Creatives Grab Coffee - Unlocking Growth Through Niching (ft. Lift Video Production) #92

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

In this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee, Grant Jamison from Lift Video Production (Melbourne, Australia) shares practical insights on how niching down into the transport and logistics industry accelerated his business growth. Grant discusses his journey from navigating early pandemic challenges to building strategic relationships that secured long-term clients. He highlights effective LinkedIn outreach strategies, the importance of consistent marketing, and the power of creating specialized content that resonates deeply with target audiences. This conversation offers valuable lessons for filmmakers and marketers looking to leverage niche expertise, enhance their client communications, and sustainably scale their creative business.TIMESTAMPS00:00 - Episode Introduction and Guest Welcome02:27 - Guest Bio: Grant Jamison from Lift Video Production04:07 - Overcoming business challenges during the pandemic05:10 - Landing the first major client and growing through referrals07:46 - Managing client relationships and gradually increasing pricing10:34 - Navigating price adjustments with long-term clients13:05 - Implementing project management fees and pricing structures16:16 - Niching down in the transport and logistics industry19:34 - Becoming an industry expert by understanding client pain points20:41 - Navigating conflicts with competitor clients within a niche25:30 - How niching simplifies targeted marketing33:38 - Importance of tracking business metrics and client data37:33 - Effective LinkedIn strategies for cold outreach41:04 - Building genuine connections through networking46:31 - Growing a small but specialized production team47:00 - Using LinkedIn consistently to drive business leads56:52 - Creating monthly recaps and leveraging behind-the-scenes content59:59 - Newsletter strategy for staying top-of-mind with clients01:02:28 - Developing retainer-like video packages for stable revenue01:06:49 - Closing advice on experimenting and finding your niche01:08:03 - Final thoughts and conclusionSPONSORS:Canada Film Equipment: www.CanadaFilmEquipment.comAudio Process: www.Audioprocess.ca🎵 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2vHd8BdbkMQITFZmDJ0bo9🍏 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/creatives-grab-coffee/id1530864140 🎞️Produced by LAPSE PRODUCTIONS – https://www.lapseproductions.comTo learn more about the show, visit: https://www.creativesgrabcoffee.com/

Welcome to Creative Scrap Coffee, the podcast on the business of video production. Creative Scrap Coffee is hosted by Dario Nuri and Kirill Lazerov from Labs Productions. Our goal is to share knowledge and experiences from video production professionals around the world. Whether you're a freelancer looking to start your own business or a seasoned business owner aiming to scale your company, this is the show for you. Join us as we develop a community of like-minded creatives looking to learn and help each other grow. Welcome to the business of video production. Welcome to Creatives Grab Coffee. Before we get started with the show, let's go over today's sponsors. Do you have a shoot in Toronto?

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And now, let's begin the show. Welcome everyone to the latest episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Today we got Grant from lift video production. Welcome Grant. Good day guys. Thanks for having me. Good day.

This is the first time we've had someone from Australia. The second time. With us. Second day. They haven't done good day before. They haven't done good day. I don't ever say good day in real life. But I just thought, you know, we're on a global podcast here.

It's like a cliche that Aussies do it. I just got to do it, right? Yeah. It's a very telling sign that you are clearly from Australia for our guests without having us need to introduce you. I'm curious to see if the other upcoming Australian guests do the same now.

Yeah. They probably will be. We also say mate a lot. So I'll probably just call you mate a few times as well, just to reestablish my Australian-isms. There we go. Well, as we kind of dive into the episode, before we get into all the specific topics,

give us a little background in you, your production company, and your journey here. Yeah, cool. So I'm the founder of Lyft Video Production. We specialize in video production for the transport and logistics industry. Started in 2020 right at the start of COVID, like literally it was like weeks after starting that we got all those nasty restrictions and whatever. So definitely a slow start, but now 2025,

we're a team of four, really just creating a ton of content for the transport and logistics space. So how did you kind of persevere through that? Like if you like starting a production company is one thing, but then starting it and then immediately having so many restrictions that you can't even grow your business in any meaningful way. Like how did you navigate that from a starting point as a business?

Yeah, it sucked. 100%. Very blunt, yeah. So, you know, in two words. It's a good question. So really I had one customer who would send me their products and I could film those from home, not transport related, but I could kind of like keep the ball rolling. We did have some like government grants that like kept things ticking over.

So really it was just like surviving until the restrictions eased and we could get out again. And I was really lucky, like my first ever customer was an indoor children's playground center. But my second customer was like Australia's biggest logistics company. So pretty incredible turnaround there. And I pretty quickly got rid of the children's play center, no offense, and just focused on the logistics side of things. Wow.

So it was kind of like, like, obviously like you were just by yourself in the beginning, right? And then just kind of trying to see when things kind of open up and then I'm amazed at how quickly you got such a major client right out the gate so early on, like how did you go about securing that? Sometimes I feel like it's just luck. Right time, right place. We got a referral to someone. They hadn't done video before.

They were, look, didn't have much of a budget for it. I was really cheap because I was just starting out. So it was kind of a good fit. And I looked back at the prices and I was like, oh my gosh, that was so cheap for what they were getting. But you know, it's funny now, it's sort of paid off in a way. Not that I'd recommend, you know,

charging next to nothing, but it's sort of paid off now. That work led to more work in the space, more referrals in the space. People from that business moved on to other businesses, brought us along and we've kind of just grown from there. Are you still with that first client? Yeah there's still a customer of ours still going strong which is great. That's pretty good because usually clients like that they're there at the beginning and then once you grow

and you start charging more they kind of can't match you so you have to leave them behind right? There's almost like a turnover you have with certain types of clients as you grow as a business. Yeah, it's always really challenging to hold on to a business. So I think I've always made an effort to like meet them in person, meet new people, catch up for coffee, send Christmas gifts, all those like little one percenters to just keep building the relationship with people because it's, yeah, it's not the same team then now as it was when I started, but now I'm finding that the new team, they kind of rely on us to tell them, you know,

what this was or what this part of the business is, or, you know, we've got so much history and such a big relationship with them that they can kind of lean on us for advice about their own business to an extent. And in the beginning, like, you're the beginning, like you're gonna have to, you're gonna have to start with lower prices to build a portfolio.

You might have to do some projects on the arm, like anyone who's starting in this industry has to do that to gain experience because that's very valuable early on, especially the portfolio work. And now that you've been with them for so long, you kind of answered it, but I'm not entirely sure if that's what happened,

but you mentioned that their team had turnover, like they changed over the years. Did you find that that made it easier to kind of, you know, adjust maybe some of your pricing? Cause you're not gonna be charging the exact same amount that you were at the very beginning. Like, how did you go about having that conversation with the client and kind of, you know,

growing your business in that sense. Yeah to be honest with you that definitely helped having like different contacts and things like that come through the years but honestly it just kind of got to this point we're like hey how much would this be and I just quote them a figure and the figure like I'm not like taking I'm not in my letter swear on this podcast like I'm not like taking, am I allowed to swear on this podcast? Like I'm not like taking the shit out of them or anything. Do you know what I mean?

Like I'm, I try to build a really trusting relationship, but as our costs have increased, I've just quoted slightly larger amounts, slightly larger amounts. And it actually hasn't been questioned with this customer, probably just because it's such a long, long standing relationship. There's a lot of trust there.

They know that I'm not trying to like rip them off or anything. It's, they're aware that our team's grown, you know, salaries, rents, whatever it is. So I think there's a real solid foundation of trust that we've built up just over a long period of time. And, you know, we do support them. Sometimes we'll do like little tiny favors for them at no cost. Like, oh my gosh we don't know how to put captions in this little video I filmed on the phone can you quickly do it and I'm like yeah sure we'll take care of that for you so sort of a bit of a give-and-take relationship the other thing is there's like multiple teams within this organization that we

support so there's like different business units and we've kind of spread throughout the organization now we support like so there's like different business units and we've kind of spread throughout the organization. Now we support like the recruitment team and the safety team. So it's not just the marketing and comms team. So I think that's a really good lesson I've learned is that if you can get in with the Markcoms team, amazing. But just ask them if like there's other areas

of the business that you can support with video production because often, you know, often the Markcom team becomes the hub for any big business requests from like safety or recruitment saying they need a video. But sometimes if you can just work directly with the HR team or the safety team, you'll find that you can essentially have three customers in one customer in a way. Like, do you know what I mean? I don't know if you guys have found that at all. We gotta start doing more of that actually, not that you bring it up because yeah, you're right with some companies that are that big,

there are, each department has almost its own separate company. Yeah. So it's good to just ask for a referral and say, hey, who else can we help within your company, right? Like that's a really smart thing to do. And one good thing that you mentioned, and one good thing that you mentioned is that

you did it gradually in terms of like, you know, adjusting pricing and stuff like that, which is very normal. Like you obviously can't do like say one year, you're charging your client like $5,000 and then as a standard rate, and then the next year it's like 15,000. It's like, okay, whoa, why did you triple your price? You know, you have to do it slowly. Like I've seen with some companies,

you know, like that's the only way you can naturally do it is like by slow, small, like percentages, like five, 10% over the years or maybe just a little bit more than that, depending on what the asks are. But that's the other thing. It always depends on what they're asking you to do and what the demands are. If you need to hire more people and then it can fluctuate and then you can have those conversations a lot easier when things are different. But anytime I found that we're doing exactly the same thing

for a client from previous years is very, those are the situations where it's a little bit hard to kind of fluctuate in your pricing that much because then they're gonna be like Oh, why if this is exactly the same ask as last year? Why is it fluctuating? You know, cuz that's that's when you might get some pushback at least for a little bit There's two things with that Sorry, I was just gonna say I mean you could always do 2% increase as standard because that's just inflation

You can't just keep it at the same price year to year because then you'll be losing out on 2% each year that passes. But then one thing we've also started to do is also rearrange some of the costs and line items. So before we weren't doing a project management fee, then we started incorporating a project management fee and it was a set number. And then this year we just changed it to a percentage. So there's like different ways we've been like moving the money around so that

it's still roughly like a small increase and the client doesn't really see such a drastic thing where they need to start questioning and saying, oh, okay, well, how come there's a big difference this year? Yeah. And I think the other thing is also like the customer clients usually understand like cost of livings increased, right? So of course our prices are gonna increase,

our rents gone up, salaries have gone up, Adobe subscription keeps going up, like all these costs keep going up and they're in a business, like they understand that. So when you come to them and say, look, we've held off as long as we can it's the start of a new financial year we are raising our prices a little bit just wanted you to be aware and maybe on the first quote you can say hey I'm still gonna honor our old

pricing after this one it's gonna go up to X amount so that's probably a way you could consider looking at that the production fee or project fee that you guys have we have a very similar one, 10% on all projects. And yeah, that's been such a game changer for us. Just like adding 10% on each job, no one's ever questioned it. It makes a lot of sense, covers all the other little bits and pieces

that go into a project, right? Yeah, curious to hear more about how you guys have implemented that actually. So I noticed it last year, like I was like, hey, like, there's, there's other costs in the business, right, that aren't related to like pre-production or production or post. So I was like, I think we need to add that fee. And then that'll just cover like all those costs, right. And then we didn't really get any pushback from it, to be honest with you, they just accepted it. And then this year I noticed, I was working,

we were getting some quotes from a company in the UK and I noticed they had 20%, which I thought was a little high. Then we spoke to another company and they had, I think 10%, or they had 5%. And then I was looking at our numbers and I was like, 20% is a little steep, 10% too. I was like, I don't know if we can really sell that easily

without getting some pushback. I was like, 5% was like the sweet spot where I was like, okay, I think this will be easy enough where we still make money for those costs of running the company and it not really affecting the budget so drastically that clients would have to start asking about it, right? Yeah, it essentially allows you to have like a guaranteed amount of profit that goes into the business aside from everything that you put into it. You know, like if we're handling a lot of the pre-production

and post-production on our end, you know, that's money that goes into the business where it makes money. But this is like an extra thing that kind of helps a lot of the administrative costs, you know. Well, actually, Carol, like software. Actually, Carol, that project management fee is actually a good way of seeing what the company will make out of the project.

That's what I mean. Yeah. Like it's like a guaranteed profit for the business almost in a way. Or not profit, but like it's going like, cause we consider our company like the third partner. Uh, so it's almost like that's his cut. You know, that's a very small cut for a partner. And when you think about it, I think you guys can't talk back. So I reckon you guys could push that out to 10%. I reckon,

you know, it might be worth the trial. I'm going to try the 5% for now and then see how it goes and then maybe we'll push it up to 10% in a couple, like maybe six months or so. Let's see how it is at the beginning. But no one's really questioning. We haven't had any pushback on it. They just accept it. I just put the explanations and you know, like the On the line item. It says oh it's for this this and that and then that's kind of it. It's like standard basically, right? It's like everyone understands that a business also has to make money You know, it's like a lot of the other aspects in Pre-production production and posts like a lot of that is labor a lot of that is labor costs that go directly to the people

But the business isn't making money. When you think about it, you know what ad agencies typically tack on to their projects? Something like 50%, I've heard some of them are doing basically. So it's like a guaranteed 50% amount. So it's like if the budget is 20,000,

they're only using 10,000 for the actual work that goes into it. So yeah, I've heard that some agencies do that. So we're being very generous with 5%. To be honest, 10% is very generous too. Yeah, I think so. I think so. Let's talk a little bit about your niche because you did say that you focused more so on the transportation side and I guess the way things worked out for you how the universe Set things in motion for you. It seems to be a lot in transportation

And I remember you were telling me that you really like double down on it and like expand within it So just tell us a little bit about that Yeah, absolutely. So I kind of joke that you know, I make a living filming trucks, which is, you know, pretty much true so I guess we started with that one major customer and that led to Basically a few other big customers in the space just through referrals So we do a lot of work with like Volvo trucks who sell the trucks to the logistic space and then there's like government Organizations that are involved in the transport and heavy vehicle space. So suddenly it's like the door opens into this niche

and we find there's so many other doors, like we can just keep going deeper and deeper into the space. So working in creating recruitment content for the transport industry, marketing content, safety content, training, internal communications. And because our portfolio kept building and building and building with similar work, it just became a no-brainer for people in that space who came across us to want to work with us.

Selling became really easy once I niched in this space and marketing became really easy because I knew what my customer pain points were. I knew what I could talk about. I knew what I could joke about on LinkedIn. Like some of my best posts have been, you know, joking about me asking for an almond latte at a truck depot. You know, like those kind of, you start to know what the humor is. Inside jokes. Yeah, like you get inside jokes and you just start to really understand the industry.

As much as like a someone who doesn't actually drive trucks for a living can understand it. You actually understand what makes them tick, what makes them laugh, what makes them pissed off and you can create content that sort of resonates with them a lot easier because it's like it's all you do basically. It's 80% of what we do. And one big benefit essentially by doing that is that you're essentially turning yourself

into an industry expert in a way by niching into this. And I think a lot of people forget that when you're niching down into a specific industry or type of project or anything like that, the one thing that you have to really make sure you do is that you become basically like an expert in the eyes of your clients because they're looking for a different perspective and not only just like creating the content, but like how to create the content.

And you have to understand what their pain points are in order to be able to address those things. And so you can make informed suggestions rather than like say, for example, if a client reaches out to you that you've never worked in their industry before you're kind of at the mercy of the client to tell you what their challenges what their problems are and then you have to do your best to kind of solve that problem with creating video in that way Whereas if you really understand the industry and then someone comes to you where you've done that their video thousands of times

You could be like this video doesn't necessarily work for you in this way what if we did something like this that could actually do that they'll be they'll be more inclined to trust you as well because you're giving good options exactly and i find like if someone comes to us uh who's not in the transport space it sort of becomes we're just competing on price like there's no real differentiator between us and another video company. It's really hard for us to stand out and make it a no brainer to choose us. But when transport companies come to us,

it's just like a no brainer. They see like we've got hundreds of truck videos. We understand the space. We know what we're doing. We know how to talk to truck drivers. We know how to talk to the operations people. It's sort of just such an easier way to sell basically. I'm curious though, because I've thought about us expanding within our own, like not a particular

niche but maybe a couple of different niches. So I don't know what the specific term for that would be if you're just focusing on a couple of different ones. But one thing that's been at the back of my mind is that, for example, for one of our financial clients, other people within that particular space would be their competitors, right? Yes. So how do you navigate a situation like that?

Because I also don't want to piss them off because it's like, hey, you're doing work for our competitor now? I don't know how they would take it. Right. So how did you go about that? I like to think of it as like two, if you have two businesses, then that's like a competitive, um, what do you call it? That's, that's probably a problem. Right. If we say you've got two customers in that industry, it's a problem, but three, you're just a leader in the niche. That's kind of how I think of it in one way.

But you gotta get to the third one. So what do you do until you get to the third one? And do you know what? I will say for my largest logistics company, I haven't actually, they've got like a few direct competitors and I probably wouldn't work with them just because we're so close with this one. But there's so many ancillary and other organizations within the space that it kind of doesn't

matter. So I find it's sort of like we've got the logistics company and then we've got the companies that sell them the trucks and selling them the tires and then we've got like the recruitment firms and then suddenly there's actually all these organizations within that space that aren't necessarily competing with each other. But what I've seen other businesses do who niche, they just kind of, it's like we're not giving strategy. We're not giving advice necessarily.

We're creating video content. So as long as you're really clear with your customers about who you serve, how it works, and that you're not really sharing their in-depth strategies to other organizations. Generally, I've found it's not really a problem. Interesting. So I guess just the way I see it for us at least is just diversifying to different businesses, maybe not exactly in the... Maybe not being direct competitors would probably be a good

thing. Yeah. Indirect, I guess would be fine But I guess because for us finance is a big industry we work in Yeah, so big like it's a little bit of a find. Yeah, I don't think that's gonna be that much of an issue for us It's like for example If we were going after like say if one of our clients was an accounting firm if we immediately went directly to their competitor To their one main competitor and be like, we're going to work for you as well, then maybe they might be having a bit of an

issue with that. I wasn't thinking that, but it's like, you know, when, cause you asked them, it's like, where your competitors, cause you had to do your research. My mind, I was like, oh, great. That'd be like other people to reach out to. But then at the same time I was like, I don't know how they would take it. I show them like the work I've done for the other one. You know?

Yeah, I know what you mean. Look, it kind of depends because again, it's like, you know, we're not giving them high level strategic business consultancy advice where it would be a major conflict of interest if you went to like McDonald's and KFC or whatever and gave them like each other's strategy like that huge red flag, right? But at the end of the day, we're just creating videos and the videos are always going to be different for each organization No matter how many truck videos we do each one is different because it's different people, it's a different story, it's different messaging. So I'm not overly concerned, but that said, you know, like our major customers, competitor, if we worked for them, they'd probably be pretty upset. So yeah, a bit of a line to walk sometimes.

What if they offered something to like in certain industries, like a, some special kind of like non-compete type of, uh, agreement with the client where they pay you like a certain fee every year on top of the projects that you do where it's like, this is what we're going to pay you to not work with our direct competitors. Do you think that might be something some people might or clients might be added to or exploring it's worth exploring. It's always worth exploring You know as long as the benefit to you is greater than if you were gonna go find other people in that space But again, I think niching it's it is industry specific There's gonna be some industries where it just it may not work But I guess for us the transport space it seems to be working fairly well I know healthcare is another good sort of niche that I've seen work for people I think that's where Pat who was on the podcast right from path eight sort of Got started a little bit and finance sounds like it could be a good niche for you for laps like I

Don't say why you wouldn't explore. No, no, no, it was no, no, it's not that I'm not gonna explore it. It was more so within like that particular circle of potential clients, which were very closely related to our Golden Goose client. I was like, should we? But then I was like, I don't know. But it's so big, like what I would probably do this year is just like research and see like the different types of companies that are within that space

and the different things they do and then just see how I can connect with them. That would be like my approach to it. And yeah, I like at different services like like, like in the finance space is not just different companies, but like what are the different types of products and offerings that they're offering and then that's how you can kind of separate them, right? You know, like, for example, one would be like, uh, like finance and accounting. One would be selling pro I don't know, like properties or something like that or managing money, wealth funds,

you know, that could be another, there's, there's so many different ones. I, I know I, Dario, I was, you're smiling cause I was just throwing many different ones. I know I thought I was you're smiling because I was just throwing You're really selling us that we're uh, we're deep in the in the finance. Yes, it laps Finance nation one of them does money one of them does money the other one does stocks Please trust this. Yeah. Love it. Yeah. Cut this part out. Okay.

So let's see. You're, you're in that space. You know, it's funny. We had a, we had an episode before this one and that, that company, they're really focused in their niche, which was like sports related stuff. And they're actually now looking to kind of get out of that niche a little bit, right? So do you think that that could potentially happen to you as well?

Like you think like maybe in like 10, let's be generous, 10, 15 years, you might start exploring like different niches to explore? Yeah, absolutely. Like I'm not, just having this niche doesn't mean I necessarily turn away work. We do, we still do a lot of work in the health space and a few not-for-profits as well. So it just gives you a bit more, I guess, maybe freedom's not the right word, but it kind of feels like you're a bit, you get a bit more power to say no to like jobs that you kind of don't want to do that are not in your wheelhouse.

And then when a job that is outside the transport space comes into me, I can kind of go, yeah, it's not really what we do, but sounds like a pretty good project. I've got a good budget. I think we could definitely take this on. A good one for us is like recruitment content. So we do a lot of recruitment for the transport space, but we can take the processes and the type of content we make. It can work for any industry really

So if someone comes to us from another space and they want to do some recruitment We generally can still help them but in answer to your question because I didn't really answer it five ten years from now Could we be in a different niche? I mean potentially like I'm not gonna say no if things change and maybe like healthcare starts to become like 80% of our work and income then yeah, I'd imagine a shift would would make a lot of sense for me Anisha is more of a marketing thing like first and foremost It just gives you the ability to market to a really clear target audience when it when you just serve like a general You're just a general videographer. It's pretty hard to like market to a particular person. You you just serve like a general, you're just a general videographer,

it's pretty hard to like market to a particular person. You're kind of talking to everyone. You're just like, Hey, here's a great video I did. It looks pretty. But you're not really like talking to any particular person with a specific problem that you can solve with video, if that makes sense. It does, but I find that a lot of it might be like market related as well. That's what I mean. It's interesting that like because in Australia where are you in Australia? Melbourne. Melbourne. So I'm guessing over there you you have quite a few different industries right or not or is it like couple only because like like here in Toronto, for example, no, cause what I mean is like here in

Toronto. Well, I don't know. I don't know how it is. They're on an island. What do I know? We are. You're only this big. You're on the map. The transport industry is big because there's many other companies that got to transport stuff. No, I know. But what I'm saying is like, look, if you look at Toronto, for example, like there's so many different industries here that a lot of the companies that

operate here are generalists just because there's there's not too much of a focus on one particular industry. Right. So, yeah, I wonder if I might be more like industry as a market related where it's like in certain markets like we found in the states and some of the states um bulk of their work might be more so in the non-profit because non-profit industry is massive there right so yeah potentially uh i mean i don't know i feel like we've got plenty of industries here in australia but i don't know um i would love to expand to the u.s because i know there's a lot of trucks over there, right? But in Australia, yeah, I feel like there's plenty of industries and spaces to niche.

I mean, you don't have to niche in a specific industry. You might niche in a specific style of video, like customer case studies, I've seen a few people do. Or I know one person runs a business down here. He's in rural regional Victoria and his business is all about Supporting regional businesses with video. So there's a few different ways you can do about it Doesn't always have to be industry specific and yeah, you're right. Like it's not gonna work in every market It's more just a way to help differentiate yourself and stand out

I guess from the competition. Cause there's no other video businesses that I know of working in the transport and logistics space. Maybe they're a lot smarter than me or something, but yeah, it seems to be just us for now. And that really helps us stand out and sell more to that particular industry. That's a good perspective.

It is a good perspective. And it also depends on what's right for you as a niche, right? You can't just one day decide like, I'm just going to start niching in something completely different that you haven't done anything. Like you can't just do that. And that's what makes niching so unique and easy to kind of pitch because not everyone can just up and decide to just do that. It's like, sure.

Those other people can create a recruitment video for your industry as well. That's perfectly fine, because a lot of video products move across different industries, because they solve a lot of the same business problems that all these different industries have. But it's not like they can just all of a sudden become the expert,

because you've been doing it now for so long. So you have to see what works and what's right for you as a business. it's not like they can just all of a sudden become the expert because you've been doing it now for so long. So you have to see what works and what's right for you as a business. And the only way you can figure that out is the more you kind of go forward with your business, the longer you're around. And also seeing what common types of work

tends to gravitate towards you. That's like a good place to start. 100%. And I made a big mistake when I started as well. I tried to also niche in engineering so and I realized pretty quickly I didn't understand a word that these guys were talking about with their complex engineering stuff. I had no idea what I was talking about. The videos we made didn't really work that well. And I found there wasn't as much of it indeed for video in that space.

But I was like all in on engineering as well for a while there. And I pretty quickly realized that actually didn't work. So I actually, if I go way back to when I started, I 2021, 2022 had plenty of time in my hands, right? With COVID and whatnot. But I threw a business coach, he suggested doing an audit to sort of decide on a niche. So that's essentially listing out your customers or top customers and then, you know, how much

revenue did you make? How much time did you spend on each project? And then identifying the customers from that audit who were the most profitable and who generated the most revenue and I identified a logistics customer, the major one, and then an engineering business and so that's kind of why I was like oh maybe I'll just explore this engineering route as well and I pretty quickly realized it wasn't for me I had much more success in the transport space so it's definitely one of those things where you need to test and then And I pretty quickly realized it wasn't for me. I had much more success in the transport space.

So it's definitely one of those things where you need to test and then if it doesn't work, pivot. Like that's, but that's business in general, right? You guys probably experienced that you test something, it works, you test something else, it doesn't work. Okay, we need to pivot. Yeah. You have to try different things because you never know, you never know what might be right

for you. You know, you figured out that engineering wasn't right for you and then the logistics worked out. What if you did it in reverse? You might be thinking, oh, I don't know if logistics might be the right thing. I haven't tested this other one out. And you have to test different things out

to see what you prefer to do, right? 100%. And also just tracking. I think it's really important that businesses track, tracking sales, tracking projects, tracking numbers. I think that's something a lot of us creatives, I don't know about you guys, can get a bit slack in, but it's probably, I heard a quote, tracking your numbers is what separates a business from a hobby. And it's kind of one of those things where I think it's really important that you are looking at the numbers each week, tracking them just in a boring spreadsheet and

doing that consistently. Do you use any programs for that? Yeah, Google spreadsheets. You sound like my type of guy. That's exactly what I would be doing. Keep it simple, man. It is the cheapest. As a numbers approach, it is the cheapest approach, that is for sure. You sound like my type of guy. That's exactly what I would be doing. Keep it simple, man. You know this... As a numbers one approach, it is the cheapest approach, that is for sure. It makes sense. And it's just simple. I used to try to use some smart sheet or I don't know, some really fancy software and then it just kind of got complicated and I just couldn't be bothered doing it. But now every week, four o'clock on a Friday, I fill out my spreadsheet, boring business owner kind of thing, tracking the numbers, looking at where we are,

looking at where we're going. And it just flags, like if I look at my numbers and go, wow, I didn't send out any quotes for the last two weeks, the next two quick couple of weeks could be pretty quiet. It's like put a bit of a fire under me. And I'm like, wow, I'm gonna make some calls. I gotta like email some people I haven't heard from in a while, generate some income immediately, right?

So if, for those that aren't tracking this stuff, like what are some of the things that you look for particularly? Like, sorry, not look for, like what are you tracking exactly in the numbers? Honestly, I, so I track quite a few things, but if I was just starting, I would keep it really simple. You don't need to overcomplicate it.

You can add more things as you go. Like, you know, you can endlessly track things, but I think there's a few key things that are the most important. And then, you know, once you get comfortable into a rhythm you can build from there but so every week I track sales calls I track quote sent quotes accepted how many cold outreaches did we do on LinkedIn how many posts do we do on LinkedIn how many impressions do we get and then I track newsletter subscribers the amount of cash and then I have a separate spreadsheet where I track like the sales.

So like, you know, week one, the client, the amount and the industry and the source. So that's really where I'd probably start with. And there's more in depth tracking you can do, but I think those are the key things to track so that then you can just get a bit of an understanding of where you are in your business and you can sort of use it to forecast what's going to be happening, but also look back if you're really stressed out and it's really quiet, you can kind of look back to the previous year and go, well, actually, it seems like every time this year, this happened to me in Jan, we are really quiet

and then it picks up in Feb and March. And that's exactly what happened. That's what the numbers show. You know, for people, like you mentioned that if your numbers are looking a little light, you'll start to do more cold outreach. That's something that a lot of creatives struggle with. So what would be some advice that you would give to creatives that do need to get more

on the cold outreach approach? Yeah. I mean, I don't think you need to do cold calls or anything like that. I tried like a few and it's just a disaster. I'm not very good at it, to be honest. But where I would start start if I was struggling to find work, I would look at your existing customers first, give them a call, hey, we haven't spoken for like two months, how you been, what's going on with you, is there anything we can

support you with? Those are the people that you're most likely to get another sale from. What's that quote? It's like people are most likely to buy from you if they've already bought from you. I totally butchered it. It sounds way cooler, but that's in essence what it is. So calling those existing customers, I list out all of my customers with a little note on when I last spoke to them. And so I go back and go, wow, I haven't spoken to this person for like two months and we did like a 20k job last year. Call them up. What are they doing? A good example of this is I have one customer who's so last minute, you never

know what's going to happen. We were really quiet in December and I emailed him. He's like, Oh yeah, I've got this massive job I needed to do next week. And it was like a 20k job. I was like, if I hadn't prompted him, he might not have really thought about it until it's too late. So it's more like finding those existing customers who are maybe they're thinking about it, but just haven't done anything. That's the number one way to start.

Then cold outreach is a long-term game. So for us, we send out 100 connection requests on LinkedIn a week and we post three times a week on top of that from 100 connection requests we probably get like three calls over like a you know over a long term sort of period but I do find it does convert it's just it might take like three to six months of like reaching out to people and posting consistently with content that resonates with them. For the connection requests, who are you targeting exactly? What role or position?

For us, it's people working in marketing communications in the transport and logistics space. Then there's other industries around it. I target construction a little bit. People surrounded by high-vis industries, I target. But generally, it'll be a marketing communications person. Sometimes they have titles that are like, engagement officer or something else. You have to work out, you know, like sometimes I'll have like a weird title or whatever it is.

So sometimes it takes a little bit of digging in sales navigator to work out who to speak to. The second target market is just transport business owners. So obviously there's the major logistics companies in Australia, but then there's so many with maybe 50 to 150 trucks, maybe a team of like 20 to 50 people, and they still also need video.

So it's not just the big guys, we work with the medium businesses as well. And do you ever like take it past just the connection, like just the connecting with them? Do you like message them directly or? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I send a connection message. Once they accept, we send a second message

and then either they reply or if they haven't replied, I send like a third final one, kind of like a sign off that just says, if you have anything for Fred or H out. Interesting, yeah. That's, it really is a numbers game, eh, on LinkedIn when you're doing that? Just volume, yeah.

One, I spoke to actually like a recent guest on the show, like just caught up with him and he mentioned that what he does with a lot of new people that he's reaching out to is he tries to not go with a very sales approach, but he wants to just invite them for a coffee and just keep it as casual as possible, especially if it's someone that's within the same city or something like that,

because getting in person with some people or just even on the phone at the very least, like can help make the connection a little bit more genuine as a good starting point. So that's what he's like mentioned, like really works for him. But again, it also depends on what kind of industry you're in. Depends on what kind of leads you're looking at.

Like he's, that's what he was doing with, I think ad agencies because he wanted to do more commercial content, right? But to do that with hundreds of different, different businesses could be tough, could be challenging. Yeah. Trying to meet people nowadays is a pain because a lot of people just wanna do online calls anyways because it's very convenient, right? Exactly.

I don't actually like pitch them in those messages. I think that's pretty important to clarify. It's not like first message like, hey, you wanna buy a video? Like, it's not like that. It's more, hey, you know, we do a lot of work in the transport space. Would it be cool to connect on here on LinkedIn?

And then they like keep it really casual. Like, I'm not like, yeah, you know, getting up in their DMs and like cold pitching them or whatever. So I think that's a good way to do it. I wonder if you could also add to that and do something like, you know, if you have any questions about the video space, I'm pretty knowledgeable about like transport videos, just hit me up whenever, that could also be good. Yeah, yeah, my second message is actually a joke if they haven't replied. It's like, hey, thanks for connecting.

Here's where I send you my 923 page pitch. Just kidding kind of thing. You know, something like a bit cheesy, but like a bit of a joke. And then I just go, how's life at so-and-so? You know, it's funny when you look at a lot of those sales force people who are reaching out to you via email and they try really hard to be jokey and sound genuine

that it just comes off as very not genuine. So it's just like, obviously the way you're doing it is a little bit more genuine, but it's just like, obviously the way you're doing it is a little bit is a little bit more genuine, but it's just funny. It just reminded me of those random emails. It's like, hey there, like I saw what you were doing here. Haha. Like you know, the way he's doing it at least is like, it makes sense because it's like, it would be something you might use him for, right? Versus like a lot of the LinkedIn requests I'll get, it's like, you're do is like so different from what you ever need.

Like, yeah. You could tell it's just, they're sending out a million a day. Right. Like it's just, yeah. Some AI generated slop or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's good. I like that approach. So I haven't heard someone really word it out clearly like you have, because the way you do it makes a lot of sense and it's something I can easily absorb and like try to apply with how we do outreach. Because before you got to try.

We haven't done it yet. We'll be doing it soon. Yeah, it was something. It was something we were like we didn't really have like a clear vision on it's starting to become more clear now like on how to go about it because I Anytime I feel like resistance to doing something. It's usually because Like I haven't learned the right way to do it just yet So I always like hold off and until like someone says the right thing like just now and I go like, okay

It's clicked now. I know how to do it.'s gonna be sending hundreds of requests to starting to not hundreds It's sometimes a timing thing right because I also you you're not sure like as Daria mentioned you you're not sure how is the right way to go about it and sometimes you just ask people the right questions and It's funny that we're having this conversation after I just learned about the similar approach that someone else is doing as well. So it's kind of like almost like a weird universe thing, timing thing, right? Yeah, that's funny. And I do get like, so three out of a hundred lead to a call, right?

So it's still a volume game. And I do get people that are like, you know, you get some pretty blunt rejections as well and you kind of just have to get comfortable with that. It's, it's LinkedIn, you know, it get some pretty blunt rejections as well and you kind of just have to get comfortable with that. It's LinkedIn, you know. It's a professional, it is at the end of the day, a professional networking platform. So in my opinion, people should be there expecting like not maybe not a cold pitch slap, but they should be expecting some business oriented conversations.

So definitely worth exploring guys. So I should be in charge of that. That's a really good point actually. Especially if you're in charge of that, if you're a marketing director, you should be expecting to be dealing with vendors and new vendors especially, and you should be wanting actually to be hearing

from new vendors that would be reaching out because you might find someone who is doing something either better or provides more value than the current people you could be working with, you know, or whatever it might be. So that's a good, that's a very good point to keep in mind to have that in the back of your mind.

So don't feel as if you're being too invasive when you're reaching out. It's like, that's part of their job. They need to be talking to you at that point. Exactly. Let's talk a little bit about your team. Sorry, I forgot. How big is your team?

So we've got a team of four, including myself. So we've got a lead videographer, a junior videographer, and a production coordinator. And then supporting that, I've got a social media content creator who's only just really started with us recently and I've got someone who helps write our newsletter and helps me write LinkedIn content as well. Oh okay yeah I actually I wanted to ask you about the LinkedIn you post a lot which is good. No it's it's good Well, I kept going on every now and then and I'm like,

oh wow, there's Grant again. There's Grant again. So you have someone that's helping you with that, right? You're not focusing on it yourself? It's like 80% is me. I aim to post three times a week. And yeah, it's a big driver for us because you're connecting with all these people, right? So if we're connecting with, let's say, we're trying to connect with 100 people a week,

then in order to stay top of mind, we need to be creating consistent content. So for me, three times a week at minimum, I've been doing that for three years. And it really works. Like we get people who, you know, sometimes I'll do a post that gets like five likes, but someone will message me and go, well really like that can we have a chat so it's just for me been a numbers game consistently grinding out content so our comms person does support me and she'll help me write some occasionally but 80% is me it takes a lot takes a lot of time yeah the, the writing aspect is one that I imagine

is what might take a long time, especially if you're doing it so consistently, you have to be able to be creating some kind of content that is different every week as well. So like, what is some go-to style approaches in terms of what type of content you're creating and how you go about it? Do you know what I found really interesting

is it seems like LinkedIn there's two different kinds of content. There's like engagement bait kind of like content that gets a lot of likes, a lot of love and support and then there's the thought leadershipy kind of content and that's the one that actually converts people but I found you kind of need both to get a bit of awareness of who you are and your story and what you do But then oh wow you actually know your shit, and you can help me solve business problems, so that's my two avenues so

For example you might write like a founder story so for me I wrote a founder story, and it did really well on LinkedIn, but it took me like three hours in the morning to write What's a founder story? Is it just like about you? It's just about me and my journey of building a business. So it was kind of a transformation It was like here's how I went from a you know solo videographer to a team of four in five years You know that kind of content you might show like a before-and-after photo You might detail your story and how you did it, the lessons you learnt along the way. And there's a lot of different stories you might not know that you have within yourself

about building a business, mistakes you've made, how I lost a 200k job was a good one people seemed to really enjoy. That maybe a bit of short and pro, I don't know. You know just sharing these stories and lessons you've learnt along the way is really great for engagement and I find like people kind of know who you are like I'll get on a call with someone like oh yeah I saw you did so-and-so so some good conversation starters the second part and this is where I lean a bit more on how comms person is tailoring content that targets direct pain points so it might be like if

you're struggling with recruitment right now, here's some solutions we've helped customers through video or here's how we helped one customer double the amount of applications with video. So that's kind of the two types of content I'm really focusing on. You know, I also do a lot of behind the scenes, like, you know, sometimes I'm like, I can't be bothered creating a post, but I'll be on a shoot and I'll just take a selfie and be like, we're here so and so doing whatever. And they always do well. You tag the customer, it goes to that network as well. So I think just a combination of a few different things works the best. And you can definitely repost content maybe like three, six months later. Like if you got a post that went really well, there's no reason you can't just repost it.

It'll show to a different audience potentially, like no one's gonna call you out. I would hope in the comments and say, I saw this six months ago. You're reposting from yourself, how dare you? Yeah, how dare you? With so much content being consumed on a daily basis, I doubt that, like I doubt anyone's gonna notice that

because especially as you mentioned, like not everyone's gonna doubt that like, I doubt anyone's gonna notice that because especially as you mentioned, like not everyone's gonna see that post, maybe and then if like six months later you repost it, maybe different people as you said will likely see it. That's, that's interesting because a lot of video production companies, what they typically do is just post their work and BTS. That is like their go-to content that they typically do. But do you ever post a lot of the work that you do or do how do you find the engagement on that?

He does it three times a week, Kirill. Yeah, but not specifically the actual work we've done. Yeah, the projects. The final videos? That's what I was asking about. I rarely post that. I rarely post that and because it's usually not that interesting for the people that I'm connected with.

Like it's sort of, you know, you're making the video for your customer to push to their target market, but my target market is just not their target market. So they don't really care that much because it's like, there's nothing in it for them personally to really watch that. They might watch it if they like it. So they want to see something that looks pretty and get some ideas maybe but I found they don't really hit the same but in saying that I will share like if a customer posted video we've done I'll share it repost it whatever just to support show that we are actually doing the work not just talking about it but I found I don't know sharing our

work that we've done just never seems to have much of an impact on also you saw that it wasn't getting enough engagement when you did it yeah it just never seems to get interesting any sort of impact really logically you would think the opposite because you know like you're trying to pitch the similar type of content to the rest of your LinkedIn network So they would see it and go like, okay, you can do this now. I know yeah do this because I saw it It's weird. I had the opposite effect though It's funny because I thought I've been kind of like

It's been like a theory of mine in the back of my mind with with LinkedIn Whenever I've posted like content of ours that has been that we've done for a client It gets a little bit of engagement like you said just like a little bit of likes and stuff like that But if it's something about us that I kind of explained something you kind of like share a little tidbit That gets a little bit more Engagement and it's like talking to someone like yourself who does it so consistently and knows what works It's like that's kind of confirmed that. So now it's giving me the idea of like, I have to think a little differently about

what we can start posting about, you know, because it's not so much the client work that we do, like, yeah, you can maybe, if you come up with like, maybe a good story or something you learned from that project and something that could be relatable, then that's a good way to maybe post that, the client work. I think that's maybe a good approach if you're gonna do it in that sense. Rather than like, yeah, cause instead of just being like,

and I've noticed that with other production companies that have shared other, that have shared the work that they've done for clients, they would usually give a little backstory of like what made that project so interesting, how they went about creating it, rather than just be like, hey, check out this latest project we did. There's nothing you're offering really at that point.

Right. So I guess that's why it doesn't work as well. I think so. Yeah. It's offering that a little bit of insight, that extra analysis into why. Think a bit. Exactly. And I think that goes down a lot better and this is for LinkedIn I don't know on other platforms I haven't really experimented but yeah that's just what I've found so far have you created like video versions of your posts I have yes some do well some don't do well I found what really works are customer case studies Like if you can get a customer and create a video testimonial of them talking about your business and what you do, that works really well for us. Like it is, and it's really hard to get obviously because you're going to a customer and saying,

hey, I want to interview you and do a testimonial for us. Like it's a pretty hard thing to get, But if you can get a couple of those across the line, A, it establishes your credibility and that you actually know what you're doing. Like obviously we do a lot of transport work. So, you know, you need someone to back it up. It's not just me saying that, hey, here's a customer we've actually helped.

And then you can kind of show visuals behind the scenes of working with them, your work, all the while they're talking about the story, like the challenges they were having before they used you and how you've helped solve their challenges in video. You post it, you share it to their network as well, and suddenly because their network is also your, or for us, it's our target market,

they start connecting with me and reaching out to me as well. So that is like, if you can get some custom case studies, that is like the best kind of content in my opinion. And I like the way you do yours. Cause I saw a couple of them and I like the little kind of like breaking the fourth wall approach you even do with some of them where you kind of film the the set as like the part of the take as, as like the third camera almost in a way.

Just having a bit of fun as well, yeah. Exactly, and like you gotta find what works for you, but like that's definitely a good way approach to do it rather than just being like so and so is great, they're a great business, you know, like you have to try to make it a little bit more, you have to think of ways to make it a little bit more genuine, right?

And I think what people have to remember is you gotta play into the personality of the people behind your business. And then that's how you can make that really effective for you, especially as you said, if you're creating this video for them in their industry and they share it, that's more clients that will get a sense of who you are.

100%, yeah. You mentioned in our call that you do a end of the week recap. Can you just tell us a little bit about what exactly that recap consists of? Was that the, maybe that was the tracking recap I reckon. Oh it was that. I think that was that. But we do a monthly video recap of all of our work. And I guess this goes against me saying we don't publish our work. So what we do at the end of the month

we'll combine behind the scenes and we'll combine like the polished shots as well into one like 60 second video. And it's like, here's what we did this month at Lyft. And that's kind of a pillar that happens each and every month. And we just post that, um, as well. That's kind of my monthly recap, if you will.

And how do you go about promoting that? Like, do you, do you do like a, cause it's, it's a little bit more, there's a little bit more work that goes into that. Um, versus, you know, just making like a photo post or like a word post or something like that. Do you do any like pre content in support of it or is it just, you kind of just let it out there? Just one, just one post on LinkedIn, just another one.

Keep it simple, right? It's funny, cause we're doing something similar with our individual projects. Cause like for the last like two years, we've been getting a lot of different BTS shots for certain projects and we kind of haven't done too much promotion on that. We're doing more now. But we are doing more now.

Every shoot now, we bring our Pocket 3, and we're just grabbing as much BTS content as possible. Yeah, and now I have like, now we've developed a good kind of format or kind of approach of how we can kind of showcase. And it was very similar to what you just said, like a 60 second video, maybe from like one project where we showed the BTS scenes,

then showed the final shots and stuff like that. And we're just kind of seeing where it goes. We're gonna try to make more and more consistently, but it does take some time, especially if like then clients are calling and saying like, hey, like I need to work on, I need you to work on this next video. So you have to then put it to the side.

But again, you have to make time for it, especially if you want to generate new business. Yeah, I think marketing, I think it's a really smart move. You have to make time for marketing if you want to try and generate new business. Otherwise, if you don't do any marketing, like, you know, a month will go by and then you've been busy, busy, busy, and then you'll have nothing, right?

So I think if you can stay consistent with your marketing, and curious if you guys have found this like consistent with your marketing, then it will just help smooth the roller coaster of work that we sometimes experience. Well, work, honestly, you inspired me so much in this call that that Yeah, same episode that like as soon as like we'll starting tomorrow because it's nighttime here, but I'm going to start scheduling into my calendar, like focus on LinkedIn. Do this. Like try to create a lot of plan because I never really gave it too much thought to be honest with you,

but it seems like there's quite a bit of potential and you're not the first person to bring it up. So I guess that's a sign to really focus on it. I wanted to ask you about your newsletter. This is something I've been meaning to start as well. Like how frequently do you do it and like what type of content do you usually put on it? Yeah, we do once a month, we send out our newsletter to all of our marketing communications customers

or like all of our key customer contacts. And essentially it's three stories. One is like a giveaway. So it'll be like a brief template or a how to write a script for your CEO, which is a common, like I think of like common problems my customers have had. And then we create like some like giveaway that they can download, take away. So it's just something to give.

Then we'll do like a little case study of like a project we did or something like that. And then the third story is maybe more of like an insight or like some sort of value give that I can education or like something along those lines like how to solve your recruitment problem with video or something along those lines. So keep it pretty simple, three stories each month. It's hard for me to say whether it's working or not working. It sort of just happens in the background and I guess maybe I need to do a better job of tracking it but

I was gonna say like yeah, I saw I'm looking at the stats on the back end But it's sort of hard to say if we've got any direct work as a result of it But I think it keeps us front of mind with existing customers more so Because you could see kind of like who opened it and who clicked on where on the specific page, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. We had one, we like exactly a good subtle reminder. And yeah, we had one customer I hadn't spoken to in a while. They clicked like 20 times on like opened it like 20 times.

And I was like, what the fuck? I was like, and so I actually reached out to them and I didn't mention that, but I was like, hey, you're like, why'd you click on it 25? I would love that. They would be like, how did you know? It turns out she'd forwarded it to a few people as well. I was like, okay, that makes a good sense.

Cause I was like, yeah, I was like, wow. But I didn't mention the 20 thing. I didn't want to like make her feel weird, but I was like, huh. I didn't know that was a thing. So if we ever get that I mean that means someone forwarded it Yeah, I think so. Yeah, and that makes the most sense because I was like it's not that good like it's good But it's not like I wouldn't open Some modest I love it. Yeah I

Think I'm I'm good on my end here. I guess I like asking this question lately, but like, what's your, what are your like future plans for your company? Oh man, you know, I'm still working that out. I'm trying to build more of like consistent revenue. So I'm working on like a, not quite a retainer, but more of like a

package that we deliver over 12 months and they pay over 12 months but I found the transport industry you know a lot of these customers don't like to be the ones that are like having to think of the ideas and like if we said you know you get five videos a month, it'd be like, oh, more work for me. So this idea is our transport content service agreement is essentially we're going to them with like a list of content that they're gonna get. We're delivering it over 12 months. They don't have to do anything. And it's just like a payment over 12 months as well. So I'm trying to build that, still testing, still tweaking.

I haven't sold one yet. Hopefully five years time, you know, we come back on the podcast, you guys are killing it and I've sold like a hundred of these. Hopefully sooner. I think you're onto something though. I think you're onto something because we've, I remember there was, I think two past episodes

where with our guests, we sat down and tried to break down whether it's a good idea to do the retainer model or not. And you actually pointed out perfectly what the issue is for a lot of clients is that you're also creating more work for them that might not be work that they actually need. But what you're doing is you're going to them with a predetermined set of solutions

that you're gonna be providing for them. It's like every business is gonna need a profile video, a recruitment video, a testimonial video, or something like that. And I think you're, it's not so much- But that still work, that still work for them because they gotta come up with the content for the video. Yes, but at the same time,

it's not like a retainer kind of approach, but it's kind of like predetermining like a certain set of packages. Like again, it's an early idea that you work, you know? It still work because we're giving them the asset, but they gotta like implement the asset, right? Other part of it is we post it for them. Oh, so you're doing like video marketing then almost, right?

It's kind of, yeah, I know, which is like kind of not our thing, but I just found these medium transport businesses just are not good at the posting of our content as well. And I was like, do you know what? I reckon I could just hire someone or like our social media content creator could just like schedule, post it for them.

It's not that crazy for us to having created content for them to then post and schedule it for them as well. So that's kind of where my mind's going. I think, and because we know the transport space really well, we know the kind of content that works, we know what they're gonna need, it's a lot easier for me to go to them and say, here's what you're gonna get,

we're gonna post it for you, here's what it's gonna do for your business, here's how it's gonna help you recruit more people, here's how it's gonna boost awareness of what you do and show all your different services. So look, we'll test it, right? I mean, if you're going to do marketing, I feel like that's the only way retainers are really going to work.

If you like market it for them otherwise. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. You're onto something. You just have to, like, as you, as you said, you, it's still early stages for you. You're trying to see kind of what works. And again, it also is very industry dependent, you know, what works in for one type of client is not gonna work for everyone else.

Because I know that there's a lot of video production companies out there who are probably like, how do I sell retainers to every client that I have? That's where those- It's not gonna work. That's where those seller, like video marketing or video production selling ads pop up where it's like, how to make 10,000 a month off of one client.

In like six days. It's six days. With nothing but a laptop. Shocking. The most ridiculous. The most ridiculous things. Generally I found retainers to be a bit of a compromise for both parties.

Like it's a compromise for us, it's a compromise for them. So this is kind of in my, and I was very against retainers, but I guess I've seen this little bit of an opportunity potentially to help transport businesses in particular with it. So we'll test it, I don't know. Maybe it won't work, we'll find out.

You find a better approach from it, who knows, right? You gotta try different things. That's essentially it, but know, who knows right? You got to try different things. That's that's essentially it but love it. 100%. Cool. How did you come up with the name? I asked my business coach and I was like I'm all out of names and he's like, oh Transport manufacturing. What about like lifts? And I was like, oh, yeah, like lift video production and he's like, yeah It sounds good to me. So easy, wow.

There's a small chance it could have been forklift productions. Yeah, I know. It would be pretty specific as well. Like only do forklifts. A little too niche. Too niche, you know? Yeah, exactly.

That's funny. That's good. Grant, thank you so much for joining us on the show. You definitely shared a lot of things that got Dario and I thinking and definitely is up the standard of how you should be marketing yourself as a business. I think you've filled up my workload for the next couple of weeks. Same. Love it. Thanks for having me guys. Appreciate it. Guys, if you want to find grant go to lift video production

calm dot au and then for social media, it's at lift lift video production, right? Yeah, or just follow me grant jameson on linkedin. It's probably the best right connects with him You have to connect with him. So grant. Yeah, absolutely unlike them Yeah, he's open to it guys. He knows what he's getting into and he might be sending you a request He might send you a connection connection message. Yeah Anyways, thank you grant. Thanks guys Thanks for listening to this episode of Creatives Grab Coffee. Please make sure to follow and engage with us on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, and your favorite podcast app. Creatives Grab Coffee is created by Laps Productions, a video production company based in Toronto,

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