level management and sell you to them. Right. And they can't do it by word of mouth or through like the emails as well as you could do

it. So you kind of need to use your proposal so that they could just fire it up the pipeline. And hopefully it gets you through. That was a wild revelation. That was such a wild revelation when I thought about it. It's almost like a game of broken telephone almost, right? Because it's like, say Chris, you're pitching to the contact at this one company. You give the best pitch of your life and they might remember three key details

or like hot talking points or like, but they won't be able to convey your energy and passion, you know, for like maybe the brief or the idea that you had, because the idea could be great, you know, but it's only great because you are the one behind that idea of pushing it. Right. take that, they go to their higher ups. It's like, so this is the project. This is, this is the idea. And then this is the budget. And then the higher up might be like, Oh, I don't like the budget. You know, let's move on to something else. It's just, it's, it's crazy how like, I think people don't realize that it's like in business broken telephone is a real problem. Yeah, 100%. And so we, I mean, I think we started doing this a couple years ago, but the very first thing we put in all of our proposals is like, the first thing is challenge. What is their challenge, right? What exactly do they need to solve? And maybe it's a few things. It needs to be, you know, we need to tell this story, we need to deliver these messages. And, you know, the experience

needs to be seamless and white glove. And then the next block is like solution, how we're going to solve that problem. One thing, though, and again, you got to have resources to be able to do this or time. But we now will no longer send proposals just to somebody's inbox. They have to be presented to at least that gatekeeper but ideally the decision maker um and you're gonna get a lot more like sorry no like not interested just send us a proposal but we've really kind of held our ground on that and it's been it's been really effective because then you know when you're taking whomever through that proposal,

you're kind of answering all of their questions. You're basically showing them that we've considered everything and that it's like their project is handled. And I think if you're dealing with a gatekeeper, that's taking it to their, to, you know, to somebody higher up, a decision maker and a lot of cases, taking it to their to you know to somebody higher up a decision maker in a lot of cases if it's a big project they'll feel like their job or their um you know you know their image is on the line so they want to make sure that you have it handled so that they can present you to you know whomever wait wait so, how do you deal with that? So do you have like,

uh, the proposal, uh, presentation with them? And then after that you have it with their gatekeeper as well, or? So we, we, we try to not, um, we, we, we try to only have the sec. So we'll have a briefing first. So with usually it's the gatekeeper. Okay. What exactly do you need? Asking a lot of questions. Okay, great. Here's what I heard you say. This is what you need. This is when you need it. This is approximately your budget. Then we prepare a proposal and then we then try to set up a second meeting

with that person and the decision maker. Yeah. Oh, I see. Yeah, we really try to get the decision maker on the line. And the way we sort of, you know, sell that through is, you know, this is obviously an important project. project we just want to make sure that we understand all of your needs because you know your boss might have different needs or expectations or challenges or know something about this project that you may not and so that'll i see yeah that'll allow us to then sort of really hear them out and it honestly leads to better work like when everybody you know

i used to sort of make too many assumptions about about things and now don't make assumptions anymore we need to like do a lot of fact finding and get to the bottom of what they actually what they expect yeah you're becoming more of a consultant almost right you're you're saying uh you're going through their business problems on a way deeper level and trying to get to the root cause. Right. And then trying to find the solution to that. That's the right way to do it. Yeah, for sure. Like video is the medium of how we solve those problems. And the beauty is that we can solve problems at scale. Right.

So if say if it's a, you know, if it's a sales sales video now this video becomes a salesperson for their brand works 24 7 it doesn't take sick days it doesn't make a commission um it's one of the most valuable pieces of content that their business may ever create and so i think sometimes they don't realize how much of an investment video is, you know, at least earlier. They don't see it as an investment at all. That's the thing I've noticed. Like not all the time.

Some do, but not everyone. That's the problem. Well, that's why you want to get the decision makers on, especially if they're in a C level position, those people tend to be growth minded. So at that level, they're, they're not focused on like completing tasks, they're focused on achieving goals. And so they, if they're more growth minded, they can understand now what where the investment comes in and what's my ROI. So yeah, you just got to get past those gatekeepers to get to those decision makers,

which I still don't have the answer to that every time. It's touch and go, but hopefully you get them on the horn and sort things out. See, the problem sometimes- I've actually started referring to, oh, sorry, go ahead, Kirill. Yeah, there's just one last point to this is like sometimes the problem sometimes to oh sorry go ahead kira yeah there's just just one

last point to this is like sometimes the the problem is so much it's like you you don't realize which gatekeeper you're with at the moment sometimes you're at the first gatekeeper then there's a second and then a third and then a fourth you know so it's how do you deal with it in that situation when there's like more than one person that's gatekeeping it what do you do then yeah good question broken telephone yeah it is a lot of broken telephone i mean we'll still try to get everybody um on board or we'll say listen and tell everybody can get on the same page it's not you know it's not useful for anybody's time um because yeah like we've been burned by that a lot of times where we've gone down we've gone up the chain and we think like we've and at this point you spent on something like that what days if not weeks on a proposal

and uh you get to the very the final boss and game over right it's sort of like oh no or this project is not happening or it's on hold or on hold we've got that one that one is my favorite one it's like let's circle back on this in a few months time and then that's it for sure for sure but our you know adding our account manager Samantha like she like she's really good at getting to the bottom of it and letting the you know letting the gatekeeper know that saying listen we're not going to present a proposal until we can actually speak to someone because um we don't want to waste your time but we also don't want to waste our time yeah I like that a lot because you're essentially just vetting them. Right. Well, one thing we started to notice is that after we started implementing all

the SEO groundwork and all the, the, the Google AdWords, we started to get more leads flowing in, which was really cool at first. Cause it's like, it started with, I think it started early July. I was like, yo, we're getting like consistently, like it was like three a week then, but it was like, we were getting, it's not bad. Yeah. It wasn't bad. Right. And it started to build up to more. And then I remember back in November, I just sat down and I made an Excel file and I listed all the people that reached out. And then I realized, wait, a lot of this was just like garbage leads that were coming in. Right.

So like what we did after that, because I was like, like, OK, we're getting we're getting people like submitting and, you know, clicking on our ads. But it's like it's junk. Right. So not quality leads. That's not quality leads. Yeah. So then after that, we started implementing some other things to vet them right

so on our website we uh for example for the budget before we had um don't know as an option and then we're like wait a minute let's just get rid of that entirely i need you know you need to know how much money you have for this thing so we set it at a certain amount from that and then this year we raised it because we're like people we were getting it's like look you want like ten thousand dollars worth of work for like three that's not gonna happen it's like that picture of the horse where you start off really well before before we move forward though i just want to quickly ask chris what is probably one of the most standout kind of leads that came in that didn't pan out but i'm just because we all have funny you're you're funniest you're funniest or strangest one yeah that didn't pan out well i've made this mistake

so many times and i still make it where um a lead will come in and i'll get really excited about like I'll have a big idea and instead of just making a proposal and I've done this up to up until a few months ago I've actually written out and storyboarded full campaigns at like the proposal stage um oh no yeah like full blown uh and I would say more often than not it hasn't worked out in our favor that either didn't do the project or they went with somebody else either less expensive or whatever but um i also think too like subconsciously they've got to be thinking like wow like even if the idea was amazing they're they've got to be thinking wow like these guys did all of this work for free do they not like it if they've done it for free it doesn't have value yeah you know yeah and so yeah there was

one it was for a company that makes um satellites and so i had this like like sort of brain flash moment where i was like i'm going to i won't say the idea because i still want to make it for somebody else but inspiration idea i i i wrote the whole script i storyboarded the whole thing and i even presented it to music so that they could like get the get the feeling of it and uh yeah they went another direction that one still stings me for sure but you know what you did you you were the peacock that showed all the feathers and they were not interested at that moment i know you know what it's like in those romance movies where the protagonist like professes his love and everything and it's all majestic and the girl's like

yeah i uh i have a boyfriend yeah that's exactly what it was right there yeah and i at that point i got too into the idea and didn't again didn't ask those tough questions which were like if i present you something at this budget is that an automatic no right things like you have a boyfriend yeah yeah you forgot to ask the most basic one i know and so yeah and that's why like it's been so important to add people to our team that um that won't allow that to happen anymore and so yeah no creative work until until we're doing business together right exactly we have two we did that two funny stories we have two funny stories carol tell them tell them the soccer guy that called us that called you

because you had the funniest response to that guy. The funniest, most unintentional response to that. It was, it was, it was such an innocent thing though. Cause it's like, it's a guy who didn't really know, but he basically was calling and asking for like a videographer to come in to, to come into, to like film a game, a soccer game. Right. And the funny thing is though, like a lot of these leads, they don't introduce themselves. That's the one thing that keeps kept throwing me off sometimes where I'm like, hi, it's

Carol. It's Carol on the phone. Like, who am I talking to? And then it would just go off. And then like after like a minute, I'd be like, sorry, what's your name? But anyway, on this call, he he was telling me like what he needed. And I asked him like what the budget is. It's like, oh, like I think I could we could probably pay like 50 or 60 dollars or something like that

50 or 60 dollars yeah and i'm like oh you probably best bet is to find a student like at ryerson like you go to ryerson he's like yeah he's like okay go to the film program i was just i was just listening to him. I then, it wasn't on speaker. So I just heard is yeah. You should probably just go find a student. Maybe, maybe, maybe they might do it. It just sounded so funny from my end. And you know what? Like we, we get those all the time as well. And we will, if the lead looks like at least okay we'll we'll set up a

call and then if we're if we're not a good fit we'll tell them immediately um but we'll still try and still try to provide some value where you can find a solution or what i would do or you know refer refer the project to someone else you know stuff like that right that's that's exactly what I was, where I was going with, with that call. It's like, you know, like immediately I wanted to figure out like, if this was something we can help them help him with. And when he told me what he had to work with, you know, I'm like, just go find a student. That is probably your best bet and finding some like,

cause you can get the luck of the draw. Sometimes, you know, those, those beginners, they can do some great work, you know, like that. I mean, we all started from zero, right? A from zero right 100 yeah that was us many moons ago right we were the ones i mean the first project i ever did was like 200 bucks and it's better than what i did i rented a camera to cost me 250 bucks to rent right so i was like losing money on the thing and but i was so excited to have somebody pay me to do a video i was like i'm doing this thing i'm gonna rent a good camera i'm gonna get some lights it was you know i'm gonna drive two and a half hours to this location and uh you know meanwhile only had money for the camera not the lights yeah yeah oh man i remember

the first thousand that i got from a video project i felt like i hit a cheat code in by doing this is like i'm actually getting paid for this and while i was still in school too that was the crazy thing and i'm like wow so i guess there's meanwhile there was like governments like we're getting paid for this weird uh there's another another okay so that was a funny story we had we had a weird one come in just this week actually so i was about to mention now yeah so someone reached out to us actually another thing i also added to our contact form is also the industry because it i actually like a lot of people reach out and you're sometimes it's hard to figure out exactly which industry

they're part of so i was like you know what this is a mandatory question you gotta answer it you know um so i see it and it's like okay retired so okay weird person like it's a guy's personal email and whatnot and he wants us to film like invasive thoracic cancer operation he's like i have to get permission from my doctor to be able so we can film it's 12 hours budgets like 5k and i was like this is the weirdest one we've got in like so there's he wanted you to film his his surgery yeah he's getting surgery he wants us to film it for 12 hours and i was like first of all i can't do medical gore so i was like carol i'm out right away yeah second of all 12 hours like can we medical gore. So I was like, Carol, I'm out right away. Yeah. It's like 12 hours.

Like, can we even bring the camera in there? Like, you're not allowed for this. I actually asked, I asked my girlfriend who works in a hospital and cause she used to have to do this at one of her and one of the other hospitals she worked at. And she said that there's so much red tape that you'd have to go through to do it. And like she was saying, when she had to film stuff, like she couldn't be in the room. She had to like be in full. How do you say like the hazmat?

Yeah, scrubs and everything, you know, like everything sanitized. And and then you just have to set it up there and then just like work and operate everything remotely. And she was she was filming an eye surgery and she described it as just, you know, needles out of jelly. It's awful, bro. I know. I know.

I'm out of that too. Yeah. I'm not a heights guy either. So I don't know. Oh really? Yeah. So you've never gone like skydiving? Never been skydiving. Never been. You got to bring them Carol. Oh yeah. Getting up on a step ladder makes me like hanging christmas lights i've got a freaking bungalow here right so uh even

hanging christmas lights on our gutter was was nerve-wracking for me he wanted to get a one floor house he couldn't handle the height from two for sure well one of my first jobs back in back in uh was this this would have been university was college pro house painting and uh we would have those like walkout backyards so it's a two-story house but when you're painting the back of the house it's like a three-story house because it's a dugout yeah okay you're painting uh you know like gutters 30 feet up and i was i did that for one summer and uh that's where the vertigo came from huh i think so yeah you look down one too many times exactly yeah feet on the ground we we did skydiving once uh we just did it with another friend of ours just to kind of

we've yet to edit the video for it we're supposed to edit the video for it we still haven't done it our friends still ask us every six months like so where the hell's the video for it. We're supposed to edit the video for it. We still haven't done it. Our friends still ask us every six months, like, so where the hell's the video? Like you guys said you would have done it. We keep telling him next week. For the last five years. What was the time, right? I mean, I have so many like behind the scenes,

little films I've wanted to make and like social content. Like that's the one thing I'm hoping we can improve this year is, is our social, um, we're so busy doing stuff for other, other companies that we haven't, we haven't dug into our own, you know, we'll post like once a month on Instagram or something. We've never posted. We're in the same, we're in the same boat. We got to up our game. Because the problem is, is that we have, we all have these plans, you know, even if we have it

planned out where it's like, okay, we'll this day this day and this day so you're gonna do it then all of a sudden the client is like hey let's hop on a call to talk about things and another call comes in another call comes and then you have a shoot on a certain day then before you know it two weeks have passed and you haven't posted anything yeah yeah for sure and you've missed like six meals and you don't know what's going on. Yeah. Oh no, I don't miss the meals. Priorities first, right? Priorities first. He always makes sure we get fed.

Yeah, we had a pretty big shoot yesterday. And so we, we, we had pre-ordered all of our food for lunch and there was, I think there would have been like around 20 people on set and so lunch was scheduled for one and we get um a notification at 12 30 that our order had been canceled and you know we're half an hour from lunch all these people everybody's really hungry because we started at 7 a.m and so we had to do the we had to we had to do the pizza pivot and just bring in a bunch of pies and you know everybody was the best though man when you're hungry like there's no tastes amazing it is the default it is the savior of all saviors on sets absolutely get it in fast and get a lot of it yeah get all those carbs in so that you know you're nice and stuffed yeah you can have a nice afternoon nap basically oh so last month uh in january was ironically the most busy we've ever

been where we were filming almost every day from january 10th all the way until february 1st which is which was a first for us and guys yeah and one hilarious challenge that kind of we started running into because it was only dario and i on set for those days uh from the crew side you know we had obviously talent and the client there but was going to get food because we were in we were in dundas square and young and dundas yeah so let's pick out like one one spot that we'll just like go grab lunch from and then the first few few days, it was amazing. You know, this one sushi burrito spot. And then after, after the first week, the second week is like, Oh, this is starting to get a little bit.

Oh, I thought you were going to tell them the, the, the homeless people almost attacking a story. Oh, well, I mean, that's, that's a story for another day, but like, we don't need to go on that tangent that's great though i mean it sounds like you guys are super busy that's great yeah chris i wanted to go back a little bit and talk about uh when you were doing remote shoots i'm wondering are you still doing anything or maybe you're capturing remote footage of like uh talent like so for example back in 2021 we did like quite a few videos where like we recorded them on zoom like i'm wondering if you're are you are you still

seeing uh more of that now or is it just died down completely yeah so like like like remote capture like this yeah yeah Less of it for sure. But we still do have a few things on the go. We use like we use Riverside, which is like a Zoom. Okay. Yeah. We like it because it actually captures natively

to whatever device the subject's on and then uploads it to the cloud. So you get better audio you get better picture um and it's a nice easy to use platform so how is it is it working well for you because we were actually for the the podcast we were thinking about either using riverside fm or remotely uh remotely something uh but i i was looking into it and a lot of people were saying it'll work amazingly well eight out of ten times yeah so that's the part that scared me a lot is that those two out of ten times you know for a guest i'd hate to have to repeat like

a conversation because it won't be the same and i can only imagine if you're doing this with like a client i don't even want to have that type of conversation where we go like look there was a screw up we have to redo it because then we'd have to do it at cost and then also just like it would be so bad like for our image right yeah there is a little bit of risk of that like we haven haven't had anything fail completely, but we've had people with like bad internet connections where it took us like three, four days to get their files eventually. Oh, wow.

Those are really nervous, nerve wracking days because we have nothing, right? Because it uploads the whole thing once. Does it do it automatically? Like as soon as it's done, it automatically starts doing it thing once does it do it automatically like as soon as it's done it automatically starts doing it or you or they have to upload it manually no it automatically does it but and most of the time it's like by the time you you stop recording it's at like 98 then it's done in like 30 seconds but oh really you can tell which ones are going to be trouble because you're like 20 30 minutes in and it's at like 20%. You're like, Oh no,

this is like rendering like for like two, like the old days when you'd have to render for like an hour. And then that it's like at three, it's like 97% for like an extra 15 minutes and then it gets to a hundred percent, but it still doesn't close. For sure. Yeah. And it's nerve wracking because in this one case it was it was a testimonial for a client and they had to jump through all sorts of hoops to get this person

to agree and then schedule it and then yeah it was a nerve-wracking couple days where he's like where are the files we're like we're trying uh we didn't eventually get them but yeah so but to answer your question yes we're still doing some of those but less and less people are starting to get comfortable with uh with in-person stuff again yeah we had like one lead um uh right now who was like asking, you know, hiring local crews all throughout the U.S. to film interviews. But I think once they saw the price tag of what that would cost, they were like, oh, why don't we just do it all remotely on Zoom? It's like, OK, yeah, no worries. an opportunity cost to these remote things um where like so i'll do most of the interviews for example and we'll have like a producer uh running the sort of call and then in some cases

i'll have an editor observing like one of our editors just so that they can make selects as we go so we can turn it around really that's a good one actually but then next thing you know um you've had three people burn the better part of a day for, you know, something that would be a fraction of an in-person shoot. And then your email inbox is piling up and others, you know, the opportunity cost is real. time that you would take maybe what like an hour to conduct the interview on zoom 30 minutes set up 30 minutes post or whatever at the most it'll probably be like two hours but you can't really book a full day shoot on that day right so that is like you said that's the big opportunity cost you know it's like that's why like we've tried to kind of schedule more people on on the same day for that but unfortunately everyone has different schedules. So like you had to, you had to try to like be accommodating, you know, especially if you're

interviewing people all over the U S you know, you're dealing with different time zones, yada, yada, yada. It's, it's a whole mess in that sense too. Yeah. Well, we have found some, some success in that we'll, we'll set the client up for success where we'll do the first video or first few establish look and feel establish sort of like a process and then teach them how to recreate that so we'll sort of create a branding package for them and we'll do the first video and then we'll just give them everything they need to continue on. Cause they find a lot of, if they have internal people that can handle something like that, like simple edits, throw this animated logo on, throw these lower thirds on things like that.

That's worked pretty well. Yeah. Oh, interesting. I guess it depends. It depends on the organization too too in terms of what resources they have but yeah it's definitely like type of content that at the end of the day a lot of people can do it themselves if they have people willing to to learn and yeah that's nice it's sort of like teach a man to fish and they will eat for for a lifetime right so right no yeah you're taking

work out of your out of your own schedule but at the end of the day, it's what's best for them. What's easiest for them, that sort of stuff. I want to go back as well to the fact that you've grown your team. How, like how, how much do you think that's helped you increase your output just by being able to do that? Like, do you find that you're able to take on like like 100 more work or like how how much how big of a difference has it made or has it has it just been that now you can like relax a little bit you're not too like you're not stretched

too thin i mean i was hoping i was going to relax more it's it's it's more because now I've got more people to have daily meetings with and more projects on the go. But it definitely has increased our output. The biggest thing is that, again, like filling up our pipeline and booking future projects doesn't wait until we're done one project now. So we're kind of filling up the pipeline as we're working on stuff um so that's added quite a lot of capacity and you know our account manager has tons of production experience as well so they've also been able to help out with like you know producing projects so you know helping us crew things up or cast or you know, producing projects. So, you know, helping us crew things up or cast or, you know, just client relationships. And we've,

we've had a crazy first start of the year, just like we're, we're constantly, we have some stuff booked out until October, November so far this year, and we're, we're fully booked until May at this point. So, wow. Yeah, it's, it's been, it's been interesting. Yeah, it's, it's, it's more hours per week, I think for all of us, but everybody at that level is incentivized by our success as well. So the more work we do, the more remunerated everybody is going to be.

That's kept people pretty excited about keeping our pipeline full. It's nice. It's great. Everybody is excited to win projects now instead of like, oh man, now we have to do this. It's like we get to do this.

That's great. We're happy to hear that you guys are doing so well like that and uh congrats man it's all yeah thanks thanks for sure and same to you guys as well uh yeah it sounds like you guys are killing it and you guys are so much so much ahead of where i was at your stage and it's it's great to see you guys are really smart and doing it right so uh proud of you guys thanks we're just we're just trying to learn as much as we can that's why we like talking to different different uh business owners just seeing their journey what what they went through it just it's been helping us a lot but I feel like we could definitely always be doing more there's always like sometimes we slack off a little bit, but you know,

at the end of the day, still better than where we were yesterday. So it's still good. And it's tough to like, as creatives, some of those like logistics things come secondary where we're like, we just really want to do something cool or think about something fun and put the admin stuff off. But I made this mistake like years ago where we're having a really good year. And then I took my foot off the gas and, you know, our SEO suffered, our search suffered, our social suffered. And I promised myself that I would never do that again.

And so for the most part, we've been able been able to you know do what needs to be done not everything that i'd like to be done but you know that's that's any business right right you're right we could always be doing more but that's that's a great sign that you're thinking that way because it it shows you're looking to grow and and do more and do better yeah we have a lot of stuff planned this year like for the seo front we are going to be focusing on writing a lot more blog articles because i find that that actually helped us out a lot and then we're also creating like blog content to accompany those blog articles and that's actually been really helpful for us too so like if we have like a uh how is a video made a blog article for example we'll just make its video version as well yeah it's been like really good for getting us

comfortable in front of the camera because we've we're actually in the process of redoing the earlier ones we did because yeah upped our production quality on those and also i think we did it at a time where the uh barbers were still closed so oh yeah for sure yeah i don't i don't know if you remember but i had i had super long hair back uh last year and i think it was like by november or so i it was like time where i'm like okay i think it's time to just get rid of it you're you're right about the blogs though I mean I don't want to reveal too many of our secrets but um we've written a couple of blog posts that I never really gave much of a thought to I was like oh that's a that's a fun idea and um this shoot that we did the last few days I think it I'm

pretty sure it was a result of one of these strange blog posts where I believe the topic was here are the best, like the, the best dog commercials from the last decades. And so kind of recapping from, I think it was from like 2000 to 2021. And it was, you know, just a whole collection, really well-written for, you know, for dog lovers, people that want to watch cute dog commercials. But it was, you know, I think it was 1500 to 2000 words, lots of great embedded video, lots of nice photos.

And it started ranking. I believe at one point it was the number one result for people searching for best dog commercials or dog commercials. And which most of those people, they just want to see dog commercials, but you know, one out of a hundred may actually say, Hey, we need a production company to shoot something with a dog in it. And so that's what our shoot was the last few days. something with a dog in it and so that's what our shoot was the last few days and i believe it was a direct result of that that single blog post so the roi on that i mean oh absolutely because

that article essentially you positions you as an expert kind of um uh how do you say an expert viewer on the content that is out there as well, where you're basically saying, this is what is out there. These are the ones that, that we as a company find are the best ones because of this, this, and this reason, this one's good because of this, this, and this reason. And so that actually just, even though the work is not necessarily yours, uh, uh, we threw one of ours in there oh okay okay so at least there's at least there's that right so you're at least part of it but it's also as a result you're basically putting yourself at the same level as all the other great ones out

there as well and uh you know it also kind of shows in a way your taste of what you think is good work and that's and that's what people will recognize. You know, like you said, most people are just looking for the content, but you're looking for that one in a hundred. You like, that's who you're, that's who you need because that one in a hundred could be, could be a long-term client. Freaking Spotify could be anybody. Who knows, right? We actually got some leads that came in and I, I,

when I asked them which keywords they they searched that's actually one thing we started doing on on our initial lead calls yeah because i was like i've always been curious it's like how did they even find us right and once i have the time they tell me the words i was like jesus christ how did you even come up with that like it's like like how did you find us with those keywords right like there's some really weird ones i should actually make a list of them all but some of them i was like okay i've written a blog article that was similar to that and then when i asked them where we were on the because i also asked them where we were on the page it'll be like one to three or four and i was like oh okay interesting

like i didn't expect that blog article to kind of lead into that but yeah the blog article is a funny thing I found is that when I'm researching I actually haven't written one since June but we have several we're working on right now um the the things I was noticing when I was like trying to like research like for example like one of them that we have up is like what is a promotional video for example right so you just kind of Google that and then you see what other people wrote. And I would start to notice that everyone was kind of copying each other. It was so interesting. I was like, wait a minute.

Promotional videos. It's the type of video that's promotional in nature made by. I love that. The funniest thing is that it was just they lit like some people legit just copied other people's blog posts oh yeah to make their own blog post and i don't think they realize that like it's not gonna help them in the long run because google just like suppresses that they they see who published it first and then just push you down instead of the other way around so but it was just really funny when I was when I was trying to see that SEO is it's like a lot of fun because

you get like these like measurable results and you know kind of seeing what's working what's not how did this site outrank me for this like what are they doing it's a new website like what's working what's not how did this site outrank me for this like what are they doing it's a new website like what's going on are they you know being nefarious in their approach there's one website which we shall not name that's it yeah that that is uh like up there on the first page of video production toronto and they are slipping though i I have noticed that. Yeah. Okay. In fact, funny story. I'm pretty sure we're talking about the same folks. Oh yeah. We, we got a lead in our contact form from, from this company, but it was like, like I knew it was from them.

And so they're, they're asking us to price this job out and we're like, no, we need to have a call and they refuse to have a call and it was just kind of funny to see see that wait how did you know how did you know it was them uh the test the one testimonial they had on their site was this person reaching out for a quote so yeah oh wait are we talking about the one that has like no content yeah that one okay oh wow so they're fishing i figured they're actually i looked into that good on them for sure i looked into them so if you search their contact info, it leads to like some SEO website or some marketing website.

They're super sketch. Like, I'm actually curious if anyone actually reaches out to them because they have like no video. It's just a bunch of words on their site. I don't get it. Like, who's actually like getting in touch with them? Well, think about it like this. There have been people that have reached out to us, Dario, where I've asked them, like,

have you had a chance to look at anything on our website? They literally haven't seen anything. They go straight to the contact form. I've had that happen many times. So yeah, I can't, I can't, it's crazy how many times we've had a call with a potential lead and we're saying, okay,

so like anything on our portfolio that you really like, that like kind of- Exactly, yeah. They're like, no, we haven't seen anything. It's like, whoa. It's like, come on. So how did you get it? Like, why are you in touch? I know haven't seen anything it's like it's like come on so how did you get it like why are you in time i know right because it's not their money that's

why it's true it's not their money they don't care but they're just looking for an option yeah exactly well the second it's their money that's when the scrimping and savings that's starts to come through you know the second someone else's someone's wallet is open, that's when it's like, hold on, let me count every dollar that comes up. It's true. So what have you guys worked on the last year that you're like most proud of any, any sort of projects that come to mind in terms of, Hey, I can't believe we pulled that off, or I can't believe we made this or, you know, anything like that. I would, I would say last year uh we actually

early on in the year i think it was like in february or march we finally got to do cross the item off the bucket list of doing a project with a ferrari we just oh yeah oh yeah i i keep forgetting that that was early last year because it was the four what is what is it called the 488 evo is that i don't remember the exact number model or whatever but it was yeah it was the four what is what is it called the 488 evo is that i don't remember the exact number model or whatever but it was yeah it was like a super car it was awesome it was like one of those ferrari supercars uh that we were doing for like this workshop video um at uh with the wind tunnel and and uh we just thought okay perfect finally we get to cross this off of our bucket list you know because we've been wanting to do that for a while and it was just thought okay perfect finally we get to cross this off of our bucket list you know

because we've been wanting to do that for a while and it was just nice to kind of like get that you know out of the way so it's like okay next time we do a ferrari project okay so it's another cool project to do whatever no big deal but we just that was that was probably the first cool project that we worked on last year yeah and we did like a pretty big big one for that because it was uh uh it was like a full-on like lesson they were doing uh this was for um ace wind tunnel and participation with ontario tech university so it was like a full like course that they did on it it was like 30 minutes long it was a workshop it was a workshop that's right yeah yeah it was a and it was awesome man that car is that car is

beautiful and that that red no matter how many pictures we took of it, it just doesn't capture it like what it is in real life. It's just a nice car. I just wish they fired it up in the wind tunnel. They couldn't do that. That was the only thing that we couldn't do while we were there, which was like fired up because they were just trying to show how wind passes through these cars and how it like, you know,

kind of like goes through all the aerodynamics and that's what, what the focus was more so. So that's why they didn't optimize. I think it's in the video on our homepage now. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. We can send it to you if you want to take a look at it later. It was a fun one. That's cool. Yeah. So working with super cars, no big deal, you know, no big deal you know no big deal right whatever what about you yeah i i feel like this mexico one we we pulled off like was was a big accomplishment because it was on and then it was off and then it was on but then we only had 10 days to put it together and uh yeah like it fully confirmed

that having the expanded this would not have happened without those extra team members and just made me like really really proud um to have people you know putting these things together and really grateful for a great team and uh yeah just to travel with that many people with that much stuff in the in the climate that we're in and uh yeah that was a big accomplishment and it was we shot um it was some like like sort of luxury lifestyle content so we spent a couple of days in a $25 million house on the ocean. And then also a bit of a mega yacht. Wow. God, what was it?

What was the product? Luxury you said, right? Yeah. So the clients, Engel and Volkers, they're the luxury, a luxury real estate brand. And so we do all of their North American work. And we told most of their story in and around the GTA. So within like three hours of Toronto, we shot a bunch of stuff last year

and we needed to have like a beach episode. These are like little vignettes of people just living luxurious moments. And so we're like, we've got to go somewhere where there's a beach. And one of their, one of the people- We need a mega yacht too while we're at it. You can go somewhere where there's a beach and um one of their one of the people we need a we need a mega yacht too while we're at it can't do woodbine beach you couldn't do woodbine beach that's what i said you know in the summer there's a couple places in like niagara region

that actually can play as a region but uh really yeah like um i want to say crystal beach looks kind you can cheat it as sort of like a you know a caribbean type destination if you find the right house but yeah it was the shoot was really cool just to see how people like that live and uh it was the owner of the house as our subject but then they they brought their friends in to sort of fill out a dinner party scene and wow it was like the 0.1 percent at the there's there's so many levels that i understood you know even this person with this huge huge mansion uh you know they they weren't the richest person in that room by far so it was really okay imagine being part of that friend group yeah yeah i certainly did not fit in i was wearing a bathing suit that day so well you know you could have you could have pretended to be the even

like the most richest person in there because it's like when you're that level of rich you don't care like look at steve jobs he just went around with the same clothes all the time yeah guys in jeans work for guys in suits who work for guys in jeans right yes but what jeans that's the key exactly yeah yeah so that was cool yeah it was just you know just really proud of the team and yeah that was that was a world absolute whirlwind and came back really tired from that but you know it was great but that was 2022 this wasn't 2021 though i don't think i could have pulled it off in 2021 yeah oh right because you said it was like flip flopping right you guys pretty much were starting it like midway through the year or something and I don't think we could have pulled it off in 2021. Yeah. Oh, right. Cause you said it was like flip-flopping, right?

You guys pretty much were starting it like midway through the year or something. And then it took a while, right? We were supposed to shoot it at the end of, end of last year. And then, you know, just scheduling didn't work for them and then it didn't work for us. And then we shouldn't go because you know, because there was another COVID spike, right. With Omicron. And you know because there was another the covid spike right with omicron and um you know and it was a bit of a risk to to bring a team down there but you know we we all discuss all the risks and so what happens if somebody has to stay here for an extra five or ten or however many days what

does that look on the yacht why not i'll take the hill yeah yeah that mansion there's got to be a quarantine room somewhere yeah it was funny though uh the hotel we were staying at down there was the same hotel that this like large netflix show was all staying at their home base was like pretty much outside of of the parking lot of this hotel and um yeah they took all of the resources that uh that Cabo had for film intelligence so you couldn't make an appearance on love is blind or uh what is it I believe this was titled f boy island we already know we already know what that show is about I know for sure our girlfriends are gonna love it that's all I know yeah yeah but it's a big show they i think they look like they had a crew of like at least a hundred and uh what was interesting though

they brought all of their extension cords in as well there was a guy in customs the same time as us going through like their gear list and he had a big duffel bag that would that he had flown in from california that was all extension cords because they're taking all the electricity on that island oh it was crazy you can't get extension cords down there maybe we didn't look at all the right places but that was one of the strange quirky little things about uh no local home depots yeah there's there's no Home Depot. Okay, Chris, so going forward into 2022, what do you foresee as some of the challenges

you'll be facing? I think kind of what we've been talking about, which is finding the time to work on SVG versus in it. So really carving out time to work on social or blogs or

team building, um, you know, things like that. And yeah, just like finding really good, meaningful work, meaningful work that like pays the bills, but stuff we get excited about, cause that's what this is all about. Right. You want to get excited about because that's what this is all about right yeah I want to get excited about what you're working on and uh you know have people really proud of like the things we've made and yeah I think that's the that's the key also throwing a party this year that's that's big on my list it's been a couple years since we got a chance to do that so just you know getting everybody together and you know telling some stories and having some laughs and having a few beverages and just you know toasting uh toasting everybody surviving a

really strange time uh well chapter two is starting for that with the russian war so it'll be interesting we're done with covet now there's a war i hope i hope it ends soon you know like it's it's it's yeah it's very surreal seeing that it is surreal and yeah i feel like it's a new era in in europe right now right it's now like the peacetime is over at least at this moment and yeah it's kareel totally to your point you were saying like it's weird sitting here here we are talking about all this great creative stuff and those terrible things are happening uh on the other side of the world and it's weird it puts things into perspective you know and like and we know when things like that happen you just kind of like reflect a little bit on you know like on how things are you know and makes you like grateful for you know you have

your health at least you know you have your family and your friends you know and the people you like the the people you were close with you know you gotta you gotta really be grateful for that and cherish that because you know like other people are they're suffering yeah absolutely what about you guys what are you what are you guys looking to uh to you know to work on this year focus on uh for sure we're gonna keep focusing on our seo and marketing so again we kind of let it uh left it on the waste i think we we haven't done proper seo stuff since we set it up like we set it up we started doing it like january to june and then we kind of got a little lazy on that front but a little bit here and there strangely it kept reaping the rewards like it actually like kept escalating without us even doing anything

like we that's the beauty of stuff we yeah like the stuff we had on there it really compounds with time and you know when people continue to find stuff and backlink to it it increases your rank all all that beautiful yeah like like we're consistently getting 15 to 20 like home page clicks a day which is interesting like monday to fridays i notice saturdays and sundays it dips down it's it's interesting though because you could see everything on google analytics right but this year we're really planning on doubling down on that and being, again, more consistent with it. So yeah, like, I think in terms of technical SEO, we've done everything we needed to do, we're just going to be focusing more on creating more blog

content, because I feel like that's pretty, like, after a certain point, that's all you really should be doing. And then again, just adding the video vlogs in accordance to them as well. Like, so for each one, they're going to have their own vlog. Then also being more active on social. What else, Kiril? Yeah, also like to what you were saying, Chris, you know, like trying to find more, trying to find those projects and work, you know, that, you know, is a little bit more like kind of like meaningful or like exciting type work. You know, obviously we have to do work that pays the bills, but at the end of the day, we also, we jumped into this industry to create a story or to tell good stories and, um, you know, just like create work that we're really proud of, you know, and, you know, like every now and then we get to do that, which is great. Uh, but you know, it's trying to find more and more of that. That's the goal.

For sure. And you can, even in the seemingly non-creative projects, you can find all sorts of things to get excited about, right? Whether it's something technical or using a new piece of equipment or turning something that's seemingly not that exciting into something that gives them a lot of value and uh yeah that like always find some always get something going with each project something get excited i think we need to think i think we need to maybe like visualize the kind of products we want to do because i noticed anytime like i've done that for our business like it's not to sound like like a mystic or whatever but it kind of has happened like like i like to visualize like where i want our company to be or where i want myself to be and it kind of does happen because i start to set those things in motion so yeah i think we need to

maybe think about like exactly the type of projects we want to do and i've noticed another thing too is that we're doing uh we're going to be bringing on a lot more people to the podcast so and we are looking at international companies too and i'm starting to notice as i look at more and more companies reels and everything there's a lot of cool projects that i want us to be doing as well and i think we just need to focus a bit more on that because we have been focusing a little too much on the administrative side of things. Yeah. Like we've been like essentially the last two years, we focused a lot on the foundation of laps and like setting it up for future growth, which is good.

And we're definitely now on the way to that, but now it's time to go back to where we want to be and, and start doing more of these like creative projects. Like I've built a library of like so many great projects that i've seen over the years and it's just like wow there's really inspiring stuff out there you know like how can we find other projects like these you know or like opportunities to to tell stories like that because you know those are very important stories too right for sure and like i so I watch a lot of like creators on YouTube and like Daniel Schiffer, for example, a guy out of Toronto, he does these unbelievable,

you know, product marketing videos where he'll just find like something in his cabinet and make a really cool product video. And he's, he's even done ones where he's like, okay, cool. Like, and he's even done ones where he's like, okay, cool. Like, yeah, I've got expensive equipment and knowledge and, you know, resources. What if I just took, you know, this product and made it on Canva, something that anybody can use, sort of like a really easy, you know, design platform, and I get inspired by that. It's, you know, stuff you can do with almost nothing and almost no skill set and that stuff's really cool that's one thing we want to start doing more as well like uh I actually

have this idea where we could I want us to just make spec spots for companies or products or services that don't really exist like like they could exist but that particular brand doesn't we'll just make it up yeah we'll make up its own like like slogans or taglines and the cool thing is that my girlfriend's a graphic designer so i could just get her to like create the logo for us yeah then we'll just pretend it's an actual thing yeah yeah instead of pepsi it's popsy you know starbucks is starbacks i actually had a funny i had a really funny one for a coffee shop a liquid we'll actually make it it's really easy to do and i had like a really funny like tagline for it but uh yeah that's another thing we want to do more creative stuff okay yeah actually you

know that that project we've been working on for eng Volkers. So that, so I talked about pitching creative, how that's like a no, no, but it has worked out because I remember we, we pitched that in 2020 and I, I did the whole thing where I pitched them the full creative with storyboards and music. And we ended up winning that against mostly us agencies. And the tagline i came up with was live your luxury and now they've since trademarked that and they're using it globally so nice wow

nice it's cool to see you know see like see that out in the wild and uh yeah so you know the passion and the the idea paid off on one, but we had the right people in the room who were the growth minded decision makers. And, uh, you know, that was huge. Actually, this thing we're doing in Vegas next week, they've invited me to, to be a keynote speaker at their big sort of yearly event. So I'm, I'm sweating because AIDS god i haven't done a presentation without track pants on in a very long time and um but so the topic i've chosen is like sell with story and i came

across this really interesting story that i think you guys would appreciate um have you heard of the significant objects project no no okay so let me just find the the name of this of this guy so um one second here where is it here we go so these two guys Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn, they're sort of social scientists. And, um, and was it 2009? I believe it was in 2009. Um, they wanted to put to test, put to the test. Um, can you actually sell more with story? You know, everybody talks about the power of storytelling and you need to tell better stories. And it releases cortisol and other, you know, other things into the brain. And so it impacts humans. But they said, can we quantify this?

So what they did is they went on eBay and they bought 100 items and just trinkets, right? So coffee cups, oven mitts, little tchotchke statues, things like that, all for, you know, on average, about a buck a piece, right? They spent $125 on 100 items. And instead of just relisting those items on eBay, what they did is they got a bunch of writers to write stories about these objects now like the stories weren't uh they were made up stories but nothing talking about saying like oh this is a this is a priceless oven mitt owned by you know, owned by the Kennedys. It was more like, you know, this is something my, the last thing my aunt gave to me, or just sort of telling personal stories about these objects.

Wow. And so they reposted the items for sale with these stories and the results were amazing. um on average uh you know like a shot glass they bought for a dollar they sold for 76 dollars you know a little horse my little pony they bought for a buck they sold for 104 dollars and so on average they uh they spent 125 dollars on these 100 items and they sold them for $3,600. So an ROI of like, I think it's 2,800%. That's pretty good. Wow. You all get ready. We're going on eBay right after.

Brush up on your storytelling skills. There we go. Honestly, we have a lot of our own stuff, you know, like instead of doing Gigi sells. This tripod, Napoleon used it to take a photo napoleon right i just found that really interesting right because that's cool connect to like something behind it and i think that's you know same with like nfts they're all just stories right what's the story behind this project or this team or whatever? And so I think that's like a more modern kind of version of that. But yeah, I think that's, you know, I'm, I'm excited to tell this group of people about

this, about this significant office project and help them maybe tell better stories to sell more real estate. So that'll be. That's really awesome, man. Like, honestly, like, is it like, you said it's going to be in person. Are they going to have like a live showing of it or like a recording afterwards or no?

So I'm bringing a team down. We're going to record it for sure. You got it, man. I was going to say, can we tune in? We would love to. We would love to be able to say, so I've got it filled. I think it's like 20 minutes, um, but it's in front of 1200 people. And you know, I'm sweating. My slides aren't quite ready yet. So you need to do a couple

more of these podcasts, you know, to get you in the, in the, in the swing of things. Which date is it? When are you doing it? Doing it on, uh, March 6th. when are you doing it? Doing it on March 6th. Oh, that's, that's, that's pretty soon. Yeah.

Oh, okay. He's going to Vegas, right? He's doing it. Okay. Well, you know what?

We're, we're actually launching this on Monday or something like that. So we'll definitely like share it on our, on our, on our page when you do it. Yeah. Post it. We'll,

we'll share it. I'm sure our listeners are like, I mean, they're going to be, they're going to be listening. They're going to be finding out about this after it's Yeah. Post it. We'll, we'll share it. I'm sure our listeners are like, I mean, they're going to be, they're going to be listening. They're going to be finding out about this after it's done, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that'll be, that'll again, like that's really testing my nerves and getting up in front of that many

people and, you know, trying to deliver value to them, not just tell them what I think is interesting, but get them, you know, excited about what they just learned and maybe try to apply some of those things uh that we talked about so that's that's honestly great to hear man and uh you know we look forward to like seeing like more of like the work that you do this year and uh you know i'm i'm sure we'll all get to grow together as well and uh i think this might be like uh i don't know if there's anything else dario on your end but i think this might be a good kind of there's more but you know what listen we'll do

another episode chris is a friend of the show he's welcome back anytime and we'll probably bring you back on in like six months or so like just to see like what else has come up in that meantime or even sooner like yeah it'd be great i i appreciate appreciate and appreciate you guys and uh you guys are awesome and we'll probably get together maybe for a couple beverages before that who knows right of course the local again right yeah exactly yeah exactly great well guys i you know really happy to catch up with you and really glad all is well and you guys are happy, healthy, busy. Keep it up. You guys are crushing it. You too, man. You too. Let us know where the next destination will be after Vegas, you know,

we'll create a little map for you, you know? Awesome. Well guys have a great weekend and yeah, we'll catch up soon and all the best.