Vipul Bindra: 0:04

Tony, thank you for coming. Sir, I really appreciate you taking the time and coming to talk to me, not that we haven't done this before. Who are? You?

Vipul Bindra: 0:12

Yeah, I was like it wasn't just recorded, but I mean it was the same thing. So thank you again for taking the time out and coming and talking to me Like we were discussing a few minutes ago. For years, you know, I wanted to start this podcast because I wanted to capture the type of conversations that I'm having with people, cause I know years ago it would have helped me. Plus, you know, it's just general entertainment. You know you're on a flight, you're driving, you know, listening to people who think like you, who think business video, you know, first can, and coming back to it. That's exactly how I want to start.

Vipul Bindra: 0:44

So how we met is obviously through David's networking events, but also you hit me up because you wanted to. You know, talk, improve your craft, improve your business strategies. So walk me through that. I want to learn more of what made you reach out to me and what did you want to ask me. You then find that out. You know, go in depth, because we have a lot of time here. And then also, um, did that help you in any way?

Tony Smith: 1:12

so just so again, tony, but now a little bit the better yeah yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:19

So tony, um, so we met a couple times, uh, through the networking events, and just I wanted, wanted to pick your brain a little bit further than what we were discussing in a general setting. You know, it's a lot of people around, a lot of noise, a lot of people, so it's a lot of moving pieces. So I was wanting to one-on-one to just sit down and just figure out. You know who you are. You know who is this guy with you know, with this nice shirt, coming on looking clean with the Jordans and all this, and I'm just like who is this guy, you know, and he's talking like he knows what he's talking about and I just want to, you know, just understand you know why, how, who, you know who you were, and then just sitting down and just picking your brain and just hearing, like you know, like all the knowledge that you had, you know, and coming coming from a place that where we kind of can, you know, relate to being, you know, brown skin. You know there's no obvious, obvious, you know, saying thing here, but just wanted to see somebody else who, kind of, you know, went through the same struggles that I might go through, you know, throughout my journey in this Pretty new to this, you know. Only, you know, been shooting for a total of six years, really, business two and a half years, you know.

Tony Smith: 2:30

So I just wanted to get with somebody who's been in it for you know a long time you said 15 years and you went through a lot of hurdles and you know tribulations, to figure out the space you're in now. I'm sure you had a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of headaches, a lot of you know all that. So I just wanted to, you know, if I can, you know, get over that without having to go through it, at least, you know, get with somebody who can understand, you know, who kind of looks like them. Be like, okay, don't do this, do this instead, so then I don't have to go through that same same journey. I can leap over that and then keep moving.

Tony Smith: 3:07

Uh, those, my, that's my whole reason of sitting down. Um, you, just one of the guys that you know, david, looked up to you know he, he would come to you and ask you questions. I'm like, okay, he must be the expert in this field, you know, and I appreciate david if we even started, because without him we probably would never even run, you know, run paths exactly, yeah I love those meetups, man, I'm telling david they just do, and I know he's a busy guy.

Vipul Bindra: 3:28

I hope to have him on the podcast, uh, podcast in the next few weeks. But you know he, uh, you know he's a busy filmmaker like all of us. So so for him to do that, uh, how many people I've met through his meetups, it's been incredible. So I'm glad you know he did those and we met. And then I'm so glad you reached out and us talking and you know, typically I mean let's get onto it, there's no off topic here I typically I'm so obsessed, you know I have that obsessive personality, but I know that you can tell.

Vipul Bindra: 3:57

You know I love video. And then once I finally made this like this, is it right and it's bigger than me, I'm gonna build this company. I just went all in and so all I could talk about is video. So I never stopped for a minute and think about the other factors that affected me, because I was always just blaming the video industry. Right, oh, why can't I get this contract? Or why can't whatever, whatever the like you said, the hurdle. Hurdle was at the time.

Vipul Bindra: 4:21

But the truth is there was race to a factor. Right, I don't typically talk about it, or even think about it, for that matter, in my brain like, oh, that's holding me back, but the truth is that is sometimes can be the factor, because we've all been through meetings or things where you can think about like, hey, um, you know, was race a factor in me not getting that project, or me not getting that meeting or whatever. Right, initially, I Initially I found it was the, it was the uh. Another thing that you know people don't think about is age Cause I was young, you know I was uh, uh, you know I'm 33 now, but I find myself I like to keep a little, you know grayish beard.

Vipul Bindra: 5:07

That helps, even though I made thousands and rather tens of thousands of videos and, you know, made companies hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Tony Smith: 5:12

When you show up and you're like a young guy and you're late like 20s or early 30s or whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 5:15

The CEOs, who are generally your marketing managers, are in their 40s, 50s, 60s. They don't take you seriously. And so when I walk in, I know and I noticed that I genuinely like people are like oh, why are you trying to look, you know, with a beard, you know trying to look older. And I was like, hey, the truth is, my market is these older gentlemen or whatever. They're going to judge me instantly. I walk into the room and for me to be taken seriously, I have to look like I belong Right Now. I know for a fact the solution that I'm offering is totally worth the cost and it's going to totally give them the roi. But if they didn't even give me a chance, it doesn't matter what I have to sell to them, right. And so as soon as I found out, when I did the the whole you know beard thing and just took on this persona of somebody who looks older, rather than say that it helped me close more deals, and ever since I'm like, okay, well, it's my life, thank goodness I don't have to go look for girls Anyway, but that helped a lot.

Vipul Bindra: 6:19

So I completely see how age can be a factor and how many great video people out there aren't getting deals just because they're not even being considered, just because the person on the other side doesn't consider them experienced enough or whatever. And then obviously, race is another huge factor, right, you see, not that many, um, black people or indian people in the industry, and I think that's, uh, that's most likely. It is because not only now do you have to be, um, a great videographer or a filmmaker or sound guy or gaffer, whatever you're trying to be your dp, you have to now, you know, be extra good, right, right, uh. So so that was a very interesting topic and I'm so glad you discussed that, because that kind of made me step for a second. Think about all the times I've been meetings where it was race a factor. Or was it just my skill set, right?

Tony Smith: 7:10

Or vice versa, I mean, you could have got a job because you were. Oh I know for a fact Diversity hour yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 7:18

So I haven't worked with that many Indian companies, to be real, but I totally. And here's coming. I'm so glad you say that. I am totally for it. I don't want to hear be one of those guys uh who says, oh, you know, you have this advantage, your privilege or whatever, so now you should lower your privilege. I'm saying no, take advantage of it. You know um there's so many um like indian businesses and and if I'm Indian and they give me business, I'm going to happily take it because I want to make awesome videos Absolutely, and if that's the factor that gets me the video, I'm taking it.

Vipul Bindra: 7:53

Sir. And same thing, if I remember correctly, I told in the meeting. I'm like hey look, yes, it's probably a factor, but then why don't you find there's so many black Americans that are building amazing, incredible businesses and guess what? They need Videos. So guess what? You have now an advantage as long as you hyper-target yourself to those folks and it doesn't mean discount other companies Obviously we'll work with them. But I'm saying, if you don't have privilege somewhere else, we have privilege somewhere other than that and we should go take full advantage of that. Do you agree with me or not?

Tony Smith: 8:25

no, absolutely. I mean, you gotta, you know, you gotta find your lane you know you gotta, you gotta go in. Basically, you gotta get where you fit in, you know, and can't just try to keep trying to, you know, force your way into certain industries that don't want you there.

Tony Smith: 8:38

You know you gotta find your people yeah you know whether that's you know it don't have to be your color, but just your people. Just be people who relate to you and people who, like you, trust you, um. But I definitely agree with that, um, because you don't want to just keep trying to force your way into a, to a hole that doesn't want you there, or to an industry that don't want you there. Go build your own lane, go build your own, you know. Find your own, find your own circle and there's enough work for everyone.

Vipul Bindra: 9:03

There's so many businesses that need video. That I don't think enough work is an issue. You just have to a have your skill be there and then you have to have your business skill be there and I don't think anyone will have issue getting enough work. The other thing is, um, now, but I'm all for playing up the part, like we we discussed a few minutes ago. But I'm all for like, hey, I go to network now until you get there.

Vipul Bindra: 9:26

Uh, like, initially, when I'm going networking events, I'm saying years ago, you gotta play your part, put on a suit, put on a tie, dress nice, because that's how they're dressed. You know these business owners that are making millions of dollars. Um, when they go to networking events, they put on a suit. So if you're trying to make millions or even hundreds of thousands you know of six figures everyone wants to make then dress like that. That's an effort on you.

Vipul Bindra: 9:51

I don't count that, as you know, anything extra or something that somebody is asking of you. You have to belong. If you, and to be real, I am at the stage now where I don't give a crap. So I have shown up with my, because to me my branding is everything. But I'm saying but at this point. I like to pick and choose and my clients, but the point I'm trying to make is if you need clients and your clients are in a room in a networking event, then dress like them, belong there and make an effort, obviously to fit the part. You know, if you were just a rebel and who's like, no, I'm just going to show up in a t-shirt, then they're not going to take you seriously and at that point I don't think it's them, it's you right so.

Vipul Bindra: 10:34

So there's both sides of the coin. Fine, obviously, find your lane if there's a room. Even after you put all your effort, they don't want you, then it's okay. Just move on to where you belong, right, but at the same time first make an effort to fit right yeah, like I said, I only really you have to fit the part.

Tony Smith: 10:51

But to come in as you are, you have to. You have to be at a level to where they trust you so much that they don't even care what you come. As you know you, you made them so much money they're like oh, that's just, that's just him, that's how he is right you become friends with's how he is what do the people say?

Vipul Bindra: 11:08

I think you have to have like nine or ten touches or whatever in person for them to like, buy from you. People buy from people. They know like and trust. And uh, for me it's like you'd be amazed. Uh, I'm very I'd like to be active in the chamber of commerce's and I'd love to talk about that, you know, some other time or even today if you wanted to. But uh, you know you, you have to be active in your business community. You're a business owner, right, and that's if you want to be. Obviously, if you're dp, I don't know if that's relevant, but if you're trying to build a production company and you're a business owner, go, hang out with other business owners, find out what they want, right, and I found, um, a huge success with that, but it doesn't come immediately. I've had a lot of people again ask me like what should I do? And I tell them they're like, oh, I went to five events and nothing happened, right, and I'm like well, it's not going to happen in five minutes.

Tony Smith: 11:52

This is a long-term play.

Vipul Bindra: 11:54

You're trying to build a relationship. These people aren't just ready for you to show up with your card I want. I mean you could get lucky. But you know what I? It's a long-term play Plus it's also genuine relationships. If you walk in there genuinely trying to meet other local businesses, build a community, help each other out, pass referrals, because I'm sure somebody's like, hey, I need a roof done and maybe you know now a roofer that you didn't. Or you know I don't know another chiropractor or whatever business owner that you meet right at these events. Now you're giving them leads too, because I'm sure somebody in your life is asking absolutely I don't know I found the huge success with that.

Vipul Bindra: 12:29

If you're just great and you just build these relationships, I've had, uh, people go a year later like, hey, vipple, I was thinking about making a video, let's do it. And I'm like, awesome, let's do it. And I've known this person for a year, right, and so money comes back. I've had enough huge amounts of roi from from networking.

Tony Smith: 12:46

It's just don't expect it to be immediate and that's, and that's the whole thing with these. You know, you know bm, bnis and uh chambers, and you know people can sense that uh desperation you know they can sense when you you're just there just for that.

Tony Smith: 13:03

yeah, you know you're just coming in just pitching video, not trying to build a genuine connection with everybody there. So they can sense when you're, you know, trying to pray, so that's one thing. Those are the slow burn. Slow, you know, slowly getting there, maybe two, three, four months, even a year, to even get one. And then once you get that one, then it's kind of like a snowball effect after that, once you do a good, a great job for that one person, then he goes to somebody else. Now it's, now it's. You got the whole chamber now on your back now trying to get you to do a video, exactly man for the chamber, let people watch it, because I don't need to, for me at least.

Vipul Bindra: 13:47

I'm not trying to um sell to each person. I'm just saying, hey look, I'm gonna partner with the chamber, I'm gonna make them an awesome ass video and then I'm gonna let them play you that video and now I want you to go to them like who did that?

Vipul Bindra: 13:57

video that video is amazing because you know, and it's all about storytelling. Again, don't get up. At least I don't get obsessed about camera. You know and like, obviously your art is important, your camera is important, your lens is important, but I'm not getting too in depth. I'm worried more about the story. That's my focus. How can I tell an impactful story? And I want those people to watch those impactful stories and then automatically go.

Vipul Bindra: 14:21

I want that for my business and they ask the chamber and the chamber will obviously say this is the chamber member that did it and that's how I like to do it. I'm like completely like. I'm like forget the hand shaking the card, saying I just want to make what I, what I love making, right. I would be doing this anyway if this wasn't a job. I'm just lucky that I can make a living off of this and I find when you genuinely like to make awesome videos, people want them and they come to you. But you do need people to see it. If they don't know you exist, they just don't know you exist. And these type of partnerships, like you said, bni, a chamber of commerce or any other networking or any other organization, like even our filmmaker meetup if you're a DP and trying to find producers or whatever is an incredible opportunity for you to get your work out there and get your personality out there because that matters too right, so everything clicks.

Vipul Bindra: 15:13

You may be talented, but you know, if you're not jiving or whatever, vibing with the other person, then it ain't gonna work trust me, I've done through that a lot.

Tony Smith: 15:23

I've tried to hire, you know. So that's my big thing is I'd love to give new people you know, or people with less status to you know, be on, shoot and and hire them, because you know everybody doesn't have that talent to, you know. Be the front runner, you know, but you know, be the producer, to be the, be the main man talking and all that. People just wanted to shoot, people just want to be holding the camera, people just want to take pictures and it's hard when you don't have that personality to be out there to do that. Now you, now you're stuck because now you got to figure out how to get more personality because you don't have it and and and just do the thing that you love.

Tony Smith: 15:55

So I love to be that person in between, you know, get the job and hire these low, low-end people, but at the same time, you know, when you don't have that personality, that also shows on the set and it's like I, I don't like the way you do that. I don't like the way you're moving. You know you're doing a little too much. Why are you talking to the customer like that? Why you fall back some? You know you're doing too much on my shoot. Now you make me look bad because you're representing me while you're here. So now I can't rehire you because now you know I don't know how you're going to act next time. Yeah, so Exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 16:24

No, you're saying it perfectly, man. It's all about, you know, again, sharing opportunity. But personality is everything. And if you don't have it, guess what you don't need to See. You need to find, like you said before, we were talking about finding your lane. If you're like, hey, my personality isn't where I want to be, interacting with a client, or whatever, right, that's okay, you can find a role there's so many roles in what we do where you know you can make your personality fit in you, you fit in the. You know, don't feel like you don't. You just have to find where you fit in.

Vipul Bindra: 16:56

It may not be the role than you're, because then you, you know you only have two choices, right, let's say you want to be client facing, you're like, I just want to be a production company owner, but you're like an introvert like me. You can find two ways, which is what I had to do. It's like, no, you can dig deep and say, no, I'm gonna go talk to this client. Or you know you can, you can just be a dp or whatever. I'm saying we can't, you know, choose a different lane. And I was like, no, I have to fight through, uh, this urge of, uh, you know, not wanting to just make random talk or whatever, right, you have to do that and then that's. That's on the person and them. I feel like just digging deep and figuring out how they, their personalities, fit. Either they're going to change their personality or they're gonna um, you know, change the style of work or whatever the role that they want to be in.

Tony Smith: 17:43

Yeah, you got to be in, yeah, you got to be uncomfortable with the comfortable.

Vipul Bindra: 17:46

You got to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Tony Smith: 17:47

Exactly, you know so you got to push through it without any, without any like traumas or adversity in your life. You don't. You know, you don't know anything. You know, you just think the shade through life is going to get you there. But you got to have some kind of drama, some kind of you know, you got to go through something to get you over that hump. You know, you don't know the other end.

Vipul Bindra: 18:06

Yeah, exactly Awesome. So tell me more about why video how did you get?

Tony Smith: 18:16

into video, yeah. So I kind of like looked into this or just fell into this. It wasn't always my passion, even though I liked it. You know, I used to have growing up. We had production classes in high school and I took one of them, not just because I loved it, it was just something else to do because I didn't, you know, have anything else for elective. So I just picked it and we had to remake the ending of what? What's the? Is the base motel or what's the one with the? Uh his cock, with the uh, with the hotel, when it was killing the people in the hotels?

Tony Smith: 18:53

And um, I've got the name of the movie, but yeah but basically we had to remake the ending of that to make it something different than what it was. So you took that and I was just going through that and just like, oh man, this is cool. Um, and also in that class we were able to learn emotion through video and through sound. Um, so we watched a lot of music videos with no music. Just watch the video, and then teachers be like uh, what do you feel? Just, you know, with no sound, how do you feel? Like okay, looks okay, like I'm okay, and then she'll play it with the sound. Oh man, I feel totally different. Like this is, this is so I'm sad now. Like this is this is sad.

Tony Smith: 19:32

Um, so going through that, not knowing that future in life, that that would help me with my beauty of making, because now I understand how to provoke emotion and and how people feel through video. Uh, that was my start. And not knowing that. So I really got started just by. You know, my wife had bought me a GoPro just off the whim, because I like to make random videos. I was playing softball and she'll come and film and I'll just chop up the videos, make little quick, little videos, or I'll make little cooking videos, just to, you know, just be playing around with it, not thinking that I love it, just I'm, you know, just playing around.

Tony Smith: 20:08

So, uh, when my friend saw it he was a also a photographer here in Orlando he saw that, oh man, it's dope, like that's, that's amazing. I'm like this is a random video, like it ain't nothing to me. So he, he hit me up. It's like, hey, you want to shoot a wedding? Uh, absolutely, why, why, why not? You know? So this is. So again, throughout this whole process I never owned a camera. Yet I'm still like I got a gopro, I got my phone. I'm not. I had never actually owned or held a camera at this point. So my first time actually holding a camera was at somebody's wedding oh wow, so that that's a risky took, sir I would never because you know a this only happens once.

Vipul Bindra: 20:45

Yeah, absolutely.

Tony Smith: 20:47

I've not got amazing footage. So so what the crazy part was? I didn't know how to turn it on. I didn't know what the start button was, I didn't know what at the time, I didn't know what ISO was, I didn't know what aperture was. He was basically, it was like it's already set. Oh. So you put hit start. Yeah, it was like just hit start, okay, cool.

Tony Smith: 21:08

So so again at a wedding, you know, you understand that at a wedding you're basically second in line, it's the bride and groom, then you yeah, everybody else doesn't matter because they're paying you to be there. So you need to make sure that you're able to capture what you need to capture without grandma being in the way. Cousin, uncle, you step out, you get in front of them, exactly. So when he told me that I'm like okay, I got it because I was with him at the time, because like, because, because I'm gonna be that guy that tells you know, grandma to move. But but you know, but at the same time they're paying me and then they'll be mad at me when I don't get the footage. Because you're like, why didn't you get it? Because grandma's in, you know. So, knowing that I'm like okay, now I, I have authority to move people and they understand why.

Vipul Bindra: 21:44

So I expect, by the way, people who do weddings I've never done one and I will never do one. I'm happy with my business owners, but weddings is a grind. Yeah.

Tony Smith: 21:53

You have to love weddings to do weddings. So, so, just going through that process of just you know again, I didn't have no references. I was just really just going off my own perception or or preference of what I would think a wedding video would look like. I didn't go on youtube and look up anything prior to that. I was just filming stuff that I thought would look cool. Um, so I did it, put the video together. Everybody loved it. Amazing. Like, oh my god, this amazing video.

Tony Smith: 22:19

Two months later, he's like hey, we'll do another one. Okay, yeah, great, yeah, yeah, why, let's go ahead and do it? So do it. Do it again Again. This time, I got a little more knowledge now from the first one. Now, this time, I'm doing a little more research on YouTube and trying to figure out what is the actual process and how do you do this and that Cool, so do that one. Great, they love that one. Two months later later, hey, you want to do another one. Why not? Yeah. Now at this point I'm like, okay, is this my passion? This is my, this is my goal in life. To do weddings like this is my. Because it's like it's just coming free, because I'm not doing a promotion. I'm not doing nothing.

Tony Smith: 22:51

It's really just you know, connection based somebody you know is just hitting you up, going yeah, like so you know it takes people 10, 15 sometimes, you know, never do three weddings in in their lifetime. You know it takes two years to get through weddings and I'm doing it within six months.

Vipul Bindra: 23:05

You know, I don't even know I would go to that many weddings you know.

Tony Smith: 23:08

So it's like not even even on the camera. I don't, I don't, I don't own a camera on a light, I don't own anything. I'm doing everything off of what he has. Um, so do the third wedding, and it's like I like this, though, but again, the same time it's the grind. You know you're there from 10 to 10 and and it's, you know, you're barely taking breaks and it's fun because it's because each one is different, and it's fun just seeing all the heavy people and just being around different cultures and stuff like that. So it was amazing that point. But but the same time it's it's a grind. I'm like man, this is a lot of work, uh. But even though the payout is better, you know, better than being a, it being a nine to five, it's like man, I can make, you know, a month's salary within an eight month time period, but then your body's taking the toll of it.

Tony Smith: 23:52

So I just went through that and then I just took a hiatus. You know, he kind of like he kind of fell back from weddings too, and again I went to a promotion because I wasn't at that time taking it seriously. So I took about a year and a half to where I was able to get another gig. At that point he had a lot of connections to where he would hit me up like, hey, want to do this and that, do that. I'm like, yeah, I'll do it. It was the last time he hit me up to do one of his friends needed a wedding and it was a last minute wedding and I'm like I really don't want to do it. So I put out an outrageous number and she's like, yeah, cool. I'm like, oh well, okay, well.

Tony Smith: 24:29

I guess I'm coming to your wedding then.

Vipul Bindra: 24:31

That's how most people raise their heads. They go. I don't want to do this. It's an absurd number and people. Just you know you'd be amazed.

Tony Smith: 24:38

So then after we did that, one was an all day. She really wanted an all day, so we were there from 6 to 11. Oh wow, 6 am Because she wanted like a documentary style capture, the whole day type thing, wedding After that. You know that's when I started taking it serious.

Vipul Bindra: 24:54

Everybody was like you know you're really good with this. What's the crazy number? Can you tell us?

Tony Smith: 24:57

At that time it was 6,500.

Vipul Bindra: 25:01

That's pretty good for a wedding video and that's what you're saying at that time? Yeah, at that time.

Tony Smith: 25:09

Because then, like you said, I wasn't a company at this time, I wasn't LLC'd. At this time I wasn't incorporated. I was just a random guy who he texted me like, hey, she needed a video for a wedding. It's all day what you doing. I'm like I really want to do it here. Just just, just just tell her it's, you know, it's 6500, yeah. And she's like, okay, great, great, great, what, like you know, you're gonna pay this, like so again. So, even with that, that kind of what threw me off too, because, again, I wasn't I wasn't.

Vipul Bindra: 25:42

You should be charging for your weddings. If you do weddings, $6,500 minimum, minimum. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I'm learning so much I'm like look, tony.

Tony Smith: 25:51

But it also depends on what kind of weddings you're doing, because I've also done India weddings. Charge double that. Oh yeah, it's like a party.

Vipul Bindra: 26:05

That's how I wanted to. Enough to say I didn't want to have a wedding, because you know I grew up in weddings. You know I thought that was normal. Obviously, you know weddings go on for freaking weeks and thousands of people.

Tony Smith: 26:12

I was like this is crazy yeah and then, um, no, I was like I, I can't do this yeah, so with that last wedding, the issue that I had was, like I said, I wasn't a business and I didn't understand business. You know etiquette and lingo and all that. I didn't have no contracts and all that.

Vipul Bindra: 26:28

So I didn't have a sign of contract.

Tony Smith: 26:29

It was all word of mouth, so the issue with that was payment time at the time up front so at that time I was, I was doing even I do, I was doing 50% of the time up front and then 50% the day of um, the the day of that you receive your final video. Um, I was doing that based off of what I heard in the industry, stuff like that. So I was nothing, nothing in writing. Yeah, um, so we got, because it was last minute, it was like two days after she hit me up, so it's like a Monday. And when it's like on a Wednesday, so you know, I'm like, okay, cool, normally at that time you'll get the full payment up front. Because it's like, hey, you just right here. So I'm like, okay, he, she's not gonna screw me because it's your friend. You know y'all are cool, you're not going to screw me, knowing that, you know who this is. So I'm like, okay, I took the leap in my eye, who just gave me 50? And we'll work out on the back end whenever you hit the video. So, um, do the wedding again.

Tony Smith: 27:27

It was actually a disaster because it was cool for the first half, because we was inside the house and then it started pouring down, raining. We're in florida and it wasn't, you know, a regular florida rain. You know where. It rained for 10-5 minutes and you're done. No, this is when the hurricane went, where it rained for six hours straight. It started at like one o'clock. It didn't end to 10 that's like a nightmare for.

Vipul Bindra: 27:49

And it was outdoor wedding, oh, outdoor and apart, move it inside or no?

Tony Smith: 27:53

it was no, no, they still tried to do it in the rain. They did it in the rain again. I'm not a production company, so I don't have protective gear, I don't have raincoats, I don't have raincoats, I don't have covering, so I'm outside with a trash bag over my camera to make sure it is protected. Yeah, and it was just. It was just. I mean, we made it work for what it was. It could have been a lot better, but again, it was. It wasn't, it was out of our hands.

Tony Smith: 28:20

At that point, you know, we were waiting, losing sunlight, losing a lot of, um, you know, just valuable time, just because we were waiting, hopefully, for the you know rain to pass, and it just never happened. So we just had to do what we need to do. At that point, again, it took. So after that, it took about two months to actually do the final video. And so at this point I'm I'm here to wrap, like, hey, I'm ready for the final payment, I have your video ready, let me know when you're ready to send the money. Oh, give me a week, okay, a week goes by. Oh, give me another week, okay, a week goes by. Give me another month. A month goes by.

Tony Smith: 28:53

She doesn't want her own wedding, she doesn't want hey at this point I kind of wash my hands with it.

Tony Smith: 29:02

I'm like it six months goes by. Well, four months go by. I hit her up again. She's like ah, I still don't have it. Give me time. So at this point I just wash my hands with it. I'm like it's done, I'm not even gonna worry about it. At the six month point she hit me up like hey, I got your money, great, oh, okay, it's my account. Here's the number. Once you send it, then I'll send you a video. And she sent the money. I was shocked because I'm like, six months later, like you know, so, to get the money, I sent her the video. She loved it, they loved it. It was like and she wanted to do some more. But at the time I'm like no, I can't, I can't do more work with you just because of how you were running your At least she paid you.

Vipul Bindra: 29:39

But you, you're absolutely right, and that's the power of contracts man.

Vipul Bindra: 29:42

But that's okay, you were new, I mean, we've all done it. You know don't have contracts. Long time ago when I was freelancer I did that a ton. Now that I know I'm like never Because you got to protect yourself plus the payment up front. The only time I'm okay with the payment on the day off is when I'm working with friends Like I'm working with, like friends, like I'm a DP or whatever, and plus somebody I know I'm like sure that's okay, you could pay me, you know, at the end of the shoot Like, but even then on that day, like I'm not expecting payment, you know, a week later or whatever, and I've never had issues with payment.

Vipul Bindra: 30:21

but that's because I've like talk to an attorney, get a really good contract. Because not you? I mean, I'm sure you have figured it out by now, yeah. Because you want to have those. They call them like the acts of God or weather clause or whatever in there. I'm not a lawyer, right, so I don't know, but point is, they can have lots of clauses in there to protect you in that case, um, because you know you can't. You can't predict it at least, right?

Tony Smith: 30:47

uh, I guess you can look at the weather app, but they're not typically reliable, especially florida, like at least it was in a florida rain, because yeah, here it'll just rain for 10 minutes randomly and then yeah, that's like nothing happened anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 30:59

Uh, but no, that that's good, but that's a good lesson though right, at least you didn't lose money.

Vipul Bindra: 31:04

And now you learned that, hey, I, I got to have contracts, I got to have payment terms. Plus, have you changed it Now? Do you charge like upfront before, like the shoot is starting or whatever, because that's how I do it I do it, you know, if they want to split it Most funny enough, again, all the good clients don't even care about splitting it. But it's okay, I'm. I understand like they may not have that big chunk, so I'll let them do 50 up front, but then 50 before shoot. You know I'm not shooting unless I have 100.

Tony Smith: 31:31

So so I kind of it's kind of kind of similar still I still, well, now I do 50, 30, 60 days prior to shooting um, and then the other 50 the day of, just depending on the client, because I know some clients do net 30s, net 60s, um, I know you talked about that where you don't do clients like that, you don't do net 30s, I don't do that, but it's okay I don't have any any issues with people who do that.

Vipul Bindra: 31:54

That's okay, because there are some companies where, like, I don't do that unless it's the government yeah, state or federal. That's okay because I I trust the and maybe I'm wrong, but I've never had issue with the any state, government or federal government. So I do have colleges and stuff that are state-owned and they have policies, whatever. But, funny enough, even I have had them pay me in like before delivery, because then they'll say, oh, but we can't also not process this 30-day payment until you deliver. I'm like, no, no, no, no, we're gonna get a deposit and it takes 30 days. So we'll pay 30 and then we'll film it. And then you know, obviously it'll take them 30.

Vipul Bindra: 32:29

So normally I try to deliver videos in two weeks. I'm like I purposely put their delivery dates in 30 days. Uh, so I'm like, okay, when the payment comes I'll give you the video. You know what I mean at the end of the day. But they've always paid. Obviously the government find at least always pays their bills. But outside of that, I don't care how good the company is, I don't take that risk. But I also do have enough friends that do take that risk and haven't had issues. So it's kind of like I think you have to decide what your risk factor is. So I think that's a personal thing. I just don't take that risk.

Tony Smith: 33:10

It's not worth it. Yeah, when at your level you have to, where we can turn down money, like that, uh, but I'm just happy I can pay my bills. Nah, that's me too, uh, so, just, you know, I'm just, I just I try not to be, you know, an asshole at all times, you know. But sometimes you have to be at a business owner. You have to be stern, you know, because people walk over you if you're not. But yeah, yeah, I do 30, 30 days prior and then the day of to get the payment. But if I'm cool with you, you know, and we're actually friends, I'll kind of lean that to where I'll go back to my prior, where I'll do 30 days prior and then I'll give you time to get the money up to then, where I give you the video, you give me the rest of the money, the video. That's if I'm cool with you.

Tony Smith: 33:45

We got to be on a on a whole nother level for me to do that. But if it's just a random business, no, I need to. Before I show up, that payment need to be, you know, pending, you know, as I show up. So, if not, you pick another time on my calendar and then we can shoot from there. But yeah, you know now I learned a lot, a lot, a lot of lessons just going through. You know what I've been through with the weddings and then other corporate events, just you know. You don't know what you don't know. Like I said, you know, I'm just going through. I didn't have no mentors, nothing like that, so I'm just going off my own merit, just what I thought was right and and and and how I felt about it. But I said you learn and you make better choices.

Vipul Bindra: 34:26

That's awesome and you know, that's what the journey is and hopefully you can reduce some by talking to other people and learning from their mistakes. So I hope, coming back to, I think, where we started, like when you hit me up, hopefully you hit a bunch of other people up and you kind of learn from other people's mistakes and they're like, oh, did they had this happen? Hopefully it won't happen to me now, because you're already prepared for it, and then obviously you've been doing this enough time that you know you've had your own mistakes. But the other thing I want to touch on is, um, I don't know how much you could talk about it, but you're also an engineer with a government job and everything you're you're?

Vipul Bindra: 35:02

you're like trying to achieve everything here, uh, working on cool stuff. Are you able to talk about it or no?

Tony Smith: 35:08

I don't know what kind of job that is so basically, I'm not your, your your typical, you know video production company. You know I do have a nine to five. Still I'm. I'm the part-time guy. You know who does this part-time, who's trying to do this full-time? Um, so yeah, I work for Lockheed Martin. I can't say that much. But yeah, went to school for engineering North Carolina. They flew me down here, interviewed to work down here in Orlando, florida, and been down here for 15 years with them. So what I do on a day-to-day basis, I work for the government. I design missiles for the Army and Air Force. I can't go into much about what I do, but I can basically give you that much that we make missiles.

Tony Smith: 35:53

So you're making literal missiles on one hand, and the other side, you're making people's vetting videos. I mean talk about versatility.

Vipul Bindra: 36:03

Typically I'm all about. You know you got to go all into video, but I'm like, hey, if you're making missiles, it's not bad to have video people. I don't know, it sounds very interesting to me what you do and obviously it's okay Like, don't go too deep into it. We don't want to have the government shut this podcast down.

Tony Smith: 36:21

No, no, it ain't just on the surface it sounds amazing, but really that you know your whole day to day is really just sitting on a computer doing a lot of Excel and PowerPoints and presentations.

Vipul Bindra: 36:30

You know it's this yeah.

Tony Smith: 36:32

You know, so you know, you don't think, no, you know, no, I'm not Tony Starks and I'm, you know, You're not.

Vipul Bindra: 36:39

No, you didn't. You don't have a hidden iron armor that you guys are testing, that we don't know about.

Tony Smith: 36:43

Now we do have testing, All these drones showing up, hey we do have secret labs. We do all this stuff. I'm not a nose, but we do testing on what we design. It's not all the time, but we do go through testing where we get to test it and blow it up and see how they react in the field, things like that all these alien crafts the government, uh, and again, it's okay, don't comment.

Vipul Bindra: 37:07

But the rumors, all these alien crafts the government captures goes to lockheed martin to for research. I wonder if you've seen, has seen any? He can, I'm only just blink once if it's true.

Tony Smith: 37:19

No, I don't have that type of clearance. I don't have that. Uh, you know that's the top, that's the top secret clearance. I don't have that. You know that's the top that's the top secret clearance.

Vipul Bindra: 37:26

I don't have that. So that's, that's a whole nother. You're not denying that.

Tony Smith: 37:28

No, I can't, I can't, I can't approve or deny that. Is this a true fact or not? But, but they did come out and say it was true. So I don't, I can't.

Vipul Bindra: 37:45

Hey topic, but it's kind of fun anyway. But that's been like so fun to ask because I don't know that many people who work at lockheed martin, so it's like, oh, that's, that's pretty interesting. Anyway, all right back to our regular schedule. Talk um, so anyway. So you, so you're an engineer and you're a video person, that must be really hard finding time, and plus, you know family of a is like how are you managing time management in work and life?

Tony Smith: 38:05

yeah, so it's definitely hard. Yeah, I said I'm doing this part-time to where you know I work nine to five. I work, you know, really it helps because I work four tens. So I work monday through thursday, you know, 10 hour shifts, um, so that's so pretty. Uh gives my weekend friday, saturday, sunday to do my work.

Tony Smith: 38:20

So I schedule all my shoots on friday, saturday and sunday, you know I, you know, and then I do all my shoots on Friday, saturday and Sunday, you know, and then I do all my maintenance work, all my, you know, scheduling work on nights to where, you know, after I get off work I can get on my laptop and then now I can, you know, start doing all the manual work. You know all the tedious work that people don't like to do, you know. And returning emails and you know trying to, you know contact and do all that to to where I, you know, on my schedule or on my calendar, you know everything's booked out. It's booked Monday through Thursday because it looks like I'm busy but I'm really just at work. So you can pick between Friday, saturday, sunday. So you know, okay, cool, yeah, okay, yeah.

Tony Smith: 38:59

So that's know it's hard, and then with a wife and child at the house. It's trying to balance that to where I spend time with them throughout the week, which you know. I try to do that Monday through Thursday try to always have time to where, when she comes home from work, we can sit down and eat dinner every time and play with my daughter when she's there, and then at the same time, I try to bring them along to all my shoots as well. Um, and then at the same time I try to bring them along to all my shoots as well. If it's not going to be a nuisance you know my daughter in the background screaming then like that or if it's allowable, I'll try to bring them along as much as possible.

Tony Smith: 39:30

That's awesome, just so there's around, you know have you had any pushback from any clients or anywhere bringing your family. No, not from the clients, but but but from my wife. It's like no, you, you know that's that's they don't sound like a event to where we need to be yet, so we're gonna stay here and let you do that alone. So it's really from her, you know yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 39:49

So you know, everybody loves kids. They want nothing to do with. Yeah, right, you know no but everybody loves kids.

Tony Smith: 39:54

So once you bring a kid around, everybody just falls into. You know a bliss. So you know that that kind of helps. So and I think I might use that strategy more often when I'm talking to businesses to bring my child along, you know, because my daughters are helpful.

Vipul Bindra: 40:07

I've been doing these podcasts and they were asleep when you came, but you know, hopefully they'll be awake when you leave, but there have been a constant attraction here, like everyone shows up. It's like a 10 minute distraction with my girl. So, like you said, yeah, that is an actual advantage. I mean, they have to be a kid person.

Tony Smith: 40:30

Some people are not, but, yes, most people yes, I find that they're more interested in my kids once they meet them, because especially um, uh, do you have a boy or a girl? I have a girl, I have all girls. I have, yeah, I have three girls, so they go, I have two girls and man they can.

Vipul Bindra: 40:38

They're very loving, so you know absolutely like always like oh, they're so cute, you know and stuff like that and it can be a you know a fun, you know distraction or whatever yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm just gonna start testing that um theory out.

Tony Smith: 40:52

I'm gonna start taking her on um business um calls with me, uh, in person, and I have a 16, uh nine and one okay, so the 16 year old you're talking about taking with you, no, the one year old. Oh, the one year old, the one year old, because, like I said at that point, you know, everybody just loves playing with little kids in age right?

Vipul Bindra: 41:10

how are you that? That must be difficult to manage. Well, I'm black um and that's that will be.

Tony Smith: 41:15

Does it kind of will be it just means, you know, we just have a wide range of just kids. You know you might. You might have a 25 year old and a one year old. You might have a 30, 15, 6, 7, 8 and in a newborn. You know it's just. You know we, you know we're the type of people that just just have kids at random times. You know you just ain't no structure to it.

Tony Smith: 41:37

You just hey, I'm just saying, my family is huge. I have uncles, that's, you know, 10 years younger than me, you know so it's just, but hey, it works, it works, it works, it.

Vipul Bindra: 41:45

I have uncles, that's, you know, 10 years younger than me, you know. So it's just, but hey, it works, it works, it works, it works. I mean that's awesome, I don't know. So, hey, maybe advise me, because the biggest because my daughters are obviously foreign and like, the biggest scary thing is a girl. Like I said, I love my girls, but it scares me already.

Tony Smith: 41:59

I'm like dealing with a 16 year old it's, it ain't too bad, even though the whole communication is, you know it's iffy sometimes because, you know, since you don't want to always talk to dad and always want to be around and you know it's it's one of the things where you just got to get them on space and just let them know that you are there. You know what I'm saying because they, you know, they're going through their own personal lives with their own personal friends and and school and boys and trying to understand college and just figure out life. You know, just let them know that you're there but at the same time, give them independence to where they can go through and, and you know, but with their own person it's so crazy for me because that, like I said, the older ones eight, and then 16, it's literally doubled.

Vipul Bindra: 42:41

So eight year difference they become like currently my daughter wants uh, not one minute away from me, you know right, and she wants to only talk like so, talk to me all the time, be around me all the time, and you're telling me, in eight years she'll want nothing to do with me, I'll leave it at long one day.

Tony Smith: 42:55

At long, I'll say about three or four more years. It'll be about hit, about 12. That's when it's gonna start.

Vipul Bindra: 43:01

That sounds so crazy to think about that. It's such a huge difference, right, that they're like oh, I want nothing to do with your dad because it comes become.

Tony Smith: 43:09

It just becomes, you know, with school. You know a lot of influence around you know, junior high, high school. That's a huge influence and they just get that, get that in them. Just depend on the person too, because sometimes you know, they, they, they take on that and then try to rebel and try to be a different person than who they really are. But if you're in their life and you have that deep, you know, same core within them, then they'll be the same person and they know who you are. So that's something I try to instill in them Just be who you are. Don't try to conform to the crowd. Be your own person If you don't fit in at one point, because people will try to gravitate towards you know, you know, towards you at one point in life. You know don't, you might be popular in high school, but you will be in 30 years you know. So it's just one of them things to where.

Tony Smith: 43:51

Don't try to, you know, be everybody's friend, cause everybody's an instant. It's not likable. Everybody's not your friend, so stick to yourself, and if everybody doesn't like you, that's fine one, or two friends, you'll be okay all right, that, that's well said, my friend.

Vipul Bindra: 44:09

Uh, let's go to back to weddings for a second. I want to know more about indian weddings.

Tony Smith: 44:13

So you filmed one, right, yeah, how many have you filmed? I filmed one, okay, how?

Vipul Bindra: 44:17

was that experience? How many days was it?

Tony Smith: 44:20

uh. So I had a shout out my guy Ed's with Ed's studio. I mean not Ed's studio, anton's studio, that's my guy. He does a ton of weddings here in Florida, probably one of the premier Indian wedding videographers video guys out here. So he hired me for one. He was double booked and he needed a couple of help Helps for one.

Vipul Bindra: 44:47

We went down to Naples to film it. It was a three-day event.

Tony Smith: 44:49

It was three days yeah, it was three days. Uh, again I'm coming in. I didn't do my research so I didn't know exactly what I was looking for. He told me three, three days. I was like, okay, that's a long, long time for a wedding.

Tony Smith: 44:58

I'm like it's a short wedding yeah, and you know, and just not realizing the actual time for each day, each day is as long as well. Yeah, so we're talking about 10 12 hour days as well, throughout the day. So it's it. So it was interesting because, you know, I'm not used to it. So coming in to seeing all the people and and just seeing how everything is structured and and it's totally different than a regular american wedding it's totally different like what type of indians they were or no no, okay, because you know indians are also massive country and massive amount of different, very different weddings.

Vipul Bindra: 45:33

Yeah, yeah okay.

Tony Smith: 45:34

So my biggest take from that was realizing that in india, as you know that, the wedding is like the holy grail of if of is it. It's like that's how you show people that you know you kind of got money, or or or like yeah, your status, your status in life. Yeah, so, that's so. That's the biggest thing in america. It's just like, okay, you want to have a party, but they do it a thousand times bigger than we do. It, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not even close.

Vipul Bindra: 46:00

Did they treat you well? Did they give you some good food? Oh yeah, the food was amazing.

Tony Smith: 46:03

the food was amazing. The food was amazing. Everybody was super nice. You know everybody, but it's weird because you have to understand what's going on, because each group is doing something different throughout the whole day yeah.

Tony Smith: 46:15

You know, it ain't just like a wedding where you're sitting there, you got the reception, you got the ceremony, you got the speeches. You have that, but then at the same time, speeches you have that, but then at the same time you have a group of women over here doing something totally different. Got the kids over there doing something different. You got the pastor saying something on mic, and then he said something on mic. Everybody just looks right back at him this and yes, agree, and then go back to what they're doing. I'm like what does? What'd he say?

Vipul Bindra: 46:38

because you know so.

Tony Smith: 46:40

And then he was just like. He told me one thing he's like don't stop shooting never, turn the camera off, never turn it off.

Tony Smith: 46:47

I'm like I don't have that many started, uh, I mean sd cards on me. I don't know how long to shoot, you know. You know, uh, so, shooting, for the one day I filled up four sd cards, four 256 terabyte, I mean, uh, gb cards, and I had to spend that whole night dumping them. And you know, as you know, uh, I was trying to do it on my laptop. You know, most people don't have terabyte or plus hard drive, so I was trying to.

Vipul Bindra: 47:15

You know, you know that one so I'm trying to go run and get an emergency?

Tony Smith: 47:18

no, because it was closed again. I didn't get home till about one o'clock in the morning to be to then get right back up at 6 to be right back over there. So at the time I had Dropbox. I'm trying to dump it to Dropbox online, but I'm using a Wi-Fi through the hotel.

Vipul Bindra: 47:33

And we know how slow that is.

Tony Smith: 47:35

That wouldn't get done by then for hours, man, so it didn't get done until 4 that morning.

Vipul Bindra: 47:40

So you didn't get much sleep.

Tony Smith: 47:41

I didn't get no sleep Because I was so weary that, oh man, this ain't gonna load this ain't gonna end on file, so it went through I was doing a dump and I did that for the three days I'm like I need to invest in 12 more cards.

Tony Smith: 47:53

Yeah, no, you needed to have a copy much faster yeah, but I was doing it and I was doing both. I had an sd card, but then I well, I was also double. I was also double, uh, backing up, because just in case the hard drive failed at some point, I wanted to make sure I had it, you know best of all stored.

Vipul Bindra: 48:07

No, that's very smart.

Tony Smith: 48:09

So again, indian wedding, all day event, you know, and and it's shocking because they don't talk throughout any wedding Like the bride and groom don't really talk. You know, they're just really there just showcasing their love, and people come show them love and the pastor's talking, and so it was just like I'm taking it all in and just trying to understand what to film and what not to film. And you know, can I step on this rug? No, you can't step on that rug. Okay, you can't step on that rug. Okay, I can't go around this way. So it was a lot of rules to understand. You can't just show up and shoot one without having somebody who's there to teach you.

Vipul Bindra: 48:48

That's a good point that you're saying. It may be good to actually watch a couple of videos that somebody else has made, I guess, to get an idea. And the funny thing is, like I said on my side, I'm telling you there's like different, completely different types. Obviously it may still be a big party, yeah, but different types of Indian weddings. So you may learn about one. And then you're like, oh, I'm ready for the next one, and then you go, it's a different culture, their customs may be different.

Tony Smith: 49:15

And then now you're like oh, I feel like I'm saying it right, but it was a great time, you know, and what I realized with them, one of the biggest things is the intro. I guess I actually forgot the name of it, but when the groom comes into the venue or wherever he's coming from, it's like a parade that they do with him. And he has the car. He might have a Lamborghini, he might have a Rolls Royce.

Vipul Bindra: 49:39

He might have a Lamborghini, he might have a Rolls Royce, he might have a, or they come in a horse.

Tony Smith: 49:41

Or they come in a horse, or they come in a horse. No, he had a. I forgot what he had, but he came in with that, with the people, with the drums and you know, it's the whole parade.

Vipul Bindra: 49:56

It's like a mile long and they meet right there and that's very important to film. Yeah, you don't want to miss that, so it's if.

Tony Smith: 50:01

I can, it's, I say it's. If you think American weddings are tense and and and and very, you know, nerve wracking feminine any wedding is 10 times worse because.

Tony Smith: 50:14

So you, we know that because of how it's trafficking, the redness are already. You know, they're already in million dollar places that you know people, you know, I had people. Well, he told me that he had people who who um around a whole hotel and he had and they told the hotel to change out all the carpet in the in the hotel because they didn't like the carpet in it and they paid a hotel to change the carpet out just for just for just for a couple days, you know.

Tony Smith: 50:41

So I know I said, but again, as as I was there, I was talking to the other videographers and other photographers and they was telling me, because they do this for a living, it was like, yeah, uh, this, this and that, and this is the biggest thing, and you know, they save since birth, you know, for the child, since birth, for, uh, you know, uh, for this point. You know this is again to show their wealth, to show so they love and they say since birth, for this, uh, for this reason, and everybody's, there is somebody, you know. As you know, indians are always either a doctor, lawyer, you know, there's some high profession you guys are amazing.

Vipul Bindra: 51:16

That's what I'm trying to say you guys were amazing that I am not a doctor, engineer, I'm not.

Tony Smith: 51:21

Oh, but you're made more than them right now. So we already know that. You know you're right there along. You know, right there along with them.

Vipul Bindra: 51:26

Tell that to my parents. My mom is just like you're, not a doctor engineer.

Tony Smith: 51:31

As you know exactly. So you know all the gifts that they're able to receive and if you ever have a chance to just experience one, just to go to one, go to it, just so you can see the difference in culture and how they treat it. You know we treat it here as like, yeah, like it's a big thing, but to them it's that. That is the thing you know, I loved it. To them, that is the thing you know. I loved it, you know, even though it was super stressful, super, super high stress, and it was just like because, again, my first one, so I didn't know what really to expect.

Vipul Bindra: 52:13

But after doing it just like oh man, this is cool. It's awesome that you've experienced an Indian wedding You've even filmed it, which is even crazy. Because you know at least when you're attending it you could just eat and have fun.

Tony Smith: 52:24

Well, even with the eating was weird to me because I didn't know that the men eat first.

Tony Smith: 52:29

Oh yeah, the men eat first, which just stole me, stole me completely off. So I got in line, just thinking, not thinking who's in line with me. I got in line and then I gave my wife the plate because I'm like, let me go get you a food. So she's eating as I'm looking around. I'm like no other female is eating. Um, hold on, give me the plate back. I don't know what's going on, you know so. So I slid it back and and, like a guy came up like that's okay, is this okay? Yeah, I'm like, yeah, it's like it was weird because, like the men eat before the women and children and just like, oh, this is this is different, okay, I don't know if that's common, at least I again.

Vipul Bindra: 53:00

Uh, I'm used to punjabi weddings where everyone just eats okay, yeah, it was, it threw me off. You eat and you drink and you party. It's a crazy party. So that's what I'm saying. It's slightly different, I'm not used to that, but again, I don't. I don't like indian weddings because it's too much for me. I'm uh, you know, as you can, can tell I'm very low key in terms of that, so to me they've always been like hyper, but the food is awesome.

Tony Smith: 53:23

The food is amazing.

Vipul Bindra: 53:24

I have in mind attending them because I'm like I can eat the food, but that's great. So now, obviously, I don't do weddings. That's great that you got your start with weddings, and I know for a fact you've done commercial and corporate work, which is again what I love to do. And tell me about the switch in that and now, currently at least, are you focusing more on weddings or you just want to do both?

Vipul Bindra: 53:52

so first, tell me how do you go from weddings to like building a brand video or whatever with someone, and then again, which one did you like better? So the switch came from after, to like building a brand video or whatever with someone, and then again, what, which one did you like better.

Tony Smith: 54:02

So the switch came from after the Indian wedding because it's like, oh, okay, this is a lot. I don't know if I can do this every time. Um, even though knowing how much you can make doing any witness, like yeah, that's that sounds amazing Like you can make a ton of money doing Indian weddings. So it came from like I said.

Tony Smith: 54:20

After that I took a break because, again, I wasn't doing this full-time, this ain't my full-time job, so it wasn't like I needed to do it. I was just doing it to help. You know, he'll always call me for certain things. He'll do a lot of weddings, not Indian weddings, but regular weddings, and I'll do those. And it was just like, okay, they're cool, but it's not really my lane, like I'll still do one today. If somebody called me, asked me for help or they needed to do one, I'll do it. But it was like, okay, that's not really what I want to do.

Tony Smith: 54:50

Um, so I kind of took a break and just trying to just start researching about different you know, video industries and different uh services that we offer. And it's like, okay, I think I like the corporate world if I can, or documentaries. Um. So ironically, one of my wife's friends contacted me because she wanted to do a documentary on her life. Basically, um, for the month of october, which is natural stillbirth, uh, month of readiness for, you know, pregnancy month and um, she wanted to do a documentary on her life, about what she went through, her struggles as far as getting pregnant and trying to conceive and all that and losing babies and all that. So I went out there and did a documentary for her and just fell in love with it. It was kind of like a one-day, half-day type shoot and put together a whole documentary for her.

Tony Smith: 55:34

Yeah, like a little short, put that together and I kind of just fell in love with the process of this. Actually a story. You know it's different than I mean a witness the story, but at the same time it's kind of already structured the way it's supposed to be structured. But when you're actually creating the video, creating the scenes and creating, you know the story. You know it's different because now you're putting your own spin on it, you're able to put your hands on it and actually make it something that's different. Um, so I put that together and and everybody loved it. Oh man, this is amazing.

Tony Smith: 56:07

Like you told the story, they was crying and all this. I'm like, yeah, when you feel that emotion, again it goes back to my high school days when I was able to, you know, bring in emotion because, because people nowadays don't understand the difference, the importance of the music and and audio and video. It's really better, it's really more important than a video. If you got, you know, great audio. You know, we know this because we watch crime shows all the time, where they will just show you a picture of a pothole with a person over talking it.

Vipul Bindra: 56:35

You know, and you're intrigued, you know so you know and you're intrigued, you know, so you know. No, I always say, as again, as a dp camera operator director, first, you know, um, it's the lighting and the audio that makes the video, not the camera people need to stop obsessing over cameras. But yeah, go ahead yeah.

Tony Smith: 56:51

So so doing that and you know the process was interesting because, like I said, I never did it before, so I was just trying to understand because you know you come through with your own questions. You know there's there's no set standard for a documentary. You're like, okay, this x, x, y and z x, this x, this, ask that, do this, do that. Everything's off your business and your own merit and and and how you feel, and you go off of what their responses are and you pay off for that. You know you might have a whole list of questions that you might never get to ask because they're going so deep into stuff and and you just keep trying to, you know, bring in, bring out that emotion and and all that, which is a better story anyway than what you probably had in your head. Yeah, so that's how kind of how it happened and it's like just kept pulling, kept pulling and then editing processes. You know how do I structure this to make it coherent and completely different than I'm guessing of editing, right?

Vipul Bindra: 57:39

oh no, totally different, totally different.

Vipul Bindra: 57:40

More videography, I would say, and documentary is more filmmaking right because in wedding you can I mean some you can put lights, but most likely you can't control lighting. You can't control, um, you know, like you said, structure, so you're just telling the day or whatever in just a nice way. Yeah, versus um, documentary, sure, the settings and the stuff, but it's completely different, like you said, the sound and the stuff, but it's completely different. Like you said, the sound and the lighting is going to make it far more different every time, based on how you do it, than the filming part of it. So it's a completely different challenge, right?

Tony Smith: 58:12

Completely different challenge. And then again I'm not researching, just kind of going on my own thoughts and processes. It's like, okay, how do I think this is a look, or how do I think this would, you know, make sense? You know, do I feel emotional watching it? You know, if I could feel emotional watching it as a man? And now it is, I know the females are going to just fall into putty you know what I'm saying with you know doing that and and that just sparked a whole nother you know thing in me to be like, okay, I love, I love, I love this work right here Going cause we went into this which got me into you know more of the corporate work, to where I was able to, you know, get a contract with another friend who actually worked with me at the time, up a um which is kind of weird to say, but it was a sewing conference like sewing like knitting and wow and crocheting.

Tony Smith: 59:03

There's a conference of that conference.

Tony Smith: 59:05

There's a conference, so when she approached me but I'm like, what you mean by sewing like, like, yeah, sewing like, sewing like machine sewing, like making bags and all I'm like, okay, well, yeah, I can, I can shoot that. You know she was creating an event or she had already created and she was just trying to get more promotion, more, um, more, uh, promotion out there for for the events, because she had one prior and then she's like, okay, trying to get bigger, for the next year is coming, so she needed promotion for it. So I came out, shot some stuff, we did a little small promotion video. She loved it.

Tony Smith: 59:37

So then she was doing a three-day event. She started doing three-day events every year, um, and she needed event coverage for that um, so I started doing her events for that three-day, three-day events for that. And it was like it was different, because I'm coming from documentary, I'm coming from wedding and now I'm at a sewing conference with you know, a wide range of women, you know. So know you're talking about young kids to old ladies. They're all sitting here and I come in with the You're telling me, men don't sew.

Tony Smith: 1:00:07

No, there's a few men there, there's a few there, but most of them were there with their wives. So it wasn't like they were there by themselves, they were there with their wives and like, well, I'm here, let me try this as well. So, uh, so. So I did that and and it was amazing experience because it was totally out of my bubble, totally out of my realm it's like I didn't even know this word even existed. You know, it's like man, you, you can make money doing this, like, yeah, so I'll be in there and seeing these old ladies and these kids in there make actual handbags from scratch, like I see the fabric, I'll come by, I film the fabric and then I'll come back a few, a few hours later and it's already into a handbag and I'm just like you made that from that. You made that's an actual, real handbag. Yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:00:49

You know, and they're making shoes and they're making. You know, it was just, it was just amazing. It's like and it's weird because I said I'm the only you know big black guy there. So the first year was real timid because you know they're like who are you, why are you here? Why is the camera in my face, why is this and that? And I got a lot of pushback from the actual attendees because I was like hey, I want to be filmed and I don't want to be this on camera, because I guess they're also the first time being there and they were kind of nervous about how to do it, cause they asked a lot of questions and they don't want to feel like slow or dumb on camera. But I'm like, I'm trying to tell you like you know, everything that I put in there won't be what you think it is. I can edit the film to make, but you know I got a lot of pushback from that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:01:38

And then how do you encounter, like, how do you counter the pushback? What's the approach that you take?

Tony Smith: 1:01:44

For me. I just try to be personable. You know, I try to be friendly and try to make them smile, make them laugh and just let them know that, hey, this ain't what you think it is, you know. But at the same time I also respect their boundaries. At the same time I also respect their boundaries. So I would just be like, okay, I understand, and then I'd move to somebody else.

Tony Smith: 1:02:03

You know it's a big conference. You know the first one that I attended, you know they had at least, I want to say, 400 people there. You know 400 people. So I have a ton of people to go to to get more footage from.

Tony Smith: 1:02:10

So once they see that I'm interacting with other people and they're laughing, they're, you know, psychic, kind of loosen up, like, okay, maybe he's not as bad as I thought it was, and then they'll loosen up and make me, you know, in the next class, might come up to me and talk to me now and say something so, um, that was the first year. The first year was interesting because I said, I'm just trying to get used to it, you know like that. But but the second year that we did it was totally different, because now that everybody knows who I am now people. As I walk in the door, people scream my name hey, tony, how you doing? You know so now, it's that, you know so now. People want to be on camera now. People want to show their work, people want to be this and that.

Tony Smith: 1:02:46

That's so awesome and I just know you so yeah, it's an amazing feeling, because now all the new people who were there for that year are looking like, oh okay, so now that same 10 minutes is already gone already because, you know it can already be more effective.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:00

Exactly.

Tony Smith: 1:03:01

So now I can be right here in your face. Yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:03:03

And you're smiling and laughing without being like, oh my gosh, go back, like you know. So now I can get those nice close-up shots and you know, if I don't have my 85 or 200 on there, I can be right there in your face with a 50, and you know, and you're laughing and smiling, you know, and and we started setting up interview um stations as well, to where we can talk to the people attendees, and and and like get their experience and how that. So before that they wouldn't do it because they didn't know. And and they're like no, I don't want to talk, I don't want to be on camera, but but, but the whole second year it's like, oh yeah, let's go where you at again, you're over there. Okay, give me five minutes, I'll be over there. You know. So it was, it was. You know, it's just for me telling us and to other people, just like, just be personal, like just be nice. You know, just be kind. When people see you smiling, they smile, and when we see you having fun, they having fun.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:51

So you just got to be that person on set and then just be who you are, you know and as a filmmaker man, I love because, sure, obviously I love lighting and sound and all that, like I said, love doing talking head.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:03

But what I love about conferences is living in Orlando.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:06

We're like like Vegas, we're a big conferences, learning what the stuff like every conference for everything, like from antivirus software to like I don't know, like from antivirus software to like um I don't know, uh, needles, like one of the ones I attended was for literally a flooring conference and I was there 10 hours listening to like sub floors of freaking 200 types and I'm like I would have never known that there was so many products for one purpose and from so many different companies and they're all you know coming up and talk about how their products are the right solution.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:41

Anyway, what I'm saying is it's like I at least love that that it can never get boring, because even though conferences are pretty much same thing you do for you know most of them, like you said, you know you're creating maybe a recap, video, cap sessions or whatever, but what keeps is interesting is because every time it's like something going on it's random once we covered, like a beyblade competition. You know what I'm saying is like it's so random what you're gonna find it. It can never get boring and and that was amazing to me and, like I said, I didn't even know there was a sewing uh conference. But then I'm like, why am I weirded?

Tony Smith: 1:05:17

out into so many. No, it's amazing because that also lets you know that. You know, people think that the market is saturated. It really is not. You know you, it's so many, it's so much work out there that you don't even know that, you can't even tap into because you don't even understand. Yeah, and you don't even know that market. You know it's crazy. Yeah, until you get to.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:34

That's what I'm saying. Stop worrying about and not to you, but I'm saying in general, people should stop worrying about uh, there's not enough work, or who has what work.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:42

Don't be concerned about that, you know, don't be envious, just just go do it. And then go make these contacts because you'll be amazed what all is happening, especially in your town, or especially especially in our town, where it's like there's literally every day tens of conferences happening and for all sorts of random things that you are not even thinking about right now, and plus it makes it fun Right Like that sewing thing I'm pretty sure you're not into sewing, but you had a lot of fun with that right, definitely, definitely a lot of fun.

Tony Smith: 1:06:12

I say because it brings you out of your comfort zone. You know, I was again. I was timid as well the first time because I didn't know what to expect and I didn't know what I was walking into. But by the second, the third, fourth year, it's like oh man, like I know how to do this. Like you got to put that one on top of that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:28

So then you know I'm going to take a class. You know what I'm saying. You're building this space. Excuse me, talk about that Flooring. I was like I know exactly the subfloor.

Tony Smith: 1:06:37

I'm going to pick. You know what I mean. It's so funny.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:39

I would have never thought about it. I'm like how do I know this?

Tony Smith: 1:06:41

Yeah, you were like using the wrong pen. You did the eight pen out of ten. Just change that out. Exactly right, and we're not even trying to learn.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:52

We're obviously trying to do what we're there to do, which is art. But back Last year, with my buddy Adam, we filmed so many of these EMS conferences or whatever. Now, like every time, I'm like I'm not a doctor or medical expert, but like sometimes I'm like, oh, they need CPR or whatever. Right, you know what I mean. It's like you start to think of these extra things that you never thought about or you're learning on the back of your mind. So, like I said, I love it. It's always interesting, and that's another avenue to make such a killer living that people don't even think about. Yeah, Anyway, coming back. So which one do you like better? Now you've done weddings.

Tony Smith: 1:07:28

You've done kind of like a mini documentary.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:30

You've done conferences and corporate work or whatever. So what do you prefer? Where are you headed towards? What do you see your future? Do you see quitting your job becoming full-time over the video, or are you happy where you are?

Tony Smith: 1:07:43

I kind of want to know what you're leaning towards so right now I'm doing a lot of uh, more commercial work. Right now I'm working with a couple businesses right now, to you know, get up there promotional as far as um, not event coverage but more for their seasonal products. That I'm doing a lot of. We just did a holiday commercial shoot and now we're going to do a valentine's day and just trying to get um I think alex uh minor told me this you know, call it a digital, digital business card.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:16

You know brand video or brand video there you go talk to alex yeah, I'm gonna have him in a few weeks excited uh.

Tony Smith: 1:08:23

So I'm doing a lot of those, you know, basically because you know like the concept is like basically who you are. You know you make great products but nobody knows who you are, so doing a lot of those. Um, my main thing now is that I want to get into is, um, not testimonials, I do those, but do a lot of trainings. I want to get into trainings as far as internal trainings for companies. I just feel like that's the same line as documentary work for me, because you kind of can, you know, make the script how you kind of want it, but same time, with their input, and you know make it a little different. And again, training is also where the money is. You know it's residual. You know you make it. You know you get a nice size company that's doing a lot of training. You can make a killer living. Yeah, just in that one department I love making courses, you know.

Tony Smith: 1:09:11

So, as you know, it's one of those things where it, you know, like the giving keeps giving. You know, and if you make one for one company I mean department other department needs training videos and it just keeps recycling. The next year you need new ones and it just Exactly Plus you're making them less boring because the amount of companies.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:28

I've seen their training videos, man, that put people to sleep at the end of the company. You have to understand, you know, and and I'm sure you get this at this point but like they're spending a lot of money training people, right, last thing they want is the person to have to retrain an employee. That costs way more money and then having to also the churn right the employees that they're not good at the job because they slept through the training. Having to rehire and then retrain people. So it's a lot more ROI for them to train the current hires better. And the best way to do that is to make more effective training videos.

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:06

And the type of training videos that existed, at least in the past, were so boring and that people would either go to sleep or the videos didn't exist at all. And here now we can come in, we can make them effective, we can can make them entertaining but at the same time very information dense, so the companies can save so much money and then we can make so much money and everyone. It's a win-win situation and they get less churn because the employees actually wanted to watch those videos and they actually did better, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:35

I love training videos and it's a different way to think, because, Because initially, you know, my thinking was oh, they're not, it's not sales, right? How do I capture ROI? Because my whole thing is let me make you money right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:46

And I'm like but how do I sell them? They're not making money. You have to go the other route. You have to think remember hours saved is also money, roi, exactly Because that's money you didn't spend. You know money. Say, a penny saved is a penny earned, right? So so it's a different perspective, but it's the same thing ultimately, right? Yeah, so that's great that you're thinking that. So it seems like weddings are a thing of the past I say it's a thing that passed.

Tony Smith: 1:11:10

But again, if somebody approaches me, says they need one, the price is gonna be crazy. And if you say, yeah, I'll shoot it. I might outsource it though so there's always a number it's always a number. There's always a number. Trust me, you shoot one too. Somebody came to you and said 20 000 no number, I have no number for. So somebody offered you 50 000 for a wedding center.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:32

Wow, okay, here's what I'll do.

Tony Smith: 1:11:33

I'm a business owner you're gonna take it in the outsourcing right absolutely, absolutely.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:40

And then I'll say, tony, we need a wedding here uh, can you wear a bender shirt and? Go make this happen, but normally no, I, I generally don't even want to cut because at the end date that's not what we do. Right, my whole branding is you know, we. We make awesome videos for businesses, so why would I?

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:56

uh, you know want to entertain, because I'm lying, I'm saying no now I'm doing that and I've never done them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:03

Plus, like I said, I don't want to do them. It's never intrigued me. Plus, I consider my I don't know, this is going to ruffle some feathers. I consider myself a filmmaker and if I can't control lighting, which I know again.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:14

On the other side, I can't control lighting that much anyway, but my whole thing with vetting was always like I can't really control much. You know, uh, and uh, you know, and obviously I'm not gonna ruin their day, right, I'm supposed to be, uh, letting them have the best day. I was like I don't fit there as my style of filmmaking and I'm letting other people who are experts that were good at that do that. Um, but anyway, but yes, so there's no number, but if there is a huge number, then I'm calling you and taking the cut, uh, but coming back to so that's good, though, man and there's nothing wrong.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:43

Like I said, I love getting videographers. I respect them. I know a bunch of my friends do this, so hey, hats off to them yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:12:50

So for me, like I said, weddings kind of because yeah, I like structure, like you said, I like I like structure, you know, you can, you know I know, um, people now are kind of getting to uh, they're calling in uh documentary style, uh weddings people doing now if I had to get a you know a bedding video made or whatever for me.

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:08

I would love to get one of those.

Tony Smith: 1:13:10

Yeah, they're very intriguing, yeah, so yeah, so people are doing that nowadays, but to me it's still a wedding at the end of the day. But again, I like structure, I like sitting down. Let's come up with a script, let's, let's. Let's come with an actual plan. Let's set up the lighting, let's set up. Okay, let's do another take, let's. I love that fact. Um, so again, I'll shoot a wedding.

Tony Smith: 1:13:28

Somebody comes to me, but that's the thing in the past, me, right now, I want to focus on corporate. I want to focus on, you know again, get into some um, doc work can. But, yeah, my main focus right now is corporate because it's it's it's easier and structured. You know, a lot more lenient. You know when, uh, with their time and and and and effort, you know you can, you can, you can kind of. You know again, you know when, my time being limited, you know what I have. You know, going to corporate world, just just you know, going to corporate world, just just. You know, just to me makes more sense. You know I'm able to book, you know, out. You know, let's do a friday shoot. Okay, great, that sounds amazing.

Tony Smith: 1:14:04

You know, with a wedding, you know it really all depend on when the venue is open. You know, okay, I only have, you know, tuesday open. Well, I guess we don't know tuesday wedding, you know so, you know. So you know, it's one of those things like now, now I gotta shove everything around and do all this and that. But you know, if you look at so, you know it's one of those things like, well, now I got to shove everything around and do all this and that. But you know, if you look at my calendar, you know you only see Fridays, saturdays, sunday. Well, that's the only days you can choose from you know, so yeah, so that's my main focus right now.

Tony Smith: 1:14:40

And as far as staying with the job at the moment, I'll probably stay just because I'm able to, you know, do it right now with the way I'm working. But if I, if I'm able to get to a point to where I can for me, I always said I have to triple my income to leave. You know, it has to be more than triple. But then, at the same time, if I hit triple, I'm like well, shoot, why would I leave when I can make?

Tony Smith: 1:14:56

you know what I'm saying so it's like now I can add both. You know, it's like one of the things where, you know, it was always triple my number as far as my salary goes, with video. So at the same time, if I do hit triple, one thing I do want to do is try my wife first, you know, let her be able to, you know, do things that she wanted to do, and then just let me keep turning that burden on. As far as that, oh my goodness.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:26

You're making all of us look bad. No, I don't know.

Tony Smith: 1:15:29

I mean, I ain't trying to man you, just you. Just different, different lives, that's all it is.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:34

No, but that's great man. That means, like I said, I respect that you're, which I mean. Family is everything to me, that you know. You're putting your family first and your goal is hey, I'm going to retire my wife first, then I'm going to maybe retire myself.

Tony Smith: 1:15:49

Yeah, because you know you just try to find your lane man. That's all I'm trying to do, you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:54

So 3X is the number right.

Tony Smith: 1:16:00

Yeah, for me, me it's always been 3x, but again once you hit the 3x you're looking like yeah, let's look at the.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:03

To be real, I think again. What your job is sounds pretty cool too. But if you look at the business side of it, if in three days of the week you can 3x hypothetically in this right, and if you do it four times, how much more can you know there's no ceiling to this right?

Tony Smith: 1:16:18

it's that give and take. It's like well, you able to make that much money only doing a weekend work. What if you did this full time? How much money can you make again? Nothing is guaranteed. You know you can have three hundred thousand one. You're gonna lose all your clients next year.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:32

I'll give that I know, I mean, I don't know where that going. Well, I'm just you know, yeah anything happened with the world.

Tony Smith: 1:16:39

You know anything happened. So it's just, you know, for me it's always been you know. I want to say not for us being scared, but at the same time it's just having that comfort of always knowing that you have a fallback, you know, and it's always there to make sure that I have something there for them no-transcript successful people in the industry.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:31

And then by the time I did that, uh, and all the advice they gave me I was like, oh, I had already figured it out. It just took me years of stumbling to get there. And had I had information like this man, I could have done this years ago. But either way, I finally got here and I'm like I don't change anything because obviously it's been an incredible journey. But no, so you never know.

Tony Smith: 1:17:52

I'm saying when you go through time, but at the same time again if you're not miserable at your job, you're making a great living.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:59

Why even quit?

Tony Smith: 1:18:00

right so.

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:01

I see that perspective. See, on one side I'm like I would never go back to a 9-to-5. That's literally my driving force, that as long as I can do this and not go to a 9-to-5, I'll do this forever. But then, at the same time, I'm like, ooh, if I was doing something cool like that, maybe why quit? You know, especially if you're happy you know it's a personal thing you can do both. I mean, you are the perfect example of you can do both and you are doing both and uh, seems to be like it's working really well right, yeah, I mean.

Tony Smith: 1:18:29

Well, that's all I'm suggesting. Really well, I don't know about really well, but hey, I'm surviving okay what does that mean?

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:39

I want to know so. So to me on the outside side is like you have a good job right that pays decent. Then you're making a decent you know rates because most people are trying so, just so you know, the, the typical people I talk to who are starting in this or not successful in this thing, they're struggling to even charge 5k for a video, right, and you obviously, obviously crossed that barrier doing this part time, so charging big numbers isn't really seems like your struggle, right uh.

Tony Smith: 1:19:05

So what is your struggle?

Vipul Bindra: 1:19:06

let's talk about so what struggles are you facing right now?

Tony Smith: 1:19:08

I would say it's always a struggle just because everybody's different. You know, just because you did it one time don't mean that's to be their constant. Unless you're constantly booking, then you can constantly charge that. But every industry is different. Every, every customer is different. Um so my biggest struggle, yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:19:25

So my biggest struggle is again you, just as everybody is just, you know, getting constant customers.

Tony Smith: 1:19:31

Uh, so my biggest thing now is I would love to get retainers, um, try to get away from the one-off clients just doing videos and then kind of you know, pitching them something in it, like no, I'm okay, I don't need that, but then. So now I was just trying to get it. You know, retainers try to get away from the one-off clients just doing videos and then kind of you know pitching them something and they're like, nah, I'm okay, I don't need that, but then. So now it's just trying to get it. You know, retainers trying to get you know, basically, uh, basically month to month customers or year to year customers, if we can.

Tony Smith: 1:19:50

So my struggle right now is, you know, just getting that consistent work as far as customers. You know it ain't always, you're not always shooting and always. So my biggest thing is just getting that consistent work, getting a consistent client. We're not clients, but me. I personally would love to have, you know, anywhere between five to fifteen real personal customers to where I'm working with them every single month and we're just doing that. You know it's having to have the every single month, every single week, trying to find somebody new, trying to find something different.

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:21

Yeah, and that's not even realistic, like I said and talk about what I was just mentioning. So when I found out, um, you know, because initially when you look at you know maybe whoever you're you're looking forward to like, oh, I want to be like that. You see, it's a dp that they're constantly, you know, working, it's a production company that's constantly making. So you think, uh, you know the realistic ways. Every month I'm going to find 10 50 new clients the thing is it's not realistic.

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:44

I mean, uh, literally the most common thread. I found anyone I'm talking people making anyone that I found that makes seven figures or more in this, doing this in the corporate and commercial world. They have like top four to five clients that pay like 80 of their their revenue and then the one off or the maybe a couple of month of repeat clients only pay like the bottom 10 to 20% of the revenue. And when I compared I was like, oh, that was very similar to me. You're just we're all chasing those same you know, retainer or repeat clients Because at the end, the idea again that 10, 15 new clients with 10, 15 big projects are coming every other month or every month um, you know, out of the blue, and you're going to be able to close those deals. Do pre-production, do production to push for like everything that we need to do it's unrealistic and anyone's thinking that's possible.

Vipul Bindra: 1:21:32

I don't know anyone. If you were that like, I want to talk to you because I don't know anyone who's doing that?

Vipul Bindra: 1:21:36

um, you know it's so. Like you said, that's the perfect thing that you're chasing, because that is the realistic way to make good living here is to find yourself some clients that need work. Right, they need content, and you can provide the content to them. And, um, the other thing, um, and tell me if you've noticed this. A lot of people are like then but why wouldn't, if they're paying you, I don't know, two, three hundred thousand dollars of $300,000 of their budget, whatever one client, right? Why would they not just do this in-house? Because you know, what I find is because it's cost effective.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:06

Because if they, hire people right, you work, you have to give PTO you have to get healthcare. You have to get healthcare which costs money.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:17

Now you have to follow rules and regulations of how many hours they can work, plus what if you don't have work for them now. Now you need you know for a month and now you need five videos made. They can't 5X the people. You can't just hire people for a month and then fire them and plus equipment. In our industry everything's changing. Then constant training Point is it's not financially viable unless they're like a hundred million, like a very huge company. It like a hundred million, like a very huge company.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:42

It is not viable for them to have a media department and here we can offer them a million dollar media department for a fraction fraction, because we are splitting that between all our clients, right, so it doesn't make sense for them to do in-house and and we can do way better job than a one to two man video team. So it makes sense for both of us and we. We can be effective because we can split our resources among many clients. We don't get bored, uh, right, and we get to make them good content, and then they don't have to now spend so many resources hiring, training, providing help absolutely so I think it's a win-win relationship.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:14

Uh, I don't know why anyone would get in the mindset thinking that's not possible.

Tony Smith: 1:23:17

That's like those clients are out there. They're plenty. No, that's definitely out there.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:21

You know, you know and I have a few though, so I'm not, I'm like, come on, I love, I love to have some of those.

Tony Smith: 1:23:25

Yeah, um.

Tony Smith: 1:23:26

But now you know, people just don't realize how stressful it is to keep trying to find new customers you know going to b2c route you know business to customer route is is so stressful because now you're dealing with emotion sort of business and dealing with you know business. You know customers want to lowball you. Customers want everything top tier but want to pay cheap. You know business is like how much is it? Okay, great, let's go ahead and get it done. Yeah, you know it's like they like there's no hassle back and forth. I mean, yeah, they might hassle because they have budgets. But at the same time, dealing with a business with a budget versus a customer with a budget is two totally different things exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:58

Plus, they're looking at roi. Their budget isn't based like for a customer. It's like, hey, I made this much, this is all I have like, right, there's not that much flexibility. That's what their paycheck is and that's what the extra money they have to buy whatever they want to buy, or credit card, right, you know. But the point is that the business they're not looking at it from what money they have. They're looking at roi. They're thinking, hey, you know, if I spend this five grand, ten grand, whatever, whatever money they're spending with you doing this video, they all they're thinking is how much money can they make back?

Vipul Bindra: 1:24:27

from you right, and as long as they they see a positive net return and whatever the roi factor that they're looking for, they're gonna buy. It doesn't matter. I've had clients buy and and then a lot of people get in the weeds thinking about this. But I've had clients buy those brand stories and so usually the smaller ones. But that's okay, I love helping them and they've been like oh, we want a band story. They know, at least they're they're they're full buy-in. But they're like we don't have that money. And I've had them put that on their credit card and you know I wouldn't recommend that financially to anyone like I wouldn't do that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:00

But the the other side of it is they have made money because those same clients where I'm going, you know sometimes you have to back a minute. You're like what? They're just putting all this on the credit card. That means they clearly can't afford it but they want to work with me, and but then you find out like that, you know, three months later, whatever are you, because I at least like to check in with my clients, I'm like how's it going?

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:19

Man, I'm as close as a big deal. I mean 100K or 200K or whatever, and that is such a. That's why I don't think about it anymore when they're like putting this on credit card or whatever, because you don't know the money they're going to make on the back end, right?

Tony Smith: 1:25:33

They need it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:40

Yeah, you are their video person, so that's what you need to focus on and, at the end of the day, as long as you're good at what you do, they're gonna make their money tenfold or more right back, because videos work, right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:46

We just want to share the right stories with their customers who, like you said, who want to pay little. But then when they're comparing competition, they see these videos and they go. Oh, maybe I want to pay a little premium to go with this because I like the personality of this business owner. I like the products better, whatever we are, or service better, whatever we're pitching to our clients. So, um, you know, at the end of them saying sometimes these business customers will even go into debt to get your video service because they are smart enough to understand the return on their investment that they're going to get.

Tony Smith: 1:26:20

Yeah, they need again. Everybody needs video. Everybody understands. Well, businesses understand they need video, they need promotion, they need the content. Customers don't understand that. They just see dollars coming out the check and not realizing that, hey, you do own a small mom and pop store, but nobody knows you're here. So how are you supposed to get out Exactly? You know your marketing is supposed to be your biggest budget period, you know. So what do you know? Yeah, talk about that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:46

I have talked to businesses, not every business is your client and that it sometimes. Again, these are things I have. I have had to at least learn and I hope somebody doesn't have to struggle with this because, uh, I had to learn to like let go, because there's sometimes you'll meet with a business right, and initially people have no idea. Right, and it's also our environment. People don't know how much video costs because there's such variety of people.

Tony Smith: 1:27:09

There's somebody, green, you know, with a tiny camera will make it for free or 300 bucks right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:13

And then there's big companies who want million dollar commercials or nothing and there's everything in between. Um, so clients don't know a lot of times especially their small business what to expect. Uh, but I've had meetings, you know, where they're like full buy-in, they're like we want it, but then they don't have the 5, 10, 15, 20k, whatever the project is that they need the solution for them and they, and then you know you really want to help them, like ah, and then to walk away from that meeting where they were interested and you were interested and you know you could transform their business overnight with these videos. But you can't help them because they don't have the budget.

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:48

But you have to learn to also know that you know it's not you At the end of the day. Our job is to get to know them, get to figure out what the pain point in the business is and offer a solution at the best price point that you can offer it at and hopefully the customer has the buy-in and the knowledge to get it. But some clients don't. I've had it where, like I said, the meetings where they go, they know they want video but they don't understand the power of video. They go, okay, well, 20 grand, but for 20 grand I could go buy more inventory or whatever and I'm like sure that is smart business.

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:25

But you know, if you don't have anyone to buy that, then you know, and then that's where the lack of knowledge comes, and it's typically these, either new business owners or business owners who don't understand marketing and they're oh yeah, we do zero marketing and you know, and I'm like but but then how are people finding out? Because if people don't know you exist, and then people don't know what you're selling and why you're different and why to buy from you, you cannot literally physically go meet every single person, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:57

especially when you're b2c, it's what it's one thing to be b2b you can go to networking events or whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:00

But if you're b2c, it's what it's one thing to be b2b you can go to networking events or whatever, but if you're b2c your client base is huge, like you have to tell them who you are, what you stand for and why to buy from you and what your products are, or at least you know, have good photos, videos, whatever, a few products and services. And that at that point again, initially, like I said, I used to have that emotional reaction and now I'm, like I had to come to terms that, like, look, what I can do is show them right. Literally, they tell you so I'm like, okay, so you're telling me this is a problem. After you ask a few questions, right, I generally approach my meetings with like okay, tell me about it. Because they reach out right, like, so would you reach out? Okay, we want a video. Perfect, what type of video? Why do you want it? Do you have an example?

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:42

And slowly, just by asking simple questions, you'll find they'll tell you exactly the pain point yeah, oh, well, for example, like the one we were talking about. Like, well, we have inventory that's not moving. Okay, well, I mean sales, right, so why aren't you getting your sales? And then the biggest thing is well, how are you getting your current sales? Right? So maybe you can expand into that. And right, so we have to diagnose the problem.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:08

And once you do, now you see if video can fit anywhere to actually solve that problem. And once you do figure it out, you know you say, okay, now how much is that going to cost me? Right? That's the cost analysis that we're doing. And then you go, okay, well, this is what I can do. It's going to be this much or this much, and this is what we're going to do and this is how it can help you. And at that point, the, the decision is there to make like if they see, if they have the buy-in, because the other thing I found is that if they you don't have their buy-in, it doesn't matter how the awesome the video is if they don't implement it. They don't integrate it because you know, let's say, you design it to go on their website or the social media or whatever, and then they don't put it, it's not going to do anything right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:46

So you have to have total buy-in, because otherwise also you can't make a difference yeah, unless you, unless they have a amazing word of mouth yeah you know word of mouth campaign going on.

Tony Smith: 1:30:57

Yeah, you definitely need it. Everybody doesn't have that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:02

Yeah, and viral marketing can work, but you can't guarantee it. Trust me, nobody in video can guarantee it. Now, yes, there's some formulas we can follow to create, maybe, a viral marketing campaign, but still nobody can guarantee you the video will go viral.

Tony Smith: 1:31:18

No, definitely.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:19

You know what I mean. There's a lot of other factors into it than just making an awesome viral video, yeah, so you have to build a full strategy, right? Sure, viral marketing can be part of it, but it can't be all of it. You know what I mean, especially if it's not working.

Tony Smith: 1:31:36

And that's why I like B2B, just because it's not emotional, it's business. At this point, customers are emotional because it's their own personal money, businesses. They have budgets. It's the company money and, depending on the size of the business, they have to spend that money that year or they actually lose it next year.

Tony Smith: 1:31:57

So they have to spend the money and and if you're good with certain companies, they're, they'll hire you just because you know a christmas party yeah you know, and you might charge four thousand and they might give you 18, just because they have extra budget and they need to spend it, exactly you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:10

So companies will december is good month for me because sometimes they will just pay me for the next year's marketing, because they just need the write-off and they have a budget, yeah they didn't spend their advertising budget. They're like, hey, we'll apply it to 2025 because you know they need to spend it. And I'm like, absolutely please yeah uh, but yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:26

But coming back to the, uh, I want to take the other side of it. You're absolutely right. That's why I love businesses, because it's not the money, it's more the roi, but it's. But there is some emotion involved because guess what now? Now your client isn't a person, right, your client is that marketing manager or that marketing director, and for them it's emotional because now they're going. Will I look good to the boss? Yeah, they say yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:32:50

Right Now, their job depends on it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:51

Yeah, their job depends on it. Or if they've spent $8,000, $10,000 on something that you know that's not going to and they're, they're on the hook, not us. So so the emotion aspect is slightly different, because they're not thinking about the money aspect of it, they're thinking how they're gonna look, and that's why I pay huge attention on that. I am not working, um, to represent, like, like I don't care about, like my branding, like in front, like I get all the credit. That's one thing at least for me is not at all. I don't care who gets the credit for it Because, again, it's not me, it's going to be the people that I hire. I just want the marketing manager, the marketing director, to look good. And even if I'm working directly with the business, I'm like no, you take full credit, right, if this works.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:33

You go to your team and like look, see, we did this and I made this happen and then your boss goes oh wow, you know, especially if it's their marketing director, they're gonna look good and hopefully get a promotion. Because we have to remember that that's who we are working for. We're not yes, the company's paying us, but our job is to make them look good, absolutely not get the credit. Sometimes filmmakers are, and I know I did this when I was young because we wanted credit.

Tony Smith: 1:33:56

You know because we watch grow up watching movies.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:58

It's like oh, I just want my name and as soon as you can let go, especially in this corporate commercial world. Uh, because half my money comes from nda clients, where I don't even get no credit.

Tony Smith: 1:34:07

No, you can't but.

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:09

but I'm like, and now that I've let go, it doesn't matter me at all. I just want to be on cool sets and make cool content. I don't care if I get zero credit, because otherwise I wouldn't be on the sets and I wouldn't be making that money. But at the end of the day, my goal is not to have my name out there, my goal is to make that marketing agency or whoever is hiring me, look good. And as soon as you accept what your role is, I think you'll be far more successful and they'll be very fast to open their company's wallets Because remember, it's not their money, absolutely Like you said's, it's just about the. The only emotional part here is are they going to look good?

Tony Smith: 1:34:48

and as soon as they, you build that trust with them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:49

That no, I'm going to make you look good and uh for you, your company, to get the roi. So again, you look good, you're right there, you get their buy-in and then, and obviously once you give that result, coming back to our retainer and repeat client thing, I think they're they're more bound to like keep coming back because now they're like oh, I'm looking like a genius here yeah and and my boss loves me I'm about to, you know, get cfo or I don't know whatever role they're aiming for.

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:15

uh, because they're doing so great here and ultimately, again, both win, because, all because all we're trying to do is make the company money and the marketing manager's trying to do the same thing, so at the end, we're all on the same team.

Tony Smith: 1:35:28

No, absolutely, and I'm the same way as you. I don't really care too much for the accolades and the name being out there. A lot of customers ask me why don't I put my name at the end or at the beginning or throughout the video?

Tony Smith: 1:35:40

because I'm like, because it's not my video, it's your video yeah put your name and say I'm putting your company name and name and you know, at the front end of it it had nothing to do with me. I'm just a tool. You know I can care less about my name being on it because I know that the return on the back end is going to be even greater. You know, when they realize that this is a great video, and then when people come to ask you who did the video, now you can promote me and you know, and then blow me up from that point of stand.

Tony Smith: 1:36:06

You know I don't need my name to be blasted throughout your video, as if I'm, you know, trying to upshow your video.

Tony Smith: 1:36:13

Like why I need to be in a training video with corporate level media and you know saying, you know, throughout the, you know why does that matter? You know. But when they see the quality, and they see it and and you know, and they feel the emotion like oh man, who? Who did that? Like I need him, or or, or I need them, now you can go ahead and you know, and and stand on the mound and shout my name at that point, because then, once you do that, then you know there is no more. You know limitations, because now you know my income or your budget doesn't matter, because now I can charge whatever I charge and I don't have emotional attachment to it, because now you're looking at, just trying to, you know, figure out who I am.

Tony Smith: 1:36:53

So when it comes from that point of stand, you know it's great because I'm out of it emotionally too, because I said you didn't cause, I didn't approach you. You know these are, these are my prices, my price of my prices. You know, and they might contact me first Like, hey, this guy might contact you, you know, go full out, you know. Or, or you know they got money, you know. So it's one of those things too, you know it. Just it's all about the connection, is all about making you know your current customers look amazing, because that is your showcase.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:23

Talk about a very good point. You hit on like my price is the price. How are your feelings on discount, because I'm very much against any discounts.

Tony Smith: 1:37:32

Yeah, I do discounts again, just the people that I like. You know, if it's an industry that I'm trying to break into, I might do it, like this time on the first video and then after that. Then I'll go on full throttle, just so I can show you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:46

So would you tell them like would you say, okay, this is going to be $4,000 or whatever, but now I'll do it for $3,000 or whatever, or would you? Just say it's $3,000 now and the next time up the rate.

Tony Smith: 1:37:55

No because I do all proposals. So in my proposal it'll show a discount. And then once I contact them again and and uh, we actually go for proposal and I'll I'll let them know that hey, I gave you a discount this time just because I wanted to let you know that we're serious and I want to show you I'm saying I'll work and everything like that, but going forward we'll be charging full price.

Tony Smith: 1:38:15

At this point okay so there's no guessing games as far as you know. Oh, it's $3,000 now. Why is it $5,000 now? So you'll see it in my contract where it says discount 25%, discount 15% or whatever it is, and you will know that. Oh, okay, he gave me a discount, but you can see the full price there too. It just says discount and you'll be like, okay, it's $5,000 for that. He gave me this. Okay great, I okay great, I'll take it, you know. So it's like that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:40

No, that's a very smart way to approach it In my opinion, which is why I'm so glad we're having this conversation so people can hear both perspectives. My perspective is different. I'm just like I don't want to give, because if I'm giving a discount, that means to the clients I had that much margin right. Then my prices aren't my prices and again my prices are anyway too low. I need to raise my prices for what I'm providing. But ultimately, the way I do it is very simple my cost calculation I used to do, and again I have dabbled in value-based pricing. That's different, because now you're just pricing is arbitrary, based on the result. I don't do that anymore. For me now it's simple. Like we're a production company. I'm going to make you an awesome video. Uh, here's what we want to make, obviously right. Then 20 production company out, then it's just the people and the equipment.

Vipul Bindra: 1:39:28

Now I can obviously make more money as a company, because I could take my fee as director or dp and bring that in and, or, um, my some a lot of equipment that we own. I can take the rental charges and bring that in-house too. So, so there's places where we can dabble, uh, but what I'm saying is, uh, at the end they cost a cost because they're genuinely calculated based on, uh, the amount of people and the equipment I need. So it's not like I have freaking hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars, just play with and uh, so like and plus what I like with my client. At least it's's like no, this is the price. There's not even $50 that I have. This is what I need to make this happen.

Vipul Bindra: 1:40:07

Now, can I make the video for a different price? Yes, so, for example, I'm doing a talking head with B-roll for a mank. Let's say, yes, can I do it for five grand? Absolutely, I'll bring me in an assistant. We'll make talking head. Absolutely, absolutely, I'll bring me in an assistant. Right, we'll make talking head. Absolutely, I got my camera card, we'll run it in, but same thing now, if I have 30 grand, I'll bring me plus five crew.

Vipul Bindra: 1:40:29

Plus, we'll set bigger lights, we'll light better, we'll uh bring alexa, you know, minis and lfs and we'll bring, you know, uh, signature, prime lenses, uh, so the product will be better quality. It'll still be very similar video. It's just do your, does your bank bank represent that quality or does your bank represent this quality? Right, the only thing I can guarantee is at that price point, nobody can make better video at that price point than me. Nobody has the amount of freaking equipment that they can absorb the cost they wanted to at the lower prices than I can. But I'll say that I'm not doing something crazy. The price is the price, because the price was calculated based on my equipment and my people cost right, plus what it takes for me to get out of the bed, right then I have a minimum that I've set, like, hey, I'm not leaving the bed until I'm making that much, which I don't think it's that high.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:15

But what I'm trying to get to is but to make that specific video, because if I changing the price, the video is going to be different. It's not only the video and I found yes, some people will not like that, and those are not your clients, at least my clients but most people get it because it's like no, this is the price.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:33

There is no you know this isn't like I just ran my butt and made up a number and I was like here you go, right, right, and now people do that again. That the other side is I've heard people, you know, have huge success with value based pricing where they're like okay, I'm going to make you how much is the average sale? How many sales do you think you can get with this? Okay, so it's, uh, I don't know, a thousand bucks times 50. So it's going to be $50,000 of value. Give me 50 of that. So the video is 25 000, even though your cost may be 1500 because it's you shooting it or whatever. And if that works, then that's great.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:08

But my thing is, at the end of the day, there's so many other production companies that are just production companies that are happy to come in and, uh, you know, just make the video for the what the actual costs are, and still make good money. Uh, then you're, you know, unless you're the video for what the actual cost and still make good money, then you're, you know, unless you're trying to be a marketing agency, that's different. They can pull that easier, I think. Value-based pricing.

Tony Smith: 1:42:28

But I'm the same way, like you've been saying, my price is my price, I don't. It only varies depending on the actual project, if that makes sense. So how many people I need, how long days we're shooting hours, you know equipment needed, um, all that changes based off of that. So when somebody asks me how much would it cost, I can't tell you that without knowing the full scope of what you need, and I don't like giving out blanket. You know prices because now you fixated on that price. You know, if I say you say you want a talking head, and I'm like what do you need? Like I don't know what you know. Can you just give me a base, a ballpark?

Tony Smith: 1:43:06

I'm like, and if I say it's 3500, now you fixate on 3500, not knowing that you need a teleprompter, you need backlighting, you need front lighting, I need mics, I need, um, a three-man crew. You know now that 3500 just came to 75, yeah, and now now you come back and be mad at me, like I said, why did it double? Well, it didn't double. This is what you needed, based off of what you asked for and to and for me to get out of that. It's all my proposal. So when I show your proposal. It lists everything that I have and I'm bringing to that shoot. So I have check boxes in my proposal to where I check beforehand and if you say it's too much, then uncheck what you don't need. It ain't based off me, it's based off the price is already in there, so don't so, so, so, so you can't come to me and say, hey, this is too much, when you see the full breakdown or every penny that I charge you know my proposal, so that's pretty cool.

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:59

I'm glad you brought that up. I would love to go more into that. So the way you're doing your proposal, which what? What software are you using for your? Uh, right now I'm using proposal, fire proposal okay, and then, um, so how are you breaking down your proposal? And I love that idea of saying so you, the customer, could just check. It's like I want this this yeah so how? Give me an example? For a corporate video or whatever.

Tony Smith: 1:44:21

So basically, so I'm trying to think of a shoot that I just shot. I just do all rent, yeah. So basically I'm a proposal I go through, you know who we are, what we're going to do, who you are, and then from there I have three tiers of basic packages you got to.

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:39

You know, um, executive corporate presidential so good, better, best strategy yeah, get better best yeah um, then from there, they choose those packages and then you'll highlight, you know, what's the name again?

Tony Smith: 1:44:52

executive, presidential and executive okay, no executive presidential.

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:57

And what?

Tony Smith: 1:44:58

uh, just threw me off.

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:59

Yeah, my bad, my bad, I know sorry that was a nugget you threw me at and I was like oh. I got to know because the naming is also important.

Tony Smith: 1:45:07

I just lost that train of thought that fast Executive residential He'll come back to me but basically it's a play off the corporate level media. I'm still going with that corporate structure when it makes sense.

Tony Smith: 1:45:22

But basically you got good, better best um, and as you know you're good is basically just you just showing up kind of thing, and your best is like, so outrageous, like okay, I can't afford that. So let's go to the middle. So you're trying to funnel it to them to the middle, um, but then within they can de-click and click certain add-ons. So an add-on for, say, we're doing a talking head, we're doing a talking head. So you choose the best package. I mean you choose the better package. It comes with two cameras set up. You know, main light back light. Two mics, boom plus laugh, standard. You know, main light back light, um, two mics, boom plus laugh, um, standard, you know. But you say, hey, I actually want to do a psa or something to talk to my, you know, talking to my crowd. Okay, great, you don't need. You know you're going to need another camera. I'm gonna need an, um, uh, teleprompter, I'm gonna need this and that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:20

So go in and check that, check that, check that um now you're like actual video, or are you putting equipment in there? Does it say add psa? Yeah? So video, or does it say no, add a teleprompter or this or whatever? So we'll say what are you trying to actually sell to them, at least on their side?

Tony Smith: 1:46:35

so on that side it actually says teleprompter. It says, uh, third camera, so if you say that, so, so, so again we go through a conversation call. So I already know kind of somewhat of what you want. So I'll go and already check it already. So if I, if I know that you need that, then I know I'm gonna need a third shoot, I mean a third person, and you're gonna need to tell a problem. You need that. So it's gonna be already checked already. But it's gonna say add-on, so it's gonna say video add-ons with a whole list of add-ons for that. So I have multiple contracts and multiple proposals for different shooting. So everything's not on there, but I know what you know for this type of shooting.

Tony Smith: 1:47:09

This is what kind of standard for this so if you say I want everything, you go and check everything and you see the price. Okay, now let me take that off. So then you see the price going back down.

Tony Smith: 1:47:23

That way that it ain't on me, it's on you to choose what you want. But basically it's a page full of video add-ons that says teleprompter and then it explains what a teleprompter is. Uh, it'll say third shooter and it'll explain why third shooter is needed. It'll say, um ta, you know, just because you got this, now I need this person to come in and do this, so it will list all the video add-ons from that. And then that's the production side. I also have pre-production, so I don't charge for consultations, that's free.

Tony Smith: 1:47:51

But say that I need to go. Do you know scouting locations? I need to scout locations. That's a price that you can check, or you do it yourself. Uncheck that. If you need model scouting, I have that in the contract. You check that if you need to. If you need models that say that you don't want to talk but you want to find, you know. You know, have somebody else talk, or you need background, anything like that, I can go find models for you script writing, all that is in there as well. So basically, so basically I said my proposal was a one-stop shop where I don't have to do any any extra talking, even the post production, even posts.

Tony Smith: 1:48:27

You know we do standard. You know, minute, 30 seconds, depending on what you want. Yeah, um time rate. Do we need this hd? Do we need ultra hd? Uh, how fast do you need it? You know standard is two weeks. You want it faster than that? That's a fee. You want it even faster than that? You want a couple days from now, it's even even. It's a rate for that. Yeah, um, you want the raw files? You're going to pay for that. That's in there, you can check it. Yeah, but their rate for that? You don't want that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:58

Yeah, you don't want that rate yeah, you don't want to to rate yeah, so it's going to be a lot.

Tony Smith: 1:49:03

It's going to be a lot, um. So all that is in there, and then after that I have my monthly subscription. So so say you like this and you want to do this monthly, I can? You know it's a checkbox for that. Let's do this every month. So again, my proposal is once I talk to you and I send you that, you choose the price you know, what it reminds me of is that have you ever been to one of those dumpling restaurants?

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:23

I don't know where they give you, or maybe a sushi restaurant where the menu actually has, like, is laminated and you give you a sharpie. You check what you get and you give it to the chef and then he gives it to you and you always end up getting more than what you wanted to get.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:38

So I see, you see, and this is why, like I said, I loving this talk, because I my whole perspective um is different like I give them good, better, best, yeah, but that is the price, right, that's what they're gonna get, based on what we talked about.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:50

But talking talking about our friend alex minor that we brought earlier years ago, I talked to him and he mentioned, you know, these add-on things and I was like I don't want to make a list, but I did add a few add-ons and they, like you know, add a sound guy or add a makeup artist or whatever, and I did find, surprisingly enough, people will actually choose that and makes our product better. And, you know, it doesn't hurt me because it's just on there on the software that I'm using and it adds zero seconds to my anything because it's just in the template and it can be a little bit extra revenue. Plus, it's helping me be able to provide income to local or wherever I'm going, professionals in the industry, and why wouldn't I want to do that? But this is a very good approach and has it worked out for you? Like, have people picked a lot of things that you weren't expecting them to pick?

Tony Smith: 1:50:41

Yeah, absolutely. And it also gives that that whole energy off of you because you feel guilty, you know, throwing in extra stuff that that they don't need. And now you show up with this and then like I didn't ask for that, why, why, why is it here and why are you charging me for it? You know, so it was like now you got to go back and forth with OL, but if you check it it's on you. You chose what you wanted.

Tony Smith: 1:51:07

Yeah, it's nothing on me. So now when I say so, now when it says it starts at 35, it starts at 35. That's basic with nothing else to add on. But then when you check everything and it goes up to 75, to 17,000.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:19

That it's on you, that's on you. But also, do you find then people can, because a lot of people do that for me? There's also skill in this industry, meaning, like you know, for example, I've been to, you know, I don't know tens of thousands, I've seen a lot of problems I can be on set and be prepared for more solutions right. Plus, I'm like a simple thing like I'm recording to two cards they're very high quality cards and I'm backing them up to three places, then I'm putting them in cloud.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:47

You know, there's also a reliability factor, why I'm like somebody should hire me and pay me um things that clients typically don't see, right? Um, so what I'm trying to say is like but there's also a factor like between picking video people is the skill level. Um, how do you find and I find a lot of clients that are hiring us are not experts in our field, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:06

it's one thing for an agency that is experienced because they can see through all this. But what I'm saying is a typical small business owner doesn't know difference between somebody just coming out of a full sale or whatever, right, being brand new with an fx6 because they just give you one right Part of the course, versus somebody who's like an experienced DP, who's been doing this for years and has solutions to solve most common problems and anyway, they will just look at this as a DP with an FX6. This is a DP with an FX6, right, because that's what they say. Right, right, right. The point I'm trying to make is right, because that's what they say.

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:38

The point I'm trying to make is do you find yourself that your clients some it may not be all can go then now start rate shopping because they're like oh, he's charging me, I don't know what your rate, but a hundred bucks for a teleprompter, 500 for a start shooter, and you know, I don't know for editing extra.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:02

And now they'll go to someone else and hopefully or not hopefully, but let's assume they're like you too they're doing a breakdown, and then they can go. Oh, but his second shooter is only 450 versus 500. Maybe I got to go with him, even though we don't know the skill level. The end result is the video right, which is what matters, right? And we don't know, obviously, the skill level difference. And this one I'm saying for a client side perspective. Do you think that that is a case?

Tony Smith: 1:53:30

Or could that be hurting you? It's definitely a case as far as hurting. I wouldn't say no just because that means that you weren't meant for me to work with.

Tony Smith: 1:53:43

I mean to work with um, but I'm we. I mean we all price shop. I mean we all. You know we all do it. So it's a human nature just to find the cheapest price for the best. No, find the best item for that for for the cheapest price out there. That's, I mean, that's what everybody does, so I don't have a problem with that. My thing is that's why I build my company the way it is, just because I know most people don't do what I do as far as proposal work does. When you look at my proposal, I've not one client yet has not been amazed by my proposal based off of how I put it together. Most people I know just send out you know where are they called? Not quotes, but where are they called Estimates.

Tony Smith: 1:54:18

You just send out estimates with a couple of lines a camera package, light package. You know, know my fee yeah total. You know. He's like okay, what is? What is it? That's all I get you know. But when I break down, when I break down everything and there's an actual contract with all the clauses and everything in it, and it's like it's personalized with your picture and name and all that, and he's like, oh man, you put working in this like this is you're impressing them because now it's like, oh well, you seem like a professional.

Tony Smith: 1:54:45

Yeah versus yeah, he might be cheaper, but is he coming with the same quality? That I'm coming with is? Is he showing you the same value up front before you can work together, you know? So I'm coming with a. I'm coming from a place where I want to be professional as possible. I want to be an actual company. Where you're looking at me like an actual company. I am an actual company. So I want to present myself as an actual company, not just a freelancer. Who would you know, would it just? I mean no shot to freelancers, but I'm just saying with you know just one sheet, and you just saying it's my price. Yeah.

Tony Smith: 1:55:16

I want to let you know what we're doing. Yeah let you know what we're doing, yeah, why we're doing it. Because you told me your why and I want to give you proof as far as veto, testimonials and stuff like that that showcases my work and in there as well. So it's like there's there's no guessing of what we can do for you, you know so preach my friend.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:32

So now. So it's just like amazing and I love hearing it, because you know we're doing similar things, or we're trying to do similar things, but at the same time, you bring this amazing different perspective. And that's why it's important to have these conversations, because now I can hear your side and your way of doing it and you can hear my side and obviously we're both trying to do the same thing make an awesome video for client um and seeing what's working, what's not working. So I'm loving this man this is great um, thanks for telling me all about it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:58

I would love to off the camera once we get. I would love to see your proposal. I want to see all the rates, man. I want to see how you're doing it, because I'm already intrigued, so I'm so glad we had this conversation. Now, as we're wrapping this, before we end this, I really want to know because, like I said, I'm learning so much from you today.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:16

I what are you talking about, like, how are you handling your calls or your meetings? So obviously they've approached you and before you send this right, there's a gap in between. So they've approached you and you've sent them this rate list type of proposal which is and, like you said, they're loving it because you and you customize it, you built it to your their. So there's a big thing in between. That you're doing is either call or in person. Which one would you prefer?

Tony Smith: 1:56:42

so me, I love in person, because telling somebody no in person is a lot harder than on the phone when you sit next next to somebody and you're actually having a conversation about money, you know if that person's not a you know, not an asshole or whatever. They don't care about your feelings, but but. But somebody with feelings will understand like, okay, I can't, I can't, let me talk to him later off the phone, tell him no, but for me I prefer face to face just because it's more personable. I can actually look in your eyes and you can see my eyes and know that I'm telling the truth and I'm and I'm and I'm loyal and I'm, and you know, and I know what I mean and I'll say what I say. Um, so I definitely love you know face to face. So that's why, even even online, I'll do a zoom versus, you know, just on a phone call, because anybody can be on the phone yeah you know, I love to see your face while I'm talking to you.

Tony Smith: 1:57:27

I love to see what you're doing, because if you're not engaged with what I'm doing, then how we work together, you know how we're going to work, you know. I wanted to be a truthful conversation, you know, and I want you to actually meet. I want you to actually want me to work on your videos and not just pick a random person because anybody can work on your videos. But I want to be because I want to build a relationship. I want to. I wanted to make it be personable because I consider I don't I don't go that far as saying as friends, but you know, at least, at least to where we can, you know, be cordial and where I can call you and say happy birthday or something. You know, not just be a random number, like OK, that's just a video guy, don't worry about who that is.

Tony Smith: 1:58:01

You know, I want to be able to, you know, call you personally, like, hey, congratulations on your daughter, or invite you to my daughter's birthday party. That's just me personally. I mean, that's just me personally as far as how I like to run my business, as far as my customers. I like to be on a personal level, because I just feel like personal will bring in more money, because now they can talk to other people about you on a personal level. You know, I know him as a person versus just a company and you know, even though the company does great work, the person behind the company is an amazing person as well.

Vipul Bindra: 1:58:35

Exactly, that's awesome, man. You're building relationships. So how do you tackle these? Call these either Zoom or in-person meetings. How do you approach them? Do you have a structure or like, how do you uh, especially on a get to like, how do you tell them how this proposal is going to come, what to do on it, or whatever? How are you handling that conversation?

Tony Smith: 1:58:55

Uh, so first I'll come through with um I use what was it? Um Miller notes. So I'll come in with a basically like a PowerPoint, basically just a structure, a front, to tell it what, what we're capable to do. You know what my concepts were when you first approached me. Put my thoughts down there and show them my thoughts, and show them what I think would be best, and then we can break it down from there. Me, I approach every business different. I don't have a structure. I just kind of just flow with. You know what they give me, what's the energy they give me, and we go from there because I already have my. You know, I already have my bullet points set up. Yeah, I already have what you're looking for, so I can go off of that and put in my thoughts and then we can talk about that and then break it down from there okay.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:36

So and then now you've come up with the proposal. You are well, you know what they want to do. You've come up with a proposal. Well, you know what they want to do. You've come up with the right solution. Do you write there and then tell them the price, or do you say I'm going to send you a proposal?

Tony Smith: 1:59:46

I say I send a proposal, I don't tell them price at all. I send a proposal and let them see the price right in the mail.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:54

So you send the proposal after the meeting. Yeah, Okay. And they have never seen the price, never seen the price.

Tony Smith: 2:00:04

Do you explain to them, like, how the software works, or you just let them figure it out? So I send it to them? Yeah, so, so so I send it to them and I let them look at it, because as soon as they open it up, I get an email saying saying you know, saying they're opening it up With their software Proposify, you can actually see where they spend the most time at. So you can actually see that they spent the most time on the pricing or or the most time on the videos that's in there. And so now when I follow up with you, I'm like, hey, I seem to spend a lot of time on a pricing and I understand that it's a lot. But let me you know, let me reassure you, why is this? Okay, let me tell you why is this.

Tony Smith: 2:00:32

You're using the analytics you can see where they spend how much time they spend what they do.

Vipul Bindra: 2:00:47

That's incredible. You know to be able to figure out, you know where they're at or what's maybe causing the hiccup Cause for me. Uh, I'm not even sending them the proposal until I'm sure they're there, Right?

Tony Smith: 2:00:55

Otherwise it's even different. Yeah, so what's?

Vipul Bindra: 2:00:57

the point of sending a proposal, wasting my time, Because at the end, if I'm sending a proposal, they should already be ready to buy. But no, that's incredible man. This has been amazing, so awesome. Thanks for coming. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. Before we go, though, is there anything else you want to say or talk or ask about, or I don't know? Shout out I don't know. Tell people your Instagram.

Tony Smith: 2:01:19

I don't know oh yeah, we gotta do this again. You know, this has been fun. You're welcome.

Vipul Bindra: 2:01:23

Hey, we're just trying this. Like I said, I just wanted to do this and I'm already like look, we just talked for two hours and I feel like there was so much to learn.

Tony Smith: 2:01:28

Yeah, we ain't even scratched the surface, and I've been doing this for 15 years and I learned so much. Entertainment man long plane rides long drives, I mean there's no, I guess we're two hours and we can talk for another six hours but now you know again, my name is tony, owner of corporate level media.

Tony Smith: 2:01:49

Um, that's corporate level everywhere. Um. Instagram, corporate level, facebook, youtube, corporate level. Um. You also follow my personal instagram, which which is ToneDeaf Tone underscore Deaf 314. It's T-O-N-E underscore D-E-F 314. It's my personal. Again. There ain't much on there because you know, I focus more on clients and that's actually one of my goals for this year is to get more, you know, social presence out there. Same thing with me, man.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:17

I've been so, so busy working. Like I said, even this took two years to make it happen, while I was saying over and over I gotta record these conversations that I keep having with people uh, but no, I, that's my goal too this year. We gotta be more active on social media, um, and share more so people can uh follow. But no, go follow tony and uh, man, thanks again for coming.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:37

You're welcome back anytime. Let's try how the season one goes and, if incredible, we'd love to have you back in season two and continue this conversation. I'm pretty sure we'll learn even more.

Tony Smith: 2:02:46

And, like I said, maybe we should bring the proposal.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:48

I would love to find a way, you know, but the eighth time to put it up and let people explore, as long as you don't mind, because I'm all about like sharing knowledge, because Only brings more money than takes anything away. So I really appreciate you. Again, man, thank you for coming.

Tony Smith: 2:03:02

Appreciate it, thank you.