Vipul Bindra: 0:04

Anthony, my friend, thank you for taking time coming out to talk to me. Um, you know, it's always an incredible pleasure and, like I've said many times on this podcast and to you, we have such incredible conversations, um, and all I wanted to do for years was just record them and let people listen to it, because there's so much knowledge. Obviously, there's a lot of fun, but there's a lot of knowledge in it and I know it would have helped me, uh, in the past, and it still helps me now. So if anyone can benefit from it plus, you know, or at least get some entertainment on a long drive or flight, why not, right?

Vipul Bindra: 0:34

hopefully it's entertaining I hope so I don't know, uh, but yo, how have you been, how's everything been?

Anthony Rodriguez: 0:42

man, it's been good. Uh, 2024 has been the most wild year for my business how do you say? That. So it's been.

Vipul Bindra: 0:51

Wow, there's a crazy noise gate I know, yeah, yeah, I like talking like yeah. So sorry, we're going auto on season one. If this goes well, we'll get a producer you bring like filmmakers on here.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:02

They're like I noticed that noise gate is really strong. Exactly nobody would ever say that we are working professionals there's no, we're not peddling anything.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11

There's nothing to gain here. This is free knowledge, but yes, if it does work out, we can have a producer season two until they're sponsors yes, I mean, I don't know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:19

I mean, as long as there's no conflict of interest, I want to to give no courses, no courses.

Vipul Bindra: 1:24

We're saying free knowledge here.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:27

So, yeah, no, 2024 was crazy for me because I did start this as an artist, you know. So for me it was just a lot of like making the coolest videos, most cinematic looking things, and I think I've pretty much achieved that. You know, I like the way my videos look. I, yeah, I would look at other people's work and be like man, I wish it looked like that, and now my, my work does look like that, which is crazy. Obviously, a lot of practice, a lot of trial and error. But in 2024, my mindset I think the actually the end of 2023, my mindset shifted from making cool videos, higher production, charging a lot of money because the videos are good, to charging because I'm making my clients more money.

Vipul Bindra: 2:15

Yeah.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:15

So it turned into like strategy and like figuring out social media and marketing and running ads and all of that. So it was pretty cool. That's awesome. I think it was your best year.

Vipul Bindra: 2:24

Cool, that's awesome. I think it was your best year. You're obviously beyond six figures. You're doing really good, yeah, right. And so, um, let's break it down right. I mean, you brought to where I wanted to be, so how were you able to charge your clients uh, more in 2024? Like, what did you have to say or do, um in your meetings or whatever in your process to be able to charge higher prices? Because that's what most filmmakers are trying to do yeah, it was funny.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:49

You mentioned that. That's like, probably my biggest message is like charge more and like the things. When I talk to my filmmaker friends like, bro, just charge more money, dude, like your, your margins, but the reason why I was actually charging a lot prior anyways, and that's just because of quality and all of that which a lot of production companies, they sell, quality, that's just like what you do, like. I'm really good at videos, so like, and I make good ones, so give me your money.

Vipul Bindra: 3:20

But that's what we've been saying on this podcast. I've had multiple people who are like stop selling. You know not that quality doesn't matter, like you said it doesn't matter you have to have your craft be good or hire people whose craft is good. Yeah, but at the end of the day, clients at least business clients, the people that we work with, corporate and commercial clients for them it's not about quality. Most of them don't even care what camera you bring. Probably they care about the size. Size, but they don't care about you know like what camera it is.

Vipul Bindra: 3:46

It's the size yeah. And that's just because they've seen, you know, tv crews with big cameras, not that they obviously small, middle-less cameras have come along. Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 3:56

But at the end of the day, they care about its ROI, their money, what they're going to make out of it. Right, and as soon as you figure that out and you stop selling good looking videos you should already be making good looking videos. As soon as you start selling them, a better result, right, you, you can just start charging more and they'll happily pay it yeah at the end they, they're, they're just looking at a, at an roi factor.

Vipul Bindra: 4:16

It doesn't matter what they pay, as long as they get their money back yeah, well, for me it was weird.

Anthony Rodriguez: 4:21

I had this like turning point, because I would see people whose videos were not as good and I'm like how on earth are they able to charge this?

Vipul Bindra: 4:33

much money. Like how on earth are they able to do this?

Anthony Rodriguez: 4:35

probably you think getting roi to their clients is that it oh 100 and their videos suck, but they, like, they're strategic and they have repeat clients. I'm like, how does that keep happening? Yeah, like, how do they keep getting clients? Yeah, um, so for me, that that was the shift. I started talking to my clients. Honestly, this was kind of crazy. So I had a mentor I still have a mentor, he's still my mentor but, um, he tried shifting my mindset after one meeting and then, right after that meeting, I ended up closing a 30K deal. Look at that which I've never closed a 30K deal before. So for me it was like whoa, and it was solely based off of I need to know your number. I had just asked a ton of questions. So the client knew that I cared. I didn't fully know how to help them, yeah, but well, I did well, that's part of the process, right?

Anthony Rodriguez: 5:30

yeah, figuring it out, uh yeah and I did know how to help them, mostly because it's like what I do yeah, like literally what I do but, um, like, and that's like what I've done my whole life, like just selling, buying and selling and marketing myself, and I just never done it for other people that much besides making cool videos.

Anthony Rodriguez: 5:49

So, um, yeah, even just that mindset. I remember that that specific client was like hey, we had, uh, we were looking at a ton of different people and normally I hear, oh, we hired you because your colors, your colors are great, your videos, whatever. And they said we hired you because we know that you really care and you asked us questions that no other of the 10 different, 15 different production companies that we talked to asked us as many questions about our company as you did. Look at that and he's like a lot of them were cheaper than you. Production companies that we talked to, uh, asked us as many questions about our company as you did. Look at that and they had he's like a lot of them were, uh, cheaper than you. You weren't here.

Anthony Rodriguez: 6:30

The one of the more expensive ones, and one of them was they had a led wall. Look at that Like they had a whole video wall they were going to do this whole virtual production thing and I Well, it doesn't matter does it.

Vipul Bindra: 6:43

At the end, you got the client and they chose you after reading a bunch of other people and I think you're saying it perfectly Like what I would say is this you care? It's simple. I know sometimes and obviously there's extensive business analytics and strategies that we can go into, but at the core of it all, it's just be good Care, make good content and think people, people will get results and if they get results, they'll come back and then they'll tell their friends and you'll get more and more money yeah and and then the other thing I wanted to talk a touch a little bit on.

Vipul Bindra: 7:17

You brought a great point and you know you look at other people's content and I've said this before. You know you people can get envious, like, oh, their content either is really good I don't know if I can ever make it or b it's it's bad like I know I can make 10x better. And you know you get into that rut of them but you're not actually out there getting clients. Just know that you don't know the circumstance they were in. I've had clients go okay, we'll have 30 minutes for setup, which is is already too low. And then you show up they're like, oh, the CEO is here and he's leaving in five minutes. So it's like, oh, so you don't have any time. You either get the content or you don't get the content. So you may not know the other side. And you look at the content and go, oh, that sucked, but you didn't know the circumstances that the content was got in.

Vipul Bindra: 8:06

So what I'm saying is, rather than worrying about other people's content, just make your content good and you, and if your content is actually better, you'll get more work and especially if you care like you did. So talk me to be about that 30 grand client. Um, yeah, because that sounds incredible. By the way, that's what everyone's looking, that's the type of clients I'm chasing too. Uh. So what were the deliverables? Did they come with a? Did they already know what the deliverables they want? Sounds like no. You had to figure that out. So what were the deliverables?

Anthony Rodriguez: 8:34

And yeah, talk to us talk to us a little more. So this was interesting. It started off as like this whole thing. They came there like, oh, we, this whole thing. They came there like, oh, we want to be on retainer. Oh, that's great. They ended up not. This is funny.

Vipul Bindra: 8:50

Not funny. This is kind of sad. That was a good emotional rollercoaster.

Anthony Rodriguez: 8:55

It's funny. It's a little sad, because they were supposed to be a long-term client and they just didn't really know what they wanted. That's okay, I'm still following up. I believe that they're gonna still come back to me and they were happy with the content.

Anthony Rodriguez: 9:09

They haven't hired anybody else, but this was a larger project to get their pillar pieces of content, which is like who we are videos, what we offer. Um, it was like three separate days of shooting. Um, it's some like banner videos because they do a lot of trade shows. So here's the thing when I ask them questions about their business, I want to know okay, where is the majority of your profit coming from Not profit revenue coming from, where are you getting the most sales? And they said word of mouth, trade shows. And I was like, wait, no, okay, you're like a multi-million dollar company yeah, why the?

Anthony Rodriguez: 9:49

heck. Is it just word of mouth? And trade shows like it. 100 should not be. This is, this is I don't. I don't want to sound like arrogant or or even ignorant to the situation, but like even knowing their niche. I'm like.

Anthony Rodriguez: 10:01

I've definitely seen ads related to this, you know so I was trying to get them on that and a couple different things. So what we ended up doing was building their social media more so that, when, uh, they sell to schools, all these other different entities like doctors, all these places, and we built what we're, what we were going to build their social media. I said we built, we were going to build their social media and we ended up just getting a couple pieces of content in the end. I mean, I still got paid, but do you ever have that situation where it's like a client pays you and then they don't even get the full package that they paid for?

Vipul Bindra: 10:45

Yes, I've had that happen so I don't want to name them, but you know this client funny enough. Remember that project you helped me on, yeah, yeah yeah, so we did incredible work. So funny enough again talking my style. So you know I always bring extra. So I promised them you weren't part of the package, right? I promised them like three people, four cameras, whatever, whatever the package, and I always bring extra. Plus, we had been talking about this Ronin 4D and I'm like I really want to try it especially for crowd shots.

Vipul Bindra: 11:12

It'd be incredible Anyway. So you helped me on that project and we went above and beyond. The funny thing is, the project requirements were record a speech, right, a live speech, a live event speech. So we're just a video part. We have nothing to do with, you know, production aspect of it Anyway. So I did that and I made it happen. You were there. I think we killed it all.

Vipul Bindra: 11:35

Funny enough, midway through or some point, you know, the person who's speaking got their pocket out and you know, like, inside out from their suit, jacket, and obviously we knew that. We, I noticed that at least and maybe camera operators not because we get so hyper focused on framing and color, you know all that anyway. But there's nothing we can do. There's three, four hundred people watching I I'm not going to interrupt a person who's in a zone getting, because that's far more important than what we're doing, as far as I know, but anyway, they were, uh, they, once they got the video, they're like this is incredible and obviously I knew that there's no way to hide it. You know, like we have to have wide shots anyway. Point is, um, and then, funny enough, they didn't even notice it and then two days later, whatever, some client was like, hey, what happened to your pocket? That was it. And then they were like we can't use this piece of content anymore. And I was like, come on, I mean I get it.

Vipul Bindra: 12:26

I get it At the same time, you have a brand perception. But on the other side. You know it'll never be perfect, especially if it's live, because if you want to be perfect, we can do it. We do it all the time. You know that that, yeah, we can't do that.

Vipul Bindra: 12:50

The point is, we filled the requirements it just wasn't it was an external factor that affected the, the end product. But yes, so it has happened where we all that effort, obviously we got paid, so I'm not complaining, yeah, but at the end of the day, them not being able to use the content kind of hurts. As a creative person, I'm like come on, we put a lot of effort into it and they can, they could have gotten huge business out of that because that was the goal of the company. But yeah, so that's kind of annoying, right, when that happens.

Anthony Rodriguez: 13:19

Dude, we didn't even make the content. Oh really the content? Oh really, yeah, they didn't even. Did you get any deliverables to? Them, yes, yes yes, so banner videos um, so you got majority of the content.

Vipul Bindra: 13:28

No, not even a majority majority. Okay, so what did you end up delivering for 30k?

Anthony Rodriguez: 13:33

so it was, uh, banner videos, some tutorial setup videos, um, and then I ended up just giving them the raw footage because they asked for it. Okay, and here's the thing. Normally that's like a red flag for me, cause I'm like all right, they're going to. They don't like the editing style, they're going to get someone else to edit and stuff. They never edited it.

Vipul Bindra: 13:53

Yeah, never did anything. I mean, and for the right price. I mean it depends.

Anthony Rodriguez: 14:05

It sounds like I was like you can have it. I was like you could take it all. No, that was an interesting client. But going back to the original question, that was what changed. I asked a lot of questions. I cared about my clients. It's not that I didn't care before. It's just that. Now I cared about the reason why they came to me. It's like a relationship, at least that's how I see it A they came to me. It's like a relationship, at least that's how I see it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 14:27

A lot of client relationships are kind of like a marriage, especially if they're long-term, where it's like if my wife comes to me and she's like hey, anthony, I really want to be listened to. Can you hear me? I want to tell you about my day. Don't give me a solution.

Vipul Bindra: 14:41

I'm just getting personal.

Anthony Rodriguez: 14:49

No, tell you about my day, don't give me a solution getting personal. No, it's true. It's like yeah, because she's like I mean I'm a man, so normally I'm like okay well here's a solution.

Vipul Bindra: 14:51

This is what we can do. This is how we can like yeah, I mean get better fake, but that's not what they're looking for right?

Anthony Rodriguez: 14:54

yeah, I can fix this problem that you're coming with me with and she's like I just want to listen, but that's what a lot of videographers do. Yeah, it's like we're the husband.

Anthony Rodriguez: 15:05

Uh, there's no like gender, whatever, whatever the heck but like there's like we're the husband that's saying, oh well, I can give you this video and I can give you this video and I can like make it look really cool, and they're like I just want to be listened to, I just want brand awareness, I just want this, or I. We don't have enough lead flow, we need lead generation. So in your, in your head, you're like ads, ads. You know, like all these, like little things that you can and sometimes they don't.

Vipul Bindra: 15:33

They tell you it's completely off. I've had clients. They go we want a recap video and you're like, okay, you know. And immediately you know I've done hundreds and hundreds of those. But then you start to dig. And this is why it's important to ask questions, because if they just said, said that and you ran with it, they would have been very disappointed because they didn't know the lingo and they were just saying the word that they knew you would have never gotten exactly yeah, and so so you, you ask okay, awesome, where are you gonna share it?

Vipul Bindra: 15:55

right? You say, oh, you know great, so, where you can share it, who you're gonna what, the platform, so I can make it better, right, I know, know the target audience and all that. And then you slowly find, oh, okay, so you're going to post here what's the purpose of it. Oh, we want new clients. Well, recap videos. And how you get new clients, recap videos is just how you show how great you are, anyway. So then you start to figure out and they're like oh, we want this. Oh, so what you're talking? I and I, and I won't say that, let me clarify, okay. I won't say, oh, you mean mini, and I'll say, oh, I get what's the video you're talking about. Okay, so here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna come, you know, record all this for four days, whatever, and we'll make a 15, 20 minute video.

Vipul Bindra: 16:34

A recap video would never be more than 190 seconds to two minutes. But you know, I wouldn't have known that and I'll generally stick with the lingo that they're comfortable with, because no point me trying to educate them on the lingo. I'm more interested in getting them the video that's going to help them. So I'm like okay, so we're going to make a recap video that's going to be like more like a documentary, it's going to be about 20 minutes and that's going to cover all these aspects. That sound right. They're like yes, exactly, let me even find a video that shows it's similar. So I know 100, is this the quality? Because you know we can make this for 100 000, we can make this for 5 000, depending on you know what, how we're shooting, the level of equipment and then, once I get, gauge where they are.

Vipul Bindra: 17:14

Now I'm like okay, now we're good, now we're good, and then plus they appreciate it because they got the content at the end what they wanted, and they're more bound to come back. And you and I are here, real production company owners. It's unrealistic to be able to find 10 15 new clients every month. You're far better off keeping the clients you have and have them keep coming back that's what I'm working on new clients, man, that's that's.

Anthony Rodriguez: 17:37

That's somewhere where I'm trying to shift more towards. I still have repeat clients, but they're not on retainer and they would benefit from being a retainer. They probably pay me less yeah, exactly, clients save money.

Vipul Bindra: 17:49

They don't realize that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 17:50

Yeah but it's something that's crazy that you said and one thing that I noticed with videographers that, uh, are able to charge a lot of money, and that separates them from the ones that are like, yeah, I'm charging whatever, this much and that much, and they're like I'm starving. I say starving videographers and I don't mean that in a negative, condemning tone, I mean that in just it's like I don't have any work this month.

Vipul Bindra: 18:13

No, starving artists is a real thing, especially in a town like this.

Vipul Bindra: 18:16

We have like three colleges churning hundreds of people every year into the market and they walk out, especially with like full sale. They walk out with an FX six which is a good camera to to, to, to work on. So so yeah, they think you know and then they start. I've seen so many productions companies open up, at least in our area, and then they close because it's a common thread, because they, they learn how to make a video. Let's not even go deep. If they do learn that, the point is, at the end of the day they are, they don't know any business knowledge.

Vipul Bindra: 18:47

They don't know, what the clients are looking for. So they either end up in the music video market, which is horrendous for paying very low and they want editing in the whole world, and then or they try to enter into indie movie world, which is way more disrespectful even worse, even worse and so, and when they try, obviously what we're doing where there is money, uh, they don't know any business things, so most businesses aren't going to take them seriously.

Vipul Bindra: 19:12

Or they end up at that two, three hundred range where you know you can find work, but then you can't pay your bills, you can't cover your costs I'll do whatever anyone pays me, exactly.

Anthony Rodriguez: 19:21

But the one, though, like the one thing that I've noticed that separates, uh, those videographers, which was me, that was me being completely honest, so that me in the past to me now is you're playing almost like a doctor and here's what I mean by that. So you, as a videographer, you are asking questions. Hey, how do you feel like a doctor? Well, let me then. What about this? Oh, you have a pain here, okay, well, I think that might be.

Anthony Rodriguez: 19:51

You have no brand you know it's like yeah, is it?

Anthony Rodriguez: 19:54

you're, you're, you're diagnosing your patient exactly, um, and I obviously we have to be careful with that, because we're not positioned as like financial advisors or business consultants or whatever, or whatever the heck. But that is what separates those that do make a lot of money and are trusted by their clients as opposed to those that don't, because you're not just. Oh yeah, let me just take an order. You want this video?

Anthony Rodriguez: 20:23

You're literally me just take an order you want this video you're literally uh well, I'm not a, I'm not a clerk worker, I I help businesses make more money. So why is this? Why is that? How about this? Well, what about this?

Vipul Bindra: 20:35

that's that's invaluable. Yeah, don't just be an order taker, or I mean, because some people will do some extra and they'll say I did it. No, you asked them if they wanted mayo and ketchup with their burger do you want a testimonial with that too, do you want to uh, I don't know. Do you want a social media video too? Then you're not actually diagnosing anything, you're just order taking like a restaurant do you want some fries?

Anthony Rodriguez: 20:58

when really you should be saying, hey, do you want a gym memory?

Anthony Rodriguez: 21:00

like do you want supplements? Yeah, yeah. Do you want some?

Anthony Rodriguez: 21:06

something you want some vitamins like and you're trying to give them more fries.

Vipul Bindra: 21:10

We're going deep into this metaphor, but but anyway yeah uh, but anyway, point is, I think there's um, it's just a mindset change that's the bottom of it and and it's okay.

Vipul Bindra: 21:22

The thing thing is it's not to put anyone down. It is especially like I said, when I started, I had moved away from Orlando, I was in the middle of nowhere and there was barely like one to two production companies there and they were those old school, no gatekeeping. I'm genuinely like, hey, I want to reach out, I want to learn more. I'm starting this massive production company Because, you know, when I started I was like I'm going to be huge, like bringing in friends and family and everyone into it.

Vipul Bindra: 21:46

Uh, point is I'm like, hey, I would love to get some guidance or just talk in general, learn some, you know, because what you're trying to figure out at that time is pricing, strategies and deliverables and, uh, all that you know, stuff that people want to gatekeep and. And so I had no knowledge. So I had to stumble my way through freelancing what people were paying me to, you know, think what their initial price was, and then figure that out. And luckily I was able to. But at the end of the day, it would have helped so much with someone either being able to mentor me or at least being able to listen here and now go, oh, I can charge $30,000. And this is what the deliverables I can anticipate being able to having to provide, and it would help a lot, and so I get it. Not having the knowledge, but at the same time, you have to change the mindset first. Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 22:34

All the knowledge can be gained. There's enough people willing to share who are actually in the industry, and not people who are trying to, you know, make a course, who have never run a video production. Please don't do that. Yeah, there's so many of them. Please verify who you're learning from.

Anthony Rodriguez: 22:52

Yeah, make sure they actually have a production company. You will become who you listen to.

Vipul Bindra: 22:53

A hundred percent exactly a hundred percent of the time because because my whole thing is and there's nothing wrong with a production company owner also trying to teach you but very few production company owners have even time to make courses, because that becomes another business. You have to now market it and uh you know promote it, and all that. Now you're taking time away from production. At the end of the day, if you're learning from someone, you want the latest and the greatest knowledge on how to run this video business yeah, you know that the field that we're in, so something that's like I was thinking about when you were.

Anthony Rodriguez: 23:24

You were talking about that was as a production company owner. Like I don't just do this year, this year's actually gonna be crazy. Sorry if I go all over the places, because I'm just, yeah, I am all over the place, that's okay. I mean, we can go anywhere that's like who I am, but like.

Vipul Bindra: 23:43

I don't even know who's listening to this. I hope somebody is, yeah, somebody's listening. I mean, there's already so much knowledge has been shared, so hopefully they can benefit from it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 23:52

So this year I'm learning because you brought up something that was really interesting. You said, oh, a production company owner, like running running courses, is a completely different thing. But something I learned while asking my clients a ton of questions like who's your ideal customer, like who's all this? I'm like who's my ideal customer?

Anthony Rodriguez: 24:15

what are their pain points? What are the? Because I and this was given to me by my mentor and someone probably gave gave it to him, um, but there was a whole list of questions that I now ask my clients that are so thought-provoking. For me they were thought-provoking I was like so I started answering them for myself and I would. It was nuts, because I was like wait, I know how to target my target audience yeah I know which kind of client I want.

Anthony Rodriguez: 24:43

I know all this different stuff. My target audience yeah, I know which kind of client I want, I know all this different stuff. So, on the flip side, I had to do content for myself, because I'm offering my clients all of these different packages on how to target their ideal audience, ideal customer, and I'm like, wait, their ideal customer is kind of close to mine.

Vipul Bindra: 25:03

Yeah, and you're not doing it for yourself and I'm not doing it for myself.

Anthony Rodriguez: 25:06

So one thing I'm only one person, so I only have enough time to do a couple things and I'm not even that competent. You're being humble.

Anthony Rodriguez: 25:16

So I do get overwhelmed pretty easily, like on a real level, even if someone's hearing this and it's like, oh, someone's hearing this, you know, and like it's like, oh, he's making over six figures and whatever the heck, and which isn't a ton, a ton of money as a video professional, I think you can make a lot, but it's. I was just yeah, I'm not the, I'm not the most, most I'm pretty scatterbrained, like I'm not super organized, like all that stuff. I'm now hiring somebody to edit all of my content everything so I can post it but,

Anthony Rodriguez: 25:49

I, here's the thing it's, and thank you like, yes, it it does have some level of intelligence, but all I'm doing is exactly what I'm doing for my clients, like I'm, I'm taking all the stuff, all the bts, all that stuff, and I'm because I don't edit everything that my clients give me. I have an editor that I've trained, that I've made sure he's as close as possible to my editing style, and then I, I finish it, but my editor is now just editing my content. Yeah, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 26:23

I mean, hey, that is very smart, Take credit, because the best thing I ever did is guess what? Yeah, same thing. I started video company right and again, to be real, people were so cynical. You know I'm in the middle of nowhere. And then first week, when I closed 3040 and business three days, not even a week.

Anthony Rodriguez: 26:41

That is so not normal for anybody listening. That is not no, if you do, if you do the right thing.

Vipul Bindra: 26:47

It is possible, but anyway, coming back to what I'm saying is so initially, guess what? It was my plan to edit everything. Right, because that's how we all start. And then I go crap, I can't do that. I started to edit first video and I'm like, uh, now I'm not selling anything, I'm not working on the business.

Vipul Bindra: 27:02

You know, we do a lot more than just just making videos. You have to be you know accountant, you have to be your PR person, you have to be your own I don't know marketing person or whatever, whatever, whatever. So, anyway, point is, the best thing I could ever do was, initial I was like oh no, I have to let go, and I'm a control freak, you know. So it's like I want to control the edit. So the best thing I could do, like you said, is find an editor, make sure they they do exactly what I want to do, or at least as close to it, and then let go, because otherwise I would have never been able to scale. At that point I would have just flattened or even gone down now you're stuck in days and days, you know, editing something, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 27:39

So that's very smart that you're doing that, because now you can free that time to be far more effective. Oh, absolutely.

Anthony Rodriguez: 27:46

And I've something I've seen as a video business owner, as a business owner in general, I've and it's crazy, Cause now I talk like this, like it's really, it's a real thing. Like who? No, no, no, no no, not this.

Anthony Rodriguez: 27:59

I've always talked like that, I've always used my hands, but like, really, who you listen to is like who you will become period, like that is just. You might not think it, but you'll slowly but surely so. I do listen to, uh, business owners and entrepreneurs, like like alex harmosi and different people in that genre and stuff, and they talk about their time and how much your hour is worth and how valuable your time is. So I've noticed how much more I can do in four hours of building my business, which sometimes seems like monotonous, it seems like stupid work. Honestly, at the end of the day, a couple times when I was doing this out of discipline, I was like I didn't do anything.

Anthony Rodriguez: 28:45

Today, yeah, and like four hours of building my business, I'm like setting up a couple systems and like different things. Like that I'm like this is the dumbest, like I could be. I could have finished a whole project, you know and like. But I've seen over the it's almost like working out or eating healthy. Eating healthy is probably a better, better analogy, because working out you see a pump, but like eating healthy, you don't initially, initially like you actually you feel after a week?

Vipul Bindra: 29:12

yeah, you initially don't. You feel it after a?

Anthony Rodriguez: 29:14

week, but immediately after eating, like, while you're eating, uh, junk food, you feel so it's so much more enjoyable. Yeah, but over the long, over the course of time, it you get so much more results out of eating healthy, and that's what building my business was. So I've seen the value of my hour increase way more. Actually, building my business, setting up systems, doing a couple different things that seem really annoying. I'm not, like I said, I'm not an organized person. I'm not super attention said I'm not an organized person. I'm not super, uh, attention to detail in that way. I'm more so attention to detail creatively. So when I figured that that was more important, I was like all right, let me delegate this, let me delegate this, let me let me spend two hours teaching my editor how to do this specific thing so I'll never have to do it again.

Vipul Bindra: 30:02

Exactly, no, that's smart and and and once you get, obviously if you're struggling to pay your bills, obviously focus on that getting the clients but once you're there, absolutely we don't value that immediately. Yeah, and I get it because I'm like I want to go get out more clients or I want to make more videos. But if you look back, the best time spent was always anytime automating or streamlining a process in the business, because now you don't have to do that again. Like, for example, I'll give one is for me, proposals.

Vipul Bindra: 30:28

Initially, you know I would spend so much time creating a proposal and then and I had those fancy and again, nothing wrong with them. You do impress the client, you know making fancy proposals. But then I was like, if they're repeat clients, why am I spending this much time? So I built templates I literally have and then now all I do is, if I have a template and again, at this point I've done majority of the things so I just literally go copy paste, or sometimes I even have them fully created like packages, right, and it saved me so much time.

Vipul Bindra: 30:58

But when I was doing it I was like this is so tedious, this is so boring, why am I wasting my time, my time? But at the end, now that I've used it because I've had the same proposal software at this point for three to four years it saved me so much time. Yeah, um, so, anyway. So working on your business is actually very essential, but then it gives you more time in the future and to do stuff like at the end of the day, I'm not trying to work more yeah, plus you've got a kid and yeah, I'm not, I'm not trying to.

Anthony Rodriguez: 31:25

Honestly, I'm not trying to. I do hustle and I guess my brain's always working at. My wife tells me like, oh, you work so much. I tell, I tell my wife I'm like, oh man, I'm so lazy. And she's like lazy, are you crazy? What's wrong with you? Like you're, you're literally, you're always working, you're always thinking about your work, but at the end of the day, I'm trying to free up my time, yeah, like my time with my. I don't want to get emotional on this podcast. Every time I talk about my son, like it's, like I've, I've, I. I don't even want to say I've built a business. I'm still building it because it's like I.

Anthony Rodriguez: 31:57

I may seem like I have a lot of stuff together, but I don't really have like every none of us have it all yeah I'm I'm figuring a lot of these things out, you know, and and I'm completely okay with it, but I've built this business and I don't. I didn't build it so I can work in it. I build it so I can have time to like go out sorry, I'd tell like go out with my son and like do whatever my wife and go to the beach on a Tuesday, you know, and like all these different things. And where I can shut, I want to be able to turn off my phone. Right now I can't turn off my phone because if I miss a call from a client, I'm like screwed or like whatever.

Anthony Rodriguez: 32:38

if I a closing call and I want to be able to do those stuff where I have people in the back end like working it, yeah.

Anthony Rodriguez: 32:45

I want to be able to do those stuff where I have people on the back end, like working it yeah, I want to be replaceable, you know so for me, obviously, that's like that is a couple years down the line, but that's my goal, that that's something that that, uh really helped me. I mean, actually I I do want to make a whole video on this, but like knowing my why as a business owner was huge, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 33:06

Huge, huge, and that's a huge motivation factor, believe it or not. It was very similar motivations for why I started it. Because I was. I had a kid.

Vipul Bindra: 33:15

Right, I had one kid at that time and I'm seeing her growing up and I'm like you're telling me I have to be miserable, I'm going to get up in the morning and money was good the job I had and I was doing video on the side. So you're telling me I have to go get up in the morning, go to this stupid job, go be miserable. Come home at night I'm so exhausted and all my daughter wants to do is play with me and I'm just like let daddy go to sleep. And then, sure, you're like, oh, you have the weekend. But now I'm like I want to pursue my passion and go film stuff. And it's like, uh, so I and I didn't want to make that choice. I didn't want to make that choice with family, um, and between family and fun and or whatever. Whatever gives makes me happy.

Vipul Bindra: 34:01

And then the other thing was, uh, what ends up happening is, um, lost my train of thought. But yeah, no, anyway. So and then I was like I, I don't want to be miserable a doing this. And then I want to do what I enjoy, uh, but on top of that, I don't want my daughter to grow up and be like my dad wasn't around and you know and I know some kids respect it obviously like my dad was working all the time. You know he had a business. So I'm like, oh, you know he's working, but I was like, uh, anytime you want to take a vacation, like you said, you have to not go to your boss, but like, can I get pto? I still remember being like, hey, I need to take some time, and they go no, you're very necessary, and you know what I mean.

Vipul Bindra: 34:31

Like you care and I'm like you're essential, yeah and I'm like I can't, I can't go to you know, like you know to any. Just I can't be spontaneous, that's my style yeah and you know what I love.

Vipul Bindra: 34:41

Like now I can just hop out to disney world, let's just go to magic kingdom, let's do whatever, right, we can't, we couldn't do that. So, anyway, the freedom that we have with what we do, we make our own schedules. Man, that was game changing and that's why, to be real sure, I worked miserable hours and I worked my ass off. I work harder now, I work way longer hours now as a business owner, but it doesn't feel like it Because guess what and that's why I've had this happen where buddies are like they need help on a project, like, can you be a DP or whatever they're like can you manage this?

Vipul Bindra: 35:11

I'm like, yes, as long as your project sounds fun, I make my own schedule. I can absolutely clear three days for you. You know, you see what I'm saying. And the same time, with my kids, if my, my kids are like, dad, we want to go disney, it's like hold on a minute, let me see my calendar. Obviously some meetings you can't change, but most times I'm like sure, let's go right, or, or let me clear up my schedule anyway, or we could do the next day, yeah, or whatever, but that being able to like or being able to go on vacation.

Vipul Bindra: 35:36

So we hadn't been to be real. I was so focused in business. I'm taking them on a real vacation because to me, disney world is whatever, but it's not a vacation when you live here, right? So I finally took my family on a cruise earlier this year that's such a that's such a vipple thing to say.

Anthony Rodriguez: 35:51

I'm gonna just be honest, I'm gonna keep going, keep going.

Vipul Bindra: 35:53

I don't mean it. I don't mean to throw you off. I was able to take them on a cruise and I love that being able to. Which crazy I still worked. It was so funny. I thought I was going to be able to take a week off or whatever, but I was still getting client calls and emails but I was able to just take the time off.

Vipul Bindra: 36:07

I'm like okay let's go on an international cruise for eight days, so anyway. So I completely feel you, man, that to be. That was my motivation too, and I'm not. I'm not trying to. You know I love this, obviously. I want to do this, but I don't want to sacrifice family for this. You know what I mean.

Anthony Rodriguez: 36:25

Yeah, Well, that's this. So I hear people it's funny when you're not making money. You think the things that people that are making money say are stupid. Does that make sense? Like, and that was like the most podcasting yeah, that was the most podcasting, but it's true's true. Like I used to hear people that like make a lot of money. I used to hear that they would say about time and reading books and all that stuff and know your why and and like have goals and just like whatever.

Anthony Rodriguez: 36:59

And I would hear that I'm like you're a tool yeah, but here I am making like 40k a year, 50k a year because I didn't get it, and the people that are there, they know what it takes to get there.

Anthony Rodriguez: 37:10

I think it's very, very, very important for videographers to know their why, because then they'll at least have direction on what to do to get there. And then at that point it's actually your fault if you don't get there, like it's either negligence or whatever. But a lot of times and this is I'm speaking from experience a lot of times videographers don't do anything because they either don't know how to do it or they don't even know what they need to learn to do.

Vipul Bindra: 37:40

Yeah, and a lot of these courses are just telling them one strategy, and even if that works. There's so many different ways. Just on this few episodes that I've done, you've learned so many different ways of being able to market yourself. Yeah, so, from all the way to boots on the ground, shaking hands you know coffees to automating your ads, there is not just one strategy. And you said it perfectly you have to first know what to do. Second, I think you have to have the desire to want to do it.

Vipul Bindra: 38:12

You know it takes, because a lot of people tell me and it's a common thread, you know New Year's resolution people go I'll do this and people don't do it. The truth is, there's never the right time right. Something is always going wrong, either in your life or the world. So don't wait for the perfect moment. Don't say, oh, in three months, in six months, this will be better or I can start If you're ready.

Vipul Bindra: 38:33

Start Now. That doesn't mean quit your job completely and you know if your bills to pay, but nothing stops you today from registering your LLC or whatever however you want to legal structure your business you're starting that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 38:45

You know you want a crazy like vulnerable thing yeah so I just started my llc like three days ago enough.

Vipul Bindra: 38:53

So are you sole proprietor? I was a sole proprietor, funny enough, I did that. So, and and again, there's the four years, yeah, no, three years. Three years, no, four years running a business so here's my side I did this well, not for 40 bro, it's crazy bro, but here's the other side.

Vipul Bindra: 39:08

There's nothing wrong with again not doing an llc. The opposite side of this because I had done many. As you can't tell, I'm an entrepreneur, so I was always doing businesses and then I learned my lesson because you know, obviously some work, some didn't work. So when it came to video this was first time doing something I'm passionate about I was like I'm not even going to take the risk, because as soon as you do llc, you have so many taxes and processes and procedures and minutes and stuff that you got to take care of. I don't even know that, but I don't want to talk exactly no, no, that's okay.

Vipul Bindra: 39:35

And then people don't know, it does hit you the first time I purchased my llc. It was so cool. I have a company and then you start getting with these taxes and and rules and minutes and, like I said, things that you have to follow through with, uh, you don't do that anyway. Um, and that's what I'm saying. My first llc, I immediately did s corp and, because you know, that's the cool thing, and then I'm like I'm not paying myself, why am I doing s car anyway?

Vipul Bindra: 39:56

so I was smart about it because I I was like testing it. So first six months, uh, I only did sole proprietorship, and that's okay. When I knew cause you know, obviously he'll live with the revenue I was like duh, I got to make this into an LLC and obviously the LLC bought the. You know the legal structure. But the point is that's okay too. I'm saying it's it's long. Obviously it's not legally best.

Vipul Bindra: 40:26

I'm not a lawyer, not legal advice, but it's okay again, it's better to just get started. Yeah, just do it. I think that's the main thing, and you're gonna fail. It's okay, as long as you keep pushing through it and you make an effort to actually go out and talk to people who are where you want to be. I, I don't think this is hard. Let's be real.

Anthony Rodriguez: 40:40

It is hard, but it's not that hard you need you really do need to know what you need to learn, like you need to know what to learn that.

Vipul Bindra: 40:49

So what do they need to learn?

Anthony Rodriguez: 40:50

let's go deep into it, because again, people are listening yeah, yeah.

Anthony Rodriguez: 40:54

So I think, well, one you, you need to know your why. First, that that's as a human being you need to know your why and you don't need to figure it all out in its entirety. But before you do this, or if you need to know your why and you don't need to figure it all out in its entirety, but before you do this, or if you want to be successful in this and you don't want to ruin your actual why, because I feel like your why is like deep in there somewhere I'm, I'll get into the heart stuff of all this but like your.

Anthony Rodriguez: 41:18

Why is somewhere in there?

Vipul Bindra: 41:20

yeah, it's like a deep desire and it can be money. I want you to know because if they just want to make money, there's hundreds of businesses that are easier to make money than video. Please do that In video. You have to have some sort of love or something, some reason to just want to pursue video first. And here's the thing.

Anthony Rodriguez: 41:37

If you're wise just to make money, that's okay. But I would just like I would ask a client a little bit more questions and be like I would ask a client a little bit more questions, like and be like hey well, why do you want to make more money? Or like what's good money going to buy you and why is that make you happy? Like I would ask yourself those questions because then you can know okay, this is actually the real thing. Yeah, cause sometimes it might not be money that gets you there, it might be something else and you'll know how to pivot. Whatever that gets you there. It might be something else and you'll know how to pivot whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 42:09

But I think that's a big thing. Second one is learn your offer. It's important to have a good offer.

Anthony Rodriguez: 42:11

You need to have a good offer and you need to learn how you're going to help your clients, because if you don't, if you don't know how to help your clients, listen, now I'm hiring people for my business and to help my business and structure and get things organized. I drill them. I'm about to give them my money. I worked hard for this stuff. Like they need to prove it. They need to prove to me that they're going to help me and they need to have a good. It needs to be persuasive, exactly, and they need to build confidence with me.

Vipul Bindra: 42:52

No, I think that's great get get your, get your uh offer, then get your also get your social proof and if you don't have it, that's okay.

Vipul Bindra: 42:55

In the new, when you're new, you don't have it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 42:56

Do you do s free?

Vipul Bindra: 42:57

yeah, exactly, there's nothing wrong. People get a very gung-ho about free stuff yeah now I have very strong feelings as in I'm all for if somebody says, come work for free for me. Don't do it, because then the relationship isn't great built up free.

Vipul Bindra: 43:10

Yeah, but there's, it's the funny enough, it's just slight change of dynamic. If you say, hey, anthony, let me come work free for you, that's okay because you're uh, and then offer them something in return, hey, can I come work on your set? You don't have to pay me. How about I do BTS for you? Right, and obviously Anthony will vet you first, but as long as he feels comfortable, I'm sure you're okay bringing them on. Just get a camera and get BTS, exactly. So, yeah, I would say definitely, there's nothing wrong with working for free. Go out, find the people that you want to be with but also offer some sort of value to them.

Vipul Bindra: 43:44

And then you offer that that was the dynamic in the relationship is great. Where you're like look, I'll come work for free and I will offer you ABC, whatever. So they are also getting something out of it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 43:54

Yeah and okay. So the cause, that's actually. I love that. That second question, right before this one that you asked like right before this one that you asked like okay, well, what are, what are things that you need to learn? I think I could list them out, maybe in like four. Okay, so if you're a videographer and you need to take oh well, I don't even know what to learn, it's overwhelming Like one. It's definitely not the next camera and next lens, but, uh, know your why, like why you're trying to build a business, know how you're going to help your client, which means get good at sales period. Just go courses, get on sales calls, like just get good at sales. Whatever you have to do, you will think you won't thank me, because you're probably not watching this podcast but just get good at sales.

Anthony Rodriguez: 44:48

Do whatever you can to get good at sales. And the last one is obviously perfect your craft, but I think that's the last one.

Vipul Bindra: 44:52

Exactly Because here's the different way I'll tell you. Obviously, generally, people get into this fail love video and they want to perfect their craft. But you are better off learning sales than perfecting your craft, because here's one way you can make good money today, as long as you go out, follow these strategies that Anthony is giving you and go find a client, and obviously you have to be confident because they can see through you. But if you're genuine about it, because you genuinely have a plan, if you go there, you sell them a solution to their problem. Guess what you can do? You can find the right video person in your town, in your community, and hire them to actually provide the solution.

Vipul Bindra: 45:34

And you make money today. That's crazy. Whatever they charge. You charge your 20%, 40%, whatever your profit range is on top of that and you make money today and obviously, if you love video and if you don't, there you go. There's a business. But if you do now, you can pay attention and you can learn what they're doing, how they're doing all of that on the spot.

Anthony Rodriguez: 45:54

Those are business and life skills. Those are things that you'll take forever. It's like communication and sales, like if you have those two things and then you know your why, you know what your offer is and then you perfect your craft. Like what you were saying, I didn't think that way. What you're saying is like I didn't even. I just started thinking about that, like that probably two, three months ago, where I could just hire someone.

Vipul Bindra: 46:15

Yeah, I make most of my money no, not most, a decent amount of money, and here's the reason. Okay, I want to answer that, because a lot of people then go oh then why wouldn't they just hire that person or that person? Yeah. And that's that low level right, that you're not thinking like the business owner.

Vipul Bindra: 46:31

They're not hiring me because they, like I don't know my camera operation better than the other people they've added they're hiring me because somebody told them usually at least for me that Vipple or Bindra Productions made us money, right, their videos represented my brand better, or whatever ABC, or they helped my recruitment or whatever. Whatever they were looking for. But they come as a warm lead so they want to work with me for reliability. When clients hire me, they know we're going to show up rain, tornado, whatever. Then they know the footage is going to be captured.

Vipul Bindra: 47:07

Nobody's going to accidentally delete it. They know it's going to be backed up. They know the video is going to look like I promised them what it's going to look like, despite the challenges on set which will happen, you know, are people calling in? There's going to be enough cameras that I promised they're going to have. I hope that makes it. It's the reliability, yeah so so don't get into that mindset, because but a lot of times I'm the producer, right, and if they come to me and they have a budget and I'm like, well, I don't have a budget for me to fly in, or I have a bigger project that I need to be at, so guess, what.

Vipul Bindra: 47:36

I'll do. I'll find another owner, operator or a buddy of mine and be like look, this is what the requirements are. But obviously you don't have to be this much. I'm more pre-production. So I'll even tell them I want this settings, this frame rate, this, this. And then you just go capture it and they're happy because now you're helping the economy and the other creator community. But then on the other side, I'm obviously taking a cut because I did work on it and I'm offering my reliability Because, guess what, if this person doesn't show up, it's not their head on the table, it's mine, and that is why clients would work.

Vipul Bindra: 48:07

So get off that thought process that clients will directly work with them or whatever. That's the low level, I think. Think mindset where you're, like, so afraid to lose clients? No, and plus most of my friends, I know. I'm happy to do it, I've done it for adam, I'm happy to put on other person's shirts and go why wouldn't I man? I want to help my friends grow so most people are okay and it's extra.

Anthony Rodriguez: 48:29

I mean, at the end of the day it is extra money without the headache of client. Exactly. You've done it for me, you've helped me out, so everyone will do it.

Vipul Bindra: 48:38

I mean not everyone, but most people will. Plus, it's a collaborative industry. Anyway, you help me, I help you, right, and we all grow together. So, anyway, we need to just get again coming back to what we started with, get out of that mindset. We have to change that and think like a business owner and not, uh, not think like that scarcity mindset that you know, oh, if I lose this, I'm not gonna have any there's enough work for everyone there's so much work, yeah, so what were the four things?

Vipul Bindra: 49:07

let's uh quickly go over them, so the know the why yeah, so.

Anthony Rodriguez: 49:12

So if you're a videographer, you want to start, or if you you need to know what to learn to build your business, I would say know your, why, the core of your being. Know your why while you're doing this. Know your offer, meaning how you're going to help your clients. That means, learn what your clients need and build an offer. Get good at sales whatever courses, whatever the heck. Get good at sales practice. You find someone that's good and convincing. Tell them to teach you, or tell them, or try and sell to them and say, hey, uh, can you tell me how much I suck at sales? They'll tell you. And communication, and then I think the fourth thing at the end is perfect your craft. You know that's something you could do along the line throughout the entire thing.

Vipul Bindra: 50:02

Biggest thing. Most filmmakers are camera nerds People. You know how much I love cameras. Lighting and sound makes a better video than any camera. Nowadays, almost cameras are good enough, unless you're at that high level.

Anthony Rodriguez: 50:18

But even then, it's a given what camera you're using.

Vipul Bindra: 50:21

Please learn lighting. And again, which is what I want to jump into next. This is perfect segue, because you have a YouTube channel, sir yeah, and you are teaching people how to light. Yeah so first, I want to let's start at the beginning of that. What made you want to start youtube?

Anthony Rodriguez: 50:36

uh, I love youtube okay you're like me, I just I love.

Anthony Rodriguez: 50:40

I love youtube. I love watching youtubers talk about stuff. Um, honestly, it's funny. My my biggest dream starting youtube was like I would love to get free gear. That was just because everyone that I talked to about my youtube channel they're like, or about gear that they sent, or or like oh that's so sick, how much did it cost? Like I don't know. They sent it to me. I like their. There was like. Their first response is oh my gosh, you're so lucky. I need to start a youtube channel because I love free gear.

Vipul Bindra: 51:16

Holy smokes, there's nothing wrong with free gear, dude. I bought every single thing I have on with my own money and I'm over half a million dollars into it. So, please, free year would be nice, but go ahead I don't.

Anthony Rodriguez: 51:27

I don't know if you can get half a million, but I listen. I love free gear super excited. But I'm so glad my, my, I surpassed that dream because I would not be doing it. I would not be doing youtube now and even times I want to quit if I was still thinking about free gear, because it's so much work and so many people want to send you gear. A lot of times you don't need the crap that they're trying to offer to send you. So why I started YouTube was for that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 51:57

Why I'm doing YouTube now is I've noticed it build my brand. I've noticed it make more, make me more money, and it's what I would do for my clients. People listen to me Like they. They. They watch the behind the scenes videos, they watch all these different things and they're getting value from it. And they're getting value from it and they're immediately trusting me, before they even get on the phone with me. Yeah, so then, by the time I get on the phone, even though they're a cold lead no one referred them they're a warm lead yeah, because they already feel like, they know, like they trust you.

Vipul Bindra: 52:23

Video works, they know me yeah, and and um, which the parasocial relationship that they build with you. Right, anyway, uh, which I know subscribers is an arbitrary number, but it does make you look like an authority. How many subscribers do you have on there?

Anthony Rodriguez: 52:36

yeah, I was. So we're close to 8 000 right now. Look at that 8 000 people and by we I mean me. I don't know why I said it was like like I have this whole team.

Vipul Bindra: 52:44

It's literally just me but hey, you're, you're doing great, you're giving people advice, and what I love about you is that you're you're not, um, uh, peddling you know the same nonsense I find, uh, on youtube because you know there's there's a lot of good content, but you have to pass through a lot of nonsense. You're like you said, you're actually testing, you're practicing your craft and now you're just sharing what you learned. Obviously you get some good free stuff out of it. Why not, right?

Anthony Rodriguez: 53:09

yeah, I get paid for it too, like there's sometimes sponsors too right there's sponsors. Um, honestly, I wouldn't be able to invest as much time like I would hear this phrase that youtubers say a lot. They're like, oh well, use the links down below, like it really supports this channel and helps it going. So we could keep making videos like yeah, yeah, now I get it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 53:31

Now I'm like, okay, well, yeah, actually it does, because I'm not gonna invest 15 hours for nothing yeah and when I say nothing I mean like no immediate return, because that 15 out now that I think about my hour even more so than before like my hour is no longer 200, 250, it is no longer worth 200, 250. Like when I'm just a DP or I'm just a camera operator. I would never charge that for a camera operator, but like that'd be very high.

Vipul Bindra: 54:02

It's like, just like as a.

Anthony Rodriguez: 54:03

DP or something, or a director or whatever the heck it is. It's no longer that. It's much more Cause I could be using that to build my business or spend time with my family yeah exactly that's. That's priceless. So, uh, yeah, I do see the, the, I do have sponsors, I do have ways of generating income, uh, from youtube and I'm, I don't know, I, I, it makes sense sometimes.

Vipul Bindra: 54:29

I want to quit, bro, I'm gonna be honest, because it's a lot make you money. Is it good money or no, or is it just paying for itself?

Anthony Rodriguez: 54:34

well, last year, well, no, no money really goes into it, besides time, which time is? Money, but the biggest yeah, you can't get it back um, but last year I think I made 23 24 000 from youtube, that's still some plus year right.

Vipul Bindra: 54:51

Are you counting?

Anthony Rodriguez: 54:51

yeah, oh my gosh, I did not count, because I showed up, okay.

Vipul Bindra: 54:55

So this happened, what? Not even a couple weeks ago, I needed to buy something from you, like a road, uh, transmitter, whatever, either way, and you're like, hey, look at this light because and I'm genuinely considering infinimat.

Vipul Bindra: 55:06

So it was very similar to what I was thinking about anyway yeah you're like it's a four by four inflatable from Godox and I'm like that sounds really great. Anyway, point is, and then I'm looking up I'm like, oh, that may interest. And it's like five grand and you're like, yeah, they just sent it to me, or four grand whatever. But I'm like that's incredible. And again, there's more to it. Obviously you're putting your time and energy, it's not technically free gear, but what? But what I'm trying to get to is that's still incredible for somebody who has to buy every tiny thing with their own money.

Anthony Rodriguez: 55:34

That was one of the largest items that I've received. I just want to say it's not usually, it's funny that company I'm not going to say who it was, but that company. They initially reached out to me offering me these tiny lights, like 60 watt lights, and I was like no, and they wanted a dedicated video. We want a whole dedicated video, which for me that means a lot more time and it means more exposure to my audience. So if I'm like each video that I put out, I want it to like bring value to my audience. If I'm just making videos about every stupid little piece of gear, like whatever chinese company reaches, out to me.

Anthony Rodriguez: 56:12

Then I'm like my audience is gonna know this is crap, you know, or so every time I put out a video that might not bring value, it's a risk for me exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 56:22

You don't want to alienate your audience so you will you know work so hard to build so?

Anthony Rodriguez: 56:26

all these yeses that I had to say, they were trying to send me a 60 watt light and I was like now, uh, they're like, oh well, we have this other light. It's like, is there anything on the website that interests you? And I noticed that they had that. They just came out with this light. Man, that's a lot of money, it's like 3 500 bucks tax, and I'm like it's a lot, it's gonna be a lot of money for that. And they like sent me a couple other attachments and then, um, they said, yeah, they're like, oh yeah, we actually needed uh, yeah, because I didn't know about it.

Vipul Bindra: 56:57

No, and I'd like to very much keep up with the most of the gear that comes out nobody knows about the site so when you did I was like, oh, that's incredible, because you know it's, I would call it very close to an infinimat, at least competitor in that four by four range and uh, my issue with infinimat is just how bulky it is to carry the whole oh my god, the balance is huge, yeah and I was like the whole point is to carry a 4x4, foldable, inflatable light is to be light and small.

Vipul Bindra: 57:25

And I saw and I was very much interested in the 4x4 and the 8x8. But when I saw I was like this ballast is massive, the case is massive, the whole I I don't know they were. They were not trying to target me, they were trying to get rental houses.

Anthony Rodriguez: 57:38

Yeah, and even then, as somebody who does rent from rental house, I'm like that is too big it would take too much space on the van so I mean, I would think it would make sense if you need it for like a tight space, because it's beautiful that, like using that light. Did you watch the video?

Vipul Bindra: 57:52

yeah, yeah, I saw the video and then I also saw it in person. But the other thing is um here. Here's the funny, that this other one is similar. Uh, obviously I didn't. I didn't put a color meter to it, so I don't want to comment on it, but your video looked great, but also it's so much smaller, like, oh yeah, compact and and I thought I thought it was huge.

Anthony Rodriguez: 58:12

Yeah, I like no in my, I thought it was huge, but then when you start comparing it to other things, yeah, and you actually had space in the case.

Vipul Bindra: 58:18

So I'm like, oh, you could throw a couple more lights. Yeah, here's your lighting kit. Yeah, and one case you now have a massive, a four by four key light. That that's incredible that you bring. You could just roll into your tesla whatever and just go to a shoot like that's incredible. I have to bring a freaking van to be able to, to bring four by fours, you know, yeah, yeah no, I mean it's cool.

Anthony Rodriguez: 58:39

So youtube has has been like obviously beneficial. Um, I've been trying to shape my voice on youtube. I don't think I I'm gonna say this like for me's. I'm like a little brash in general, like my person really I'm a little, I'm a little uh uh, I wouldn't say abrasive, but I'm like I I do like telling it how it is, because I like being told how it is, you know, and and no, I like real people.

Vipul Bindra: 59:08

That's why we, but we clicked immediately. I was like, I like.

Anthony Rodriguez: 59:11

I'd rather you be you than some fake no and and it's it's annoying when people I don't want to get into this too much, but it's annoying, like when I have to like cut through fluff. I'm like all right, well, tell me how you really think, like well that's probably why I'm a person. But I'm Like just tell me what you're thinking Like all that stuff. Like sometimes I like that with clients and I need to learn, I need to learn. There's a nicer way to say it, but the same thing Not like that.

Vipul Bindra: 59:38

The real deal, what you think I need to learn from you on that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 59:42

You said something earlier, I was like I would never, say that. What you said but it was so nice.

Vipul Bindra: 59:49

I was like what, what did I say? Now, I don't know about their documentary thing.

Anthony Rodriguez: 59:52

You're like yeah I don't want to tell them the term and that.

Vipul Bindra: 59:54

No, that's just because to me, and I'll tell you why- there's beautiful trying to be nice that be trying to be fake. That's me just trying to not sound condescending, because to be real people have done that, let me be real, obviously.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:06

Um, you know, I'm indian originally and people speak, um. You know english fine in ind, but English is not my first language, right? It's my second language, so sometimes some words are pronounced wrong or whatever and I hate it when people go now it's one thing you don't understand, it's okay to be like, hey, what do you mean? But if you get it, and then I hate when people correct me, I'm like if you understand it, oh it's not this, it's this. I'm like like so you understood me then shut up. You know what I mean.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:35

Like let's move on. We're having a conversation here you just destroy the whole flow. So anyway, coming to this, I genuinely care about my clients and I genuinely want to help them. Otherwise I wouldn't. This wouldn't be.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:00:46

This would become a job immediately otherwise you're a peacemaker yeah, at the same like you're. You're not trying to to to stir the boat while at the same time directing. You're like you're a peacemaker. Yeah, at the same like you're. You're not trying to to to stir the boat while at the same time directing. You're like you're creating.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:56

At the end of the day, my goal was to make them the video they wanted, and if it was a documentary or or whatever corporate documentary, whatever we're going to call it, me teaching them the lingo isn't going to solve the solution at the end day. What I wanted to do was figure out what they wanted. Now, where I would have failed was if I'd made them a recap video. And as soon as I figured it out, I could approach it two ways. Right, I could either go into a whole spiel on uh, you know what the correct term is and I think, no matter how deeply uh good place I come from, it's gonna always sound condescending to them, because they don't give a crap what I'm making, they just want what they want.

Vipul Bindra: 1:01:33

It's like, you know, you go to an apple store and they give you hey, here's the laptop. Right, you're like I want the 15 inch m1, whatever they're like. Here you go. Imagine they went on a 20 minute spiel on no sir, it's an m1 max and it's a retina display, you know whatever. And you would be like stop, stop condescending me, just give me the fucking laptop anyway.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:01:53

So that wasn't me being nice, but I do see what you mean, yeah, I need to learn, like I need to learn from that man and like, because sometimes I'm like yeah, it's just a little abrasive. And and like I, I do need to to be nicer because Because sometimes I'm just like no.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:17

And I've said it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:02:19

I've had clients. Yeah, excuse me, I've had clients that have asked for this. It's like oh well, I want this, this, and that we could do this right, and they've already paid me for something. I'm like no.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:31

Oh really.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:02:31

Yeah, I'm just like no, no, we can't like, here's why. But what?

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:34

are they being unreasonable? Yeah, oh yeah, then I get it see that see, that's not to me.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:02:38

Rude, that's you but I want to be nicer though. I want to be like how would you? Say it nicely though oh, if like a client's asking for two, well, I don't know, okay, I'm not nice, I would say it. I'll say and tell me if that's too extra nice.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:49

I would say that that's outside the scope of the work we discussed, but I'm happy to see how we can amend the scope of work. That's all I would say.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:03:00

It's kind of like being political, oh my goodness, don't call me political.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:05

I don't think I'm at all political.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:03:07

Well, that's what politicians do? They get a question, they get something that's like a little whatever reporters trying to knock them off and they're like look, they say what they're trying to say, but they make a big bush around it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:22

And then and then they like oh my goodness, I feel a little attacked, but it's okay, that's what.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:03:28

That's what I do. No, I I do that with my clients. Sometimes I'm getting better at it. I I don't want to paint the picture that I'm terrible at it, but like sometimes I have to say they ask for certain things and I'm trying to keep them happy. So I'm like, hey, look Well, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I'm like lightly telling them they're wrong and they're not going to get what they want. Yeah, but in the nicest. But sometimes you just have to be clear about it. Yeah, yeah yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:54

That they're not going. I've had that Because you know, let's be real. These are business owners especially the bigger they get they want to push you around.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:01

You have to set a fine line stand. That's why I'm like I always do contracts. Day one, I'll tell you this Years and years ago this is freelancing days Somebody. And years ago, this is freelancing days somebody wanted to, and obviously I love filmmaking, right then time I would have done anything. Yeah, come film this for me. I was like, absolutely, and money's not even a thing, right. But I was like, okay, here's the contract and they go what. We just want you to hold the camera, whatever, whatever, plus, it's free, like what. I was like no, sir, I am not coming, and I stood my you know, like I put my foot in the ground no, if you don't sign the contract, I am not coming, because I want legal protection that this is my footage. You can just license it anyway. Sorry, point I'm trying to make is that you have to like go this is it anyway, I don't use contracts.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:04:44

I don't use contracts, but literally on the way here today I messaged call attorney no I messaged a buddy of mine and I'm like, because there's there's a 15K deal on the line.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:55

Yeah, I know you mentioned it, so you may be getting that call yeah, I would love if you take it live.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:05:00

Yeah, let me see if they called. I actually haven't really checked my phone. I've been trying to. No, they haven't called. I'll leave it here. Is that on frame? No, is that on frame? No? Okay, but I, I have that and I'm starting to get into more retainer. I'm trying to head towards retainer. Yeah, and I don't have a contract and that's impossible, that's that is the dumbest thing you could possibly do.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:05:29

So, uh, I don't want to be the dumbest person, so I messaged my person, all the person. So I messaged my person on the way here. I messaged my friend. I was like hey, bro, can you send me that contract which I'm probably going to talk to you about?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:05:39

contracts like I'm probably going to get some of those, but, like I, I don't have a contract and I'm. These are the systems getting in place right now of like how to pay on retainer, how to do all these different things, getting automated proposals and stuff. Like I really do want to be automated. And like hire VAs. I definitely think you should have a couple of VAs. Yeah, no.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:02

I'm telling you no, I have looked into WordPress. I actually have a system now, so I have. Tiffany. So yeah, and I have a real assistant.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:06:10

She's a real life one.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:11

A real person. But no, I mean yes, no, definitely that was necessary. But coming back to it, yeah, I wanted to talk about no, clients will push you around. Let's be real. I don't want it to sound like, yes, clients, the more they pay, they do get. I find easier to work with because they let the expert be the expert, but on the other side, they will push you around.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:34

I've had people actually and this is why contracts are necessary because I've had clients sign contracts and then pay. You know, let's say I'll give them the option hey, pay 50% or whatever, and then not pay the other 50%, and then when you go ask for it, they'll go, they'll make up their own rules. No, no, we were supposed to pay per event, like we'll pay, like they'll make a yearly contract or whatever. I've had this happen recently where they were like, oh, we'll pay you, we pay before every event and I'm like here's the contract, there you go. This is what you signed. It clearly says payment now and then immediate due on. You know this If you're not paying, technically the contract's not valid right yeah you're not going to make anything.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:14

I mean that's just what it is.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:15

I mean at the end of the day, uh, I mean, obviously I could take them to small claims and all that, but that's not worth it for me, uh, but because we haven't done any, uh, any work towards those events, I'm not losing anything. Point I'm trying to make is that's why, a I always collect payment up front and, b I don't want to even deal with the payment issues which I want to get to, because I know you've been talking about a payment issue. But anyway, we'll get there in a second.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:07:40

I have a spicy story. Yeah, I want to know the spicy story.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:42

But same thing. Having heard stories and this is not just you, but from a bunch of people, and, like I said, that's how I learned. You know seeing, oh, this happened to someone or whatever. I don't want that to happen to me. So it used to do 50 up front and then 50 at delivery. Then I changed that. Now it's just either all hundred up front and, funny enough, the bigger the contract, the easier, I find, the people pay and then 50 at the time or no before to the shoot.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:07

Otherwise we don't even show up for shoot because I want to be able to cover my costs I I'm not floating money out of my pocket for all my contractors and my editors and stuff like that, and I've had no pushback because, again, people who work with you typically know that that's just how it is, because it's in the contract. So I would highly recommend it. But also, here's the other mistake I think people are making nowadays They'll go to chat GPD or whatever, and it's a good starting point. There's nothing wrong with going to chat GPD and getting, but I would highly recommend work with a real attorney, because there's clauses that you may not even think about, like, for example, one of the best ones that I have is called artistic release.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:45

Cause, let's be real, what we're doing at the end of the day, I'm giving them a video which is art. Right, what I make is different than what you make, than anyone else makes. That's just what it is. I mean, if same script we'll make a different video and I don't I've never had that happen, but I just don't want that to happen they go. I just didn't like that because that's just not the style, even though we made sure, obviously upfront, that that's the style we were going for. Having that in there just clearly says like look, this is artistic expression. You know, you have seen our previous work, so you know what we're going to create Cause, at the end of the day, that could, that can be an out like for not wanting to work with me or whatever.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:09:21

So do you have revisions? Do you have like a a thing with like revisions on your contract?

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:27

What, how many revisions? I only offer one revision. But obviously there's clients, like government clients especially, that want because you know with them signing a contract is such a process. They're like you know, just give us three revisions, that's fine, we'll just add the cost. I just don't like so. Initially I used to do more revisions and I find most people do two or three revisions. Here's what I found A that adds extra cost for no reason and B my style is I'll call it. Most people, you know, send a draft and a you know draft video and then go from there. My thing is, when I call it a draft, it's already fully done.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:59

I don't send a video until it's like I'm ready. I'm okay if they publish it on the internet and then I'll send it, but I'll say this is my draft. And then here's, and now you have one revision and you can do whatever changes to it. And that's my standard format. And if they want obviously anymore they can buy them after um at the hourly rate or they can, uh, which, again, my editing rate is very low. We only charge 75 bucks an hour for editing, which is very low, in my opinion, for them to do. Yeah, that's what I'm saying, that, yeah, I pay good rates to my editors, so that's what it?

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:31

is. It's just very good Anyway. But again, most clients don't do, come back. And actually, funny enough, I make so much money from post because here's the advantage of being a production company. I don't know if you've noticed this yet. You own all the data, right? So client obviously hired you, let's say, for 10K project, two deliverables. You made the videos, you're done. Two deliverables you made the videos, you're done. And guess what happens? Six months, 12 months later? They always come back. Hey, we want them captioned, or we want to make social cuts out of them, or we want to make a recut, or we want to update our logo. And now you can just build them for the, for the editing hours, 75 times, whatever yeah and now that's extra thousands and thousands of dollars that you can keep making.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:09

And I've had clients come back years later and they'll stick with me because, guess what, we have their full archive. So if they want to make an encompassing video for the last three years what they've been up to, know their company and do that because we have that archive. So we can pull from our archive. So, which is why I'm so against selling um, you know, raw footage, because a most people can't work with. I find log footage and stuff in the corporate world.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:11:32

That's why I always shoot in log.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:34

Yeah, and so I'm like this is 10-bit log footage.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:11:38

I mean I shoot in log for the image, but I also shoot in log because well, no, I do mainly for the image, but a side benefit is nobody's going to use this footage.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:49

So, if you want, somebody you're going to have to have to I've had clients literally, and this is funny again smaller guys go, please can you not show it and log. And then I'm like but then why are you? Because they want to use the footage. And I'm like but why are you then hiring me? There's so many other videographers, just go hire them, like yeah, you know it's not gonna do.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:05

You want it to look as good yeah, that's what I'm saying, the whole reason to hire us and again, I personally am like log and 10-bit gives you so much flexibility in post. My colors can't do anything if I record already with you know, 709 baked in Anyway, but to me what we record is also an asset that will come years and years. It'll pay off, and it can't if, obviously, you just give it away or also you don't store it or you lose it or whatever. So anyway, at least that's the strategies that I've been I've been following, but anyway, I don't want to backtrack because I know you have that spicy story, but before that, would you say, because there's something you are doing that I'm not doing. You have a YouTube channel with a lot of following, do you, and that builds credibility. Do you think that's helping business? Would you?

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:49

suggest other people do that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:12:51

Oh, this 15 K deal today is uh from you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:55

Look at that man.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:12:57

It's, it's somebody that they've been, uh, following my content. I don't know why, cause they don't do video, but they've been like watching it. And then, ooh, I have a. This will actually be kind of cool to listen to, this will actually be kind of cool to listen to. And he said I could share this. But someone, literally I met them. I sold them a lens they were buying it for their kid and then they were like man, I've been wanting to do and I, whenever I sell something, I'm always like hey, what do you do? What do you do so I can close them?

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:30

I'm just kidding.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:13:31

So, I can just whatever. Maybe I could help them or not. But this one guy, this cause this is actually and it's crazy cause this is live, like this is live, live. Let me see if I can find it. Maybe I'll find it at the end or something okay if you find it, but the guy the guy literally said.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:14:01

He was like oh man, I've been looking to do this myself and and blah, blah, blah and I'm buying all this gear. I'm like researching what gear to buy because I'm like videographers are expensive and I have this project in mind. I want to do all this stuff. I'm trying to learn it, whatever, because I always send my YouTube channel. When they're like hey, can you send me your portfolio? I send them Instagram website YouTube. He's like, yeah, he sent me back the video and he said I can't do this it was a behind-the-scenes video.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:14:37

He's like but this is exactly what I want to get done for my business. And after watching your video I realized there's no, I need you, Exactly I need you to do this. And I was like, oh, makes sense. And he was like, yeah, Did he lose the lens sale.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:53

No, no, he bought the lens. Oh, he got the lens. This he bought. He bought the lens.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:14:56

Oh, he got. This is this is after. This is after.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:57

He bought the lens, but he bought it for his son because son is passionate and he was like I want to no, that's incredible and that's see, that's what I'm saying and I'm so glad you are doing that because, uh, and you could tell people that I think it's also okay to you know something like that. I'm not doing this in an alternate way is to build an audience because it builds your credibility. It's a lot easier, especially with new clients. Right, I'm relying on the that warm refer lead, which is harder when it's new clients now, versus you, on the other hand, have another way to be like look, here's the credibility piece that you're looking for yeah so they're more.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:30

Uh, you know, okay with, because you know let's be real, even for a business, 10, 15, 20k is a lot of money to spend, especially with a new record that they don't know yeah, so so that's great. So I'm glad that's working out for you. Um, all right, let's move on to that spicy story I want to know on why you should have contracts and payment terms in place.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:15:50

Uh, legally speaking anyway well, imagine you spending 10 to 15 000 to $15,000. I'm vetting the crap out of that person.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:16:03

The water break, yeah, but yeah. So the way I do my payment structure and I will never do it differently unless it's a larger client corporate there is actually a system in place. Their butt's on the line is actually a system in place. Their butt's on the line I have a contract in place Is 50% up front and that's just to lock in the date. We're like, oh well, I'd like to talk about the project, I'd like to brainstorm and come up with an idea and I'm like, yes, after the 50% deposit, because that's part of my packages, it's brainstorming, coming up with the strategy and a plan to make you more money, or or not just direct money, but like generate more awareness leads, whatever the heck.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:16:50

We end up coming up that you want um, and then it's 50%, the rest before the day of the shoot or I'm not showing up, yeah, or or if it's if, if, like, we're close and it's like some kind of relationship, I will say it's okay and I'll do it on the day of blah, blah, blah, but nothing like nothing else that the first time I ever did not hold to that. My client uh didn't pay me the other part, so I I, thankfully I still held. How much is it? Uh, $4,500.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:28

Wow, that's a big one yeah.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:17:30

So the whole project was 11 K. Oh, no, no, no, no, it was eight K. Um, I, probably. Oh, no, no, no, no, it was 8k, um, I, probably. How much is it? So they paid me the deposit, because I'm not even going to put it on my calendar without a deposit, uh. So they paid me 2000. Uh, it was even less than 50, which I I don't have done that, but they paid me the $2,000 we get all up until the shoot I have. I paid my person already. Like this was a larger same day edits for a conference, like it was a whole thing. I had to go to Tampa like I was bringing my wife to the hotel because thankfully in this business like.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:18:14

You go places, you go to nice hotels you could bring your family, and then it's like a vacation for the family, um, or at least it's vacation for my wife, without me because I'm working. But, um, so the literally she's not answering calls a week before and I'm like, oh my gosh, so it was two days before. Finally, and I'm calling her, I'm calling.

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:40

At least they booked the hotel or you had to expense the hotel later.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:18:44

No, no, no, they were booked. I never expense.

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:46

Yeah, okay.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:18:48

I should, now that I'm thinking about it, for like flights and all that stuff.

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:51

I mean that's okay if they're doing it, I'm okay either way, as long as it doesn't come out of pocket. Yeah, I don't know, At this point they're going to have small claims.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:18:58

I don't care, I'll pay the cost of the hotels. But what was I going to say? So this person didn't answer. I reached out to everyone. I started reaching out to her team because I'm like no way. And she messaged me saying don't reach out to my team. I'm like, then answer the phone. I'm like you don't want me to reach out to your team, answer the phone. Uh, she calls me and crying, and it's like a whole thing, bro okay I don't want, I don't want to get too deep into it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:19:31

Sure, I mean yeah, because she's kind of kind of stills dang it. We can't edit this.

Vipul Bindra: 1:19:37

No, oh yeah, Don't say anything you don't want to say, but I mean I get it. So she had some emotional issues.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:19:43

Her mom was in the hospital. Okay, it was a whole thing. Yeah, like it was a legit thing, an emergency, I get it, yeah, but then legit things happen every time she didn't pay me but so and I actually cared about this client Like, and I was like she's like, please can we figure something out? So I'm like you know what. I'll do this this one time. I will never do this again. I will show up. You don't have to worry about paying anything more. Just I will not. And it's the same day, edits.

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:16

Oh so she wanted to reschedule, basically, the shoot. No, no, we shot the same day. Oh so we shot the same day.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:20:22

Yeah, everything was good, but it was. They were same day edits. So I'm literally giving her the deliverables on the day and there is a larger video, like a story brand video that I'm making out of the content. I even upsold her. On the upsold, like, I convinced her that she needed interviews done like professional interviews. So that was an extra 2000 on top of whatever I was already doing. So it was. It ended up becoming a big package and she was paying it off after very slowly, like she would randomly give me a 2000 or she randomly gave me like $3,000. Okay, I'm like, oh, cool, awesome, bro. I never heard from her again. It's been like it's been like eight months, wow, no, no, no. Yeah, it's been eight months and I reached out multiple times there. There were some times where she would say, yeah, I'm paying, I'm, I'm gonna pay you today. Uh, didn't happen, I'm gonna pay you. Uh, in two days. Uh, didn't happen, I'm gonna pay you this.

Vipul Bindra: 1:21:30

Like that's happened, like at least she's communicating now, because sounds like she can ghost you on the phone too yeah, well, I have, yeah, I have like connections to her whole network at this point yeah, I'm like integrated.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:21:42

So like you can't run from me, but like, but, uh, I don't have a lawyer, so I'm gonna. Well, now, now I do. But, um, so this last conversation, uh, before she was, literally she sent me a screenshot and she, cause, she randomly sent me the money. It wasn't like I asked for it, she did it on a random day, so I don't know. There's probably a bunch of stuff happening. I don't know those situations. But she sent me a screenshot of her Zell, like trying to Zell me, and it said could not like send money, whatever? Uh, and I'm like what? She's like I'm going to try to figure it out, I'm going to get to the house and then I'm going to send you the rest of the payment. This was like three weeks ago and, uh, she didn't respond, she didn't send the payment. I messaged her the next day. I'm like what happened? She's like, oh, I accidentally sent it to my landlord, who's also named Anthony.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:46

I'm like what, whatever At this point the amount of hours, like we were talking about time earlier the amount of time you spent on just trying to recover this payment is crazy.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:22:53

It's crazy. So I sent her a whole text message that was just like hey, this needs to be done by the end of the year. Uh, I ended up doing my taxes. I made a lot more money than I thought I did. It'd be better to defer the payment to this year because I'm not an escort. Now I'm an escort, but like before I wasn't. So I'm like, oh you know, it's probably a good thing, it's probably god or something, like not wanting me to pay all the taxes on that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:23:18

So I deferred it to this year. I sent her a text message on the first and I was like hey, I know you didn't. She didn't pay. She didn't even reach out to pay. She's like I'm going to pay by the 31st. I reached, I reached out and I was like if this does not get paid by the first week of January, I'm going to send you to collections. You're going to pay the attorney fees and late fees. I was like I don't know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:46

All right, so you're waiting on it, let's see. Well, yeah, so that's crazy.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:23:50

But if I had a contract, it'd be a lot easier to win that case honestly. So, I don't know how I'm going to win it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:54

Yeah. But if I pay enough money, yeah I mean, that's how it works, right, it's the person with the bigger stick wins. But that's exactly what I'm talking about. It's the power of contracts. I personally would never work without a contract. Now here's the other side of it. To be real, I do help other buddies with DP stuff and stuff. Now, that's different. If you were like, if we'll come DP this project?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:24:19

I don't need a contract for that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:24:20

Like I'm going to come help you out. You're going to pay me.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:24:22

We're done Like we don't need contract for that and you could ruin my life if I didn't pay you. But I'm not going. Yeah, no, no.

Vipul Bindra: 1:24:40

And it's. It's okay because that's just a simple day rate thing. But now, when you're doing deliverables, when you own their assets, when you own their video, when you own their I don't know the raw files and you own the deliverables and stuff, I think it's very important to define specialty deliverables Because, like I said, clients will come back and say I've had this happen. So I did like a live stream a year ago, whatever where I offered them a live stream a year ago, whatever the where, um, I offered them, you know, to live stream the event and then give them a copy of the video. That was the the simple deal.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:05

But then I was like, hey, here on the top of that, uh, we can make you an incredible recap and we make great recap videos and the good thing is when we're already out there, it's not that much for me to make a recap video, so I'm like, hey, we're gonna be already out there, yeah exactly right, um, and maybe getting a few extra shots that normally we wouldn't get.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:21

But again, no, no extra human cost, you know yeah, so anyway, I was like, hey, let me make this uh recap video and it's gonna be very useful because you're gonna remember this event forever yeah right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:33

And then they wanted a teleprompter, both thing. They said no. They said, uh, because I, because you know you need a teleprompter operator, it's a live event, you can't just have one of those other teleprompters anyway. So I said okay, and then they rejected the teleprompter because they didn't like the person cost and equipment cost was fine, uh, and I was like, okay, well, that's fine. Then they said we'll get our own teleprompter. And then, uh, the other thing they said was, yeah, we don't want the recap video because we don't want to take this cost, all done. Guess what went without a hiccup? The live stream, perfectly fine, they loved it. Guess what didn't work? The teleprompter they bought on Amazon, anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:10

So they had to like the whole thing was a disaster because they had to, like now, read off paper or ipads. You know, whatever done, the event is done, that the response is incredible. After the event they emailed me that this was the you know incredible live stream. Our audience loved it. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah, when are we getting the recap video? I'm like, uh, hey, you guys didn't pick recap video. They said we're sure we did. Here's a copy of the agreement. It helps a lot. I said, yeah, I wanted to really make it. I was excited about it genuinely and I'm like but you didn't pick it. Here's the contract, here's the option that you didn't check and you didn't pay me for the cost yeah you know, what I mean that what ended up happening?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:26:48

nothing, that's it. They said there's no, no, yeah, okay because they, they, there's no nothing.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:53

The argument that's what they did. Same thing when I was talking about payment terms. That happened. I was like look, here's your contract. You're not supposed to pay me whenever you want to. You're supposed to pay me when you sign. It is what it is, you know yeah and if you don't pay me, we're not gonna be filling your event, you know yeah yeah, what it is, I mean yeah so I mean, yeah, well, we'll talk after this.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:27:14

I need I need some like contract templates and stuff. Uh yeah, I was thinking about getting like an ironclad tense thing, but I don't know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:22

I mean, at the end it's a negotiation. My advice is and we can like say, talk off this. What I suggest to people is nowadays we have access to chat, gpd and stuff like that is just go in there and generate something like give it obviously details the type of work you do do and you'll get a good template out of it. Obviously, don't use that again, not legal advice. I would then take that to an attorney and be like hey, this is what I have now. Can you find loopholes and stuff and or fix this or make this legally, because you know they have to be able to defend you with it too, so so, so they need to check it and and I'm pretty sure I would not use a just chat gpt you want it to go to a real attorney, who, who's familiar with litigation.

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:01

All that because that again hire experts the whole point of this is you want to be an expert in video, then please hire experts in other fields. Don't cheap out, you know.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:28:10

Otherwise the result is not gonna be good because like you're still learning that yeah, and and to be real, most people don't even care.

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:17

I mean, we do it every day and I hate that. About everything Like software, you know, you just check, accept terms and conditions and then you know who knows what you're signing your life away to. But people are so used to accepting terms and conditions at this point it's not that big of a deal in my opinion. The only time time here's the thing I and I work with very small to very large companies never had issues. The only time contract issue ever even comes is government.

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:41

I work with a lot of state-owned universities, state governments, and they will always have a state attorney and who will go in. And the biggest thing that they remove or want to negotiate on is liability. They're like we're a government of united states, of florida. We cannot be held liable for anything or something, something, something. And at that point I'm just like I'm gonna let, because usually those are bigger contracts, I'm gonna let the lawyers handle it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:05

It's not, it's beyond me. I'm like, okay, here's this, here's this at that point somewhere. But there's an advantage now, at least for some of the universities I worked with we have a vetted already contract. We're a vendor. It's a given and speeds up the process. So much Cause I I use that contract that has been edited and filtered out for them. It makes it a lot faster, cause now I already have one I'm like, and I know the attorneys agreed on it so, but I'm saying that's the only time I'm willing to like, because again it's the government they're gonna pay their bills. Yeah, so I'm not as worried about it, you know what are you gonna do?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:29:39

send them to collection? It's like good, I'm just sending a government entity to the collection yeah, but I've never had that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:46

Now they're slow, but that's and that's the only time I'll do net 30, net 60, whatever. I'm okay with that because again, I don't know about other people I trust governments to pay, that's. I've never had that default so I'm not worried about it. But any private company signing the agreement it is what it is it has late fees. I've never had to charge late fees, but again because I don't even show up until they sign it. And then the other thing is kill fees. To me that's very important.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:30:14

A lot of people don't think about it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:15

I had that happen with a buddy, which it was a buddy, so it wasn't a big deal.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:30:18

That was part of this client's. Oh, really, it was a cancellation. They canceled on the day before to fly out.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:24

Yeah, that's not acceptable because you've blocked that day out and my thing is obviously things change. I want to be reasonable, but at some point it's like it's too late and you gotta have kill fees.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:40

So one, but again, I find most people when they have kill fees in the contract.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:42

They don't want to cancel the the thing I had had. Same thing. I was helping a buddy, uh, on a shoot, like I was gonna be a gaffer or whatever. And I'm literally and I prepped the whole date before like I've already done the work, you know I loaded, I showed up and I'm literally pulling into the venue, like here's me turning into this to where we're filming, and he's leaving and I see him. I'm like what's happening? Like he's waving at me and he's like, dude, uh, the person's not okay with us filming in there.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:07

It was like a documentary type of thing. I'm like what, the team, whoever scheduled this, didn't vet them, which is fine. Not, he was obviously very disappointed. But at at that point I'm like, well, I'm here, you know what I mean. Like I better get paid because I made the effort. I'm literally at the location, I spent all the time prepping, but of course he's a buddy on the other side. I'm like look, if it's your own cost, I don't know. At that point I didn't know what the I was. Like I again, that's okay, it's not that big of a. Yeah, yeah, but obviously it's a client.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:36

If it's a company, then no, like you got to pay me again they have to pay me yeah, but, and that's why it's so important to have contracts and things like that- yeah in place anyway. Um, all right, let's move on to the next topic, my friend doing it oh my gosh, that's what's. It's already been an hour and a half. We haven't even freaking my camera's dying oh really do.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:31:54

You know it's funny. My, my, uh. So I'm filming content right now for my own thing. I try to like difference between youtubers.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:01

Other people just came sat down and talk and you're like, hey, where can I put a camera?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:32:04

yeah, I'm like, I'm like trying to, because it this is your, you might say something good, you know yeah, I mean, hey, I'm happy for you to get content out of it, why not?

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:14

and um so, my camera's dying.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:32:16

Well, it's gonna die yeah yeah, sorry, this is live.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:19

There's no stopping, there's no changing. Do you know what?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:32:21

happened the the? I hate wireless mics oh I've had issues with the freaking.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:27

Which one is the?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:32:27

dgi. Yeah, it's stuck.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:29

It did disconnected halfway through oh, my goodness, is it at least internally? I just recorded.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:32:34

Yeah, so whenever I remember when I pulled something out of my pocket that was me noticing it didn't record and I was like dink, and here's the good thing.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:41

I do want to talk about this. So I'm very much about using the right tools for the right job. Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:46

And so I own, you know, kostink and Kost11Ds, because those are the, I think, the standard lav mics that people should use and and then you know Shep's microphones, good Sennheiser microphones, but at the end of the day. Here's what we also use, which is a funny contrast Rode Pro 2, or Rode Wireless Pros or whatever, and it's so funny. On one hand you can know it's probably one of the most expensive mics, like the C-Met 5U.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:10

And then now here it is A couple hundred dollars, you know, or what $300, $400, whatever the price of the road wireless pros is. But there's a right tool for the right job. Whenever conferences we have to get you know, otfs on the fly, interviews, and we cannot have time, especially these people in their massive gowns. We don't have time or the energy or, like I said, the manpower and willingness of these clients, especially there to the guests, to go run wires and and all that and plus we need a quick soundbite. So road wireless pros are these djis would be great for that. Because, uh, because you can quickly use a magnet, and I'm trying testing out the new lark m2s too, because they're so much tinier, um but anyway, they just came out with the ones what m3s?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:33:58

m2s dude I just got m2 I'll show them to you after this. See, this is the thing like just talk to talk to your youtuber friend anyway, but I'm texting because they were.

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:10

They were around and I was like, oh, this is smaller. But the thing I liked about wireless pros was they were also recording 32 bit float internally and my main thing was, you know, it's live event transmission, whatever. So anyway, it's not that the quality is the same, it's just it's the right tool for the right job.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:34:28

So I don't think, uh, they're actually pretty good, yeah, and I mean surprising yeah surprisingly good.

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:32

Obviously I wouldn't compare it to like a cost 11d with a electro or some deity or whatever some kind of transmitter system, but I do think for what it is it's incredible and for a job like uh conferences, I think it is uh incredibly powerful tool. Do you have any equipment like that? You say it's considered lower budget, but in a professional world it can actually be useful Because that Justin over he's making a full living from just an Osmo, osmo Pocket 3. Like his entire, he's making six figures Justin Mark.

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:06

Yeah, justin, the guy who does the Kel-Tec stuff, you know. No, anyway, he was at the event. But what I'm saying is he's oh yes, oh Justin, yes yes, but what he's doing is he is making a six-figure living, making videos with osmobocket 3. Isn't that crazy, yeah?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:35:25

that's his camera of choice, because I am thinking about social media so like my, my, I think. Well, actually my cameras, my cameras are not expensive. I I use Lumix S5 IIs. I could get those used for like $1,100.

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:42

What's their love with Lumix? Now, as somebody who loved, by the way, gh4 Revolutionary, that's, made me so I started with Canon T4i, whatever, whatever, and before that was tape, and then I switched to GH4 because it was in first 4K. It was such a massive jump and I went to that system with that sigma 18 to 35. You know that was a killer combo with the metabones anyway, uh, but then obviously I left and then I went to gh5s or whatever for a while and then I went to c200 and never looked back. But you're still using, uh, obviously, lumix cameras different than what I was using. What's your love with lumix cameras and why?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:36:18

I mean, I'm a, I'm a new lumix shooter, probably like a year and a half maybe. Maybe not two years yet it'll be two years in april but the image, the image is great. The autofocus is pretty good. I mean, it didn't miss until it died, but um, the autofocus is pretty good. Way more video features than any sony mirrorless camera or canon or any other one but start shooting starting controversy yeah, open gate, yeah well what do you?

Vipul Bindra: 1:36:52

use. See here's another thing. As somebody um you know who's doing client work, do you actually use open gate? All the time huh, you're the first one, so what? What's the? Uh, how are you finding extra use out of? I get more vertical resolution so you're trying to make both vertical and horizontal.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:37:10

Yeah, so right there I can use it for horizontal and I could actually. This is a. This is me confessing. I did not shoot an open gate. No, like, I noticed it halfway through this and I could actually. This is a. This is me confessing I did not shoot an open gate now like I noticed it halfway through this and I'm like oh no, I can't get up I was like I can't do anything at this point.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:37:27

But uh, yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I use it for client stuff um the ibis is the best ibis that I'll give it to you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:37

GH5 was a really good IBIS back in the day whenever I had it.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:37:41

It's so freaking good. So when I'm shooting, I shoot handheld a lot of times. I just it helps me keep it small and the image is reliable. So I'm not trying to like dig at, but like every time I had Sony, I always like cameras that just look different. They're organic.

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:00

That's why I loved the c70 it was just oh yeah, that's one of my favorite images it was just a beautiful image and I was really snobby about that stuff.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:38:10

Uh, I'm not snobby, I was just particular like I would use sony cameras all the time and I'm like shadows on the C70.

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:18

And that's why, when C80 came out, people were like are you going to switch back? I was like A no, because the demand is for Sony. So obviously I'm making business decisions I don't care about.

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:28

You know, sony, canon, whatever. And then B, the truth being is the C80, again goes great, camera, whatever. Fixed a bunch of problems I had with the C70. But c80, again goes great, camera, whatever. Fixed a bunch of problems I had with the c70. But what it didn't fix is it now doesn't have the djo sensor. And the reason I like with c70 wasn't the form factor, whatever, it was literally that image. It's the closest thing I've seen to an alexa.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:38:49

Uh, without paying alexa, yeah yeah, and I had a komodo at the time, so I used to have a c70 komodo or red komodo and the image was like pretty close, like both of them. You know, the komodo image is great. I love the komodo image. I think it looks great, uh.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:39:04

But then I got a lumix s52 at the same time and I use them all in conjunction and I was like, oh, oh, this is good this is a really, this is a really good image and yeah, it was a little bit more digital than I'd like it to be, but I can easily fix that with digital diffusion or just some. It's so easy to fix that. But it just looked good and the dynamic range. It just had a lot of hole in the shadows and the highlights and I'm like this. I can rely on this. I can trust this image.

Vipul Bindra: 1:39:38

So here's what I want to talk next, and I'm like this, I can rely on this, I can trust this. So here's what I want to talk next. Then that and I'm glad you like it, because at the end day, initially when I started, I was client you know, direct client only and I quickly realized camera doesn't matter, right, it's what you want to use to get the result that they want. But then, when I started working with the agencies, I realized camera does matter because you, you know the requirements and then rules and blah, blah, blah. Coming back to you, have you seen any camera perception issue? Because, let's be real, client may not know Lumix from Sony, from whatever, but guess what? They do know Size, right. So obviously these are tiny little cameras.

Vipul Bindra: 1:40:14

So do you like to build it out? I'm saying, is it necessary? Obviously these are tiny, I can build it out. So do you like to build it out? I'm saying is it necessary? Have you find at least your clients, especially the ones that are paying eight, 10, 12, 15, 30 K? Do they care or do they not care?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:40:25

So a lot of my, so I I do three months worth of content in one day, which is like a. I shoot for one day and I make to $15,000 and which is like nuts.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:40:35

And then the back ends editing costs and on the front end it's a pre-production, a lot of pre-production. Yeah, um, so that stuff, social media nobody cares. Nobody cares about that stuff. When I have a high paying, like one off, which I do have a couple, um, they care, they care, and especially if, if it's somebody that's like, oh man, this is a lot and I'm like I've never paid this much money or whatever the heck, then I want to show up with a fully rigged camera one.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:41:09

It's easier, it makes my life easier in the sense of like I don't have

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:41:11

to switch batteries and all that stuff so you'll build it out, you'll put rails on it and madbox and vmount, vmount and all that, all that stuff.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:18

But so you'll build it out, you'll put rails on in my box and the v? Mounts and whatever and all that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:41:20

Okay, all that junk, but I yeah, it matters then, um, but I also have a ronin 4d that I bring for those shoots and that's a monster. Yeah, that looks like a chicken yeah, exactly they have that little head thing and they just they, uh yeah, that, that's a talking point itself oh yeah, they're. They're always like whoa what is that? Like I'll be shooting a conference or something and everyone's like yeah they should make like a like an instagram reel where everyone's like oh like watching something, or anyways.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:41:54

Yeah, no, it's cool. So which one do you like better?

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:57

so what's your preference? You like the, the ones where you have to, you know, build your rig out or whatever or social media, where you know you don't have to do that. No, I just like showing up. Oh, you just like showing up, you'll make anything I like showing up with a tiny little tiny camera yeah, tiny little camera.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:42:15

Uh, it's not the smallest thing, but just getting the job done, like I don't even. I don't have crazy primes. Yeah, I, I the only primes I have. I actually have like ours, which are nice. I'm trying to sell them but, but um, the only primes I have are anamorphic. I shoot with the zoom lens. It's just 24 to 70. That's all Like I don't need anything. I can make the image look nice on the backend, you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:43

And and you're also trying to innovate, so things that I've noticed watching your videos now that I am subscribed, uh, that, thank you. Yeah, of course. Hey, I want to watch, I want to learn, that's my.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:54

I'm obsessed with this stuff, right, yeah, so I I want to learn. So here's something I knew, I noticed. So I was very bullish in, you know, 360 cameras years ago when they came out. But then I had an Insta360, I think it was like X or whatever, the first one, the one X, whatever and then I kind of didn't find a use. The only use I found initially was location scouting, because you know, I don't have to like look around, I just walk around and then in the, when I go home, I can actually 360 it and be like, oh, what was that, that corner or that corner? But then eventually I did that a couple times. I was like you know what, this is not necessary, and I obviously sold it, uh. But then now you know, looking at you, you were actually very you know using 360 cameras in your shoots. So a what, what makes you want to use them? And just tell me your process.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:43:43

So I there's a lot, a lot of other people that are doing this nowadays, so I'm trying to find out things that are like different, and there are a couple of people that I've seen them do certain shots like crazy hyperlapses and like adding emotion and blah blah, like it's like this whole thing, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's cool. How do they do that? And then I found out it was a 360 camera, so that that's why I wanted to add it, and I've gotten great feedback from my clients on the fact that, okay, these shots look different.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:44:15

They're like can I? Get those shots, I'm like, yeah, it's an extra 500 bucks.

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:18

Exactly there you go, hey, extra revenue but now here's the other side of it that worries me. So in my experience, as somebody's tried everything right, I've tried making fancy transitions and whatever the trending thing then was. But here's what I found. My client at least for me, my clients love making content that lasts them years to come, and what worries me about that is it looks good now because it's trending. It's cool in three years. What if this is not cool or it's been overdone or whatever? And then the content is not going to be evergreen or whatever, and um, so anyway. So that's why I haven't used any of that. But I did see your shots and I'm like, yeah, that's actually innovative, that's cool do you have?

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:56

any thing with that? What if that's? Like reservations yeah, or just in general it starts to look dated because you know now it's been used. Not now, but yeah, yeah so it's been overused I, I'm not.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:45:06

I'm not sure, because I do think it's um, it's fairly timeless. Obviously, if you do it a little too intense, it'll be too much, but they used hyperlapses back then. They just didn't look that good.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:22

Now it just looks better.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:45:24

It's more seamless and stylish.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:27

I like that. You can do it with this tiny camera and a stick. Yeah, you just get a stick.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:45:31

I also use it for drone stuff. If I can't fly a drone, I'll just pretend it's a drone I'll just and just like pretend it's a drum um, but no, I'm not too concerned is it too unwieldy when you're at that height? No, no, it's just a stick.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:44

I gotta, I gotta, come test that out it's just a stick.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:45:47

Yeah, you're just coming around.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:49

I was like hey the only other guy I've met. So I am usually the guy who is who's all the gear you are. I think the second guy would be like if I don't have anything I know, so who the guy who does you know?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:46:01

but, uh, yeah, I mean it's, it's, it's pretty simple to use, um, it's just a little time consuming. So, like on like one of my youtube videos, I'm just like walking around and it was literally a four minute clip where I'm taking slow steps around the thing and sometimes I usually just send my assistant, like when we were actually shooting during the event, I was like, oh hey, camera one, you could lock off, get it on wide manual focus, set the focus. Can you grab the, the inset, 360 the stick and just do a really slow walk, make sure the bulb is towards the center of the stage and then, uh, yeah, then I got the shot. So I don't even film it, but it's cool. I do think it'll be timeless in the sense of, uh, the way you do it, if it's too much and weird and tacky, then there's a lot of, there's a lot of marketing that that has stuff right now.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:57

Yeah, no, it is very popular and, like I said, I liked it watching your video and I don't do it for every client. Yeah, I definitely don't do it, so that is definitely an add-on.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:47:05

Yeah, and well, yes, but not every client. That style fits clients. It fits speakers really well. It fits events. It fits events perfectly, perfectly.

Vipul Bindra: 1:47:18

That doesn't need to be evergreen either, because it's events so you are more and again, you don't have to tell us anything. You, you know about a product that's not released yet, but I want to know more. Um, what do you see where the industry goes? What type of products are going to come out to help us? What do you see happening this year, in 2025, 2025?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:47:36

Just with everything.

Vipul Bindra: 1:47:36

Yeah, just in general.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:47:37

Yeah, um, so I think I think the industry as a whole is getting more compact. Everything lights, cameras, lenses, like the different iterations of lenses are slightly sharper but smaller, like everything's just smaller, more compact. So I just smaller, more compact. I do think the industry is moving more towards content creation or focusing. Bigger companies are focusing on content creation. Obviously there's a cinema aspect, but even the cinema aspect lights are getting smaller and brighter. Brighter Flags are getting more collapsible quicker quicker.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:48:18

I think speed. All this stuff is there. There's not huge there's. I'd still see a necessity for larger crews, but also people are doing it on their own and smaller crews. So I think companies are realizing that they're seeing that at the end of the day, it's money like people are. These companies are trying to make more money, so yeah, there was the highest cost, so yeah, yeah so these content creators or these one-man bands or three-man bands, whatever they're trying to sell to them.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:48:49

So I do see that being a thing, obviously I. I think the best camera out there that's going to come out is it's not the client, I would have answered that, but I think the best camera. I hope that DJI comes out with a 4D mini.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:08

Yeah, I don't know why they couldn't and it would be successful. Well, they're having current issues just bringing their products into the country.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:49:14

The drone yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:16

But they could easily make you know like you. You said a 4d without just the gimbal part. I think that would sell or even a tiny one, just make a smaller 4d yeah, that's 4k really good yeah and just has like a crispy image, like and then I'm pretty sure again I don't want to. I'm pretty sure they buy their sensors from sony so they could easily source the fx3 or the fx6 sensor and put that into a into a mini 4d or whatever I think, it would sell.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:44

Like I said, I was at first like yes, it's a one trick pony, but after having seen you use it, I was like you know what? I see it? A purpose, but it would need to have an a and b to complement it. It would make a good c camera, as long as we can get one without the gimbals and I think, um, they just need to, and maybe they are. I mean, we, we don't know, obviously I, I, it does make sense because everyone liked those cameras.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:50:06

They're the apple they're the apple of the camera industry. I'm telling you so after using that camera, the, the menu system, the integration, how everything just works. There there's the best.

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:18

Even the LiDAR autofocus they came out with the LiDAR is cool.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:50:22

They need to get things better, they need to get it together, I mean at least they are somewhat, I see starting to show up on main sets.

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:30

Like I said, I'm very bullish on like Teradek, for example. Very rarely do I've been on bigger sets where they wouldn't be using teradek, but here's what I found. I've actually started to see some dji transmission and stuff on on bigger sets and that was crazy to me to see that a company can come in and start to like cut some market share and dj has been able to do that oh 100.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:50:52

I was on a, a larger live production shoot and it was a-list celebrities, like it was a whole thing. Um, it was a very large live production, like, and the director of like the one whatever calling shots and all that and he was the video director, so he was helping with the engineering and whatnot. He said after this show I will never use teradek again. We need dji's next year look at that because it was so reliable.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:51:21

We rented the 12g yeah, expensive um teradeks, yeah, and we use them alongside each other and they're like this was seamless wow this was so good. We never had a drop out. It was, we didn't even have to put it super high and it didn't drop out, just the signal so strong.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:41

There is a little bit more latency, but I need to do some more tests, because my experience is with teradek though I have tried all the other systems and has been that I'm very bullish. That's what I'm saying on teradek, because personally, um, I have never had issues with teradek, and what I do like about Teradek was or is because I still use them on my live streams is it's either there or it's not there.

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:04

I don't want the compression because at least and again I'm not saying DJI does that because I haven't personally tested it, but a lot of wireless systems will compress the image and still try to keep transmitting and I don't want that. I'd rather just switch to a different camera and I need to know if it's good or it's not there. I don't want half compression. But again, if you're using it not for live, then I guess that the other way is better. Either way, I found Charadex to be very reliable and also very good for what I'm trying to use them for. I did switch over for regular, which I've shown you earlier, to this new Holly land pyro seven system, and only because on my director's camera we can switch a button and they can go and see a, b and that's what these business clients want to do. But I don't think I have done that for live or am interested in yet. But who knows, this makes me want to still try the DJI system.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:52:57

If you need latency, I would. I would stick to teradek still, yeah, yeah, the latest live for live.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:02

You know, that's what I'm saying, that's what's important, that and then that image quality doesn't drop, because I don't want people on live to see compression artifacts or whatever yeah, well I've.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:53:11

I haven't had too much compression. Well, I'm pretty sure teradek has a patent on uncompressed yeah latency, so like nobody else can really even yeah, exactly it's like some, that's stupid these patent things, man, the whole zach's phone I'm thinking about that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:27

Let me not get started.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:28

Which is why I think nikon bought red just for the back well yeah, that was stupid yeah, so same thing with zach's come so in the sound industry, if you've noticed so in a lot of the equipment will come out like you can record and transmit everywhere but the US, because this company called Zaxcom on the high end. I've used their equipment, which is good equipment. I don't want to say anything against. But this patent is stupid because it restricts other companies from being able to offer just a feature. You know so.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:55

Now, that's why a lot of these products can record and transmit at the same time in us, but you take it outside or you buy it literally outside the country which is why we were talking about the deity theos thing when you were in europe because they'll restrict them, uh, from basically working properly in the us and which is kind of, I think, stupid. But again, I'm not a patent expert. It's just annoying because it restricts our ability to do and and create content that we want to. At the end of the day, yeah, it doesn't make sense.

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:23

Yeah, the same thing with uh red. I think they have a. That's why all these companies have had to go, like canon especially has to go and uh license the, the, I think, patent from them and nikon, which is why I think uh nikon bought them, which I was surprised. 80 or something million dollars, it wasn't a lot of money that's not a lot yeah, that's what I'm saying. They got red for like basically nothing, it's just well, I'm thinking, I we don't know their books.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:54:47

Yeah, we don't know. We don't know how, like how much money they were actually making red nikon doesn't care yeah, no, I got nothing.

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:53

I didn't buy them, I'm pretty sure, sure it was for patents, because there's no way. It's like not even a drop in a bucket for Nikon. Yeah. What's also crazy, though, is I don't know if you've noticed that at least for me, as somebody who's owned Monstro and Helium in the past, and V-Raptors too I owned two V-Raptors for a little while. The thing is, I found that the demand is just gone.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:18

I mean, while the thing is, I found that the demand is just gone, I mean outside of music videos. I'm still seeing them used on music videos, but it immediately um or not immediately, but at least the last couple years I'm seeing less and less productions. Uh, demand reds, you know. I mean I'm camera agnostic. I'll use it if that's the demand is there which is why I was so lucky I'm.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:35

I'm glad I sold my V Raptors because it was like nobody cares. Either they're like we don't care, or we want FX6s, fx9, fx3s you know that level of camera or we want Alexa Mini and Mini LFs. I was not even getting single requests where somebody wanted RED, which used to be a thing.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:55:52

You noticed that, like less and less people are using reds in their production, especially, you know, like companies yeah, I mean, I think we're in different, completely different industries, but, um, yeah, I think, I think it's sort of not really matter. I had one inquiry where they were like, do you ever use red? And I was like, how do you even know what that is? Yeah, yeah, I'm like how do you even know?

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:18

what that is.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:56:18

Yeah yeah I'm like how do you even know what that is like? Oh well, we could probably rent you one and I ended up not landing the job. But like, yeah, so I, I don't, I don't think, I don't think it matters. I I do think our industry is leaning more towards content creation. You're gonna see it, more businesses are starting to realize, oh, evergreen content, or or just, uh, ugc content.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:41

All that stuff is like starting to make more sense in this social media age and I think we're going to start seeing that, especially with like ai and all that um yeah, with all these cell phones and osmo pocket 3 is like making it easier to make that content and that's's why I don't at least for me, I don't see myself fitting in there. I know a lot of people like I was talking about. I've had people on podcasts who are making a living just making social media content. I mean, you've had huge success too, offering it. Obviously, I try to stay in where you know we're offering like real world solutions and telling those stories.

Vipul Bindra: 1:57:16

I see myself being doing more where I see going mini documentaries, corporate docs and stuff like that. But you're right, social media is huge and obviously it's only going to grow and it's going to even need more attention because as soon as more people do it, more noise, more. You know more. You have to be even more innovative to stand out in the noise Right. Yeah, well, you know more. You have to be even more innovative to stand out in the noise right yeah, well, I do think that documentary thing that's never going to go away.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:57:41

Yeah, social media content might. I don't know if you've seen like google ai just making ugc content yeah, like out of nothing from, I think, open air to bro, literally making based off of marketing research, content for a specific brand. But I think the one thing that we're not going to lose and we can't lose is, like personal touch, um.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:58:08

But then you could say hey look, here's a video of me can you make videos of me talking about my company, so I I do think there's going to be a play on ego thing and that's how we can find the future.

Vipul Bindra: 1:58:19

Mini docs is cool like that and that's what I I was talking with adam I've had, like it went from nothing. No company wanted to do long form to one. Then last year I did three or four. So I think companies are starting to recognize that it's all about the storytelling right, and sometimes long form is the right format to tell that longer piece of story and I love, obviously, producing them because that's a documentary style. You get to be more of a filmmaker, get to take, you know, have time and space to be able to tell that story. Uh, obviously it's almost time to wrap up. Before we do that, um, anthony, I do want to ask you so for 2025, tell me your ideal package that you would love to sell. If you had a hypothetical like you write your client, what, what would your dream package be like? Hey, this price point, this many, with the deliverables, um, you know, whatever, what, what do you try? What? What would be ideal for you?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:59:15

honestly, it doesn't have to be crazy, I would love to. So I have like a 12K package. That's three months worth of content from the one day I don't do anything besides help script, shoot them, edit them and I deliver. I think 40 pieces and 40 vertical social media content.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:37

That's actually pretty good for 12K 40 pieces yeah, 40 vertical social media content.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:59:38

That's actually pretty good for 12K 40 pieces. Yeah, well, that's the whole point.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:42

Yeah, and you're doing what Three day shoot you said.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:59:45

One day.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:45

One day. Oh, that's even better for ROI.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:59:47

Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:48

Are you bringing any assistant? So it's you and an assistant maybe.

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:59:50

It's me, I'll bring some people, so like, if I I need it, I might start hiring a producer, just somebody that can like keep us on track. Are you scripting?

Anthony Rodriguez: 1:59:59

these or you're going off the cuff chat gpt oh, look at that man, look at that so, uh, now that I have a whole template where I ask the client a bunch of questions about their ideal yeah, exactly, and then, um, I take their answers and this was given to me I take their answers and I put it into chat gbt. I say, hey, make uh 50 different content ideas. I go through the content ideas.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:00:22

I'm like, oh, this is good, this is not good, this is good look at that and then I give it to the client, say, hey, can you pick 30 that you love and then pick 10 that you are meh, and then half of our day is filming that. I try and not have them read off a teleprompter and then, um, which I might have to start doing, but the second half of the day, half of the day, or at least two to three hours, is b-roll, b-roll. Maybe we make some funny content it all, depends it all depends with every single client.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:00:54

So none, nothing's the same. I don't wish it was the same. Actually I was going to say I wish, but yeah, I mean, if I could, I did my numbers and if I have 12 clients I can make half a million.

Vipul Bindra: 2:01:08

That's pretty good.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:01:09

Yeah, if I have 12 clients.

Vipul Bindra: 2:01:13

Because you're going 12 times four right, because three months of content. They're going to come back to you four times 48, 48 times 12, half a million is a very very good-sized production company. And then the thing I like about this package that you're building costs are low. Because, unlike typical, production. A 12K production would only net you 2, 3, 4k at most profit. But it's just here. Now you can pull in a huge amount of profit, right? What are you thinking You're trying for what? Seven, eight, nine, maybe even more?

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:01:41

My profit margins on this will probably be let me do like some rough numbers. Editing costs would probably be not that much.

Vipul Bindra: 2:01:52

You have your social media content. Yeah, yeah yeah. So probably media content yeah, yeah, they're probably, I'm probably looking at uh 10 000 profit on that.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:02:09

Look at that look at that, that's a very good profit. Yeah, so you're telling me it's a lot of it's a lot of work? Yeah, obviously. No, I don't want to take that social media content.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:14

It's not easy, so yeah and plus 40 delivers is a lot, but let's also look at the bright side 12K 10K profit one day shoot.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:02:25

Oh, that's why I'm doing it.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:27

This is incredible, but now I want you to think on the client side. They're going to get. They only have to put up one day of their time because these people are busy. And they get three months of content. They're getting 40 deliverables for 12K, which are very well done because they're professional doing it. So I think there's a win-win situation.

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:02:45

Oh, it's a win-win all around.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:46

It's very smart that you're doing that, man. It's so great to learn I can't believe. Two hours is over. I would love to keep talking talking, and that's why I love this format. The good thing is, if this goes great, nothing stops us from continuing this conversation in season twos and threes, and if I can do this, remember there's no roi here. I'm not trying to to get anything out of it, but all I just want to have these great conversations. I know I learned a lot, so thank you again for taking your time before we go.

Vipul Bindra: 2:03:11

Anything else you want to add, say do they do no well, I was gonna make a joke then I decided not to, but why was it not pg?

Anthony Rodriguez: 2:03:23

it was uh political. Oh yeah, let's, let's stay out of. I'm just kidding with more camera. All right, uh do you want to tell people where to follow you instagram, youtube, probably for you yeah, so, uh, you could find me on instagram uh tailored, uh like a tailored suit dot films, and then on uh youtube. It's anthony rodriguez with two z's two z's.

Vipul Bindra: 2:03:48

Yeah, the onesie wasn't available my, my onesie wasn't available dude, again, I really appreciate you. You're an incredible person. I'm so glad I met you and it's always a learning experience, so thank you and again, you're welcome back anytime. Thank you, dude, I loved it.