Creatives Grab Coffee - Strategy & Building Teams (ft. Tripwire Media) | Creatives Grab Coffee 32

Episode Date: October 13, 2022

Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee, a podcast on the business of video production, hosted by Dario Nouri and Kyrill Lazarov from Lapse Productions. Our goal is to make the video production industry smaller by creating a sense of community. Whether you are a creative, an entrepreneur, or a professional there is knowledge for you to learn. Join us as we have industry professionals from around the world come on the show and share their insights on the industry and business. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Welcome to Video Production. Today we are welcomed by Doug Darling from Tripwire Media, a video production company based out of Winnipeg with strong focus in strategic storytelling. Timestamps: 00:00 - Intros 3:30 - Why strategy is important 6:20 - How to start a creative venture 9:48 - Communicating your process 11:00 - A good process sets expectations 15:37 - Show client milestones 17:15 - Involve clients in the creative process 19:09 - Vetting leads saves everyone time, including theirs 22:00 - Choosing the right leads 25:00 - Finding out the budget 28:50 - How asking about budget benefits the client 31:02 - Growing and benefits of a big team 37:02 - Building out your team 38:24 - The hardest hire is the first hire 41:36 - Developing workplace culture 44:28 - How remote work has affected team collaboration 46:57 - Dealing with team conflicts 49:37 - How to collaborate with your team properly 53:33 - Recommended books & resources 58:49 - Outro To learn more about the show, visit: https://www.lapseproductions.com/lapse-productions-blog/ Subscribe and follow for future episodes! Instagram: @CreativesGrabCoffee https://www.instagram.com/creativesgrabcoffee/ Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.com Instagram: @lapseproductions https://www.instagram.com/lapseproductions/ #videography #videographer #videoproduction #businesspodcast #videoproductionpodcast #lapseproductions #creativesgrabcoffee #videomarketing #videographers #videoproductioncompany #videoproductions #videoproductionservices #videmarketingstrategy

Welcome, everyone. Back to Creators Grab Coffee. Today, we have Doug Darling from Tripwire Media. They are a video production agency based in Winnipeg that has a strong focus on strategic storytelling. Doug, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Very excited to be here. Yeah, it's great. It's great to finally get this on. We were supposed to do this a couple, like a week or two ago ago but all of us ended up getting sick at one point or another yeah all it's all good we're not going anywhere yeah yeah so doug why don't you just give us a little background on on who you are and uh who tripwire media is absolutely yeah so uh we are um yeah we're a video agency based in um

in winnipeg uh we have a team of about 14 people and we, we do work kind of all over Canada, primarily in kind of three areas, which is live action, video scripted, live action, video unscripted, like short documentaries and stuff like that. And then animation and then all the things in between, primarily, mostly corporate commercial work. And yeah, it's been going for about 13, almost 13 years now, which is crazy. And has just been really exciting. We've redefined ourselves a few times that we have a real kind of focus on kind of the storytelling and the psychology of, you know, why are we making things for our audience? What do they need it for? Who is the goal? What is is the audience how do we move them to that goal that kind of stuff so it's been uh it's been a wild trip

and uh we're always just continuously trying to redefine ourselves still um and uh and um yeah get past this pandemic and back onto the streets a little more let's let's dive a little into the strategic aspect sure what you guys do because this is something that's been coming up episode after episode. Everyone is, a lot of video production companies are shifting from more so just providing the video content to seeing how they can be more strategic about the videos they are creating. So why don't you just give us a little, like a little overview on how you guys implement that in your videos? Yeah, I mean, there's a few different ways that we utilize strategy. I mean, one is obviously the strategy of actually the structure of a video that we make. So is there an arc to it? Is there a hook and a conflict and a journey and a resolution and a jab, those kinds

of things. So when we're making something, we want to make sure that it has structure, kind of like having a blueprint to a house. You don't just go and build a house. You want to make sure you understand what you're building before you go in there. We were like a lot of companies before that who used to just kind of show up and shoot or just make things the first idea, or we would actually listen to the client, them telling us what they wanted to have made, which is sometimes kind of like, you know, like someone coming in and hiring lawyers and telling the lawyers what their legal defense should be. So what we started realizing is that we weren't doing our clients justice and actually listening and understanding the need

and then bringing them something that was probably better suited or better fitting for them. Not saying that we had to change their mind every time. And then the other part of it is really that strategy of where is this, if it's one video, let's say, where is it going to be in part of the larger strategy and the larger funnel of the experience or the journey of a client or a viewer. And so we faced again, like a lot of companies, you know, where we would have a client come and go like, Hey, we need everything in the kitchen sink in this, this has to serve every possible purpose, have all the information yet be emotional and tell our story. And it needs to talk to all of our audiences. And for the longest time, we were just like, yeah, okay, sure. Sounds good. And we found

we were kind of either making things that were, uh, totally off, uh, off track. They were not connecting with the, uh, their intended audience. Uh, they were something that maybe the client was really happy with, but again, it wasn't really doing anything or we were making something that was just too big. Uh, and that original idea had turned into something way bigger. So if you don't have that strategy, you don't have that infrastructure, that framework to have defined first before you lift a camera, before you animate a frame, then you're really, you're just kind of throwing caution into the wind and hoping to make something and really, you know, arguably wasting their money and your time. So we, sorry. And so we kind of really started defining that and really realizing when you have a proper strategy that actually it helps creative be better rather than the other way around.

It's actually not restrictive. It actually helps you focus and then come up with better ideas and then put all the noise aside so that you can actually do the job that you're supposed to do. Yeah. It's so key to be thinking like that when working with your clients. So actually, how long did it roughly take for you guys to start thinking a little bit more strategically with your clients? Because it took Dario and I a little while before we started getting that kind of mindset and type of thinking. Yeah, like you kind of have to,

I mean, there's some people who obviously do it quicker. Some people jump in right away knowing what they know. Maybe they were trained better than me. I always joke that I actually started Tripwire in the like back ass, like our ass backward way possible, which was not spending a ton of time in the industry. And then starting a company. That's what most people do, right? They they they work maybe anywhere from like two to 10 years in the industry, they go, this is, I'm going to do it a little different. This is how I'm going to do it

with all the knowledge and the training that I have. That's, that's pretty much how we did it. We just got as soon as we finished university we just were like okay let's start our company we did and then we were i feel like we've said this before it did feel like we were two freelancers just collaborating on projects but i feel like we had the exact same well there you go yeah so you know that like uh it was just like you know when i tell uh actually teach a uh a course at Red River College now in Winnipeg. And I joke that it's just a whole bunch of cautionary tales of really not what to do, but what not to do. And so as you kind of like, you know, when you start, you're just doing something just like kind of any creative venture,

any creative venture, whether it's painting or music or something, is you really kind of just start with trying to do the things that you like, that you think are cool, that will help you learn things that are different. But then you start realizing that, that, you know, it's obviously not about you, it's about the client. And actually, it's not really about the client, it's actually about their client or their viewer or their audience member, which is a good distinction to make. And that took a little while. So I would say like kind of the first couple of years, we were just fumbling our way through kind of learning. Luckily, there's a lot of need for this skill set. We started in 2009 when we had kind of a perfect storm of DSLRs becoming a big thing. Facebook and YouTube really taking a rise and the need for or the availability of bandwidth. So you could actually start sharing larger files and that kind of stuff and HD turning around.

So we were able to screw around for a while without going completely out of business. Although we had one of those almost go out of business kind of arcs in our story as well. But it was probably about 2012 and 13, where I really had this kind of moment. It's kind of like having little corners to the stairwell of your life, of your career. And I had hit a corner and went, hey, I feel like I've been editing the same video again and again. We're going and we're interviewing the CEO and we're getting a video of their employees working and some establishing shots outside. And we talk about how many employees they have and blah, blah, blah. And we're all happy about it. And then it goes, they throw it online and not only does it not really connect, but they don't do anything

with it. So we kind of got frustrated with that. So we decided to redefine ourselves. And the two big areas in around 2015 was storytelling, storytelling, training, the art and science of storytelling. So I really dove headfirst into news storytelling and started a relationship with Patrick Moreau and all those guys. I ended up coaching and executive producing some stuff with them for a while. And then the backend strategy of it, even the process that we didn't have, being when we started growing to 10, 11, 12, it was a house of cards built upside down. Like I just kept piling stuff on and it would be like every day, like, hey, what's the shoot we're going to? Like, oh, shoot. Yeah. You can't read my mind. Okay. And there was no scheduling. There was no input or output. And

depending on who was working on the project, it would be different. So, you know, we had to build our process. So that was really important. And there's obviously the production process and then the client experience process. So that's been the last three years. And that's really what I think is keeping us going and adding that brand value that maybe some of the smaller companies can't necessarily tout. But of course there's, there's pros and cons to both. Sorry, I ramble a lot if you didn't know. No, no, no. Hey, I mean, there was so much here to unpack.

Like number one was that, that point where you said you almost went out of business like that. I want to explore for sure. But for sure. Going back to the ending part, like you're right. Like systems are so key to being able to scale and we've had other guests come on and say like you need to develop a system otherwise again you're just you're just joe schmo working yeah you're a gwc a guy with a camera right and like oh that's funny and uh and we actually i don't know about you guys like one of the most common questions we get it by our client, usually on a first call or a second call is what is your process?

And I mean, you can easily just go, well, we do, you know, pre-production and then production and post. But when you can get a little deeper and really explain, you know, what we would consider a unique process and walk them through that, that instills confidence, especially when we're trying to work with larger companies that need to know that stuff. When you're working with other entrepreneurs or smaller organizations, they don't really care. They just go like, I need a video.

Your videos are beautiful. Can you make me one? But when you've got a lot of people's not only money, but also their role or their careers, you know, kind of riding on it, they need extra confidence in that. And while you're actually explaining that stuff, you're also building a lot of trust. So we do a lot upfront on client education and, you know, getting in front of the client and walking them through our process. We actually did a, what is it?

Like we basically sent out a survey to about 40 of our clients last year and asked what the priorities were, what they care about the most. And you would think obviously visuals and maybe price, but those actually were way lower than communication and process and experience. Those were the top ones. Yeah. I feel like everybody always forgets about the client experience. Everybody's always so focused on how they, on their processes for their video content that sometimes the way they deliver it to the client or the way they communicate with the client gets overlooked a little bit,

you know, like not answering emails on time or taking a little bit longer than expected. And like you said, when they ask you what your process is, you can easily say pre-production production or post but you have to really dive in and explain every part of the process because no one knows what those words mean right well it's not that they don't know but you're not they don't know they don't know they don't know what they don't because why would you assume they don't yeah and you know

you say things even like b-roll and they're like oh let's b-roll and you're like yeah of course why should you know necessarily what B-roll is? Like you should talk at the level that you would expect them to understand. And that's, that's the other part actually, that has saved our asses a lot more. And really, it's not only just the process that we have, but it's the process that we expect them to follow so that we can meet their deadline. So we have this saying that we go like, we,

we move as fast as you do. So when they go, how long does it take? I'm like, well, how long can you get feedback from? Because you'll destroy you and you guys, I'm sure we'll be used to this big, big rushes. And then you send out that first draft and they take three weeks to get back to you. And so if you haven't set that process or those expectations that got them to agree at the beginning that, hey, for us to do our job, you have to do yours. And here are all the milestones and points of approval. The goal for us is not necessarily that we always have to make that deadline. The goal for us, though, is that if they fall behind in any way, that they're the ones changing the deadline rather than us even having to go to them to change it for them. So yeah, I mean, that's just a huge part of it. And it's been really,

really helpful for us. We're always, you know, we're always still kind of like tripping over it a little bit. There's still, it's very nuanced and it's creative and it's people, you know, you can't follow it to a T as you would maybe in, in something a little more, you know, technical, but so it needs to flex as well. Like if you're too rigid in it, that's also a problem. It's more like a guideline. It's not, it's not a rule. I was wondering. It sets the expectations. It sets the expectations essentially. A hundred percent. The earlier you said it and the more, you know, we always like kind of just saying like, you know, once you, if you assume something, the word, the moment we hear the word

assume, we're like, like on our team, we're like, no, no, no, no. Let's assume nothing. That's actually going to be, we're rebranding our values. And that's when I want to be as a core values, assume nothing, do nothing. I like that. That's really good. Actually. How, how detailed do you get in terms of explaining your process to the client? Cause for us, um, lately we we've actually sat down and developed the whole like A to Z type of process for us lately, we've actually sat down and developed the whole like A to Z type of process for dealing with our clients. Because before, yeah, it was in our head.

But now we've actually put it on paper and we detailed each of the steps that we go through. Like, so for example, for our sales process, we have like five or six steps, right? But like, I'm wondering when you're explaining to your clients

and you're setting their expectations, like how detailed do you get within those steps? It's somewhat subjective to understanding that client on that first kind of discovery call where you really try to find out what is important to them, especially also what do they know? So we actually built our process. I luckily, my VP of creative operations worked at SAP building processes on top of already directing and, you know, and DOP in films for 30 years.

He's lived like 20 lives. But so we have it like pages upon pages of inputs and outputs. We rarely show that, if ever show that to a client, but we can if we really want to just like kind of allow them going like, this is all the work that goes on behind. So what we tend to do usually is we boil that down into either a couple of infographics. One can be like really the, it's about what seven big steps from the, the sales process or the, the, the, you know,

what are we doing before they sign off, which is actually really important to define, especially in time. We found out like in the last couple of years, you know, like, so we say our general amount of time for turning around a video, three months, you know, if we don't know much else, we can do it quicker and often it takes longer, but we just kind of set that and And, and then people go, great, that's exactly the amount of time we need. And then, and all of a sudden, when we're ready to go, we only have like, we have, we're already behind. We couldn't figure it out. And we realized that from the point of a phone call to the point of a green light, the average time of that is

about four to five weeks. And we went, oh yeah, that's, that's a big part of the process that we were just ignoring. So, I mean, we, we definitely will show client milestones. We actually like to show where you, where they have, where a, we need their input, but be also like, here are the levels of, of, of, of feedback that we'll need. And when you'll be notified, especially so that by the time you get to, you know, that V1 edit or that, you know, like there shouldn't be any really big surprises. We're really trying to make sure that they are approving all of this stuff in creative development rather than looking at it with, you know, their eyes actually, or their discerning eyes for the first time on a first cut, second cut, or getting, you know, the boss to look at it for the first

time going, oh, this is all wrong or we're missing a part. So that's really helped. So again, yeah, like it, we always usually go through it in a, we go through it sometimes in a discovery call and definitely put it in our pitch deck. And we insist on doing our pitches of a certain price or higher. We, we insist kind of on doing it online to walk them through it so that we can kind of really explain ourselves. And again, kind of adds value, adds personality, adds trust, those kinds of things. So it kind of serves a few purposes, but yeah, that's, you know, we, we obviously don't show them the whole, you know, backend of it because that's just, you know, it's kind of like, you know, trying to

sell someone a car and then showing them like the the the electronic makeup of the motherboard or something like that. They don't care. They just want to know it gets them from point A to B and it looks cool. Exactly. Does it work? Will it achieve it? Will it achieve my goals? Yeah. And well, yeah. I mean, that's one of the things, right? Like, uh, I try to do it. I'm still not as good at it, but you also like, you want to find the pain point obviously of the, the, the people that they're, the video needs to serve so that you have a good creative idea. But you also want to try and figure out the pain point of the client to go like, what is it that you're looking for? Are you looking for the lowest price? Are you looking for having this off your plate completely so that you need someone who you can trust? Are you looking to look good?

Are you looking to drive sales in that way? So you can kind of figure out what those pain points are so that you're coming forward. So when they're really caring about the trust of I have to make sure that the CEO is happy with this, then, you know, we spend a little more time maybe with process than we do about talking about like investment or ROI potential of sales is a big part. Exactly. And one thing you mentioned was that was about the time it takes to go from, for example, a lead to actually getting the green light to move forward with the wanted the most becomes then the problem where you get too much that comes in, or at least a lot of tire kickers, a lot of bad fits, those kinds of things. So we actually kind of really, you know, there's a lot of people and I don't criticize it at all because it saves a lot of time.

There's not one way to do it. But, you know, they get on a 30-minute call and they go, okay, I have a general idea of what you want. I'll send you a quote. Here you go. It's a one-pager or two-pager or something like that. We really believe in, and this actually goes against some of the Blair Enns training that I have done. If you guys know Price and Creativity, which is a great resource. a great resource. But we have a vetting call. So it's usually getting on a call to assess really budget timeline and fit. We're always trying to get budget. And I know that's a hard thing to do. But when they say we don't have one, I start throwing out kind of some general numbers to see, you know, if they either go like, yeah, that's cool. Let's move forward with that.

Or if they do the thing where, you know, it's like when you go into a store and you see that $500 pair of pants and you're like, cool, cool, cool, cool. And you kind of like walk around for a little bit, you know, try to save face and then like back out. So we kind of, we save ourselves a lot of time there because we actually, our pitch document is quite a several levels of process to the point where we do a discovery. We understand, again, the goal, the audience, the need to at least a high level point. We then build either a service request if we're not doing the creative or a creative brief, if we are. That goes to our writers who then build a treatment. That goes then to either our animators or our head of production to scope it.

That comes back to me. We put it into a pitch. We get onto a call. I'll usually make adjustments and change some things and blah, blah, blah. So it's a bit of a process. And it's unfortunately not the quickest turnaround, which we used to be more nimble on, but it allows us to handle a more volume, but also spend more time to make sure we're coming to them with the right thing.

We often find like, you know, sometimes our advantages, we actually landed a large client when we said it was an RFP, which we usually don't answer, but this one was close to me. And we said, you don't have the right information in here. So here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. And here's what we can quote on in ranges. But if, and I actually say, I'm like, if anyone is coming to you with a definitive number and a scope, they're, they're, they're cart ahead of the horse right now. They're, they, they haven't done, they haven't listened properly because, you know, so often the client says we need this, this, this, this, and this, and, and not to be a dick, but you go like, do you, are you sure why? And you get down and you just, you just guide them through like, well,

what is the purpose? What is the, you know, what is the, what do you need them to do? What do you need them to feel? And then when you go like, oh, we need people to care about our culture. Okay. Well then is it hearing from the CEO, as an example, is that the best way to get culture across or telling a story of someone who loves their job or multiple people, you know, those kinds of things. So we usually lead them through that process so that they can actually almost arrive at it themselves. And we're building value at the same time by doing so. So we're not, we're not ever trying to, you know, you know, throw shade on any other organization, but we're just trying to show our value versus theirs. And hopefully that's something

that sticks with them. If it comes down to price and price alone, then it kind of works out that, you know, we're not the cheapest, we're not the most expensive, but we don't, we're not, we're not in it just for the money, we're in it for the impact. And if they care only about money, then it's probably going to be a problem for us collectively down the road anyway. So it's, it's usually when we have those vetting points at the beginning, it saves us all a lot of time and grief. We have a similar, our process is similar to yours. Yours is obviously a lot more detailed, but we do the same thing with the intro call. Like as soon as we, we get, they fill out the form on our website and, and it gets to us, we immediately give them a call

and we just have a quick 15 minute call just to introduce, get introduced. And then again, see like high level overview of what they want is it even doable for us and then if it is like do they have the money and we're pretty up front we ask like look that you selected this like i make sure i ask like you selected this option is this correct and then i if it works it's like okay that that works we can go to the next step because again the worst thing you can get is a time waster right so you got to figure out right off the bat like do you have the money for this and it's not i think a lot of creatives are afraid to ask especially early on but you get to a point where you start to get enough of them enough leads that you go like i don't have time to waste like you either

have the money or you don't like it's not just that it's not just that though it's it's it's kind of also what you said doug that uh it's the value. Do you both also share the same values or are you both committed to this project? A lot of the time, it's not so much budgetary issues when I'm talking to a lead that I disagree with them or I feel like this is not worth our time. It's more so if they're really putting in the effort for this project or they want this project to succeed, I can tell if they're actually feeling it. Budget is usually a good way to determine if it's a good monetary kind of, how do you say, attribute to determine if they're doing that. But sometimes they may have the money, they may have this, but then you can tell that they're very demanding to the point where we demand you to give us this, give us this, give us this exactly like this. It's like, oh, you don't want to hear how we work necessarily. Then I think, I think we can go our separate ways at this point. Yeah, both are right. And we're assessing for both, right? Like, because there have been times where, you know, one big red flag, of course, is like, listen, you guys are the, you know,

anytime they say you guys are the experts, you come, I don't really want to have any involvement in it, blah, blah, blah. And then of course they always do. Um, or if you're, you're right, if they're really demanding or they're really rude or they're really overconfident and going like, this is what I need and blah, blah, blah. And we could kind of go like, yeah, it's just not a good fit. We've walked away from ones where it's just almost more personality based that like, you're going to be a problem. Or we have, you know, if I, you know, to be candid, like we, we add a PETA tax, right. A pain in the ass. Like we're like, all right, if we're going to do it, we're at least going to have to make it profitable. And usually you, we have, we have thrown up some high numbers and then they're like, yeah,

sounds good. We're like, oh, all right. You called my bluff, but, but, but the, I, I'm an, I'm a big analogy guy. And like, you know, I think one way to, you know, for anyone who's listening, who really has a tough time asking about budget. Cause I'm, it's so funny. I'm, I'm the sales guy here and I hate talking about money. I'm in, I'm should not be in this position, but I have to be. And, and so I, you know, I say, it's like, you know, when people go, well, we don't know what it costs at all. I'm like, okay, cool. But it's kind of like asking me to build you a house. You know, what, if I can show you a shack and I can show you a mansion, but if you can be in range of where you're at and, and, and, and, you know, what your expectation is,

then we can at least build something for that. It's, we always try to make it in their benefit rather than like how much you got. And then we'll tell you what it costs exactly that. So there's ways to kind of explain that. We always try to explain it in the best interest because we can then bring something to you that will fit in and around your budget. We can either bring you options or blah, blah, blah. Sometimes we'll also send ranges of work that we've done

just again to kind of see if they're down with that. But yeah, I actually learned this from like Ryan Corral from Studio Sherpas. But like he asked the question is like, what's the best way to get the budget? Ask them their budget. And when they don't, you can actually either start putting ranges for yourself or you're not comfortable with that. Start going, OK, well, where is it? Like, are you at 10 grand, 20 grand, 50 grand, a hundred? And they'll usually stop you at some point. Like we definitely can't go over 50 grand. You go, okay. So I'll probably be building things under

there. And then you can, or if they go, we definitely can't go over five and you go, okay, well, just so you know, most of our things start at X. And so this is probably not going to be a good fit. And then what we always try to do is introduce them to a freelancer or like a strategic partner who would be happy to do that work and do it at a smaller level. So with that, we don't just kind of leave them high and dry. But I think you've done it enough. We've done it enough. There's nothing worse than spending a ton of time building this concept and putting together a pitch and here you go. Yay. And they're like, oh, I'm sorry, we only have a thousand bucks. And I'm like, yeah, I really should have found that out first. Shouldn't have I? And of course they couldn't tell

me. And of course they always have it, whether they say they don't or not, they know what they're working with to a general degree. It's not that they're being devious, but they also don't want to necessarily give it away because, you know, the trust isn't necessarily there yet. So building that trust and explaining why you need to know the budget is very helpful for us. building that trust and explaining why you need to know the budget is very helpful for us. We stopped, to be honest, we stopped having a lot of like, they don't know their budget type of issues as soon as we, because most of our leads are coming from Google, right? So they have to go to our website and they have to fill out our contact form, right? And before we had, we had not sure as one of the options for the budget.

And that's when we started getting like such a big influx of leads, which was great at first, right? Because we were working on our SEO. We're like, yeah, it's working. We're getting all these leads. But then like 99% of them were like, oh, yeah, I have like a thousand bucks. And we weren't finding out until like you said, like after like a call or two. And then it got to a point where we were like, okay, we got to set like if you're contacting us this is the minimum it starts at so they would know right away there right and that that was like the biggest vetting uh process we've ever had was

just filtering them out right on the website themselves i'm totally stealing that at that point yeah and from that point on like i i would say like nine out of ten leads that we have coming to us like they they already know their budget ranges and again like once we do have that intro call with them like you start you selected this it'll start at this but what's are you we always ask like are you flexible on it like because if there's more stuff involved can you do you have it more money for that and usually they they've almost always said yes or they either say no like this is like our absolute limit for it and that's like okay we can either work within it or we can't even then when they say their absolute limit it often

is not you find that not all the time yeah yeah not all the time especially when they start adding things later it's like okay that's your limit with what you asked for originally but if you're adding things okay you're gonna have to increase that limit. But yeah, by adding that filter, it also actually gets a lot. I know that this is what happens. It gets all the leads thinking about it right off the get-go. It's like, oh, maybe I do have to think about how much I can allocate before I reach out to anybody. I haven't been asked this question because a lot of the times sometimes people think to themselves, this is what I need, but they don't think that far ahead in terms of what type of budget should I

allocate? What is a good budget to allocate? These guys are saying it's usually minimum this much. Maybe I should talk to them to see what that typically entails. So it, it, it kind of opens the conversation also to, to help, uh, have like educate the client a little bit more about what they should be expecting, not just from us, but from anyone else. Don't just go for a company that is a yes company. We will do it for whatever we'll, we'll figure it out.

No problem. We're not going to ask questions, whatever you want, we'll do it. It's like, let us ask you a few questions to start thinking about it a little bit more in depth. That's that's the distinction of a good production part. Well, and that's why I hate RFPs, especially the ones that are they don't allow you to talk to them. And it's like, well, then great. Like you're just literally basing it on arbitrary information that is being stored without the whole picture. But yeah, so just quickly question, like, do you guys just have like, is it, I guess I can look at it myself, but like,

is it a multiple choice that doesn't go lower than like let's say 10 grand or something like that? Well, for us, it's like, there's different pricing options. So it's, there's a 75 to 10 option. There's a 10 to 15, 15 to 25 and the next one is 25 plus. So we have have like those options right off the bat. It's like, okay, we're catering to, we're not doing anything under 75 yet. No, it doesn't make sense. Right. Yeah. And there are ranges.

The goob factor, the get out of bed. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You have a lot of these acronyms I've known. The goob, you know, it's just acronyms and, and analogiesies over here acronyms and films that's how that's how it is that could be a production company yeah there you go um let's talk a bit about team your team yeah because you you have a you have a very big team and uh i know a lot of a lot of guests are curious as to like you know know, how do you grow a team and what kind of systems that you have in place for that, for it to be like, you know, manageable and sustainable?

Because you don't want to grow your team too fast to the point where, you know, you can't pay enough people, you got to start cutting back because then, you know, people took a chance on you and now you got to let them go. So how did you go about your hiring process and just your team building process? Yeah, the way that we grew is kind of, it really was in a way of like, when I started getting too busy, I then started hiring people for the things that either I didn't want to do or the things I didn't think I was as good at so that it would then free me up to kind of, again, you know, either, you know, at first it was just to edit more. So I, or I had someone help me edit and I could direct more and have someone shoot. The other, you start looking at like, where are my expenses going on either freelance and that kind of stuff? Does it make sense to bring that in house a little

more? It is, you know, it's the best and worst, obviously having a larger team. I even know like a lot of the big production companies in LA and Toronto full-time don't have more than 10 people. And because I think we have such a different or such a range of content that we make, so we don't do just big commercial and we don't do just small content,

it's really good to have people who are there ready to take in extra work. And I think a lot of it actually came from me not being able to say no very well. So it was, you know, I know a couple of other companies here in Winnipeg who, you know, the owner is still the DOP or the director. There's maybe three or four people in support

and they just pick and choose the work that they do, which is sometimes I really go like, that's, that's the sweet spot. But I just, I really like, you know, the core of my essence, I like to help people. So I have a tough time saying no to, to helping organizations and colleagues out. And so I just kept adding more people. And then the burden of that, of course, it's filling the overhead and filling the work. And sometimes you have to say yes to work that I kind of say keeps the lights on. But it also allows us to act really, really quickly. When you know, we try to get our clients to plan as quick as or as long as possible, but there is just always going to be rush jobs, there's always going to be things that are needed. And the fact that I've got, you know, a team ready to go for the most part, or at least that work is being done. And that they're able to help me find the

team is really helpful. So it also kind of frees me up a little bit more, you know, doing it out over 10 years, one of my goals was to take a little bit of a backseat, I actually am not on set that much anymore, I don't really edit that much anymore. And as, as much as I miss that to a certain degree, I also have a young family. Um, I like having some free time. And so I've kind of tried to build it in a way that, um, there's a little more balance versus the 14, 15, 16 hours that you were doing every day and the weekends that were gone and all that kind of stuff. So, um, it kind of comes based on need. Uh, I've only had to let people go from a sales perspective once, and that was the pandemic. So, you know, so far, so good. But we probably, we're now really kind of going like anything to add on top of it. I was trying to scale to 25 before the pandemic and

realizing that, you know, in Winnipeg, it's a pretty small market. We have work outside of it. But unlike, say, like the GTA, where you can't find work in Toronto, well, you can find it in, you know, 10 other cities around it. There's really, there's, it's a landlocked island in Winnipeg. So we're kind of hitting a little bit of a ceiling here. And it's tougher to expand out, being that there's just not as much business. So we know that we still hire, you know, we still hire quite a few freelancers especially when we're crewing up when,

you know, we don't have in-house grips and, you know, Sam guys and stuff like that. But we wanted to kind of keep it to the core team that we know we need in house that benefits us by having it in house. And then knowing that we're able to scale with work only on contracts and, you know, kind of day to day freelance. So that's we're kind of we're kind of at this sweet spot have been for probably the last couple of years and probably don't intend on really going much higher than that, unless something huge changes or we get some sort of like two year contract with a ton of content. And it makes sense to hire another project manager or hire another editor or those kinds of things. Do you foresee yourself like optimizing your team structure going forward then?

Like, since you're already at the limit, you see maybe like, okay, trimming the fat off a little bit. Yeah. I mean, I always have to look at that. I actually just like literally the other day, I'm like, I got to relook at our structure and, you know, you're supposed to build your structure without anyone in mind. That's really hard to do because you're dealing with lives I could easily build it in a way that maybe makes one or two people obsolete but then you see the value that they bring as well but you're you're right I do need to I built I have a very odd structure to be honest because I a lot of my training kind of came up in in in, in, in agency work. And I didn't

have a lot of experience in production houses or anything like that. So I actually went and visited sandwich video in LA and we compared our, our structures and he's like, yeah, yours is crazy. And I'm like, yeah, it's a little weird. We have a full accounts division. Most production companies don't have accounts. They have, you know, producers who obviously are client liaisons, and then they kind of, you know, run the team. It's usually kind of like a two prong. We have a three prong system, which is, you know, kind of divided into, you know, sales and accounts and client experience, and then a director of operations who manages really the creative and the production. So it's a little odd. I could, you know, it works fine as is. I might look at maybe putting that together a little bit more or going a little more traditional, but we'll see. And then we're

looking at getting more into original work just to throw a wrench into everything. So that'll be fun too. Okay. So if you're for companies that are just starting out or that are looking at developing their teams further, how would you recommend that they go about it? Cause you, you already have like, like you said, like a three-prong approach, but let's say your company, like, like, uh, like, like our company where it's Carol and I that are running it. And in the future, we want to start adding like a team to it, how would you recommend we go about it? Yeah. I mean, I don't have a business degree, even though I did teach media entrepreneurship. The way I kind of look at it is what is, you know, what is holding you guys back

from, from, from a enjoying the work that you do and be building and increasing the work. So if, if it's like, well, I hate, I hate the sales side of it, or I hate the client side of it. Great. Get, get a client relations person or someone who can really drive business or a producer who's really good with people. And then you're focused on the creative. I myself kind of got more and more out of the creative as I tried to get better people. I'm still the executive creative director, but I wanted to find better shooters and better animators than me because I was just kind of a jack of all trades, master of none. And so I always just kept finding the stuff. And then by the time we were about four, I'm like,

wow, I have to manage all this. There's kind of HR components, financial components. So I then hired an office manager to kind of run that stuff for me. And again, it freed me up to do the stuff that I love. So I don't think there's any right way to do it. I will say though, the hardest hire is the first hire because it's the first time you're really committing to a very large expense and you're not sure if it's going to work or not. You can always start someone on a three-month contract. Although when you hire someone full full time, you actually have legally three months to, you know, you can let it go or part ways within three months for no reason. But there's ways to go about it. We did it incorrectly. Our first hire was like a guy who we hired him for 40 hours of freelance a week, guaranteed. That is technically illegal.

But, you know, you can get away with it for a while. We never got busted. But you know, you need to be paying into CPP and I and all that kind of jazz. So yeah, I always like it's, it's, it might not be the best, but it feels like a simple approach is find the things you don't like doing, find the things you want to spend more time doing, and then find someone to supplement that, and then see how that goes. Now I'm wondering, I was just gonna say now I'm wondering, Oh, sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say now I'm wondering if we had a long project that was maybe say a full month and we hired the same freelancer for every single day would, would that technically be illegal then as well?

I think it's something like, you know, if they work 30 hours a week, you know, for a certain amount of time. And I mean, like, obviously, it's like, you know, there's, you know, you hire a DOP for a film, obviously, well, maybe they actually do get higher. I don't know the HR legal stuff behind it. I always defer to to all the other people who know way better. But it also then comes down to you can also do it in a form of investment. So it's like, hey, we want to do more of this type of work. So we know that if we're going to, you know, if you set your goals and going like, we want to build this amount of business, we know that if we get that, we're going to need a person to support, whether it's a, you know, a videographer or it's an editor or whatever. And you can kind of build

it. So they will come as an option as well. I've done that successfully a couple of times. We really wanted to do more animation. We needed to be able to supplement it. So we really bolstered up our animation. I've also hired and failed and being okay with failure is a big, big part. It's also, again, something I teach in the course. It's just like, be okay with it. We try to do strategy for video as a service. I hired a guy that, um, you know, was not cheap, uh, to build it. And we didn't really make a dollar off it. He worked on it for three quarters of a year. It wasn't doing what it needed to do. There was a, you know, and so I just had to kind of, I had to kind of chop it off and, and, and rebuild, uh, and re re group with myself and my team and go, okay, now what are we going to do? And being okay, like, Hey, yeah, we lost money, but that's part of it. I actually have a massive drone hanging an effigy in our hallway. It was one of the first ones in the city. It's one of those big, massive quadrocopters that you had to be like a skilled RC pilot to fly. And, you know, it was

$30,000 after everything. And, uh, and, um, and, you know, rather than kind of like, you know, trash it off a space style, we kind of hang it up there to kind of remind ourselves that you can get past failures and failures just part of it. What, let's look at, let's look at work. Like how do you how do you how are you developing work culture like because you do want your employees to be like happy working at your company right so what do you do to kind of make them happy or make them literally uh work there yeah we literally actually just had a half day retreat where we sent everyone to an indoor beach facility to play a bunch of games um so that's a part of it culture is you know some people go like crazy on it and and then some people don't do anything. And I think there's somewhere kind of in the middle, especially as a small company, you need to make sure that...

Sorry, there's a handful of things that we do is, A, I do check-ins with everyone every quarter, whether they report to me or not. That's really, there's value in just being able to have those candid conversations. It doesn't mean I can, you know, I'll take the information and then send it to whoever their kind of direct report is. So that's really good. We do a Monday morning meeting and a, so that's where we kind of go through a few things, maybe, you know, go over some sort of process or do a little bit of education.

And then we have a Thursday afternoon wind down. It used to be on Fridays, but then kind of with pandemic and, and even summer and stuff like that, it was tough to make everyone kind of meet on the end of a Friday. And so that's where we watch a video that we did. And we actually kind of use it as a case study and we walk through it and we kind of, you know, cathartically talk about the challenges we had, the successes that we had.

And I think it really puts everyone in a good headspace. Aside from that, you know, just trying to have fun where we can, trying to keep things relatively light. Even our kind of our conversational tone for the brand is, you know, online to be really kind of friendly and not too professional. So I think that kind of helps. And then, of, we, we, we become remote, sorry, a hybrid. And we're finding the balance in the value of being able to work from home sometimes and the value about being here to work with people, to collaborate, you know, to have those, those creative meetings where you feed off of one another. That's really, really valuable. So we're trying to figure that out. I actually had a town hall like a week ago being that we are, our lease is coming up on this place. We have way too much space, especially for now that we, you know, we're not here all the time.

And I'm like, what do you guys want? Like, you know, what helps? And I found out that actually people do like coming downtown. I thought if we found somewhere that was easier to commute to might be better or, you know, they're like. They see so much value about being an exchange district, which is kind of like this old neighborhood with lots of restaurants and stuff, that it made me reconsider what I'm going to do. And so being able to listen to them and have those meetings while still being a leader and making the decisions not based on what they want has been really helpful. So I'm always trying. It's not easy. It's tough to be happy and energetic when you're not on the inside. But that's part of leadership.

Has remote working like changed the sorry, has remote working changed like the collaboration or creativity of your teams? Or have you found that it made no difference? collaboration or creativity of your teams or have you found that it made no difference? I think that, I mean, one of the great things about being remote is it does make things a little more intentional. And so your time together is a little more intentional and that we're okay getting on a call no matter where everyone is, especially when people were available kind of all the time. So there was a more connectivity as well as like, we'd already gotten onto Teams prior to this, but then we really obviously started using it for communication. And so we, you know, it really helps make sure that everyone's on the same page versus, you know, what used to be more just

conversations and things would happen without maybe being kind of written down. People were missed. Decisions were made when not everyone was being considered. So that's really been great. You know, we're pretty task based here. So like, and we're small enough to go like, if someone's really shit in the bed or, you know, screwing the pooch here a little bit, you'll notice, right? And we don't even do really any crazy time tracking, but like we, you know, they quote time, we have deadlines, all this kind of stuff. So I think it's actually helped, especially when we've got people who like, you know, our writer who buses 45 minutes each way, he can now do the same thing he does at home. And that even being private and being able to be focused is really helpful. One of the challenges prior as well is like when there's enough of us here, people can

walk in through your, you know, you can lose your day just having kind of random casual meetings and people coming in. Hey, can I talk to you about this? Blah, blah, blah. So it's a lot more intentional when you're talking online. And then the flip side though is again, yeah, being able to like, I hate creative meetings online that like, oh, what? Oh, did you? Oh, sorry. You? Yeah. Okay. No, your turn. Like, it's really hard versus like when we're at a

whiteboard going, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. And what else? Like, you're just, you're talking over each other in a really good way. So having that balance has been really helpful. And the two days a week and three days optional has so far been really successful for us. And we're hoping, we're really not looking at changing that anytime soon. Have you, like, because Kirill and I is just us two right now. And anytime we have conflicts, we're able to settle them pretty quickly. I'm just wondering when you're dealing

with a team as big as yours, have you had to deal with any conflicts, conflict resolutions? Like, how did you go about those? Does that even happen at all? Oh, all the time, man. Oh, it's, you know, I mean, like all of us didn't get into this.

Most of us didn't get into this to manage people. It is tough. And I don't want to slight anybody who's here, but everyone has a need. And when you have a lot of people, like they're trying to build their own careers, their own work, all this kind of stuff, there's going to be disagreements. And then how is it being handled? There are a lot more meetings that need to happen. Like with me and my VP, we meet once a week for an hour to talk

about any challenges we're having. We need to make sure that we're also following the process. We're not, I'm not circumventing him. He, you know, other people aren't circumventing other people. And, and that we're nipping it in the bud and that we're having, you know, some, some good discussion. So it is, it is a big part of it, like any organization or any, you know, of our size or any family for that matter. There's going to be disagreements. There's going to be problems. You know, and the other part that really sucks about this is when the problem is too much, you really have to let someone go. I remember my dad saying it was the worst part of his job when when he was working in the financial world. And I was so scared to start a company, or even add people because I knew that one day I would have to, you know, let someone go

and that just that that scared the crap out of me. And it still is the worst thing to do. But when you do it, it's usually better for all parties. Uh, it's, it's good for obviously your wellbeing because you're losing sleep over it. It's better for them in the long run, because obviously they're not happy or doing what needs to be done. And it's good for your team because obviously they're most likely pulling, uh, uh, the extra weight off this person who is, who is not, uh, putting in their, uh, their full commitment. So yeah, it's, uh, it's, it's, So yeah, it's nice to have. I do have an office manager slash HR person who handles a lot of this stuff.

So again, as one of those, like I don't like dealing with this that much. I wanna be kind of more on the vision and the building and working. You hear the term working on the business rather than in the business. So I have people to help with that and to help mediate that partially because I have people to help with that and to help

mediate that partially because I have a huge aversion to conflict, which again, is not a great trait for a leader, but actually is a common one. So it's, you know, trying to head things on without letting them go for too long, but also, you know, making sure that you're not reactive and that, you know, I just hear about like just terrible bosses or just people who just force their opinions and their ways through it. And it's, it's my way or the highway kind of bullshit. So that doesn't work either that you're not going to build any culture when they just feel like they're being told what to do. And they're showing up and, you know, clocking in clocking out. You have to go with the assumption

of it being also like a collaborative approach with the people you work with you can't you can't be the judge jury and executioner uh because why did you even bring them in in the first place you brought them in because they they have a skill uh and a mindset that you don't and they add value and always you have to remember that and obviously yeah you may have the final decision at times but if you got to make them feel that they're also collaborating with you, even if it's just a freelancer that you're working with, you brought them in because they're going to help you with this project. So it's good to me. Yeah. It's one of the hardest things I've had to learn because when you're at smaller, like, you know, at the beginning, like you are calling all the shots and then you hire these people.

And for some people, it's like, in your mind, you're just like, no, now you're just doing, you're helping me facilitate what I need to have done, but they're not going to find value in that. And I, you know, often as we started growing, like, you know, I'd say, what do you guys think? I think we should do blah, blah, blah. And then you're like, well, great. You just took the air out of the room, uh, by, by basically putting your idea out there. And they're like, you want them to contradict that idea. There's like a Simon Sinek talks about leader speak last. Right. Um, so, um, you know, trying not to take over, trying not to be the one who talks all the time. And I talk a lot, uh, is, is been a real exercise in letting, you know, even being like, okay, with things that I don't necessarily think is a great idea when it makes

sense going like, let's go with this. Let's try this, giving them the, the, the space and the breath to do that. The other thing, by the way, that really is, we're really trying to build is we've learned about kind of, there's like this a pie chart of needs for employees, especially millennials. And one of them is really kind of extracurricular impact that they have. And so we're trying to, we're doing something called 12 months of giving, where we do something different that is involved and is measurable for a charity, a different charity every month. Um, and, uh, so that's been some really good team building, um, really kind of puts things in perspective for us as well, when we're helping, you know, either, uh, people who, um, you know, like Habitat for Humanity or

people who need blood and like that kind of stuff. And we're trying to come up with the even bigger, uh, charitable, uh, initiative that we can really own ourselves. But that's, you know, something that I'm hoping will really round out the value because people, people want to come to work now. It's not like it used to be. People want to come to work and know that they're making some sort of a difference and making some sort of an impact, that there's some value. It's not just that I show up to do my job and then I leave. And then I never think about it again. People won't stick around for that. So you have to be able to communicate vision. Where are we going? What are we headed? And what are you know, and so they know what they're working for. So when you guys hire someone, have a good idea of what they are actually contributing to. If you share a vision story

of beyond like, yeah, you're editing pixels and putting words together. It's like, no, if you do this, you're going to help grow a company. You're going to help people's lives be better. Like our clients, you know, depending on what the goal of your clients is, you're going to help them reach that goal when they know that kind of stuff, what they're working towards. There's just, they work harder, they work better and they care more and they show up with, you know, better attitude, better energy. So I often have to remind myself to, you know, a, to have a good goal and good vision set out. Cause I've been, you know, some guys have come to me before, like, you know, we really don't know what we're working towards. We know we're

just showing up every day and making content. I'm like, yeah, I haven't been communicating the vision very well. So I've been trying to really do that a lot more. And it's, it's weird because yeah, again, you're just in your head and like, when you're a solopreneur, you're just going forward and, you know, everyone get out of my way. And then you need to actually now take a step back and let other people do stuff. I think it was Richard Bronson who like really says, like, you know, you have to listen to everyone who works for you, because if you don't, you're screwed. And there's a, a, um, uh, a book called scaling up that you really, your goal is to be the dumbest in the room, not the smartest in the room. Uh, and if you're the dumbest in the room, you've really done your job because that means you've got people way better than you, uh, doing work that you couldn't do yourself. Man. Okay. For, for all of our listeners, why don't you recommend some books for us?

Cause you've already recommended like a couple, it seems like you have a list. And I'm definitely interested in reading a lot of the books you've been reading. So there are, and I'll try and I'm not great at recall. My memory sucks. But actually, you can probably see in the background, there's a binder right there. It's called Pricing Creativity by Blair Enns. Blair Enns is a, if you haven't heard of him,

he's actually from, originally from Winnipeg, but he is a consultant for agencies and he really teaches people how to have proper conversations about sales. So if you're looking to have a better approach to sales, he is amazing. He also has a podcast, not to talk about other podcasts here.

Oh, that's fine. Called Two Bobs with David C. Baker. and i have learned so much from those podcasts um checking out they don't have books but muse storytelling or um uh studio sherpa is really great training solutions one's based on storytelling the other one's a little more sales based and how to kind of run your small organization so there's some really great help there. If you guys know who Terry O'Reilly is, he has a, he, he has a, a CBC show called under the influence. And he had, he's written a couple of books. I'm trying to remember. It's not his most recent book, but it's another book where I really got inspired a lot about the client experience and storytelling and all that kind of stuff. So that's actually a book I hand to a lot of people when they start here. And yeah, I'm trying to think of, yeah,

there's a lot of books that I've half read. It's my ADHD. I'm like, I'm like, I kind of have a good idea with it. For anyone who's listening, who has maybe like anywhere from like eight to 12 people. There's a great book called rocket fuel where you can really understand how you can be the visionary and then you need a secondary person called an integrator who's really your operations person. Yeah, those are the ones that come to the top of my head. I also read the Dave Grohl book recently, which has nothing to do with this, but it was a really great read. So if, if you want something just really fun, I haven't finished a book in a long time. I finished that on vacation the other day or the other week. So that was great. Okay, well, we have a long reading list. Hey, Carol.

Long reading list indeed. Yeah. I have heard of two, two other books, which is start with why, which is Simon Sinek. And I, we use the golden circle all the time. I don't, I haven't read the book, but I've heard really good things. And there's another one for solopreneurs and start, you know, startups and stuff like that, or smaller companies called profit first which I've heard quite a bit about. And it's been recommended by several colleagues, which really talks about like how to manage your money and how to like, you know, when, when a lot of us start, we really just like, we're just trying to make sure that we're not in debt, but then you have to go like, well, what are you paying yourself? And you're just taking money, you know, from whatever's available and we'll know you should be kind of

more treated like an employee. And then there's a value to you. You should be entitled to a certain amount of money for, for doing what you do, because I would argue you can do it for passionate reasons only for only so much time if you want to have a certain balance and quality of life. And I'm not saying you have to be rolling in the dollars and stuff like that. But it's good to understand that profit isn't a dirty word. And if you profit, you can do everything from actually maybe, you know, be a little more comfortable to reinvesting in your company to hiring more people. You know, there's there's, be a little more comfortable to reinvesting in your company to hiring more people, you know, there's, there's you know, getting more gear,

all that kind of stuff. So it's a good you know, financial literacy is a, is a thing that I had to learn as someone who was basically in credit card debt. When I started this company, I knew nothing about money. I had to really learn about, you know, everything from operations to, you know, like finance, I'm not by no means a financial advisor. I really still don't know most about it. But at least I understand kind of how to look at a spreadsheet and understand that,

hey, yeah, okay, here's where my costs are, here's where I can save money. And here's where my profit margins are. So that's important stuff. It helps, at least to have that mindset. Yeah, we started treating ourselves like employees i think starting last year we're like hey man like yeah we we got to pay ourselves like a a consistent salary and everything and from we we started we became financially literate i would say last year yeah it's the right thing to do because otherwise you you are just kind of living like you gotta treat it like a business you gotta be like a business owner so it's it's definitely good to think like that. Um, so we are at the, sorry, I was just, I was just saying it, I was just saying that it just helps change the mindset as well when

you're working, because if you're not getting, if you're not also paying yourself and you're technically not making money, the motivation sometimes can also waver at times. And that is one thing. Uh, yeah, that's right. It's a budgeted item rather than you're just trying to like, hopefully we have some money left so I can pay my bills this next month. It's like, no, I have, I have a guaranteed amount and we have to budget along that. We know how much business or how little business we need to take as a result. We need, you have overhead, you should have overhead. Exactly. Yeah. So that's a, that's an important part. Okay, Doug. So we're just past the one hour mark.

This has been a very informative one. I really enjoyed it. Um, but before we end off, we always ask this to all of the guests. Uh, why don't you tell us where you came up with the name tripwire media? Oh, it's not that sexy. Uh, actually, uh, I had a business partner at the start. He had started an audio production company called Tripwire Productions. And then he asked me to join and we started Tripwire Media Group. Being that a media group sounds like a bigger deal than two people. And he just liked the sound, the phonetic sound of Tripwire, the hard T and the soft W.

wire, you know, the hard T and the soft W, uh, it's, uh, you know, it was, it was just purely an aesthetic thing. Cause I, yeah, it's kind of like, it's a devious, uh, thing, like a trip wire in, in obviously in like the jungle or something is very, there's no, uh, you know, even part of me when we rebranded, uh, in, uh, 2013, I'd consider changing the name and there was just enough brand awareness that it didn't make sense. So it's like a band name, right? It just, after a while, at least for me, it doesn't really have that meaning. It's like, you know, like Pearl Jam or, you know, Stone Temple Pilots. Like, it's just like, I know I just dated myself there, but, you know, they just, they, they lose the meaning, the literal meaning that they might mean.

So yeah, that's where it comes from. So you had a business partner before, like, is he still around or? No, I bought him out in 2012. He decided to move on to some other things. I have a business partner now, kind of more of a small minority shareholder who owns a agency. And so we became strategic partners. He's now become one of like kind of my best friends and best advisors. But, you know, he's not working in the business. So it's been really helpful to have advice, to have someone to bounce off it. And we both have the same goals in a certain way. And he's actually a very different person in a business sense. And that is also really helpful for me. I've never wanted to run a company by myself like solely. So I've always had someone involved at some point that has a kind of, you

know, a stake in the game. So having you guys, you know, with each other is really helpful, but you know, business coaching or business advisors or something like that, I've found very, very helpful. I'm always trying to learn. And I've always admit what I don't know. I try to be as humble as possible. And there's a lot of things I don't know. That's really interesting. That's really interesting. Cause we there because we there's there's been a couple of most quite a few guests that did have partners at the very beginning and they found out right at that point if it worked out or not and they usually bought the other person out so it's it's pretty interesting you know yeah i mean it it it ended as well as it could but i mean

i i tell people all the time if you're going into business with a partner, don't just focus on the honeymoon part of it. Um, go like go through the, what could go wrong? Like basically the, the equivalent of like a prenup where you just go, um, you know, uh, pros and cons, what is, you know, what are, and what are the things you want? What are the things I want? What I had found out with, with David was he actually like within the first year, try to start another company. And, uh, and that took a lot of his time. And he's like, well, I've always, I'm an entrepreneur. I was going to start other companies. I'm like, oh, okay. And that really caused a divide in where we thought our priorities were. I thought it was him and I going hard, you know, on this. And he was already kind of, um, separated himself towards other things and no fault there to him. It was just, we never had

that conversation. We're just like, Hey, we're going to kick ass and take a, do lots of work and make money. We, and we never had those more serious conversations of what if this happens, what if this goes wrong? And do we align? The other thing I would also say too, is usually is like, you know, make sure that you don't have someone who's exactly the same as you or has all the same abilities. You, it's good when you have someone who's really complimentary to you,

who does things better than you or different than you or that you don't do at all. I hope I didn't just call you guys out if you guys are exactly the same. We think, we think the same, but we, our skill sets are different. Yeah. That's what I mean. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. I mean, any, any, any possibility of me moving within any organization, either, you know, sorry, I'm making a strategic partnership or emerge or anything like that. I will have that big long list of let's, let's go through this. What, why is this good? Why is this

bad? What could go wrong so that we don't find out later on? And most, a lot of people don't do that. And that's usually why they, they, they split. It's, it's no different than a marriage. Um, it really isn't aside from there's way less sex usually. Um, and, uh, and, but like it, it's, you go through all the same kind of things and there's that honeymoon and then there's reality sinks in. And, uh, if you weren't aligned, you found out you weren't aligned, you did this too quick, or you did this, uh, too, uh, uh, optimistically, it could definitely come crashing on you. And now you're legally bound to one another, which makes it really hard to just split. And then it can, ours was a clean split. Thank God it could have gotten really bad though. Yeah. I can only imagine. I mean, luckily with Carol and

I, we've been doing this since 2014. So if it was going to crash and burn, we would have known by now. You're over the hump if you're good now you're probably good for a while for sure probably okay well doug thank you so much for coming on the show like thank you i really enjoyed this episode it was focusing on a different aspect of the video production business which was more so like the employee side pricing we haven't touched on those topics too much lately, but I really enjoyed it. Like I want to bring you back on next time, focus a little more on the strategy aspect of things.

I think. Yeah. Happy to come back. I'm an open book. Usually sometimes do a fault. Amazing. All right. Thank you so much, Doug. Thank you. Take care.