Creatives Grab Coffee - Standing Out & Growing Your Team (ft. SDE Weddings) | Creatives Grab Coffee 5

Episode Date: October 6, 2020

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kyrill Lazarov & Dario Nouri. A platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas and share experiences. Today we welcome our guest Yang W. The studio manager at SDE Weddings which is Toronto’s premier wedding videography, cinematography and photo booth rental company. Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1518863773 Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee Facebook: @CreativesGrabCoffee Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS - www.lapseproductions.com

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, hosted by Kirill Lazarev and Dario Nuri, a platform where creatives and business professionals discuss industry topics, ideas, and share experiences. Today we welcome our guest Yang, the studio manager at SDE Weddings, which is Toronto's premier wedding videography, cinematography, and photo booth rental company. photography and photo booths rental company. Alright well, yeah Yang it's great to have you on board here. You're officially our second guest. Yeah, thanks for having me guys. So let's kind of like jump into it like right away.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. I was actually an engineering student at U of T. You know, I did co-op for engineering, I didn't really like it. And while I was in co-op, me and my friends were just making YouTube videos during the weekends. And that was actually a lot more fun. And, and because of that, you know, I got I fell in love with filmmaking, I fell in love with like storytelling deep down I think I'm a producer but you know we started this business our business is called SD Weddings we shoot weddings in Toronto this is about 10-11 years ago you know at first you know when we just got into this field we're doing

everything from music videos short films commercials corporate like even real estate video, but eventually, just from a business perspective, we decided to move forward just to do weddings. So we focus weddings, we've been doing weddings for the past 10, 11 years. And the reason why we did that is just because we want to have a steady source of revenue, and which we do now, and because of that,

right now we're exploring like producing our own content that's cool so how many partners do you have um yeah we have i started this company with three different partners um i i would say i'm the uh the main person when it comes to the operation the business my other three partners they're more like cinematographers study cam operator editors but I run I manage the business mostly but we're still shooting together as a as a team and in our business now we also have contractors for for for filmmaking we also have like full-time staff who shoot in our company exclusively we also have a full-time editor and when it gets actually busy in the summer i do have like a few assistants so we we are running like a full-fledged operation and you know a lot of people are running a wedding business at home you know in their basement we

actually have a retail location um so it's a full-fledged business and i would say every year you know we're doing like high six figures i don't want to say the exact amount but we're doing high six figures just in weddings how many weddings roughly do you do a year um i i can't say specifically the amount but but it's over three digits oh wow okay that's a lot how do you find managing so many events like obviously there's only 52 weeks in a year and having over a hundred weddings, you're doing on average, at least two to three weddings per weekend. Do you find, is it usually like that? Or do you have a lot of multiple weddings in one weekend? Yeah. So the wedding industry, it's well, specifically in Toronto, in Canada, it's very seasonal. seasonal so from I would say like November it really slows down November to March April you start picking up

because some people won't have spring weddings the majority of weddings are basically from May to like October I would say you know August September and July those three are your bit like busiest month and on weekends you know august september and july those three are your bit like busiest month and on weekends you know we do obviously multiple weddings on sundays some some people want to book a sunday wedding because it's cheaper a lot of time you do uh jewish weddings on sunday or thursdays and it's actually pretty trendy now people are doing like friday weddings and um because of covet you know obviously not a lot of people are getting married this year people are actually getting married at different dates because like you know before

the norm was to have a wedding on saturday uh you know if it's if you're on budget you know go for friday or sunday or for religious purpose uh but because of covet you know that's completely out of the window we've been filming weddings you know on tuesday wednesday thursdays you know speaking of covid how's how has the pandemic affected uh you like everybody else like i would say from uh march to july uh a lot of people are scared everyone is staying home uh you know government is forcing everyone everyone to shut down uh past july because we're in stage three or stage four depending on what area in tarrant in so people actually starting to get married so things are picking up for us now but compared to you know last year like our revenue is down 70 to 80 percent even 90 percent depending on the time of the year and the weddings we have now it's

very different from 2019 and the other years like I was in the past you know average we have 150 guests at the weddings we shoot right usually you're shooting for you know anywhere from 8 to 12 13 hours a day right now you know most wedding we have is anywhere from 20 to 50 guests uh just because that's the uh that's the maximum allowed by the government right as normally anywhere from two to even six hours so obviously we're charging way less. You know, we have way less work. But we're just very grateful to have work, right?

A lot of people, you know, unfortunately can have work right now. A lot of people are forced to stay home. But we actually did shoot a lot of weddings, a good handful of weddings in August. We shot a few weddings in July. September, October, I don't really know how that looks like because right now we do actually have a lot of people booking us last minute uh just because people decide to have a minute uh weddings last minute right now just because things are are changing like rapidly right

um but yeah it has affected our revenue uh but my cost is low you know my. We do have an office space. The rent for my office is only $1,100. So my upkeep cost is low. So when a pandemic is happening, the first thing I did is just trim my cost. My office, I can't cancel that, but I still pay my lease. Whatever I could cancel, I could cancel in terms of cutting my cost. cancel, I can cancel in terms of like cutting my costs, right? Most businesses I know, you know, they don't have a office. They're not fully fledged, fully established. A lot of people are doing it part-time. A lot of people are doing it from their home. So their cost is very low. So essentially, you know, if you want to survive in COVID, just make sure your cost is low. And I would say, you know, at the end of the day, at the end of the day at the end of the tunnel there is a shining light mainly because every wedding you know most wedding now in 2020 is being postponed to 20 sorry most weddings in 2020 is being postponed to 2021 so if if your business can survive this year you know next year it's going to be very busy for everybody so there are definitely business

closed down in the wedding industry, you know, venues, caterers, you know, what have you. There are there is a few photographers, cinematographers, I know they're stepping out of the industry. But most people are okay, because like, for most businesses, their cost is very low. Yeah, so it's interesting that you mentioned that. So for anyone that's wanting to kind of get into the wedding space, what would you say are some things that you mentioned that. So for anyone that's wanting to kind of get into the wedding space, what would you say are some things that you've learned over the years while running SDE? Like what are some key things that you've learned?

I guess I'll tell you why I decided to take the direction of our company into shooting weddings. And I've been doing this for for 10 plus years you know I try to start my own rental company you know I try to do corporate real estate corporate commercial you know so so basically as I see it right all of us are creative filmmakers right we want to do something creative but at the end of the day if you want to survive right you need to you need to make money I remember 11 or 10 11 years ago i would try to produce my own short film and and and it was it was a quick shoot it

was only two days but i had to pay for the food you know i had to pay for makeup you know i i didn't have to pay the actor but i felt bad i want to pay them something right so at the end of the day i was making a short film and you know that cost like couple hundred bucks and it's a very low budget film right and at the time i was a student you know like everything i'm paying out of pocket and and as a student i just didn't have the money right so i i realized you know if i really want to be you know a producer a filmmaker i i can't do this financially because i can only do it once but i I don't think I'm the best producer you know I know I'm gonna make mistakes buying to get up and keep doing it over and over again right so so 10 11 years ago you know I look at the situation it's like you know I need to make money I have to make money if I

want to really produce my own work and and so I decided to start a business that makes money right so I look into real estate right a lot of people shoot real estate you know commercials for real estate agents it could be follows videos the thing about real estate back then you know houses are selling for 300 400 grand so you know a real estate like agents probably gonna pay a couple hundred bucks to do follow-up video for further listing you know and and it's a very low cost entry business you know anyone listing. And it's a very low-cost entry business. Anyone can do it.

It's not highly creative. And real estate agents, they're always trying to keep their costs low, right? So it's not a very good business. But if you look at the landscape of real estate, photography, video, now, houses now are averaging $1 million to $700,000, even for a condo in Toronto. So it is a better market than what it was 10 years ago, but even now I still wouldn't do it because there's not really a creative outlet

in terms of how to make yourself different from someone else who's gonna do real estate photography or videography, right? So that's why I didn't do real estate. Now let's look at corporate, right? A lot of videographer filmmaker want to do corporate you know corporate you're dealing with a corporate client usually it is a bigger budget but the downside is that you know that process where you're discussing with them pitching your idea pitching their vision you know finding out what their budget

it's a very lengthy process right I remember you know I would I would pitch to a client right it would take a couple weeks for them to make a decision then they gotta go into meeting find out their budget you know occasionally they're looking for someone to cover their event but it's not it's it's really hard to build a reoccurring uh revenue with a good client like a good client is hard to come by and when you have a good client um it's just a lot of work right I mean because you have to you have to create your project you know and you they have to get approved and they have to get approved by somebody else so it's a very

lengthy process and the way I see it right like there's no difference between me filming a wedding versus me filming and commercial because at the end of the day right I'm still producing work for somebody else at the end of the day i'm still working under someone else's schedule the only difference between film uh like a corporate gig and versus wedding is just that you know corporate they usually do pay better um it's less stressful but at the end of the day i feel like if i build a corporate company i don't think my lifestyle as a business owner as a business would really change that much right I would be still be looking for clients servicing them but again corporate clients are a lot harder

to come by especially really good clients so so that's why I didn't do corporate now if you look at if you look at music videos music videos and like independent films or even feature films you know I did grips you know I did AC I did I did ad all for independent productions and and it's like anyone in the industry you know if you want to be the top where you actually have like creative control you either have to have your own project or you have to climb climb your way up the ladder right that client could be 10 15 years um and you know some people are okay to grind it out for 10 15 years you know

be an intern you know work away you're up eventually you know you prove yourself and you could do your own work right and again on the other hand if you want to have any creative impact you know you have to do your own independent project and and it goes back to the point i was making earlier. If I want control as a creative person of my own project, I need to have money. Because you really do need money to produce something worthwhile. Sure, you could get your friend to be an actor.

Sure, you could get your makeup contact to work for free for a day. Maybe you could talk to this venue, that venue to pitch in, to let you shoot for free. But when you do have a budget you know you could spend it on crew you could spend it on you know production you could spend it on like anything right money at the end of the day in my opinion makes a difference about how how the work is right of course like if you spend a lot of time and effort you know a lot low low budget independent filmmaker make amazing work right but again it's it's hard those people they're spending like years of their life you know putting all the pieces together and i just didn't never want to do that because i know like i need to make

multiple films multiple projects before it really hits the shelf right um so that's uh that's like that's the creative project and also um like when you're starting out, if you're looking to shoot music videos, independent films, the clients at the lower end are usually harder to deal with and you really have a lot of limitations. It's only when you have bigger budgets and you can really show your creative vision. And because of everything I said, I just felt like if I want to run a business to make money and be in this industry,

I felt like the wedding industry is probably the better industry. And I'll explain why, because when you meet a bride and groom, right, who's looking to get married, who's looking to hire you, potentially to shoot your wedding, right? They have an incentive to book

you as soon as possible because usually they have a day schedule right and that day is fastly approaching so they have a deadline so so they have incentive to make the deal make the purchase with you whereas if you know you're working on a corporate client like they don't really a lot of time they don't really need it these are things nice to have right they don't have the same purchase uh purchase impulse purchase demand they need and also weddings you know a lot of time it is an emotional uh event for most couples and because it's emotional people are willing to spend more money right you know uh i'll give you example there are luxury like filmmakers uh wedding photographers who are charging anywhere from eight to ten sometimes even twenty grand for a day of work right I mean that's that's pretty oh that's a lot that's really really a lot right and the

reason why they could get away with it is because people are spending based on emotion and also there's also a a demand constraint because sorry I supply constraint because you as a person who's providing a service, like you could only shoot one wedding a day. If you're booked for that day, you can't shoot for any other wedding. So there is an opportunity cost, so for you, your supply is limited,

and because of that, you could jack up your price. And so the economics in the wedding industry, in my opinion, opinion is very favorable to the vendor to you as a business owner like I said because you have the supply constraint you know people are making a emotional purchase and people have the incentive to book you as soon as possible and and also the last thing I think I really like about the wedding industry it is a very referral based industry so you know if you shoot someone's wedding right they're gonna have 150 to 200 guests you know if you have a kick-ass video their friends see it they they're probably gonna contact you on bookie right so it was very easy for us once we

got into the wedding industry to to keep growing our business just because you know we do decent work you know we charge a fair price and our name just gets around just because we run the business. Yeah, so that's why I got into the wedding industry just because it's just very competitive and it's also very, I say, advantageous for you as a business owner. Yes, that's just my personal opinion.

Like I said, I look at the different industry and the wedding industry to me just makes sense. But for me, you know, the only downside I would say about the wedding industry is that I know a lot of filmmakers, you know, who's great at shooting weddings. The only thing about wedding is, again, like you're following someone else's schedule. Someone else is telling you what to do,

what kind of, like where you need to be you as a creative individual you don't have much uh i would say input to the day as if you know if you're running your own tv show or independent film or shooting your own music video um you don't have a lot of control and a lot of times things are totally out of your control right for example if you shoot a wedding like it's raining right there's nothing you can do it's not like you could postpone the shoot or we shoot on a different day right and because of that you know a lot of people who shoot weddings like what you really learn is how to shoot run and gun right um i know a lot of film filmmaker in the wedding industry you know who's great at shooting weddings but they don't understand the concept of lighting right they don't understand the concept of like directing or concept of you know props art department like what

have you right um so film like if you are a filmmaker you know wedding industry is great it's a great place to start make money you know how to shoot run and gun right it could be good if you want to be a documentary filmmaker but if you want to be a commercial or creative filmmaker you really have to do things on your free time just because like you're not going to learn about not like lighting right you're not going to learn about creative concept like film shooting wedding but yeah overall for me like we did like i said like it just got money and now you know i can produce my own short film, not worry about, you know, how much I need to spend on lunch. Cause us as a business, we have that budget to, to, to spend it. Right. You mentioned that, uh, it's a very competitive

industry. And I think based on what we've seen, it really is because the, the, the, the barriers, the barriers to entry are really low, both in terms of, uh, equipment and also getting an office. Because like you said, a lot of people don't even getting an office because like you said a lot of people don't even have an office right and uh camera gear is uh getting cheaper day by day right so with all these uh competitors in your field how do you make yourself stand out well in my opinion if i were compared to how things are now to 10 or 11 years ago, I would say right now it is way easier to start a business as a wedding filmmaker. I remember 10, 11 years ago when I just started doing weddings.

Facebook was around, but you can't really advertise on Facebook. That function wasn't there yet. There wasn't there yet, right? There wasn't Instagram, you know, so when I started this like a decade ago, I was, you know, like asking everyone I know on Facebook, you know, by phone, right? Do you know anyone getting married? We'd love to shoot their wedding, right? Now, you know, you could just, you know,

shoot your friend, post an ad on Instagram, right? Just, you could advertise yourself. So it's a lot easier to advertise get your your words out um so so right now it is easier um but for us i would say how we started is that you know like really hustle i remember like 10 years ago um i was waiting outside the civic hall in mississauga waiting for like couples who looking to come to book the venue you know i'm i'm there i went there for like a day or two hoping to book people then i realized it doesn't work but it just to show you it is all way harder to find uh couples back then but now you know you can run an instagram um ad you know you can run a

facebook ad targeting people who just got engaged so it's a lot easier to start a business now in terms of how to different differentiate yourself yourself i would say at the end of the day you have to understand like your position right when we just started shooting weddings you know we weren't charging a lot we're charging like 500 bucks to a dollar and bucks that's how much we charged in the very beginning we shot a few weddings for free then eventually we raised our prices year by year and i would say if you want to do this competitively professionally your first goal should be doing this on a full-time basis or or shoot enough weddings that you can live off of just shooting weddings right so that's the first thing because there is

a difference from someone who's doing a part-time versus someone who's doing it full-time right like you're focusing more on running the business you're focusing more about you know how to get more clients um so that's your first goal and and think about like pricing right if you charge very expensive sure you're not gonna book a lot of clients if you're really thinking about starting a business your goal should be getting as many customers as you can in the first one or two years because you're gonna keep raising your price but the clients you have will be advertising your business right you get a lot of referrals you know if you're good at what you do you can network right it's very easy to network now versus you know 10 10 years ago right you know all the planners all the venues they have instagram account

right you could you could say hey i'm new in the industry you know i'm willing to shoot you know a little bio about you or maybe a little commercial new in the industry you know I'm willing to shoot you know a little bio about you and or maybe a little commercial spot for your business you know just just just so you get to know me just so I want to work with your client potentially for you to consider us so there's a lot of way you can do creatively in terms of like you know reaching clients and it is way easier now and aside from that right you know some people could say oh at the end of the day everyone is using study camp at the end of the day we're

actually wedding in this one in that way there are still ways to differentiate yourself as a business right one the one of key examples I always tell people you know I speak to I do consult businesses on the side you know anyone who's in the wedding industry so yeah I do consult but one of the like big examples i usually tell people is that you know every one of us know how to cook right you know uh maybe something basic you know we all know how to microwave you know a fast like something from the fridge right and some of us might be more advanced you know we could make rice fried rice you know every one of us can know how to cook but but you look at it why are there so many restaurants in the world right where are there at mcdonald's why are there

you know kfc's and every year whether new restaurants you know starting up right so if you think about it all of us can cook but yet there are so many restaurants so what that means is that you know it doesn't matter there's a lot of competition in the industry as long as you have a business you have a model you you understand what you're servicing what you're providing how you can stand out you know you could still be a successful business owner especially in the wedding industry as a filmmaker you know if if there are so many restaurants and so like i would say restaurant is super competitive but yet there's still so many restaurants starting up right so as competitive as the wedding industry is you know especially for filmmaker as it's not as

competitive as you know the food industry right so if you really want to start there's definitely ways for you to be successful right again you just have to look at your branding right what is your message right it could be you know you want to deliver your video like in the same week right it could be something small like that to make yourself stand out it could be like you know what you politically support you know maybe because maybe maybe you want to support you know a special cost and you could donate a percentage of your revenue to that cost from your business you know that that could potentially align to someone who's

looking who believe also in that cost yeah so there's a lot of ways to uh like differentiate itself but yeah it is competitive but like i said you know the food industry also very competitive but there are again so many restaurants starting up every year and all of us know how to cook right same in the wedding industry everyone can take a a video on our phone now but people are still hiring videographers you know people are still hiring cinematographers and there's so many in business already. But you can still start one right now. You just have to work hard.

You have to hustle, get your client, get your name out, and just be creative. What role would you say story still plays in your content? Well, when it comes to telling a story, you have to tell a story for your client, and you have to tell a story as a business. So, you know, obviously, depending on your style, right, like different different filmmakers have different style. Some people want to tell a story from visual. Some people want to tell a story based on what people say in speeches and their vowels, things like that. Some people want to tell a story chronologically.

Some people want to tell a story chronologically. Some people want to tell a story from a non-linear perspective. So, you know, if you want to be a filmmaker in the wedding industry, like look at different videos, find out what, you know, what storytelling really resonate with you. I would say if you really want to stand out as a brand,

the stronger your story is, the more unique it is, the more likely you're going to stand out from the crowd, right? What are some of the first steps that you need to take in the wedding industry to grow your team, basically? Do you take on a lot of people that are more full-time, or do you feel like you have to at least start with doing only freelancing, like having freelancers come in a lot of people that are more full-time or do you feel like you have to kind of at least start with doing only freelancing like having freelancers come in a lot how do you take that next step to build the core team for sde usually when you're starting a business you're either starting it by yourself or starting with a couple partners uh who you are who's who's your partner is actually i would say the hardest thing you have to make to start your business normally I don't recommend you starting your business with your spouse just because you

know a lot of people do go through relationship issues a lot of time you don't see head to head and you're going to bring that to home so usually I don't recommend you starting a business with your significant other but in the wedding industry it does happen quite often again I don't advocate for that so that very first thing and and the second thing is let's think about what it's like to meet what what makes your run a business right there's a difference between running a business versus building a business like if you're running a business you know you're just doing the day-to-day operation you know you're meeting clients you know your booking client you're shooting client you're shooting weddings the difference between

that versus building a company building company is about you know taking things to the next level right how to reach out to more vendors things that will actually you know grow your business so a lot of people getting to the mistake of just running the business and not building their business and and then we talk about at what point you know you should hire people so so let's say like one of the biggest mistake I I was facing I want to first start this business is that I'll try and do everything myself even though I have partners you know

they're just running the business you you know, they're shooting and editing the weddings. But I'm the one who's doing the marketing, the business, the sales. And one of the mistakes I was doing is I was trying to do everything myself. I was trying to handle everything. And I would say as soon as I learned how to let go, delegate my responsibility, that's when my business started to take off. Because you, as a business owner, the more you can delegate, the more you can do. You can do more important things like leading the direction of your business, reaching more clients, generating additional sources of revenue, a lot of tedious things, things that you have to do repetitively.

If you can't afford it i would say always delegate it uh and and when it comes to delegation that's we're talking about like building a team right uh we could be delegating you know your office work right we could be delegating actually shooting your wedding or editing your wedding and um a lot of times you know it just depends on the size of your business um a lot of times even now we contract some like of our individual work right if a client wants a dvd just to be made we contract it out because that's there's not enough um there's not enough supply or demand for us to do it and hire a full-time staff for that right a lot of times some people need a graphic design work right we

just contract it out like i'm too busy to do it you know we don't have enough work to hire someone full-time and in terms of filming weddings right we have people who's full-time and we have people who are like freelancers but again at every wedding we try to have someone who's full-time and just having someone freelance to to assist right now when it comes to building that team especially people on your team who can shoot your wedding. I would say what you want to do to build that team is you want to have a standardized process. So as much as you can, you know, write down everything you're doing on a piece of paper so people can read it, follow it. We have a lot of training to go over our procedures. So the more steps, the more procedures you have, you know, it's's just easier for people to follow and every time you train someone new you

know follow the same procedure and and again you know depending on the skill of someone who want to join your company right there can be very race they could be very beginning to very pro so that process is very different but usually for someone who would know skills at all but they have a lot of interest and enthusiasm, you know, we just bring them along to wedding to show them what we do for one or two weddings. Then they just follow us through shadow, you know, to assist. Then after six months to a year, then we get them to maybe shoot. And eventually they take the role of a second videographer or cinematographer.

Then, you know, two or three years when they're good enough, they become lead. So it is process a lot of time you do have to invest money and time on someone who's want to join your team sometimes it does pay off some time it doesn't but if you want to grow as a business you do have to invest in new people and I think it's also a good thing to invest and hire new people because when you run a company or when you're in a group of people, if it's the same group of people over and over again, your ideas, your shots, your creative vision is all going to become very similar just because you don't have any fresh

voices. So a lot of time, it makes sense to hire someone new just to inject that energy. Someone new might see something differently you might they might question you why are you doing this inside of that way and usually having those new voices you know it just keeps everyone energetic anyone everyone focused just because like again if you're in the same group of people you know it's going to be the same thing eventually so you want to have those new voices and anytime we have someone new coming to our company in our business You know, I'll ask them, you know, what do you want us to change? Like what do you see us improving?

Mm-hmm What are what are some next steps for your company? Deep down inside, you know, I'm I'm I would say I'm still a producer, you know I I wonder you know, I imagine myself winning the Oscar one day. I believe right now that's that's my dream to win my own Oscar. But, you know, like realistically, I know that if I really want to pursue and reach that level, you know, I had to be out of the wedding industry because there is limitation in the wedding industry. You know, like you're not really telling your fault, your your own story. You're capturing someone else's story. and and it is a sad truth you know I'll give you

some personal story why sometimes I would say the wedding industry it's not something you can do as a creative individual forever I shot a wedding personally myself I think 20 2018 2017 and i saw the couple uh last year i remember their names i even said hi to them but they didn't recognize me so as much as they love my work you know a year or two years later you know i was just there filming their wedding i i don't think i have that much impact on their life right you know unfortunately a lot of people do divorce so so like think about that for a second you put your heart and soul into making a story a film two three years later you know no one's gonna watch it because the couple's divorced so so and those kind of

situation really made me you know evaluate you know my purpose right like I do love all of our couples but again my ultimate goal is to be a producer so one day winning like a Hollywood Award right so us as a business you know I do try to diversify our stream of revenue one of the things I want to do this year is to produce a course I've been working on it for for almost two years now it's a course just basically reiterating teaching everyone what i know in the past 10 years about how to run a wedding business it's applicable not just to filmmakers you know you could be a photographer dj wedding planner venues i just want to teach people how to um how to book more clients book more sales in the wedding

industry so that's something i want to do i want to create a digital product because a digital how to book more clients, book more sales in the wedding industry. So that's something I want to do. I want to create a digital product because a digital product is great because like, you know, when you shoot a wedding, right, as same as, you know, shooting a music video, shooting corporate, you have to show up, right? You have to work, then you get paid, right? If I make a course, you know, I'm working on it for a year or two years. I produce a video, you know, and afterwards I just advertise, right?

So that's a one-time cost to produce that content. I can keep selling it. Whereas, you know, weddings, right? Even shooting corporates, you have to get up every day to work. It's interesting that you mentioned how when you shoot the weddings, you put all that energy and effort into it and then you never know what happens with the couple later on i feel like that is a discussion that not a lot of people typically have i remember early on when we were

shooting weddings many years ago uh we noticed that one of the couples we filmed the wedding for they got divorced it wasn't one it was it was a few there was the studio we were working with they had this blackboard and there were like a bunch of couples names crossed out and we're like oh what happened did you guys finish editing their videos it's like no they got divorced and they were like four or five months after we shot the wedding and it's like wow that kind of hit us and you know at least from your perspective do you hear a lot about what happens with your customer with your clients afterwards or do you hear a lot about what happens with your clients afterwards or do you know if any stay together or get divorced? For me personally, no, just because the number of weddings we do every year, I mean some

people do stand out in my mind, but I don't have a personal connection with many of them just because we do so many weddings. But if you're running a smaller scale size sometime you do know your client a lot more especially if you're starting out you're very like in the luxury market but it is quite common believe it or not i know a lot of people would like couples departing before the wedding you know after the wedding or a few years after the wedding so it's just it's just how it is right um and that's why you know personally i like to make something i could look back 20 30 years from now and say i'm either proud of it or

not proud of it but you know 20 or 30 years from now on you as a creative individual um can you really look at a wedding video and have anything to say about it other than what that day was like so it is a hard thing to think about it other than what that day was like so it is a hard thing to think about it's very philosophical but again try not to think too much about it I just try to run the business make money and just diversify yeah what would you say is the future of the wedding industry in Toronto and maybe even as a whole if you look at overall market, right? Like, believe it or not, right now, not everyone gets a video for their wedding.

Most people will get a photographer, almost 100% of people will get a photographer for their wedding. I would say one in three, one in five weddings will actually get a video for their wedding. Mostly because weddings are more expensive, right? And they just want to budget it out right and photography is very expensive but so that's one of the things about the industry for filmmakers a second thing for filmmakers that you know ten like when we started right if you want to do a steadicam right we had to get a Merlin or a glycan and you have to practice it right for at least two three months to get good at it um right now you could just buy the the rolling s right the wrong like

a gimbal anyone can buy a gimbal you know balance the camera for 10 minutes and and get some decent shots so it's definitely way easier to shoot weddings and because of that there's a lot like up and coming people in the industry but like i said it's like it's like the food industry right people are gonna come um and and so what you have i think is a a growing industry with a lot more competition and and usually in that kind of situation um the market will consolidate so you're gonna have you know big companies like my my business like we do a lot of weddings because we grow right um it just happened in industry there are going to be few big players like that's we're one of them right they're gonna have a lot of small size player all right and who trying to be boutique and you have

a lot of upcoming players so it is just developing to the natural progression of of a normal market i mean is the market declining or increasing that's hard to say uh because on average you know uh brides are getting married at a later date uh than before you know the average uh age for people to get married now is like 27 to 28 for for the for ladies and 31 to 32 for for men right you know 15 10 years ago that number could have been like 26 to 27 so on average people are getting married uh later and later um but on the other hand less and less people are getting married right more people have uh like cohabitation situations you know some people are putting off marriage altogether right um so that's the thing so it is a potentially declining market statistically

but on average people are spending more on their wedding just because they have more income as they get married on a later age then you have situations where people are getting married for a second or third time i mean for second marriage people do spend money but usually not as much as the first wedding um so the market i i really don't know where it's going but there's a lot of trend you know people are spending more getting married later less people are getting married but you have more second and third marriages but for a video it can still be a growing market you know a lot of people have iPhones now a lot of people have Instagram you know you have tick-tock so people are getting exposed to video a lot more that

exposure could lead to more demand and so it's hard for me to say but I could see a go either way it could go up or down just depending on things are I I don't have a clear picture but yeah these are the kind of things you want keep in the back of your head so we're pretty much at the end of this why don't you share with us a funny moment you had on a shoot? A few years ago, you know, it was just such a chaotic day. We had wedding Saturday and Sunday and I just finished shooting the bride or the groom, I forgot. I went to the church

and I saw a different photographer out there. I really confused I told him you know the bride is coming in and the guy look at me he's he's completely lost like who is this guy and I waited I'm like I don't recognize anybody at the wedding and what I realized is that I was at the wrong church so so I went to the church I was supposed to go for Sunday on Saturday instead so yeah so I rushed back to my own church I was supposed to go for Sunday on Saturday instead. So yeah, I rushed back to my own wedding. I was a little bit late. But my second cover for me. So that's one of the funny things I've done. It's interesting that you mentioned about how there's always some chaotic moments that happen at weddings.

And even sometimes something very minuscule is one of those memorable moments. I remember one of the first years. I remember the, like one of the first years that I was shooting a wedding, uh, unfortunately Dario wasn't there for this, but he heard the story and he likes to remind me every now and then about it. But, uh, there was this one moment where, you know, when you shoot in a hotel room, depending on the hotel, it can get very cramped, very tight and not as, uh, and not as a lot of room for your equipment and i remember once uh the bride was in the the bathroom uh getting her makeup on you know getting ready um and i'm in there with the you see he's already laughing he knows he knows which story i'm talking

about uh the photographer and i were both in there trying to get our shots and i had this really big tripod and as i'm like about to set up my shot i'm like hold on a second um i just got to spread these legs wide open and put the tripod down nobody said anything and then i'm like i meant the tripod and then they both looked at me like you didn't have to say you didn't oh wow they didn't hear it they didn't hear how weird it sounded at first but oh man i think the funny part was that you were in the bathtub or she was in the bathtub when you said that yeah but it's like it's like it's funny how like just little things like that sometimes you know just come up from like even the most mundane things that you do when you're on set

or at a wedding i think the funniest thing i've seen happen at a wedding is when they had this cake that wasn't the most expensive. So at one point I started seeing that it was starting to like tip over. It was like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was like a three layered cake, right? And the top two layers were starting to tip over and there were like kids running around the cake. There are times when I see the kids running around the cake and I'm like, I'm just, what would happen if one just knocked the cake over right there?

I'm so paranoid about doing that that anytime I get closer and I'm getting my slider shots, I step like way back. Just stay away, just stay away. Have you seen a cake topple over at a wedding? No, we have. I have actually seen a cake topple over at a wedding uh no we have i i have actually seen it yeah uh that was 2014 i think six years ago oh yeah that's when we were having that issue i guess the cakes in 2014 were just not good uh yang if there's anything else you want to if you want to plug in uh like uh like your website

or any other uh things that you're up to right now uh you're more than welcome to share so if you want to just learn more about like you know the wedding industry uh starting a business just follow me on instagram at sd weddings or at wedding milling year well yang thank you so much for joining us on the creators grab coffee podcast you know you've really shared a lot of great insights with us and our viewers yeah thanks a lot okay all right thanks a lot guys thank you for tuning into the creatives grab coffee podcast you can find us on spotify youtube instagram and linkedin let us know if there are any topics you would like for us to cover in future episodes you can reach out to us at creativesgrabcoffee at gmail.com.