Vipul Bindra: 0:04

hey, josh, thanks for coming, uh, taking the time off your busy schedule, coming and having this talk with me. Funny enough, we had a pretty much a podcast a couple of weeks ago because we were we were chatting at the meetup for a while and that's what ends up happening and, like we were talking, that was just my purpose. We had so much, uh, information that we shared between each other and I was like it'd be great if people would just listen to the information being shared.

Vipul Bindra: 0:29

You know, I don't promise that we have to share valuable information, but hopefully somebody in the similar field could learn something out of it, so anyway. So thanks for coming and coming here to talk to me. How was your drive? You're a little further from me, right?

Josh LeClair: 0:43

oh man, I'm so thankful that I have my own business and I don't have to leave my house if I don't want to uh yeah, traffic is kind of ridiculous yeah, orlando it makes me very thankful. Just you know, walk from my bedroom to eat some food and then out to the garage where I have my little office set up, and yeah, yeah, isn't that the life? Right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06

You have to be self-disciplined. Though it's not for everyone, yes, cause for some people they do need that nine to five, but, yeah, not for me. I'm like no, no, I'd rather make my own schedule but then gives you the freedom you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17

Earlier this Last year my family was like, oh, we haven't been on an international vacation in a while. I was like, all right, let's go on a cruise. And we were able to do that Because, funny enough, most of what we do is on a computer and I was able to still continue my business. I know I shouldn't on vacation.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37

But, I was responding to emails and texts and stuff Because you can buy, thanks to Starlink, internet on these cruise ships now and it was like never leaving work you know, so it was incredible except for you can show your clients and your friends like hey, by the way, yeah, here's what I'm doing when I'm not answering emails? Yeah, exactly right so that's the life, so I'm so glad obviously I do this. Uh, tell me more about, like, how you started into this yeah, um.

Josh LeClair: 2:02

So I picked up a camera a long long time ago, uh, my nota dimage z1, I think, 3.2 megapixels, and just played around with it and uh, then I went into high school and I started getting into film photography and, uh, dabbled in some large format stuff and you know, it was just kind of fun. I was just playing around, I wasn't even doing like senior portraits or anything like that.

Josh LeClair: 2:26

Um, back then you didn't have YouTube universities, so you couldn't really go online. And you know, learn as much as you possibly can right now. Uh, anyways, fast forward. I went to Northern Michigan university and I went for a different degree originally and then ended up switching it over to photography, and then the rest is history. Like, I've been doing photo or video in some shape or fashion ever since then, so well, which university you? Said northern michigan university go wildcats, look at that. I went for a semester.

Vipul Bindra: 2:58

So how I ended up in us was to an exchange program with disney and central Michigan University.

Josh LeClair: 3:03

Look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 3:05

So funny enough. So what brought you down to Florida? So?

Josh LeClair: 3:09

well, this is a bit of a story. So Michigan shut down really hard with COVID and so my business. What had happened is I had hired my first employee February of 2020. We had a baby February 2024, my wife and I, not my employee.

Josh LeClair: 3:26

Uh and then, um, I think it was like early March, everything just shut down so couldn't go to the office. I had a office downtown Marquette, michigan, um, basically couldn't leave the house, and so for like four months we just sat in the house, not sure what to do. The only cool thing is is, uh is our third kid and we got to spend a ton of time just hanging out as a family, right? So we definitely don't take that for granted.

Vipul Bindra: 3:55

Um, but what did you do with the employee? Where they actually coming to work and just hanging out with the family, or they were just at home, they were just at home?

Josh LeClair: 4:02

Yeah, because we weren't allowed, like they were really hardcore about it, um, and so thankfully we had the PPP loans, so that kept, uh, at least a little bit of money rolling in, but basically I wasn't making anything, Um, so it was enough to cover bills for me and the employee and actually worked out better that I had the employee because we got a little bit more money. And then I had a buddy who had a production agency in alabama and out of the blue he's like called me up. Who do I know anyone?

Vipul Bindra: 4:33

uh, west wages oh, I know that guy do you not personally, but you know I have uh, you know through common people.

Josh LeClair: 4:39

Yes, yeah, so our most studios. Yes, he's amazing.

Vipul Bindra: 4:43

I love that guy look at that I didn't even know that common thread.

Josh LeClair: 4:46

But go ahead yeah so he called me up out of the blue and he's like would you like to come do a shoot for winnebago, like the rv? Company and I was like yeah, absolutely, and it had turned out him again. So through studio sherpas ryan coral um, we had gone to a meetup in michigan and we met there and just kept in contact okay and so um, we got our stimulus check that summer.

Vipul Bindra: 5:11

You know six grand right, wow, not a lot not too bad, yep.

Josh LeClair: 5:16

And so, uh, to dive back a little bit further, I'd always wanted to buy an rv, travel, you know, do that sort of thing. My wife was not super on board and then all of a sudden, out of the blue, we got this stimulus check and we were just staying at home. It turned out that I needed to do a little bit of traveling for my work and she's like I'm not staying at home with three kids, like I'm going to come with you, let's, you know, find an RV. And I laughed it off. I was like there's no way, like I can't buy an RV for six grand. She's like just look. So I went on a bunch of different places and, you know, found a bunch of rolling meth labs essentially yeah, but I went on to eBay type of thing, yeah exactly Walter White could shave my head, grow a mustache, uh.

Josh LeClair: 5:59

But I went on to eBay and there's this one that was buy it now and it looked terrible on the outside but it had low mileage and I called the guy and I'm like does everything work? He's like, yep, everything works. So we bought it like that.

Josh LeClair: 6:13

Probably a terrible idea, but it ended up working out great, and so we ended up traveling through 39 different States, working in a bunch of different places, doing a ton of work with my buddy Wes for Winnebago, tiffin a couple other things. Um, I got a client that has campgrounds around the U?

Vipul Bindra: 6:32

S, so I was doing that and we were just traveling for about a year and a half Traveling and making videos for the people while you're traveling, so that's pretty neat.

Josh LeClair: 6:41

Yep.

Vipul Bindra: 6:42

Um, and then what landed you in Florida?

Josh LeClair: 6:44

So one of the last jobs that I did with Wes was for Tiffin Motorhomes and that was in Ocala, and we had been coming down to Florida every single year anyways. We really liked Florida, especially during the wintertime. I'm Midwest born and raised. I've lived in Wisconsin, minnesota, michigan, north Dakota, all very cold places and so it was time for a change. So we had this job in Ocala, got done with that, and then we decided, you know, maybe we're done with the RV lifestyle for a little bit, and we made the mistake of renting an Airbnb that had multiple bedrooms, big TV, big pool, and we were like, yeah, I think it time to to find a place and settle down. So then we started searching for homes in florida, and here we are three years later look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 7:32

Did you sell the rv? So it's gone?

Josh LeClair: 7:34

we did, yeah, so rv life is in the past now well, we have a travel trailer now, um, and I think we'll do it again with the kids, uh, when they get a little bit older, because our youngest was mean, he was a baby. He doesn't really remember anything, so I'd love to do it again with the kids.

Vipul Bindra: 7:49

That's awesome to meet someone Because you know funny enough. Like all people before COVID, before pandemic, a lot of times I have done that or had the idea of it would be so cool to travel and it was so funny. My mom you know uh, and it was so funny, um, my mom you know indian, so I took her to one of those rv dealerships and she's like what are you doing? And this is not you know anyway, because you know the indian parents. They're like doctor, engineer satellite.

Vipul Bindra: 8:14

This is completely not around in an rv no, yeah, and that's not even like a concept for for indian parents at least, anyway. So so I did do that. You know, that was a long time ago 2016 or whatever, whenever but there was been times when I considered that and, uh, obviously, for me at least, looking back, I'm so glad I didn't uh take the plunge because, uh, what I initially started, you know, was class A's big ones, and then, finally, the last time I considered them, I wanted to do the before this is before it was trending on YouTube I, I wanted to do the van life but now I'm like, how would I run this video business?

Vipul Bindra: 8:47

I have more gear, that could you know. As you saw my van earlier, there would be no room for me and the wife of the kids.

Vipul Bindra: 8:55

And anyway so I'm glad I didn't do it. For me it wouldn't have been the right thing. I'd rather be, you know, one of those where we rent it for a week or whatever, then permanently move into one. But I did consider it many times. So it's good to meet somebody who actually ended up taking the dive and actually doing it and seems like had a great time, because you're doing shoots too. So which is the you know, the ultimate thing? What happened to the employee? Did you have to lay them off? I'm guessing.

Josh LeClair: 9:21

We did. Yeah, I kept her on for as long as possible and tried to send her like editing work and stuff, and then her and her husband actually moved downstate michigan so it was just too far, like I was living a different lifestyle, um, where originally you know we were in the same town, went to the same office, so it made sense, and then after that it just didn't so uh, was it like a one of those employees where you have to shoot, edit everything?

Vipul Bindra: 9:44

you know pretty much yeah, so how did that conversation go for people? You know, because that is part of it, as somebody who's had to do that and, to be real, I like to delegate that task. Um, it's been so fun for me. I've had to fire people, sometimes on set, uh, and I as a director, you know, I call my producer, you know, which is julie. Uh, she's more, uh, lead editor now, but at that time she's doing both roles anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 10:06

I'll be like all right, julie, uh. And then, you know, I put all her side. I was like okay, we need to let that person go and let you know, all right. And then she's like all right, buddy, come here. Oh no, but you know, sometimes you have to. I mean, that's just, unfortunately, when you're the, the leader, uh, that is what you have to do because you know, at the end day, the client is the boss and that is what's most important. But coming back to it, how was that conversation? How? Because I know it's a difficult conversation. Regardless whether whether it's mutual, it's still a difficult conversation. So how did you manage that? How did you handle that?

Vipul Bindra: 10:39

especially seems like you hadn't done that before no, this is your one and only time so please walk us through so people can know what it's like or how to do it.

Josh LeClair: 10:47

Man, I don't like conflict so I definitely am not the person to be like here's how to fire somebody or let somebody go. She kind of saw the writing on the wall. I mean, you know, my business was going in a different direction. Her and her husband moved, they had a kid. She lived out kind of in the boonies so internet was not great so even sending her editing work was difficult. So I just called her one day and I'm like hey, I'm really sorry, but this is not working. And she, she knew it was coming right so she took it.

Josh LeClair: 11:16

Well, there was no animosity or anything no, we're still good friends to this day so perfect, so that's great, and that's what I'm saying.

Vipul Bindra: 11:22

People like um and I'm not, uh, it's not an easy conversation. Like I said, a lot of times I've had to delegate it, but I, having done that myself too, where I have had to have that conversation, it is very difficult, right? Oh, yeah, uh, because, um, you know, regardless, like I said, even if it's mutual, there is a little bit of like what you feel like rejected. I guess it's like, uh, you know, tinder or whatever, right, when people are like saying no to you, even though it's virtual, you still feel a little bad anyway.

Josh LeClair: 11:48

So, um, but I think it also depends on what the circumstance is right like if they know that it's coming and you know it's not that big of a deal versus you know if they did something that they knew they really screwed up, or you know, you just don't like them, or something. Yeah, then it's more awkward, more difficult to do, I think, for me.

Vipul Bindra: 12:08

The difficult one is the other. I've had a few times where the the client wants them gone from the set.

Josh LeClair: 12:14

That is the most rough one but and but.

Vipul Bindra: 12:16

I saw the valid writing. Why yep? And at the end day, uh, I'm like, look, but here's my strategy. I'm like, look'm going to still pay you for the day.

Josh LeClair: 12:24

Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 12:24

Right, you're not getting. It's not like, oh, you came for fun hours, I'm going to now give you one tenth of your pay or whatever. Yeah, personally for me it's like look, you shouldn't have done what you did. But at the end of the day, there's no blame game here. Right, so I, you get to actually not work and get paid. But obviously that does not. But the the awkward part here for me has at least been the people will usually text me like hey, I hope this doesn't affect our working relationship and I'm not a liar, I don't want to lie.

Vipul Bindra: 12:54

So it's like, yes, they will. Unfortunately though, so I'm like I'm not gonna lie to them, like no, no, you're good, you know, because at the end they you know, uh, it's hard to bring somebody on, that you know. But they may still fit. I'm not saying I've had people where I've like considered like never hiring them again, and then I have many, many times. So there's both sides to it. But yeah, it is one of the more difficult things that we have to do, especially if you're trying to be a producer, director or owner of a company.

Josh LeClair: 13:20

Right, yeah, and it's good to have that transparency, bp, because, honestly, you want to help people grow right. So if they did something wrong and they truly want to grow, they're going to own up to whatever you know happened. So yeah, that's good for you for doing that exactly. I've only been on set uh once I I don't work a lot of larger productions, but I've only been on set once where somebody was asked to uh like not come back for the rest of the production.

Josh LeClair: 13:47

Yeah, yeah, it was super weird because nobody else was told and then all of a sudden that person wasn't there and we're all like, oh, where's so and so and uh, it was just kind of an awkward unknown, yeah and and usually I'm not like to be real on my side, at least as a producer or director.

Vipul Bindra: 14:04

either way, whether I did it directly or had somebody else like who was under me go do it, we're not going to start now going to the rest of the crew.

Vipul Bindra: 14:10

That person's not coming back, I'm generally like, yeah, they're not going to be back, and that's it, and you move on. You're not going to stand there, give reasoning or whatever, because, a, we don't have time for that, we don't want to, but yes, then then it does become an awkward unknown, because it's like, hey, walk with me, and then they don't come back. But you come back and we continue with the shoot. Uh, but hey, I'm, I, I'm so glad we're having this conversation. Uh, you know, it wasn't obviously planned, but yeah, it is an important conversation and it's an important skill, um, to learn, because I'm not for political talk, but you have to handle this carefully because, at the end of the day, there's a human being on the other side of it who is also being affected and I don't know.

Vipul Bindra: 14:52

But I'm all for, on the other side at least. Personally. I'm all for if somebody reaches out like, hey, what happened? Blah, blah, blah, I'm happy to have that conversation If any way I can help them. You know, not have that situation in the future. You know why not Like again. You know we're all human beings, we all make mistakes. It is one world I'm not like, but I would never do that. I've also heard stories from buddies where it's like they go to a production meeting and then somebody doesn't like them. Who goes? I'm the DP. If you bring this gaffer again, I am quitting. And then they the production generally has picked the dp.

Vipul Bindra: 15:28

So they have to fire these other people just because this guy had an attitude trip, you know. But they can't ruin their production because they've built the look and everything right. So, yeah, it's hard to work with people like that too. I wouldn't obviously bring them on my set. But then when I hear these stories I'm like, oh my goodness, that sounds like a nightmare I don't understand that.

Josh LeClair: 15:45

So I'm midwest born and raised and, like I, also work on smaller productions, right so even the ones that you know, they have a specific role and they do not do anything outside of that. I don't understand that. If it works for those productions, that's great, but I've always worked on the production that, like, at the end of the day, everybody raps and we all do it fast, so we can get to dinner faster or we can get to bed faster, or whatever right but it's like how can we help one another work together?

Vipul Bindra: 16:14

exactly same thing. I think we're in similar space corporate and commercial work. Now, uh, I would say some of my shoots that do end up being really, really large I'm talking three, four hundred thousand dollars. There is a hierarchy and it's more for efficiency sake, because when you have 50, 60 people on set, uh, you don't want anyone, uh, you know doing something and causing other persons work to slow down, even though you think you're helping. But to be real, 95 of my sets are 10 or less people and that's where it's all hands on deck. It's like it doesn't matter you're a pa or you're a director.

Vipul Bindra: 16:47

Everyone's picking up bags, everyone's helping load in, load out or whatever whatever the task is, because at the end everyone's working together to build an image. We're not working for credits, right? It's not like it's my image, it's your image, everyone's image. Everyone at the end helped client get whatever they wanted at the end there, right, yeah, um, so talk about, uh, I want to talk to story how we met. It's so funny because we didn't meet. It's so weird so.

Vipul Bindra: 17:10

So it doesn't happen often with me. Obviously I will hire owner operators in other states, sometimes when there's not budget for me to go or I'm busy or whatever. So I have hired, hired people, but typically I will have like a video call or something like hey, let's, let's, let, let's, let's hop on a call or whatever. Uh, but yours is one of the rare ones. So here's what happened, my side and then I want to know your side of it. So, so a very good, um, I would say.

Vipul Bindra: 17:32

People I've known for a few years an agency, a part of my chamber or whatever they needed, um, some content for a big, I would say, theme park or whatever you want to describe it here locally, and then they wanted some content for that. And I'm excited, I'm like, absolutely, let's go. And then they're like we just want photos, and obviously I'm a video agency. But guess what? We have to provide photos. But I'm also about doing it right. So I don't say, oh, let me go do it.

Vipul Bindra: 18:00

Headshots is fine, it's easy, but what I'm saying is, we don't go, we'll also do photos. Like, I'll go do photos, then I can't give them the best. So what I do is I hire photographers all the time to provide that service Anyways, because again, at the end of the day, if I say no, then I'm losing the client. Regardless, this one was also more helping out. Their budget was on the lower side, uh, than I would like, but it was more like hey, we have an existing relationship. I really like the employee that works there. I've worked with him on other projects anyway. Point is it was like oh yeah, I want to definitely help you, uh, but the on the other side it's like it's only photos and I'm uh, you know I'm not gonna.

Vipul Bindra: 18:38

It was drone photos too it is and I'm like I, if it's drone video I'd be all over. Then I was like, okay, so I want to provide them good quality content from Binder Productions. So I went on our group thing and I was like, hey, who does drone photos or whatever? And then you came up and then it was so last minute that you know I was like, look, I've not met you, Just don't ruin this relationship for me, because that's for me far more key. And obviously you know we did hop on the phone. At least we did talk. And obviously you did incredible work. They loved it, because the first thing I did was after you sent me the photos. I sent the guy over there photos, my contact over there and then a day or two later I emailed him. I was like, hey, how did it go? How was everything? And he's like, no, no, it was great, your photographer was great. So I was like, okay, awesome.

Vipul Bindra: 19:24

So, everything's maintained. They got the content of the budget that they had and hopefully you had a great time. So that was at least my experience. And then, funny enough, when we finally met, I didn't recognize your face. They're like you've hired me before and I was like what. How do I not recognize? Then you know, obviously, when we knew I was like oh, josh, okay. And then you know obviously, here we are, yeah. So now take me from your perspective of this experience At least that's mine.

Josh LeClair: 19:49

Yeah, absolutely so. Yeah, the group that we're in awesome group of folks here in the production realm in the Orlando area and surrounding area. And, yeah, I had just gotten my drone license. I've been flying drone for a long time. Maybe I'm not supposed to tell this, but I I've never gotten my license, cause most of the stuff I do is like out in the woods, it's architectural stuff, um, it's not you know, metro area like the one that we talked about, where they're saying specifically like you tell us what your flight plan is.

Josh LeClair: 20:19

Uh, how long are you going to be in the air? Where are you going to be in there? You know very specific things. Uh, you got to have drone insurance. The whole works, uh. So we had a number of conversations to make sure that that went, but for me, it's just awesome to be able to have new connections and that's part of, you know, getting yourself out there. I'm fairly new to the area within the past three years, and so it's just me meeting people, and so you know, having an opportunity like that, you took a chance on me. Thanks for doing that. Now we have a relationship.

Vipul Bindra: 20:52

And now you don't have to think about hiring you Exactly. Yeah, and so that's yeah, it went great. Yeah, no, and that's the other side of shoots like that. So that was obviously at a theme park with actual guests, travelers, so they can't take any risks. So we had to like provide them actual flight plans, insurance, like you said they have. You have to have a license. It's one thing you know. Like you said, when you're um, for us, like for corporate video at least, what I am most time using drones for, is push and push outs at like the beginning and then the videos, you know, establishing shots or whatever in a business, but that's the extent of typically it is uh anyway, so um, but this one, you know it's like you're flying over.

Vipul Bindra: 21:32

Well, you say you're not gonna fly over people and you're providing insurance and all this written thing. So paperwork was most the part. And then, funny enough, when you show up, all that is the legalese. Now they're like oh go, oh, go over there, go to this person, go on top, and you're like none of this is you know.

Vipul Bindra: 21:49

But that's just how it is, because, at the end of the day, these companies don't want liability right the theme park is going to push the liability, or the resort I don't know the right way to describe them but they're going to pass the liability to the marketing agency. Then the marketing agency is going to pass the liability to me, and then I'm going to pass the liability to you.

Josh LeClair: 22:07

This is how it works. That's right, exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 22:10

At the end of the day, everyone just wants to be able to go. Something goes wrong you know?

Josh LeClair: 22:15

hey, it's on you, Right.

Vipul Bindra: 22:16

And that's just how it is. Yeah, when you get specially to these higher end jobs, like, even though, like I said, their budget was lower, uh, at the end the client was very high end, so that's just what it is right. But, but I'm glad, like I said, it all worked out. They loved the content. Uh, you know, uh, like I said, they were happy. I'm happy.

Vipul Bindra: 22:35

Uh, at the end, we met and you know directly, like I said, because of that and built this working relationship and, uh, in the future, hopefully, we can obviously collaborate a lot more. But anyway, that was very interesting to me that I've had that never happen, I think, where somebody's been like I worked for you and I'm like, who are you? And then it took me a second. As soon as you were like that location, I was like, oh, I know you. Of course, now it's like we know each other, and then we had such an incredible conversation after that about you know business and strategies and everything, so, anyway, that was that was incredible. So let's talk about that. So, what type of videos are you making? Obviously, I know you do drone photography, but what else are you dabbling in and what else do you do?

Josh LeClair: 23:15

I've never really niched down too much. I do photo and video production. I started off with photography and then video just became a part of the business and I really enjoyed it. So, um, I do a lot of corporate stuff, uh, you know, interviews, uh, brand stories. Um, if you're going to dive into what things I like to shoot, lifestyle would be my number one, and then architectural, and then, if I can do it, automotive, and that's mostly because of the RV work that I've done and I just like cars so yeah, so what price range are you trying to shoot into?

Vipul Bindra: 23:48

And then I would love to know your sales strategy. So what? What price range? Let's talk about project Cause sometimes you know it's not per video. Sometimes a project is one video right. Sometimes, it could be three videos. Sometimes it could be photo and video. So, but what price range of a project are you aiming for typically when you're looking for clients?

Josh LeClair: 24:06

For 2025, I'm definitely upping it, but at bare minimum. I want to stay in the $5,000 range and then go up from there.

Vipul Bindra: 24:14

And is that where you were in 2024?

Josh LeClair: 24:16

Where were you in?

Vipul Bindra: 24:16

2024? A realistic number. Where you were, what would you?

Josh LeClair: 24:20

say it depends on the project. I definitely had lower ones, but I would say an average is between five and 10.

Vipul Bindra: 24:25

Five and 10, but just pretty good for corporate and commercial work.

Josh LeClair: 24:28

Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 24:29

And how are you finding these clients? What's your strategy?

Josh LeClair: 24:31

I don't have a strategy, cause you know you're new to the area.

Vipul Bindra: 24:35

but yeah, but let's, let's be real. You're, you've been in, obviously finding clients, you're doing pretty good. So how, how are you? How are you navigating the market? Let's uh, let's get into that for somebody you know who's in this area, or maybe any city how do they navigate the market when they're new?

Josh LeClair: 24:52

but within a couple of years of uh moving there for me it's a lot of repeat business, so I'm going back up North and then, uh, it's just connections that I've made over the years and then really my sales strategy for the time being is just meet up with groups like the one that we're in and just make connections and tell people the type of work that I do. My goal for 2025 is to actually start reaching out to companies. I just haven't had the time and wherewithal to do that. We're a family of five so we're super busy with that. We moved to a new city this year so that was super busy.

Josh LeClair: 25:28

And then this summer, just from repeat clients like Q1 was super slow, and then Q2 and three was just pedal to the metal traveling all over the place, and then now it's kind of quieted down and I'm catching up and now it's like all right, how do I make a sales strategy? And you know messaging you talking about okay, yeah, I should join the chamber and I should make some new connections and really that's all it is.

Josh LeClair: 25:53

It's just making as many connections as possible.

Vipul Bindra: 25:55

Yeah, just putting yourself out there and don't be afraid, because a lot of people will go at least. Oh, they already have five video people, or they already have I don't know whatever, or the thing is, uh, you know, stop treating your fellow video people as competition yeah we all grow together and there's enough work for everyone and funny enough. If they're better than you, then they can hire you exactly, and if you're better than them, you can hire them.

Vipul Bindra: 26:17

There's no competition. Yeah, I find that very strange feeling and at the end they just go there, meet people, shake hands and you know, and, and me and adam had such a great talk about that, so I would recommend everyone go listen to that one. Uh, but, like it's, it's all about putting, you know, those boots in the ground. Now, that's not all the strategies. This is one other way to do it. There's other ways that we have people in our group doing it and finding huge success with ads and and social media and marketing and whatever, but to me, that's what's worked you know, just going to a chamber, meeting people shaking hands, telling them what you do, and also my strategy is to let the work do the talking it's like

Vipul Bindra: 26:55

hey, and then it's full funny. I go to some events and some client will get up and they're like he's great, and I didn't tell them, I didn't put plant them there, because you know they're there to promote their business. But yeah, he made a video for my business, you know, and that the other video guy can't do, because absolutely you know what I mean. And then it's so funny even, and then I also say partner with your chamber, because it's uh, it's so great, because I'm like that we'll make a video and then somebody else will make a video and our video is all about storytelling, and then the other video is just a montage, and not saying a montage is bad, but it's not the same impact, right? So even the chamber goes when somebody calls them, even though they're supposed to be non-biased right.

Vipul Bindra: 27:31

They'll go oh, call Bindra, Because you know people do call chamber. I know I have where. I'm like hey, I'm looking for this, right, I'm looking for a real estate agent, whatever. Recommend it when you, Because, again, the trust factor with the chamber.

Vipul Bindra: 27:42

They're not going to recommend me somebody who's not good. You want to be the guy that they tell, hey, and I've closed big deals. Now, long-term strategy this doesn't work. Tomorrow, like, you show up at a chamber the second day, you're like, oh, where's my clients? But long-term, if we've been active for years, you know there's a higher chance you're going to be able to close these high-end deals. Now here's the catch-22. I do want to say that, like, there's one chamber that's quite far from me now because I moved and I've not been able to be active at all. So now.

Vipul Bindra: 28:14

I'm debating is it worth, you know, even being a member or what? Because at the end of the day, I'm like I can't. You know it's me and like you, I'm traveling. I'm literally flying tomorrow morning out. I'm like I can't. I can't just do this right, I can't just be everywhere and I'm not going to hire somebody just to go to these events for me. So so there's. So you know there's there's sides to it, but no, I highly recommend somebody, especially if you're new to the area's the best place to meet uh your clients, which are businesses so that's incredible.

Josh LeClair: 28:47

Yeah, well, and depending on what you want to do with your production company, like for me, I actually want to go and find my own clients as well as doing, you know, the shooting. I'm trying to pass off all of the editing to my editor now. Um, but I realized I had a chat with my wife not long ago and I need to set a specific day every week to go and just talk with people you know. Make those connections and those conversations, because even if you just meet somebody once, you're more likely to work with them than you are to have never have met them, right? So when you hired me, you had no idea who I was, but because I was in that group, you at least felt a little bit more comfortable rather than like just some random person, right?

Vipul Bindra: 29:31

exactly. And then what's crazy is when you you responded to it, other people are like josh is great, josh is good. That's that also builds trust. Right again, people buy from people they like, know and trust, and the best way to build that to me is obviously video, obviously in person, and then video, and then video can replace in person you're not biased? Yeah, well, I'm very biased but I also believe in the product that I'm selling and it works.

Vipul Bindra: 29:55

You know right. But at the end of the day I'm saying that's what it's about. Everyone has other video people in their town and go meet them. Now some people are not going to meet them because when I started. I reached out a bunch of people and not everyone responded. And that's okay.

Vipul Bindra: 30:09

Yeah, you know, go meet other people and, and again, don't wait for instant reaction yeah because it's not like you immediately meet someone, like I went to the meetup, right, I met a bunch of people. Doesn't mean to the next day I'm calling everyone come, there's this project. But when a project comes, you know, I genuinely at least try to keep the people in mind. I'm like, oh, this, this person may fit well or whatever, right and. And so you never know, right, and it may not happen tomorrow, it may happen in six months, right and uh. So so you know, just don't uh, like I said, don't go with evil intentions. I guess that's my only thing. Just be nice, right absolutely.

Josh LeClair: 30:44

It's not that hard right, it's karma right. It comes back to you. If you put it out there and you be nice to people, it will come back to you yeah, exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 30:50

And then when they do hire you just do a good job. You know, don't say yes if you're not gonna put your hundred percent, because I that has happened generally when I bring on sometimes people when I'm like they're green, they don't realize they're green and that's okay because you know you're so self-confident, which is what it takes to go, take this leap of faith to go full-time and, uh, and it's okay.

Vipul Bindra: 31:12

I mean, uh, I don't mind that because you, you know, I like confident people, obviously, but at the same time, it's okay to uh to follow directions, as someone says hey, can you set the light here, put it there, blah, blah, blah. And you know you do it. Um, you may not know right now why you're like uh, why am I putting the light there or there? You know, you just have to follow the process and I feel like, as long as you're open, but it doesn't stop you from giving an opinion and I don't care who that person is, if I've never even worked for them if they see something, please, because you know I'm thinking about a thousand things and, and you know, there's memories that we're literally talking with clients thinking about lighting, camera, sound, whatever we may miss something, and it's okay and I love it when somebody goes hey, could we move that there?

Vipul Bindra: 31:54

it may look better and I'm like, let's take for a second. I'm like absolutely let's do it right, or sometimes I've had that happen where I go.

Vipul Bindra: 32:00

No, no, I want to film on the shadow. No, I'm not going to change that or whatever. So that's okay, and you know it's not being mean. It's like genuinely giving your thought. You know what do you call it. I'm actually giving it a shot, you know, and I'm like going yeah, absolutely, and why not? So what I'm saying is just be on set, be nice, be collaborative, and you'll improve, improve, they'll improve their craft. It doesn't matter who they are or how experienced they are. You make the production better as long as you give it your 100. And so only go if you, if you know you genuinely want to go there. It's my point, because sometimes you don't, are not getting paid.

Vipul Bindra: 32:35

What you think you're worth, sure, uh, but but then don't say yes, is my opinion yeah only say yes if you genuinely want to either learn or whatever, because you never know what you're going to come back with. And I do that even now you know I've said this before like for me, I had closed myself off, like I started this production company and you know I went around, funny enough uh, I was. So I was in florida, I was in orlando, and then I was freelancing and I had a job or whatever, and then I moved away to alabama, for Biggest mistake. But let's not go there.

Josh LeClair: 33:05

We're in Alabama.

Vipul Bindra: 33:06

Exactly where your friend was. Not Florence For real, yeah, and I started my company there. I'm in the middle of nowhere.

Josh LeClair: 33:14

You know where Florence is.

Vipul Bindra: 33:16

So I genuinely yeah, this company was started in Florence, so everyone goes around me. Funny enough. Actually, most people don't have this reference. Let me tell you enough.

Josh LeClair: 33:24

let's actually most people don't have this reference, so let me tell you.

Vipul Bindra: 33:25

Yeah, you know where, florence, yes, so you know how small that is. Yes, so I'm in florence and they're like there's already an established company here, hermosa yeah, forever and I don't know them personally.

Vipul Bindra: 33:32

I don't want to go there, yeah. But point is they were like they're already here, they're already really good, they do a lot of business. So you know you're not gonna make it, blah, blah, blah. And at that point, you know, I said there's two parts of it there's business and then there's craft. I was 100% confident in my craft. I was like I've made thousands of videos. I'm not worried about the quality of the videos, right, I'm worried about the business strategy. They've figured it out. They have existing clients and stuff like that, and I don't right. So I'm like I could have this. Is it 100?

Vipul Bindra: 33:59

In the middle of this, one of the smallest towns, I could say anyway, and if I succeeded, guess what? By the way, I started the company on the 10th of september, something like that. Uh, 17 september we had already made 30, 40 grand. This is in a town with established partnership, with established, you know, quality level and whatever. They were good, obviously, that's why they were doing a lot of good work.

Vipul Bindra: 34:27

And uh, without any guidance, without any business strategies, uh, you know. So I'm saying, if I can do it, anyone can do it. So it's all possible, you just have to give it, your all in you. But. But I didn't go in and say let me come make a video. My whole strategy was let my you know, I recruited everyone I could that I knew had talent around me in a small town, you know, which is also very hard. And I was just like, let's go, like, hey, look, I'm going to bring you a Grammy award winning audio engineer, I'm going to bring you a team of three, we're going to have a BTS photo, bts video. You know what I mean? The whole shebang. And then obviously, getting your first client is the hardest. So first client is the hardest. So I did have help, like I had people you know giving me leads. Uh, like, hey, you could go talk to this person, go talk to this person or whatever, but then you have to go close those leads, right?

Vipul Bindra: 35:11

yeah, and and it was so incredible, walking away with you know tens of thousands of dollars, uh, at the end day and you go oh, people thought I wouldn't make this in a year. I made this in three days. Now what?

Vipul Bindra: 35:23

yeah now you know what I mean. Obviously that doesn't mean all my strategies were great. I had to refine my business strategies because I had to learn myself. I didn't have anyone else, you know, around me teaching me because there wasn't that many options there to go reach out to. But anyway, the point is uh, so it doesn't matter who's there, who's established, what well they're doing, and it doesn't mean I went out for winnebago or whatever their clients were I found my own clients, right?

Vipul Bindra: 35:45

yeah, so I think it's just all about a giving it a shot and and just taking that leap of faith and, uh, giving it full effect. You never know, and don't listen to the noise around you at least that's what I did yeah because, to be honest, you know, part of me obviously wanted to listen.

Josh LeClair: 35:58

Right, you're scared you're worried, you have a kid at home.

Vipul Bindra: 36:01

You know you've got you. You got people to feed you. You go. Should I, should I do this or should I go for something more established? You know, maybe I could get a job in this field, or whatever right point is, don't listen to that just just go give it 100. You are an example of that. I'm an example of that it's all doable. Plus, you know, I did it like standing in a very, very small town. Please tell people how small that town dude like why florence?

Josh LeClair: 36:24

I don't want to dive too deep on this.

Vipul Bindra: 36:25

Well, somebody took me there. The really, yeah, my wife she's from there, so she was like it's gonna be great, you know, and then you know, and and I'm obviously 100 at that time, to be real, I I'm glad I went. Okay, let me backtrack. Uh, at that point you know I'd been in orlando and obviously I loved it. I love we can do so much here, oh yeah, but I also go florida.

Josh LeClair: 36:45

Traffic sucks you know this is the what is there.

Vipul Bindra: 36:48

I can always come back for a vacation, you know like the thought process um and then, uh, you know, I'm like whatever, and the home prices were absurd, and I'm like oh, I can buy a brand new really nice home there, blah, blah blah.

Vipul Bindra: 36:59

So you know, obviously there was other factors. I don't want to just say it was just that. And then, as soon as I showed up, I was like what do we do? Oh, it's just the three restaurants. You can only go eat the down the road. And again, I love southern food, but you know it's unhealthy. You can only eat it so many times the same thing, um, you know anyway. So so, like I said, it was fun, it was nice, but then you go. What do I do?

Vipul Bindra: 37:19

yeah where do we go? And then I instantly was like uh. And then I thought, oh, I'm in the country, I'll do a lot of country things, and then we weren't doing that much country things, so I'm like so it's not like uh, you know, I'm enjoying the other side of the world anyway. Yeah, so instantly. And then I, like you, I took advantage of the covid. As soon as covid hit I was like let's get out of here.

Josh LeClair: 37:39

This is it.

Vipul Bindra: 37:40

This is the time to to leave, uh, because you know everyone's making a move and I'm like this is perfect timing and then took it. Obviously can't have no regrets, never going back. But funny enough, I've gone back. I still have clients there, so I've gone back and shot.

Josh LeClair: 37:54

But that's it.

Vipul Bindra: 37:55

That's the limit of what I'm going to do. I'll happily go back there shoot for a few people. I don't think I'm moving back, and it made my love for Orlando grow bigger. Sure Cause I'm the type of guy I'm like, you know. I have free time, let's go to Disney and let's go to university or wherever there's so much to do here, and now I respect that more.

Vipul Bindra: 38:14

before I did it and I was like now I'm like, oh, being able to just go to these places and then not spend weeks, you know, planning or whatever is incredible.

Josh LeClair: 38:24

Or you can go in the off season. There you go Right, and then you don't have the massive crowds to wade through.

Vipul Bindra: 38:30

Yeah, exactly, and you don't have to. What I like is at least not have to. You know, plan out, take vacation days, whatever, like the whole thing. This is every day for us, like for other people's vacation. So now our vacations can be different, like we could go on a cruise, we could do other things and um.

Vipul Bindra: 38:51

I don't know, like I said, I I respect it more, I get it. It's not for everyone. You know it is hot and hot and hot and hot. Not everyone likes that. It was so great. Last year I had a manual, the podcast, and we were talking about how we were in dc for a project. Uh, late last year and it was fall weather like real fall weather. And it's like we don't get that down here.

Josh LeClair: 39:07

So there's pros and cons, except for now, like right now. All of a sudden it's like a freak. Yeah, it's random but it's not.

Vipul Bindra: 39:14

Also, you know, we don't have like leaves on the ground. Sure, you know what I mean. You don't get that feel. I'm sure you know that from Michigan. Obviously you get it.

Josh LeClair: 39:26

Oh yeah, you get way too much snow? Obviously yeah, but you know what I mean. Like right, do you miss the snow? Um, like the romantic side of it, yeah, absolutely. You know I'd go up there for, you know, maybe a week or something like that but you don't miss shoveling, no like the. You know all the stuff that you would spend hours and hours, whether it's warming the car, shoveling, scraping the windows just being bitter cold.

Vipul Bindra: 39:47

Yeah, no, I don't miss that at all. Yeah, um. So, like I said, if I um, you know, anyway, yeah, same thing. Uh, my kids go, my, my daughter goes. Uh, you know, she was like it's snowing, like we want to go to alabama. It snows and I'm like girl, it snows like one day a year maybe at most there.

Vipul Bindra: 40:00

If you really want to snow, we can. We can go up north. I don't I don't have that romantic side of it like obviously it was. It's cool, yeah, again staying in alabama for a few years, it was awesome that one day when it snowed, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 40:12

But but it was awesome because the whole town basically shut down right, so you could just have three off, extra off days, paid from work, because I had a job at the time too, but now I'm like it wouldn't be fun if I was in michigan, and because the world is used to it, I'm sure you guys don't shut down for three days for tiny snow. So you're, you're, you have to like shovel and whatever right, and I'm like that doesn't sound fun at all you know so. So yeah, I'm, I'm happy where I am. Obviously they want to see snow. I'm like we have here in orlando. There's enough locations, you know where they do the fake snow park and whatever I'm like I can show you snow.

Josh LeClair: 40:46

If that's what you want to see, we go to sea world where they do the bubbles in the air. You know it's 50 degrees here, like this is close. They're doing ice skating.

Vipul Bindra: 40:53

I'm like look there you go, which is funny. My daughter, uh, oh, my god attention. But my daughter was like I want to go high skating. I took her and then for 40 minutes all she did was hold the handrail to just walk and I was like there you go, there's your ice skate it's different. You know when you look at it it looks beautiful, um, but you know, when you do it I'm like yeah it's all right, I mean obviously I'm sure there's people listening who love that and that's great I have buddies who go every year to you know, go snowboarding or whatever, and that's great for them.

Vipul Bindra: 41:22

I'm just like I'm happy in my little bubble and I'll definitely go for vacation oh yeah that's my limit, you know yeah, I think I'm happy and and, like I said, it took a while, it took me that change to florence and back to just go.

Vipul Bindra: 41:36

Okay, I'm happy, this is, this is it which is why you know about the home now settled and made roots down here, because I'm like this is it, we'll travel, but I'm just happy down here, you know, because I think this is a good, um, permanent spot, and then, um, yeah, but anyway so I'm super interested in your story.

Josh LeClair: 41:55

Uh, so, first of all, you had a milestone this past year. What was your revenue or what did you make this past year?

Vipul Bindra: 42:03

so we finally crossed two mil. Hey, let's take a moment for that.

Josh LeClair: 42:07

Congratulations, thank you, thank you so I I want to know how do you go from, you know, being in orlando, going to florence, alabama no hate on florence or muscle shoals I just like saying that name uh, and then I want a sweatshirt that says Muscle Shoes. I still haven't gotten it, but how do you get from that? Coming back to Orlando, where were you financially as far as your production company then? To how do you get to where you were this past year?

Vipul Bindra: 42:36

So funny enough. Like I said, I started in 2010 here through Central Michigan and Disney exchange program thing. Blah blah blah started in 2010 here through central michigan and disney exchange program thing blah blah blah. Uh went back to india for a little bit to finish my degree and uh did the internship at my dream job per se in india. Whatever didn't like it.

Vipul Bindra: 42:52

I've talked about it, so I don't want to go into that the point is now I'm back in us, right, I'm working for disney full-time, and then I started freelancing video on the side, bought my t4i and all that right anyway, and then you know, obviously you went through the freelance journey, but it was a side job so I was like. You know, I'm passionate about making videos, so for years I just did it to do it you know it was like you know, what happens is when it's not your primary source of income.

Vipul Bindra: 43:15

And I finally had a decent, finally I mean these, those exist had a decent job at disney that paid well. You don't you stop thinking about you know, like I have to make money yeah uh.

Vipul Bindra: 43:24

But there's always been this entrepreneur my family's multi-generational from business. So I had this entrepreneurial side in me, like I was still making people sign contracts and, you know, making a legit, even for a free job. I'm like, no, no, I don't work, come out for that. So there was some side of the entrepreneurial side to it, but it wasn't deep. And then obviously started other companies did tons of things, things. Point is it was never a primary source of revenue, but I was doing enough that I was making decent money out of it and it was a buddy of mine.

Vipul Bindra: 43:52

Funny enough, we still talk in Florence in Muscle Shoals, whatever he goes like dude, like he got me inspired and at that time you know you do everything. He's like make me a logo. He's starting some company. He's like make me a logo. And so he's like encouraging me. I was like sure, I'll make it for 500 bucks, right, that's how your brain goes. And he's like sure, I don't remember the exact amount, but I'm just saying let's, let's say that and then and then, uh, then he makes it like, he's like so great, now make me this.

Vipul Bindra: 44:16

Or or have a buddy who wants to make a video, so you know, and, and it always takes people around you, the the point is somebody was encouraging me and then I'm also miserable at my job because I'm like what am I doing? You know, this isn't fun. Point is, it was in that leap of faith and I was like debating it. I was like I want to do this full time, right, I want to go deep dive in it. I knew, and, by the way, in mid journey, mid of that, I bought like GH5s and gh4s and blah, blah, blah, move through the journey, yeah, five, yeah, I mean. And gh5s, uh, primarily at that time was my main a camera when I started this company and I still had my gh4s, uh, so I was always on top of you know, uh, everything, uh, which is like passion, I'm doing it anyway. So, long, short, short. It was. Here's what's my thing, what I noticed in my freelance journey. I was like everyone's just making and we didn't. Equipment wasn't this accessible back then.

Vipul Bindra: 45:06

Right, we didn't have really good cheap lights and cheap cameras I was like everyone's just making trashy videos at the low level. They'll charge clients 500 bucks and then it's just. It was really bad. I'm talking you can make better videos, cell phone now, right, and then, um, the videos don't do anything. They're just a montage. There's no purpose to them.

Vipul Bindra: 45:27

And I know, obviously, power of video. I know how effective video marketing can be. I've been bullish on youtube since the beginning and uh, so I was like you know what? And plus my desire to be on big sets, right, I was like I don't want to deal with the bs that comes with music videos and movies uh, indie movies and then but I still want to make those type of content. How, how can I bring these small businesses that level of content that I've seen on sets that are bigger? Yeah, and uh.

Vipul Bindra: 45:52

So it took a lot of thought process, like I said, of going through this wild job. So the process was very simple. I'm like, okay, so I know this guy who's really good at audio processing, I have these buddies, I have me who's good at strategy, uh, and then point is, and I have julie at home was good at organization, so I brought all the people together. I was like, okay, so here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna start a production company and I'm gonna again arbitrarily. That time I was like I'm just gonna charge people thousand bucks per minute or whatever. I thought stupid. But at that point my calculation was if I make this much minutes of video, produce video. But from day one the fundamentals, I think, were very good. We were like we'll never share raw video.

Vipul Bindra: 46:30

We'll repatch the content to make more money in the future. So you know I had given enough thought what I'm saying before I paid any pen to paper Plus. Having started enough companies, I was like I'm not spending all this time doing LLC. It's going to be sole proprietorship. You know what I? Mean I had enough business fundamentals. I would say, um that there was less risk but there was still huge risk because I put all my 401k, everything into it and I went um.

Vipul Bindra: 46:58

So all in uh to be real. One week after so the first week same thing, so everyone around me goes. You can't charge people a thousand bucks per minute or produce. They'll never pay that.

Josh LeClair: 47:07

That's too much I was here in, or no? No, no, that's in florence. Okay, yeah, they're in florence now.

Vipul Bindra: 47:12

So that's my journey anyway, so I go oh really, oh really.

Vipul Bindra: 47:14

And then you know, I show up. And then I showed up, uh, at a local university, um, and they were like we already have a you know a company that we work with and stuff like that. And I was like, look, here's what I'm going to make for you, I'm going to make a testimonial. And it was like four or five grand, whatever the price was. Remember, this is my first ever thing and I'm like official thing and I'm like, but this is going to be like nothing, like you know, you guys have experienced before, because I knew even this other company was doing great, but they weren't bringing BTS photo video, everything for the university whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 47:46

I'm saying anyway. And then same thing with the local businesses. I was, like, you know, having meetings, but it was just that it was like genuinely going there, genuinely paying attention. So instead of this was my strategy from day one. I was like I'll make you a pretty video, it'll have all the right equipment. Blah, blah, blah, right, let right equipment. Blah, blah, blah, right, let's talk about why you want this testimony, why do you want this brand video? And uh, obviously, immediately, like with the university, uh, it was like okay, let us think about it. And then, uh, not even five minutes, I was like absolutely, you know, nonchalant, absolutely, because the good thing is, I had some leeway. Obviously I didn't. Just, you know, I wasn't going to go bankrupt if they didn't take it anyway, I walked out, you won't believe.

Vipul Bindra: 48:22

One minute later they're like let's do it. And then same thing with the uh, the next uh, when I was like, okay, it's gonna be 10 grand, uh, I'd like, uh, you know, 50 down now, how would you like to pay it, you know? And then they go uh, oh, maybe we could see. I was like well, and then the you know what's there to think about whatever right? And then they go you know what.

Vipul Bindra: 48:40

Yes, here's the check. You know what I mean. Like it was like that. And then now you're with the, you know 30 grand or whatever, and you're though, holy crap, this is it far exceeded what I want to do. And then I had to. I immediately bought. Uh, you know, I was like, okay, now these clients deserve the best. So I did that one testimonial with the gh5s, that was it. Like we moved very quickly. I was like, okay, I invested in four Big big. I made so much money from them.

Vipul Bindra: 49:06

And then you know all the app, the best lights. They were like I think it was 120D Mark IIs or whatever I bought a three light Point is. From day one we were like, or say, second video technically, because we did use the original content for that one video. But outside that we were like all in. And then I partner with local school organizations, and this thing, you know, because it's limited, You're very little option in Florence. And then I was reaching out to all my contacts outside. This is how I was flying in or flying out. I was like, hey, now I'm a production company, we have really good audio, Another thing I was focusing on which other people didn't at the time.

Vipul Bindra: 49:39

I was like, no, we're going to have high quality audio, high quality camera, high quality everything. Anyway, it was just that. It was like just being able to tap into other people and it was just that. It was not even something crazy like hire me. And. But from day one we were like that. I was like, look, this is what I'm going to make you, and if I'm not the right fit, I'm not the right fit, and you would be amazed how many people saw that.

Josh LeClair: 50:01

Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 50:01

And it was very quick to find people who were fitting. And then I was noticing all the people who'd say no and would go to somebody outside of me and the other company, cause you know that was their only choice and I know what they were charging. So I was like I know we're pricing, so if you're going to third, I know there's no one else that good out here, so it was always terrible.

Vipul Bindra: 50:24

It was like so your option was either at least locally I'm saying it was me or or armosa or no one, so so it was kind of pretty much like that, because there was a few other companies. But, like I said, it wasn't, it wasn't what we were trying to do there, and that was pretty good. And then what I liked was I was able to coexist in that small little market. And again, I wasn't there. I was there very limited time. I don't want to uh take too much of it and then I was able to fly out and travel out and get big gigs.

Vipul Bindra: 50:46

Uh, obviously there were some mistakes made, as in like I was so like gung-ho on it being a production company that so many people just came in. They were like we just want the raw files like I want it for me.

Josh LeClair: 50:56

I was like nope, not me. Yeah, unless me.

Vipul Bindra: 50:58

Unless I own the footage. You know, if you want, edited sure, which I've changed now, which is fine. Like I said, I'm never hurting for revenue, but at that time I was so like no, we're going to be a production company. I don't show up unless there's four people. Blah, blah, blah, right. And it worked no-transcript, and they were always impressed and we were always, from day one, trying to tell better stories. It doesn't matter the visual, obviously they'll be somewhat good, but it was like the stories is what they cared about. And then talk about the university. As soon as I got that first testimony, I sent it to every department. I was like look, we're a registered vendor, we have, this is the video, and I was happy to share. I was like this is the video we made. Do you want one? And now it's seven grand, right. So we made tons of money. I'm saying that year, I think I don't want to quote exact number 70, 80 grand, just from that one university client, without even putting in effort, because all we did was send an email.

Josh LeClair: 52:03

That was it. Yeah, that was it.

Vipul Bindra: 52:05

The work's already done, yeah exactly Because now we have a registered vendor, we have this client, we have a proven thing, our contract's proven because it's a state-owned university. So, anyway, I think it's all about just coming. I hope that answered your question. It's just about a obviously perfecting your business skills and then perfecting your craft, and if you are not good at craft, you can always bring people, and I was, from day one, bringing people with me, and it's not about that. I couldn't do it. It's because I wanted to focus on the client and the client experience and I was focused on directing. If I had picked up cameras or or lighting or whatever and not that doesn't mean I wasn't helping set up, but my focus was the client experience and the story experience. I think that separated me from, uh, their experience in the past and I was able to, uh, kind of you know, uh, I guess establish myself and as soon as you know you do good work, they're happy to bring you back absolutely and once.

Vipul Bindra: 53:01

I was able to do that for enough people. I at least found that, oh, I no longer have to worry about revenue. I was focused on following solutions. I've talked about that again. First time I had issue where the cameras wouldn't sync. I'm like, okay, we're time code. Only now going forward. First time had issue of a card not working time code. Only for a first time had issue with air B cam not matching. You know, we had I think it was C 200. And then another I think some some Canon camera is what I was shooting on and it didn't match.

Vipul Bindra: 53:32

I didn't like in post that the tight didn't match the thing. Nothing wrong, people do that all the time. But I was like never again For my shoot A and B camera have to match. Our B-roll camera has ever been extra cameras, which is very rare. You know again corporate video and the advantage of that was once I solved a problem, it's never been a problem.

Vipul Bindra: 53:50

So, now I've realized, when I ask my clients why you hired me, they hire me for reliability. I show up, we're going to show up what we're going to bring, what we're going to show up what we're going to bring, what we're going to do and the result that we're going to give them. They get it. And then and I find that it's a lot easier because now I don't have to sell or do anything it's like genuinely just trying to help people and it just kind of skyballs from there and then, uh, like I said a year or two ago, finally opened where it's like I don't care, now I can have a show up and be your dp I don't know why I had that stupid restriction in there and happy to give people raw files, obviously for a price, right, unless they're hiring me a dp, then that's different than they just get the files. Point is, and that made it, I think, finally brought everything to where it is now and I think I'm very happy. Talk about 2024.

Vipul Bindra: 54:34

I think it was such an incredible year where I personally felt creatively happy. I felt as a business. We were happy, finally was able to build that man that I wanted to oh, by the way, I had a trailer in alabama too. Nobody had it. We were building a full production trailer and nobody had that, so that was also a separation point. When they saw like a legit production trailer, they were like whoa, what is this you?

Vipul Bindra: 54:55

know, again and the advantage isn't just to go whoa, it was also useful. We had it loaded with stuff we were using all the time I'm setting a four by fours and stuff, and who's used to that in florence, alabama right and huntsville obviously the other markets we were shooting in right in and around of that. So people were like impressed. And then they, and then when they saw the quality, they were like, oh, this is really good yeah and so, and that's what it, and then you don't have to go ask for a repeat client.

Vipul Bindra: 55:20

They automatically call hey, we have another video, or we have a buddy here down the street who can use you, or whatever.

Josh LeClair: 55:27

What were your sales strategies when you were in that area? You said at some point you started flying out doing jobs for other people. How are you getting that type of work?

Vipul Bindra: 55:36

So same thing. So I went in my freelance thing. I pulled up everyone. You know that I knew, and I basically sent them an email out. I was like, hey look, so we're doing this production work, now we have the production trailer, we have all this equipment, plus I fly packs, uh, and that was it. To be honest, I didn't really do much. I did join the chamber immediately.

Vipul Bindra: 55:54

The local chamber was very active doing events. They're giving speeches to other, uh business owners and uh, again, see things I say now I was like immediately, like I have to join a business organization. I was even joined huntsville chamber, you know. So I was very active from day one from there, um, but to be honest, like I said, those are long-term strategies.

Vipul Bindra: 56:14

So, again, I didn't immediately start to get business from there, but I think it was just that it was reaching out to every network and I have everyone that I met with knew what I was doing right and then I think it was telling them hey, this, this is what I'm up to, and then going to these jobs and just doing a great job and tapping into whatever network I had and just waiting for things to come through, and I think, just being uh, I think, at least for the area I don't want to take, because, like I said, most of the work wasn't in florence but also there wasn't that many options.

Vipul Bindra: 56:46

It was that company or me so it was like you know, I'm sure that whoever worked with me was reaching out to our mosa too, and they were obviously on a different level at that point. But again, I I don't know their current revenue or whatever, but I'm pretty sure I was, I was, I went up very, very high. I may have been at by the time I left there, even same or higher revenue, sure, but that's what I did. I didn't want to take away, and that's why I say it wasn't competition, it was just like knowing what other people were doing, and I was like these people are doing this level of great work, right yeah I have to do same level of work, or at least close to it, in the beginning and then, once I was good, I was like now I have to try and do better work.

Vipul Bindra: 57:24

Not saying my work was any better but that was at least the aim right from my end.

Vipul Bindra: 57:28

And then, and at the end of the day, I was like I know everyone's not my client, right, that's just the truth. There's so much work, even that little town, that we're fine. Uh, as in, like you know if, and that's why I was like some company, I do want to know the other side of it. Not all transactions went great. We went to meetings. They were like oh well, I can hire this guy down the street for 500 bucks, absolutely you can you know I mean we're not a good fit, yeah, we're not gonna do what they're gonna do.

Vipul Bindra: 57:54

And it's funny and sometimes, like I said I would, at that time I was small enough that I would follow up and see and I was like, yep, that's what they wanted. And then they weren't happy and some would come back, some be like, hey, we weren't happy yeah are you gonna work with you, or some would just be like you know, and then they didn't last. It's so funny.

Vipul Bindra: 58:09

A lot of those businesses closed down too right so I wonder what the fate could have been the other way. That's why I'm so bullish in video you don't have to get it from me. I don't care where you get it, get video and do it right. But, like I said, again, that sounds crazy, but that's all I did. I didn't do that much, but I did join the chamber and that did bring money, by the way, even in shows. But it wasn't, like I said, day one, but it was like maybe three months, four months down the road, but I was very where you like.

Vipul Bindra: 58:35

uh, plus, I also liked here's another thing. So in the beginning I didn't have an office right, so people wanted to meet. Where do you meet the chamber? Most chambers will have like a conference room that you can use. So what I was leveraging was, uh, at that chamber, the shoulder, shout out to them really good team, great, really great people. Shoulder chamber of commerce. So they had like a conference room or whatever that you can, you know, borrow as long as available as a chamber member. So I would just, anytime at a meeting I'd be like we're gonna meet at the chamber of commerce. Gives you credibility, plus, gives me an office to meet. I didn't have an office to me. There you go. So that was the perfect place to meet people and have meetings or whatever, or even hiring people. I hired so many people locally I ran out of people to hire, by the way the issue.

Vipul Bindra: 59:18

I had the opposite and and great, I met great friends. I have so many great friends now still because of that, because you know, you start as hiring someone and then you become friends and you still keep up. Funny enough, I was literally texting last night with one of the buddies from there, uh. But point is, yes, I, I genuinely ran out. So then I was had the other issue where I was calling literally every other person. I'm like you're available available you available and a lot of time.

Vipul Bindra: 59:40

You know they were not full-time, so they had jobs or whatever. So I was actually struggling to fill in roles because there was not that many people there, yeah. So either they were, like I said, full, not full-time, or they had jobs or whatever like, and and then the people that were good were working for almost already anyway, because like in this so small town.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:01

So yeah, that was the other side of the issue where I was like I was having issues scaling because I could only have so many people on staff. But no, we did great. We even tapped into the tourism department.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:12

We did video for tourism there and tons of stuff like that. But then again same thing. It was like I loved going to my meetings. Uh, within months it was like, okay, we've seen your quality, so we're not even talking about quality, right? We always was talking about business. Yeah, uh, but now not. In the first one I had to obviously show them demo reel and stuff like that to tap the first couple of clients. But after, like, you've seen my work, right?

Josh LeClair: 1:00:36

and if not.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:37

Let me show you my work first. We're not even going to talk about quality, because if we're there, then we have other things to talk about before we talk about what video, why video and stuff like that yeah I've never. I've always wanted to deliver good quality, but I've never wanted to talk about it because, I'm like I'm going to do that anyway, otherwise I wouldn't.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:53

This wouldn't be fun, right, this would become another job. Oh, absolutely anyway. So that's my long rant about what I did in a small time. But obviously getting out of there was the best decision. Yeah, leaving shoals. Uh, because you know the airport was in huntsville was not direct flights, small flights.

Vipul Bindra: 1:01:09

It was a pain to fly out with oh my goodness and uh yep yeah, so just having mc over here has been a game changer, and then just direct flights to a lot of common locations that we go to LA, you know, vegas, new York, whatever um has also been very helpful. So, yes, town doesn't matter, but a good airport doesn't matter.

Josh LeClair: 1:01:30

Yeah, absolutely, and I think you know you and I have the same thing in common of, you know, trying to run a production company in a small town, and I think there's a lot of benefit of learning how to do that.

Josh LeClair: 1:01:44

I used to struggle to try to get people to pay me $1,000 to do a full commercial in a small town and it would take months for them to be convinced and show them work that I've done and I was well-known in the town and it was still just like pulling teeth to get them to pay anything, but also my cost of living was extremely low.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:05

right, like there's benefits, there was definite advantage that you know low cost of living definitely helps.

Josh LeClair: 1:02:11

But either way, whether you're in a small town or you're in a big town, it all comes down to just keep going out. Make those connections as much as possible and the work will come flowing to you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:21

And people will pay high budget. Remember 2018, I didn't charge less than $3,500. Every project was more than $3,500. That was the minimum I set right. Sure, so I never did a project less than $3,500. I'm talking in Shoals, alabama, and you're one of the people who'll get that, yeah, so it Alabama. And you're one of you people who get that, yeah, so, so it's possible. Obviously, it's not easy. Yeah, the small town, especially 3500 meant a lot six years ago than it does now and, funny enough, I think, I set my rates.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:49

So so, so well. I have not once raised my rates, my rates. I set my day rate then and again, I know I could charge a lot more, but I have not once upped my rate since I started the company. Now it's internal. I don't really tell to people, obviously, other than you know. Like you hiring me that's different, but typically clients hire me not just me but with the crew.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:09

The point is I have never done a video for less than $3,500, unless I was just a DP or whatever. Now that I do that. But the point is it's doable. It's obviously harder, but then the advantage you have in a small town is there's not that many other people doing what you're doing, right yeah and uh, so you can easily, um, you know, set yourself apart is what I'm saying and, like I said, I it was so weird for me to find out.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:34

I actually was in a town with a high quality company yeah which is rare for a small town like you said their clients are from Vinnebago and Tiffin, which is rare. Remember, this is a middle well, not middle well, north Alabama, very small town with a video production company whose clients range from Vinnebago and Tiffin. And here I am going, I'm going to start a video production company. You know, I'm saying I think I was setting myself a little bit up for failure.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:59

So I'm saying I think I was setting myself a little bit up for failure, so I'm just glad it didn't go south. But you know what I mean? It's doable, they were doing it. First of all. That's an amazing example. And then for me to come in and build my own clients, and you know, I was able to be on sets of Fortune 50 companies from that tiny little town. Funny enough, I don't want to go too many tangents. Talk about pandemic. January 2020. This is before the pandemic. I tell julie, I'm like okay, so what's next for bindra? Right now we've established ourselves, we're doing great content. I'm like we're gonna tap into live streaming. And she's what? Because you know, at that time nobody cared about zoom and live streaming oh, pre-covid amazing so I made a huge investment can you tell the future?

Josh LeClair: 1:04:40

is that what you're telling me right now?

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:42

maybe I'm telling you I go funny, let's talk about toilet paper. We didn't have that issue either. Uh, I've always been like let's buy things in bulk. So again, we weren't the panic buyers, we just bought it. So it was so crazy, we had toilet paper and everyone's, which a made no sense. It has no connection to covid, but people are just crazy yeah, and then.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:00

So we were able to help people out with toilet paper, of all things. It's just, it makes no sense, but anyway. But that's the thing. That's just my nature, as you can tell I start a production company. Three days later I buy 4c 200s. I don't know if you can tell something here yeah, you know yeah, yeah, that's just been my style.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:17

Same thing. I switched over sony a couple years ago. People would go, you know, little by little, I meant okay, 2fx6, 2fx3s, all gm2 lenses, immediate, like you know what I mean. And then 2fx30s. So anyway, that's just. This is the way I do. It don't do as I do, do as I say anyway, because gear doesn't matter.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:35

You can rent it. It's my opinion. Don't invest in gear. I'm just silly. Plus I'm passionate about technology. Um, anyway, uh, coming back to the the point that I was trying to make, which was what was it? I lost my train of thought I don't know.

Josh LeClair: 1:05:48

Anyway, I mean man we're talking uh all over.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:51

We're talking, uh, january, oh, yes, yes, so pre-covid, so I uh anyway I'm live streaming, yeah, so I went all into live streaming and we bought all the equipment and training and everything. I obviously put myself in a room and just did it Like because, again, I didn't have resources. So I'm telling people now just reach out to people who know what they're doing, Makes life a lot easier. But even when you don't, nowadays there's YouTube University.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:17

There's very little of that, at least that I remember. But either way, all I did was I built a stick rack, I put myself in a room, I practiced every scenario and again, if I'm like, if I'm going to be there, nothing should go wrong. So I practiced and I knew, oh, this could go wrong. Then I would buy a double of that. The point is, come February I felt experts started doing live streaming events and come april, the whole world shuts down.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:40

And I'm like, when everyone is forced inside and I was like, oh well, we're here, middle alabama, uh, or not, like small town alabama, we can actually come, uh, you know, make you content, and yeah and that was really great.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:52

So and then, funny enough, uh, I thought a pandemic goes away. Live streaming would go away, but it hasn't. We've done tons of events flying all over, you know, even in central Florida, just you know, all sorts of conferences and ribbon cuttings and things like that. I think live streaming is a huge market, different but similar than video production, but more, I would say, difficult, because if anything goes wrong, it's going on live. You better be able to fix it, because you'd be amazed how many people going to live. And then they're like our internet connection dropped off and the client was so angry.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:27

You know it's not your fault, but it's your fault, if that makes sense absolutely so, yeah, maybe in a way I don't know what came over me I did predict the future and I think that is why I think I was able to grow during the pandemic, when everyone else, like you said, was sitting at home and I was able to just plus also keep a lot of people around me, you know, with work, yeah, so you know, at the end of the day, that's all I think that's about, like, which is what I'm saying.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:52

I've always been grow with everyone, keep everyone together, because it's a community, so everyone together because it's a community, um, so, if you know, some people were able to make some money, um, I was able to grow my company, obviously for a limited time. We became live stream only now it's a balance I would say, 40 live streaming, most of it is back to 60 regular production, uh, but anyway, that did keep us low. That keep it kept us going and I was one of the few people and I think what also helped was every single person wanted to buy live streaming equipment.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:21

It went out of stock and here I'm like, I've got it already, I've got everything I've got every you know type of converter, sdhdm or whatever, uh, decimators and anyway, it was just incredible, man, like it was like, uh, surreal time is all I can say that's wild, wild yeah, so next time I time I'm like again, I'm joking, I think I just got lucky.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:42

I just I'm always forward thinking. And then I don't think I was talking about pandemic, I was just thinking about what's next. Yeah, it just, pandemic helped a lot. I'm sure we would have still done a lot of live streaming. It just wouldn't have grown, it did you know, uh. But you know, I'm glad more people have accepted live streaming. I think it became bigger than it used to be.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:08

And just imag, another thing. It's not live streaming, but you can use similar equipment. I didn't realize an untapped market where, when you do conferences, you can offer imag, which is just putting the image on the screen, and, uh, it's so simple to do and it's so much extra revenue. You, you can easily charge clients more money and I've had, you know, people from broadcasting and stuff like that were like, no, you have to use broadcast cameras and whatever. But the thing is, these conferences, they don't want to spend that much money, especially for something as like iMac, when they're not live streaming, right and but you can still offer high quality with these cinema cameras nowadays, which is better than what they would do.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:42

Um so I've been able to get more money from that too, so that's an extra bonus that comes out of it anyway.

Josh LeClair: 1:09:48

That's always good. Yeah so so what do you primarily focus on as far as, like you know, your bread and butter? What's what's the work?

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:57

interview and B-roll.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:59

I think I could do that, close my eyes and do it. I mean most of again. What I like to do is corporate and commercial. Obviously, my favorite is scripted stuff, but most of what businesses need, though, is unscripted content, like we'll be telling stories from unscripted interviews, and having done thousands and thousands, I mean more than 10,000 interviews at this point, because a lot of what I do here's my expertise, and I would recommend everyone do that. Figure out how to do high quality interviews, but over and over again in the same day so what I've been?

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:29

able to offer is better budgets to clients where we can go. Okay, so we want to tell the story. We have 18 people, I can do that in one or two production days and they go. What?

Josh LeClair: 1:10:38

What's the most amount of interviews you've done in like?

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:42

a single day 18 to 20?. Okay, I would say I'm talking one day different location? Yeah, so, and you can. I've had people who've helped me with those, but like we've literally gone, I've so perfected the interview setup and you were seeing, now I'm trying to go to the next one, but literally like pull up up, go to the location. I'm talking indoor, outdoor setup interview, pack up out. Next location, set up interview pack up out. Set up interview pack like and these are unscripted interviews, unscripted not, not locations yeah, nice yeah so I'm directing and interviewing.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:13

Then I have a crew with me obviously doing camera sound and uh, and, and that's been like I said, and I'm talking big locations. So, for example, to talk about our town, I've gone from like h2o water park to kia center, to, uh, to interview orlando magic I'm talking an hour or two like that just takes in traffic just to get there. Imagine setting up and interviewing in both location. One's like a hot sun. You know a theme park we have to set up a frame just to even get anything decent, fight the music, because you know people are enjoying the water park. And then to go to Orlando Magic, such huge location, to light up an interview.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:50

And I'm saying that just was one of the two. And then we did that all day. We were like, I think, at Kissimmee Utility Authority and all these, and the point is, yeah, that's my thing, like you know, but trying to also do them high quality. So just, oh, set up a camera. No, we're still going to set up a key light, you know the three-point lighting, a backlight and all that. And you know again, at the end of the day, I want people to know that's the production side of it, but what we're trying to do is tell a story.

Josh LeClair: 1:12:20

Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:21

And if these are the people that you need story to tell for your client, that's what you need to do and you have to figure out. The money-making part of this is scheduling, getting your setup down to the T, getting all your settings down to the T and being able to resolve problems to the T. And being able to resolve problems when you show the location, like I said, that water park and we can hear music. Now you go. Oh well, we know we can't use the copyrighted music, so what can we do Right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:47

And then being able to work with partners. It's like, hey, I know we can't turn off the music, can we just turn the specific speaker off Right? And then using the correct mics and I'm like like, okay, let me pull out my outdoor mics and being able to bring it as close as possible so you know you can reject the rest of the ambient sound anyway, but you have five minutes to do that. Remember that. You also think that the timeline that's going around you while my and then having good people to help because I'm telling them to set up the frame while I am doing this and and be like, oh, 10 minutes, we'll be out. So you're just turning this one speaker off for 10 minutes, getting their buy-in, so they're going to look great and doing that over and over again.

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:25

But the point I'm trying to get to is, at the end now, the client's budget was lower, right, we only had to do one or two days of production versus 20 days of production, and you were able to tell a better story because those people were important to tell, whatever story you were trying to tell. Now I do want to note there is a contrast to this. I do interviews all the time where we have 10 people all day to just do one talking head Alexa minis, you know cook lenses or signature prime lenses.

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:54

You know the whole shebang, big soft, you know big book light. So production designers, that's the contrast. And now you're spending all day. So production designers, that's the contrast. And now you're spending all day just perfecting that one interview and that's just, uh, the budget and the timeline, right? The client's like we got 40 grand to tell this one story with you know, I don't know three interviews. We're gonna take our time, right we're gonna.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:13

We're gonna kill it, we're gonna bring the better equipment, better time, but if they're like also, we've got five grand. This is the story we want to tell. Guess what? I'm still going to tell the right story. We just have to change our timeline. Right now. Is each interview going to look the same as the other one? No, but I bet you it's going to look better than anyone else who had five grand to do 18 interviews. At least that's my mindset. So I would tell people get really good at doing interviews one, but then get fast at doing good yeah, and that's where you can really start to make money in corporate, because a lot of times they shove you in small offices.

Josh LeClair: 1:14:46

Oh my goodness, Horrible locations Conference rooms with a giant table in the middle.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:51

Brown, red-brown carpets man, it's so ugly.

Josh LeClair: 1:14:55

Throw a plant behind them and make it look better.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:57

Yeah, but you have to look around you in the five, ten minutes that you have and, yeah, become the production designer that we're not. You know, uh, you know and and stuff like that. But but that's the talent, that's the corporate world and that's not for everyone, but that's how you make money. You make money, uh, charging client five to ten grand for that expertise yeah right once you can do that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:19

That's why you can charge the clients that, because at the end they they don't care about the production aspect, they care about the result right, yeah care about the final video, what it's going to look like, and you have to be able to provide a certain level of quality. You cannot go to a client and I I've never said to a client hey, the room was brown, ugly carpet, ugly wall can't do it so.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:38

That's why it looks so ugly because, can you imagine they were like uh, what like? Because they're not even thinking about that right, that's not their concern, they're they're just concerned about is roi or whatever the story that they're trying to tell yeah result that they're trying to get um. You cannot tell them that, and if you do, then you come across as incompetent, even though you're correct tell, tell me if I'm wrong.

Josh LeClair: 1:15:59

What's your experience with that? So let's talk about interviews. The wildest I've ever had was 42 interviews and we'll say it was two and a half days, but it wasn't actually. And they were back to back. Like I pretty much had about 10 or 15 minutes in between each interview.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:17

But were they same location, at least Same location.

Josh LeClair: 1:16:19

We did move around. It was the same room, so we would move around, you know, periodically just to switch up the background and whatever. But the biggest thing is is I had never met these people in my life and in five minutes I have to sit them down and make a connection with them, and then I had to ask them fairly difficult questions. You know, some people got emotional on camera and to be able to do that make them feel comfortable and get a good story out of them at the same time like that's an art.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:51

I love being able to do that. Yeah, I think interviewing people is definitely incredible art and also, you never know where it's going to go, because you could obviously, you have, you have an idea. Obviously, as a director, uh, you, uh, you have an idea of the story that you're trying to tell, but at the same time, you never know what you get and what you can integrate into that and tell a better story until you get people to be comfortable, and I think that's the key right because, these people are not actors.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:17

No, they are not professionals of being on camera. Some CEOs are, they're just ready to go and they're perfect, but that's rare right Most people are nervous.

Josh LeClair: 1:17:27

Most people don't want to be on camera.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:28

Exactly they're being forced by someone, or they know they have to, or something like that, and so you have to A make them comfortable and, like you said, you have to get the content out, but then you have to do that in 15 minutes or whatever, and that's an art, yeah.

Josh LeClair: 1:17:43

So funny story with that. So the location that we were at was in downtown Portland and there was a rail car.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:51

Beautiful Now yeah it got bad for a minute, but there was a rail car that would go by.

Josh LeClair: 1:17:57

But there was a rail car that would go by. So I had to tell people before the interview like, hey, if that happens, just stop the interview, which you don't really want to do. But we had to do it, okay. So we dealt with that. Then, all of a sudden, on one of the interviews there was a guy who set up across the street playing saxophone, and I could hear it clearly in my headphones. So the poor producer had to go out there and he scrounged up as much cash as he could and was like hey, I'm really sorry, you're playing beautifully, but like, can you go play somewhere else?

Josh LeClair: 1:18:31

And he was happy Cause he was like sweet, I just got a good payday, yeah, and I'm going to have lunch or whatever. Right, but yeah. Also lunch or whatever. Right, but yeah. Also being able to just adjust on the fly because you never know what's going to happen, you know, unless you're in a controlled environment.

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:45

Um, yeah, and that's what people love to ask me sometimes. Again, I don't do. I do want people to not do few big commercials a year. That's about. It's not a lot. I'm trying to get to more. But uh, people ask me. They're like, why would somebody pay you 400,000 versus, you know know, 50,000 or versus 5,000? It's like that. Because on those big commercials we're in a controlled environment, we're at soundstage, we have built set sources under $100,000 or whatever. Right, that's where the money's going. And because the talent on stage costs more than the entire production budget, we cannot screw around as in like, uh, I hope people know like again, on one side, we do value our skills. I'm like, oh, I can do this expensive production. I am nothing but an ant in the what the talent is charging to be there, and so what I'm trying to get to is that's what changes? Your skill set doesn't change, it's the um, the value of things diminishes as you go up meaning to that level of production. A camera costs nothing, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:19:44

They just expect to use the best because they're paying so much for the talent, not because your Alexa Mini is something extra. Obviously, the skin tones on Alexa's are incredible, but what I'm trying to say is people go. Why would I use an Alexa when I have an FX3? No, fx3 is an incredible camera. I use it all the time. 3 yeah, no, fx3 is an incredible camera. I use it all the time. But when you're being paid that much, that's like the rental fee is not, it's the least of your concerns I'm saying yeah, and they just want you to use the best because they have plus, you know they want the talent to look good.

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:11

Um, sometimes these talents even have riders on what filters you can use but things that yeah it can get crazy, but the point I'm trying to get to is that's why it's not crazy. It's just we can control the environment, and when you control the environment, it costs money.

Josh LeClair: 1:20:24

Yeah, well, it comes full circle. It doesn't matter what the client is. If they have a bad experience, whether you're the producer director and somebody on your crew doesn't do a good job, or whatever, you're not going to work with them again, right, or whatever, you're not going to work with them again, right?

Josh LeClair: 1:20:41

so you want to make sure that you have every single thing prepared and everything's going to go well, and that if something happens that you know you have your list of things that you prepared for and that one wasn't on the list, you can still fix it yeah, exactly, and that's why in smaller things a lot of people go, um, don't have pad in them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:58

Or people try to make so much profit like, sure, you're charging client five grand for a half day shoot, whatever one day shoot, uh. And then you have to understand and you're like, oh, I can make, because it's a smaller shoot, I can do me and an assistant or just me, and then I can make so much money after I pay the editor. But you have to understand you're charging and you have that much profit because you are prepared for anything that can go wrong you know will go wrong.

Vipul Bindra: 1:21:21

Plus, I don't like to bother my clients. I've had that happen where, you know, sometimes clients will cover the travel themselves, but sometimes it's part of the, the initial proposal and I'll add pad because you know, we show up and it's like, oh, uh, we were going to be straight at this hotel. Now that hotel was booked. Now we have to, you know, take ubers from the location or we have to get a rental car. It's a couple hundred bucks now. Uh, you know, in a 15 grand project, I'm not gonna bother my client like, hey, we need to up the budget by 200 plus gas. I'm just gonna absorb that cash and you have to be okay with that. As a business owner. Sometimes unexpected costs come up, unless, obviously yeah, it was two grand, it was two grand I'm calling the client. I'm like, hey, we need to add this to the budget because blah, blah, blah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:04

And have that conversation, but you have to be also able to absorb. Like you said, if you had to pay a little bit to the saxophone player, how beautiful it may be, we get it done. And there's two ways to handle it. You can go back to the client and be, like I paid him $50 or $20. Can I get that back To me? It's unprofessional, just absorb it.

Josh LeClair: 1:22:24

It's the cost of doing business.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:25

It's the cost of doing business, right? Yeah, that's incredible. That's kind of funny too. They're like, hey, you're playing great, but can you get away because we need to film, right a lot of time. It is not even filmmaking, it's logistics. Uh, funny enough, and I'm getting paid the most.

Josh LeClair: 1:22:40

Uh, I'm just booking flights, yeah making sure people are aware they are they know where they can, um, you know, go bathroom and what they can eat.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:50

That's like the half the battle and, uh, that's what you're getting the big bucks, and that's crazy, but that's, this is what it is. You know, you're, but you make the the production happen because if, guess what, people don't know why they eat, they don't have anywhere to go bathroom. You'll have a riot, you know, oh yeah absolutely, but anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:09

So that's incredible that you had this. And then it seems like you travel a lot too for work, right? Yeah, how is it? How do you manage, especially with you know so many kids? How do you manage, especially with, uh, you know so many kids? How do you manage, cause I have two and it's hard to manage? Uh, how do you manage traveling and uh, you know, just in general, being able to, uh, you know, maintain a work life balance.

Josh LeClair: 1:23:30

Yeah, so I spend as much time with my family as possible. Uh, probably to a financial or business fault, but for me that's the most important thing. Um, this past year was the most amount of traveling that I've ever done, uh, and the longest I've ever been away from my family. I did almost two weeks straight. Uh went from Mackinac Island in Michigan all the way to Vegas, uh, for a conference and, um, it was awesome. I really enjoyed the productions.

Josh LeClair: 1:23:57

But at the same time, man, being gone that long, you feel like your kids just grow crazy. So I try to do as much stuff as I can locally and if I'm doing work outside of that, I try to get back as soon as possible I can go and do something. So, like, um, I had a same client, had job out in Portland. Again, I took one day, drove to the coast, got an Airbnb, you know, just enjoyed myself, saw the ocean again, which is always great, right yeah, I feel like there's a lot of people that don't know that I just show up, I do the shoot, like I'm telling you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:24:37

I'm going to be three, four days out in California and my plan is quite literally, go to the hotel. You know, go to the shoot, go to the hotel.

Josh LeClair: 1:24:45

You know what I mean, Like yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:24:46

And I'm not saying that's the right way. Your method is a lot better because that at least you're. You know, financially it's probably a smarter thing to do, right?

Josh LeClair: 1:24:53

But at the same time, you know you only have a limited amount of time that you can get to do this stuff and I feel like it's a privilege to be able to travel.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:01

Especially, it still blows me away that people will be like oh yeah, for sure, we'll cover, you know, your travel, your plane your food whatever else, and it's like, wow, let's take advantage of that, not in like a bad way, but enjoy it right, exactly, no, that's, that's really great, which is what I was checking, talking earlier, when we were up in dc last year yeah um, we were able to actually go out and you know, see the monuments and stuff had.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:25

I have seen that already, but you know what I mean. It's also important to who you at least for me, and I need to get a better at doing it by myself. But when I'm hanging out with people who do want to do that, like we were in vegas, and everyone's like, oh, let's go see hoover dam and then so we just drove a little bit out and we watched, so there's an advantage to that, but when I'm alone, I don't do that and I feel like I need to get better at um just just taking advantage of where we are.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:48

It's so funny. I've said so many times in la, like one street over from, uh, you know in hollywood, from like the chinese state and all that I've never crossed the street because I'm like you know, I'm also wary of things in LA, anyway, but what I'm saying.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:02

But then every time I go, I could have just, you know, taken five minutes out of my day, walked a block and now I am quite literally the, the touristy area, and just so I can see it, see what the you know all the talk is about, about. But having haven't never done that, because I'm just always like, uh, whatever, let me just go chill in the hotel or whatever, um, so that that is an advantage. And I would say, yeah, people don't do as I, again, do, do as I say like go take advantage of it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:28

But that's pretty neat.

Josh LeClair: 1:26:29

So you're also getting more value out of all this trip and work and everything right yeah, and and that's for me partially, but I think the other thing is is when you show people that you're going and doing that stuff. Number one you know I'm not saying that you should just go on the internet and brag about your life, but obviously that works and like just kind of showing people the cool stuff that you get to do.

Josh LeClair: 1:26:51

But then you know, for future clients, or even your clients, like they love to hear the fact that I took one day and went and did something cool. And then I show up on set and like, hey, check out what I did, I took some cool pictures. And like they're like yeah, that's really cool that you do that, because, you're right, most people don't do that. They'll fly all over the us or the world and they don't get to see the stuff. Right, yeah, all right so 2025.

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:16

Maybe you'll change that I'm gonna try and change that tomorrow there you go try and walk around or do something.

Josh LeClair: 1:27:21

I'm gonna expect some photos. Yeah, I better send me. I need to get better posting and social too.

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:26

So, um, no, that that's actually uh, very smart what you say, that, um, I want to deep dive more into real stuff that people want to probably hear about numbers and stuff. So how are you, um, and again, you could pick one example project that you have, sure, and you can round up numbers if you don't want to give exact numbers, sure, but I want to know, how are you, um, how are you building proposals, like, how are you coming with a project amount?

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:50

because that's what most people starting out struggle with yeah, like what to charge so how do you come up with that number on what to charge, and obviously you'll have to pick up a project, whichever one.

Josh LeClair: 1:28:01

Yeah. So like the larger projects it's, you're figuring out what your day rate is, and then you know what expenses you have, and then you're just adding padding on top of that.

Josh LeClair: 1:28:12

Right and it just depends on you know what you can think you can get away with with the client Not being dishonest, but just like trying to figure out what's the wiggle room in there. How much creativity are you bringing, you know? Is it just showing up and doing a very standard corporate interview? You know that's kind of lower budget or are you coming in? You're bringing, you know, a bunch of creativity and a bunch of crew and everything else. So that's really yeah, so.

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:39

So how do you so give us an example? Do you have any project that comes into mind where you can give people some numbers?

Josh LeClair: 1:28:45

um, I can't think of anything off the top of my head, uh, other than we just locked in a contract for about 30 000 look at that, that's pretty good, so what's?

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:55

the deliverables on that uh gonna be so.

Josh LeClair: 1:28:57

Technically it's one video which is pretty sweet. Look at that one video for 30k now.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:04

Now we're talking all right, yeah.

Josh LeClair: 1:29:06

So, that being said, people.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:07

I think most people want to be in the corporate world. So 30k one video. Now let's talk about real thing like cost. Yeah, and obviously you've been done it, you just booked it so what do? You anticipate your cost being?

Josh LeClair: 1:29:18

so when I split it up I think I'm going to probably have about 15,000 in expenses and it could be more.

Josh LeClair: 1:29:24

It's likely it will end up being more. There's a lot of unknown variables. I'm working with the client schedule and I'm trying to be as flexible as possible, and I know there's some people that would say, hey, it's going to be this much per day. But I'm just trying to go there and work with the client because obviously they're working with me. So then there's specific days that I have to have people and then I can say, all right, that person is going to be this much plus a little bit of padding, and here's what that production day is going to cost Exactly, and that's a pretty standard 40- 50% profit in a 30 K video.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:03

Now, how many production days is it? Are you anticipating at least?

Josh LeClair: 1:30:08

So it will probably end up being just over two weeks. Two weeks, and that's pretty good.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:14

Now, if you see the other side of it two weeks of production for 30 K is actually pretty good. And then are you including travel costs. Are those extra or do you not have any? Everything is in one lump sum so yeah, I'm trying to work things to obviously be as favorable to me as possible, but at the same time, can you tell us location where you're going to be going to do this city? Uh?

Josh LeClair: 1:30:34

wisconsin and vegas.

Vipul Bindra: 1:30:36

Look at that, I love vegas, all right, so that's pretty good, yeah, man, and, and you have to see from the client's perspective, they can just give you, they don't have to worry about variables. They're like, hey, look, here's 30k, you're gonna, you know, produce this a video and then it's good for them. Now they don't have any variable. And some clients like it differently, some want the travel to be separate. But for this client and mine are, a lot of my clients are like this. It's like okay, this is it like you figure out your expenses and everything. So they have that advantage there's no variables. But for you, on the other hand, uh, now you can go out and maybe try and save, shave some costs or whatever, right, and build um, build. And that's why you also have padding, because sometimes costs may change. Hotel prices can vary a lot, like changes alone.

Josh LeClair: 1:31:18

Yeah, you could be spending double what you think you're going to spend exactly but one of you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:22

Freedom, though, right yeah, absolutely.

Josh LeClair: 1:31:23

But one of the things that I did too, and I think is important, you know, as you run a production company, is just think what is the value that you can bring right. So they came to me and they said we need a three to four minute video. Here are the things that it's going to entail. We think and I could have just said, okay, well, it's going to cost X amount, but I'm going to them and I I sat down, had a long conversation with them. It's actually multiple businesses all under the same owner.

Josh LeClair: 1:31:52

They've acquired new business right and they're doing rebranding. Well, the one video has one specific purpose, but now when I talk to them, it turns out that they don't have a marketing person and we can go there and we can shoot a bunch of other stuff and then we can sell that to them in the future, right, yeah, look at that. Instead of being like well, we're just going to do this one thing and then we'll come back another time, now we're building a relationship just based on one video. Right, look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:25

And that's what I tell people. Your data is your biggest asset. You know. By data, I mean our footage and audio and whatever we record, because you won't believe how much extra money we can make Right Six months down the road. They're like're like hey, we need to read, even just with the same content. They're like oh, we need to make this different edit or social edit or whatever yeah and you can do that because you own the data.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:47

So that's why I'm like. You know your data is very valuable. Save it, store it, don't lose it. Save in three different places the three, two, one backup rule. Please look that up and follow that because, um, you know that's I as a production company. At least you can keep making revenue from stuff you've already shot.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:04

And you would be amazed how many times I've gone back and been like oh yeah, we have three years of content for you. We can build a journey video or whatever. Like look, here's that special, you know annual event. Like look, let's see where you came from, right, and all that. You can't do that if you don't have that content. Most clients at most they photo or cell phone videos and that's not that good, you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:23

obviously you can do something with that if that's all they have yeah but you can do so much more and you are an asset that they're not going away because you have that archival data. So that's really smart that you're thinking about it. Is this an existing client or a new client? New client. So so how did they find?

Josh LeClair: 1:33:37

you Friends, oh friends. You mean people in production world or just regular friends. I've known these people for a good long time. It's never worked out that I would work with them and I've never pushed it. That's one thing, you know. I kind of believe in things coming organically right, Don't?

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:55

burn bridges, because you never know.

Josh LeClair: 1:33:56

You never know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:57

It may not be the right time now, but it can come back yeah so, uh, obviously it's a new client, but you've known them so that's pretty good. Now they came to you you already explained that you have this deep dive with them. Was it remote, I'm guessing, on a on a video call or something, or how?

Josh LeClair: 1:34:10

actually just a phone call, just phone call, okay, yeah and, uh, you had this conversation with them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:15

Um, uh, what did you pitch to them? What was your final? Final? Like you know, they've told you all these questions. You asked them questions, right, um, like, um, you know, I guess, what the video is for, right, any other deep dive questions that you asked that we don't?

Josh LeClair: 1:34:29

So they actually gave me very. I can't talk about it but they gave me very specific like this is what the video is going to be for. This is where it's going to be shown, you know and then what did you ask?

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:40

obviously, broader questions. What did you want to know? Where you came to this conclusion that you did?

Josh LeClair: 1:34:45

yeah. So they sent over a video of what had kind of been done in the past by a competitor, uh, which was not great, and so they kind of gave me a little bit of framework of what they were looking for. And then it was me just asking more questions. Right, whether it's an interview on the phone or you're interviewing for an actual video, you just want to dive in and know as much as possible, and the more questions you ask, the more they're just going to keep feeding you information and they're actually technically selling you to themselves right Because they came to you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:20

They're obviously interested already. They just want to know that they'll get the ROI that they want, right. And then how do you pitch that? That's the main thing I want to know, because I think people struggle with that. Now you've come up with a number. Obviously, they didn't give you a budget in this one. You came up with a 30K number right, okay.

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:40

So, so. A lot of people struggle with being able to say these big numbers. Yeah, absolutely, I want to know. You're on the call. You've built this proposal in your head or in your paper, however you do it, but do you present it right there and then on the phone, or do you later send a proposal? Yeah, so do you go over with them? So now you've created the proposal, did you just send it over to them or did you hop on the phone call first and say let me go over this with you? How did you approach that?

Josh LeClair: 1:36:01

I've done that in the past, but most of the time I just send over. You know what the proposal is going to be and say you know if you'd like to review it or if you have any questions or concerns, I'm happy to chat with you and you know, see, like most of the time, it's just important to say it's. This is not a final.

Josh LeClair: 1:36:18

This is kind of get us in the ballpark area. Let's see how you're feeling. Um, I have done it on the phone before. Uh, I'm sure for some people it might work out well. Uh, but for me it feels a little bit pushy yeah uh it.

Josh LeClair: 1:36:34

But it does give you a really good reaction, especially if you can do it over a video call. Then you can actually watch their facial expression and then you can see like, yeah, okay, how do I react? Like if they go? Oh, you can be like, well, you know, there's some things that we can massage or, you know, we can take out a couple of things, depending on what your budget is um, so did you.

Vipul Bindra: 1:36:54

So how was their reaction? Did it was an immediate yes, or did they uh, come back and, and so money I sent the proposal on friday and then I got a call on monday.

Josh LeClair: 1:37:04

Part of me wanted to be a little bit pushy and you know, message them monday morning, be like hey, did you get my thing or no?

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:10

yeah, I gotta give them just leave it alone.

Josh LeClair: 1:37:12

And I got a call and they're like yeah, it looks, sounds good, we're going to be moving forward. You got the green light, um, and now it will just be a bunch of production calls after perfect, yeah, do you split it in uh?

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:22

do you split it in anywhere or is it all payment up front? How do you split your uh?

Josh LeClair: 1:37:27

your project costs yeah, so typically I do 50 up front, unless it's a larger. So, like with this one, it's a little bit of a larger budget. So I just proposed that we're going to split it into three payments over the course of three months. They seem to be totally fine with that. I leave it up to people for the most part.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:46

Are you going to deliver deliverables before the the monies fully come in, or no? In?

Josh LeClair: 1:37:52

this situation, I will likely be paid before the deliverables are going to happen. But this one is a unique situation where there is a deadline to shoot and then the final edit is due two days later okay, oh wow, so you have two days to to deliver the most of it will be edited. There's one production day that we need to get specific content, and then that will just be integrated, so it should be fully done, except for just the last part and you would be fully paid by then.

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:21

Yeah, do you care about that, uh, typically or no, like when you get paid, or no? What's what's your experience on that?

Josh LeClair: 1:38:27

not really. Uh, the only thing that I have as blanket advice is one client did this thing where they said, oh, we're not going to pay you until we get deliverables, which I was like, for sure, I can do that, no problem, like I'm good at hitting deadlines or whatever. Well, they kept asking for revisions and revisions, and revisions, and I was too polite. Sometimes I'm a little bit too nice, a little too Wisconsin or Minnesota nice.

Josh LeClair: 1:38:54

And I was like, yep, it's totally fine. And they ended up pushing it so that I didn't get paid for a month after, and at that point we were a little bit tighter.

Vipul Bindra: 1:39:01

That was really difficult, but I don't like to run into that. So do you do? You do contracts. So do you put a to put a cap on the number of revisions on your contract or no? What does that say?

Josh LeClair: 1:39:13

usually I just tell people three revisions, but I'm pretty flexible unless they're asking for something.

Vipul Bindra: 1:39:18

That's just, like you know, pushing scope yeah have you had to put your foot down sometimes have?

Josh LeClair: 1:39:23

you how?

Vipul Bindra: 1:39:24

have you handled those conversations where you're built to be like either with revisions or something else like no, this is the scope yeah, if you do anything more. We're changing the scope of work. How have you handled those?

Josh LeClair: 1:39:33

thankfully I've really had awesome, so I haven't had to do that too much. But if not, I'm just super straightforward and like hey, we've already done this many revisions. If we're going to do any further, then it's going to cost this much per hour per whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 1:39:47

Yeah, Okay, perfect. And how have the clients handled it?

Josh LeClair: 1:39:51

For the most part good. I think people appreciate transparency and so if you just do that and you don't try to be strange about it, like they understand it's business at the end of the day.

Vipul Bindra: 1:40:02

Yeah, absolutely. At the end of the day, you know, we're just trying to offer, send them an offer, and which is a solution to a problem that they have. Do you use like a proposal? How do you get them to sign a contract? Do you have like DocuSign or a proposal software that they sign? How are you getting signatures on these contracts?

Josh LeClair: 1:40:18

So I use HoneyBook and if you want that, I can do a referral, because I end up getting money. Look at that. Hey, we don't peddle anything.

Vipul Bindra: 1:40:25

I'm like we don't peddle anything on this, but sure. But funny enough here's the contrast thing I had had a bad experience with. I used honey book in the beginning when I started. I wasn't a fan of it, but hey, sure it works for you. Works for you. What do you like about honey book?

Josh LeClair: 1:40:37

uh, I've been using it for so long that it'd be really difficult for me to switch to anything else. For me, it's just a really good way to keep track of my projects. Uh, I would say the only thing that I don't like is I wish I had an option or maybe there is and I just don know about it but to kind of separate like warm leads and cold leads cause I'd like to start reaching out to more cold leads, but for me it's a really good way to figure out.

Josh LeClair: 1:41:01

You know what projects do I currently have going on. It allows payment through there, whether it's credit card or ACH, uh, or they can send you a check, obviously. Um, so I know my payments. It connects to QuickBooks, so it goes directly to my accountant and it's you know. I can just keep track of my projects.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:21

Yeah, I like, and things may have changed. Remember, it's been years since I had HoneyBook. I really liked that. I liked what they were initially offering, which was a combination of CRM, payment processing, contract signature proposal all in one. And that sounded really great to me in the beginning because I was like, oh, I can just have all the projects show up in here, the timeline, everything, and then I could create contracts from here, I can get payments from in here. But then I realized that they were, you know, like what I'm against. I'm like higher experts. I was like they're jack of all trades, master of none. Like the other crms I found were better, sure, right. So we found a dedicated crm. Then I was like, oh, all other proposal software are better. So I switched to.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:03

And then same thing with payment. I was like, oh, their payment platform is through stripe but you get zero control over it. Uh, they could revoke it because you know you have to go through honey book directly. Whatever they're using at the back end doesn't matter. And so I was like, oh, I'd rather just go have my own payment platform, because now I can see who's paying me with what card and all the detail you know. Sure, so you know it's a legit payment point is, and so we ended up switching to individual softwares that still integrate, like my proposal, software automatically charge clients through stripe or whatever and send it to my crm of choice, which is is HubSpot.

Josh LeClair: 1:42:33

You know anyway the point is.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:35

It still works. But I had to do all that integration myself versus being in one.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:40

But anyway, but it seems like your experience has been great. So there's a contrasting thing Doesn't work for me doesn't mean it's not a good software, but here was my biggest issue with it, and let's see if that's changed. What I hated was, uh, the biggest thing for me was I want to send them a proposal, uh, that had or the agreement or whatever, and has the agreement that they agree to, blah, blah, everything's good. So they would have to sign, and then I would have to freaking countersign. I'm like, why do I need to countersign it?

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:06

yeah they sign it done.

Josh LeClair: 1:43:07

They agree to the terms, like anyway so the easiest way to get past that is, you can either send proposals where you do have to do that, or you can just send an invoice and then you don't have to worry about that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:17

But they still can sign it, or yeah? You can put a contract in there and make them sign okay, and then you don't have to countersign it, but they still do the regular proposal where you have, they do yeah, yes they need to get rid of that I mean maybe we'll give it another shot if that happened. But anyway, that was like my biggest thing. I was like I don't need to countersign it, like they're agreeing to my terms of service exactly like anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:38

Anyway, that was, and that was annoying because that means it wouldn't initially be executed. I want them to look at it. Obviously we can negotiate if, if they want changes. But ideally, when I'm sending it, we're ready to just move forward. But then I want them to be able to sign, make a, a payment. We move forward, don't make it difficult.

Josh LeClair: 1:43:55

They're busy enough, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:56

And then we're busy enough, and that would always kind of throw me off. I'm like, oh, I got to go back and countersign and forget two days later, whatever. Then the client's getting an email oh look, your contract's not executed. They're like what is it? Anyway, to me it was a confusing factor, but that's good to know that there is a workaround that you found where you don't have to do that generating invoices.

Josh LeClair: 1:44:15

One other thing that I really appreciate is if I send any form of an email through the HoneyBook system, I can see if they've opened it or not which sounds a little creepy, but as a business owner, especially for a production company, it's really good to know whether somebody's actually busy enough that they haven't opened the email or they've seen it and you're like all right, yeah you know a couple days. Let's send them a reminder and just kind of gauge where they're at. Yeah, absolutely, I love that about.

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:42

So we use better proposals and, uh, what I love about the same thing it can track, uh, so it's good to be able to know they open the email. I don't know if honeybook does that, but it tells you how long they opened the email for. It also tells you on the proposal which page, because it's a multi-page. They stayed on the which page for how long and then when they signed, what IP they signed from everything. But my favorite part is that, because sometimes clients are busy, they open the email, they never open the proposal. So now you know.

Josh LeClair: 1:45:09

So if they spent 10 seconds. You're like yeah they didn't actually read it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:18

Exactly 10 seconds, you're like, yeah, they didn't actually read it exactly and they they never don't even the price, because you know you want to know when you call back what, maybe the factors of the price or is it, uh, you know the contract or whatever. Is it not deliverables? But when you know they're you're like, okay, they spent um a minute reading the email, or 30 seconds reading the email, but they never even click because with the better proposal they have to click the word proposal, right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:33

And then it shows up. So, oh, they haven't even looked at the proposal. So it's not the money factor at all, it's just either they were busy or something of that nature because they were expecting my proposal. So they're in click, so it's a much easier follow-up. Hey, have you looked at it? Oh, I forgot about it, right, something like that. And then, um, the other thing is, when they have opened it, I can see where they spent the time. Oh, they looked at the price and then didn't pay. Oh, now I know what the issue is. Or they looked at the deliverable same thing. They didn't go to the next page where the pricing is. So, oh, let me, let me check with them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:02

But now that they've seen prices, my first thing is hey, what do you think? Was this within the budget? Typically, I like to have the budget talk on the phone before, but for some reason, let's say we can go. Oh, what was it right? And then, but you're already prepared for, hey, this is the type of conversation I'm gonna have. Uh, it just helps, I think, and it helps you to know which stage the client is in, where they are, where the, the, the if factor may be. Um, and very rarely I. What I found the best thing was they sign. Usually it says pay and most people pay. My, my takeout rate got so high, like you know. Pay uh, like I would have to.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:35

I stopped having to ask people to make a payment uh, and I love that amazing I'm doing this way, but some people will go to there they've signed, now they haven't made a payment, and that's weird for me. So now it's like uh and the you know, until the payment's made we can't move forward with pre-production calls or whatever. Now you, you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:52

Oh, so let me call and ask what happened you know, because you signed it, you clearly agreed with the payment terms and everything. So why didn't you make a payment? And it could be like, oh, we're just waiting on abc. Whatever, you know what I mean, I like you. I like that being able to know what stage they're in.

Josh LeClair: 1:47:07

It's a little extra transparency?

Vipul Bindra: 1:47:09

yeah, exactly, and it helps us to not figure out, like I. I may think it's a whatever the issue is, and that's not at all the issue. So avoiding you know, talk that doesn't need to be even talked about, because once they're sold, they're sold. Right, you don't want to be reselling them on anything, but if they're not sold, they haven't signed it. Then you can go back and discuss hey, was it the money or was it the deliverables, or whatever the issue was, and, funny enough, best clients, I think, don't even think about it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:47:37

I've had that happen, repeat clients where I'll send them a proposal. The email was open. Week goes by, they haven't signed. And I'll reach out and I'll be like hey, literal text, like hey, what happened? You know I need to book flights. And they'll be like, oh, forgot about it. And. And. Then, before I can respond no worries, you know, or something they've already paid they send me a screenshot like, oh, paid, all right, here's 15 grand in the account. And I love that, because sometimes that's all it is. It's just they're busy people, they forgot, and a quick reminder could mean that they could go in and quickly make a payment.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:05

But, uh, but do you find that I find, the bigger the client, typically the easier, uh, the payment comes.

Josh LeClair: 1:48:12

Yeah, let's just go on a quick tangent. If you have clients and they are nickel and diming you and they have all sorts of questions and they keep asking for revisions, and generally when you think about working with them you're like man, this is work.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:28

Yeah.

Josh LeClair: 1:48:28

Then you probably want to get rid of them. And I've been in the place where like, hey, you need some money. You're going to work with those clients, um, but man, the satisfaction of being like, hey, this is not working out. And then and sometimes it's scary because you're like I really need that money coming in, but then finding those clients, just like you talked about, that have no problem. Like, oh, yeah, you need 10 grand for the month so that you can, you know, take care of expenses and whatever else. Absolutely, I'll send it over right away. Right, because they understand they're working on a higher level, they understand how business works and they have no problem. This is just a part of doing business and they're happy to work with you.

Josh LeClair: 1:49:08

And then you feel good about the entire situation and you can do better work rather than like, oh, my goodnessand-so is calling.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:14

I really don't want to talk with them, for five hours about yeah, whatever yeah, exactly, and I think um we need to know is that we are their favorite vendor, because guess what? Video is the most effective form of marketing it? You generally gives the best roi, whether it's direct sales or indirectly, like processes or whatever we're trying to solve, and we make them, the like you know, the most amount of money. So we should be their favorite vendor to pay plus generally I'm not a tax advisor, follow, ask a cp or whatever but generally on their side, advertising, which is what we are, our expense is fully writable write off so

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:50

they love that, they can write off the whole thing and they're making money from us, so we should be their favorite vendor. And if you're not, that means you need to hop in a call or a meeting and educate your client. And maybe it's rare, but maybe you can bring that client from this level to this level where they can understand like, look, this is the place where you've got to be spending your most marketing money because we can make the most impact. And sometimes you can do that, sometimes you can't. I like being able to grow my clients right who are here and now you're like I've had clients who are like oh, we're a franchise, we bought something and you start working with them and next thing you know they bought freaking the whole state's worth of franchises and they've grown and we grow with them right, because now we're making 10x the content or whatever for them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:37

It's good for everyone. But then there are business owners who are still you know I would say green or whatever like they're not there to go there, and that's okay too you know. That's why you find clients who have the money right, who?

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:47

can actually help you, uh, who don't have to worry about little money like that. And then you're not chasing money because that's like my least favorite thing. I have very few not chasing money Cause that's like my least favorite thing. I have very few clients who do that, but that's like you're. You're like after I've spent, I should have charged you, like you know, whatever your hourly rate is, you're like I should just times that by the amount of hours we spent, you know, just chasing.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:11

Try to avoid those clients because at the end day, we want to be making content and not be chasing money. And plus this is again I want to do the best for them and if it's ours the relationship and I'm not going to be able to give my hundred percent, I'd just rather not, and you know, have you dropped a client yet? Ever, oh yeah absolutely.

Josh LeClair: 1:51:28

How is that experience?

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:29

have you sent a direct email or just stopped working with them? Have you ever had to where it'd be like.

Josh LeClair: 1:51:33

Oh, we may not be the right fit type of email I'm an over communicator and I think that's the way to do things. I don't ever just like stop communications with people.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:40

I can't do that. Please don't ghost anyone. Yeah, no no um yeah, so how have you broken that news?

Josh LeClair: 1:51:46

last year, yeah, there was somebody, uh, I did editing for and I started off, you know, very reasonable for them, uh kind of a friend, of a friend situation. And then I kept upping because I was like man, this is taking so long and I found out that it was actually cutting into me being able to get bigger and better clients.

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:07

Right.

Josh LeClair: 1:52:08

But at the same time, at that point I really needed money. So it was super hard. But I I took a chance, like I prayed about it, my wife and I talked about it and we were just like, yep, it's got to happen. So I just communicated with him.

Josh LeClair: 1:52:20

I'm like, hey, like if we're going to keep working together, together, I have to go higher yeah and he was like you're about at our cap, like we can't go much higher than this, and I'm like, well then, it might be time to find a different actor right, yeah, unfortunately, but that was the right way to say it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:35

And like you, said you thought about it, you didn't just do it on a whim. Because here's the thing Sometimes you have to do that as you scale up. A lot of us want to bring our clients with us and some will, but a lot of them don't, because it's a lot easier to find a 10k, 20k, 50k client than to bring your 1k client to 10k or 50k yeah because you know, uh, unless they have a full buy-in you can do that with video.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:01

But some clients at that level don't yet have the buy-in and, like you said, I found the best.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:06

You do best for them and yourself when you're not struggling yeah because I found when you're uh, you know, when you need the money, you you tend to want to take everything, or at least take the clients you normally wouldn't. And I find you give honest advice and build a better relationship when you're not worrying about basic finances, because then you can be honest about it. You're like I want them, but if I didn't get this job it wouldn't be the end of the world. And then I find right, you can go in the sales meeting and you can be honest about it or whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:35

Or you can. You know you try to give them a right solution instead of just do whatever, because clients will come with silly requests. You know we want I don't know a testimonial video for you know X number of dollars or whatever that needs to be shot in this city or whatever, and we're not going to pay travel budget whatever. I mean, they could come up with fantasy, land things in their brain, but then you can bring them back to the ground versus trying to figure out how can I make this happen. You know what I mean. Do you feel that way?

Josh LeClair: 1:54:01

Yeah, Anytime you try to make sales happen whether it's a repeat client or it's a brand new client but you're doing it out of desperation, specifically for financial stuff. Like people can smell it from a mile away. You don't even need to tell them, but they can feel the energy coming off of you and they're like I don't know about this. Yeah, exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:20

Uh, do you struggle with that?

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:21

because it's production people and you know we work at different price ranges do you struggle with, um, um, you know, sometimes narrowing it down like if it's a new client, like either the 5k client or the 20k client or 50k client. Right, because you don't want to over or under shock them. Because if they came in with a 5k budget but they weren't telling you, or whatever, how's your strategy to approach that? How you, how do you, um, narrow it down? Basically, what level of production or budget are they in? Because you know you don't want to be making a 50k proposal for somebody looking for a 5k video. So how do you kind of qualify them? Do you have a process or questions that you ask, or whatever?

Josh LeClair: 1:54:59

Basically, just ask as many questions as possible. I would say the most important ones are have you ever worked with you know a video production company before? What sort of budget did you spend with them? And then, of course, you can ask them what they think their budget is. Of course, these days there's a lot of people, oh, we don't have a specific budget in mind. It's like, well, okay, then if you're on the phone call or a video call, I usually like to say, all right, typically, you know, projects of this size might run between five and 10 or 10 and 20 or something like that, and then you can gauge their response right and right there. Even if it's not a specific number, you can see what sort of ballpark you're playing in yeah and then you can build a proposal based off of that right okay, perfect.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:43

No, that's actually a very good thing. Sometimes you just have to ask and a lot of people won't have an answer yeah so my first question always is that same thing. Do you have a certain budget that we need to hit and most people say no, no, you tell us and then you know. Okay, you have to ask more qualified questions to get to to the final because they have a number. Yeah, anyone who says no they're lying.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:02

They're lying. They have a number because you know, otherwise you could say a million dollars right away. You know they'll be like no, you know what I mean. Like everyone has a number. Uh, sometimes a they may not sure or B, they just are waiting for you to throw. You know, whoever throws the first number loses.

Josh LeClair: 1:56:19

This is the truth.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:22

So I genuinely like to gauge. You know where they are. Like you said, just ask them qualifying questions and most of the time they'll give it to you Because, again, at the end of the day, you know it's a negotiation, it's a business transaction. Give it to you because, again, at the end of the day, you know. So it's a negotiation, it's a business transaction, and the the main thing for me is and tell me, it's the truth they're gonna get their money's worth.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:39

like meaning if they give me five grand, they're not getting the 30 grand video. And they give me 30 grand, they're not getting the five grand video, they're getting the 30 grand treatment it is and at the end of the day, we're not like just arbitrarily making numbers. We you know, the production is different at different ranges and so so it's not like uh, you know, it's not like uh, an ipad or whatever, like oh sure, if you pay me 30 grand, you're still getting the, the 500 ipad, it's no, it's just rose gold.

Vipul Bindra: 1:57:05

Yeah, exactly, yeah, we don't do that you know, it's genuinely like the budget changes the level of production, you know, and uh, so we're not just trying to, uh, you know, just say numbers just to be well. I mean at the lower level maybe, because you know, if it's just you, maybe you're starting? Yeah, you maybe the two, three hundred two thousand bucks and how much? Is grocery okay, and then, if I do, yeah exactly, and that's okay, and they're, you know, thousand fifteen hundred bucks. That's what you're doing yeah uh, but that's.

Vipul Bindra: 1:57:31

That's a different market. You know that's not where we want at least I think the people listening to it is either they are at the ranges that we're in or they're trying to be in yeah and I think that's the way to approach it.

Josh LeClair: 1:57:41

You can't approach it like arbitrarily making up numbers, because your client will quickly figure it out, but your business is going to fail right, yeah, when you think about running a business long term.

Josh LeClair: 1:57:51

you want to think about how can I actually grow this business. It's not just because you want to say oh, I'm, you know, doing a 10,000 or 20,000 or $400,000 job, like cool, that's a feather in the cap and you know it sounds cool, especially at different levels. But at the end of the day, you want to provide return on investment for your client. You know, blow their mind. And then you want to build your business so that you can, you know, provide for yourself and for your family and for the other contractors that you're hiring and like it's fun yeah you got to do it correct and, uh, it's so crazy.

Vipul Bindra: 1:58:25

Taxes, yes, please do that, you know. Hire professionals for yourself like you're a professional for other people. What's crazy to me is I feel like we just sat down and started talking and somehow our time is almost up before we go quickly. And again, I don't think equipment matters. Plus, I think you should be renting it before buying it, for other people, but people probably want to know what equipment are you shooting with right now I'm not super exciting.

Josh LeClair: 1:58:48

I have the sony a74 so I I ran the gamut where I did the gh5, uh, when I worked at northern, and I loved it and that was my main production camera and maybe I'll get some hate for this, but I I've got a big job and I went out and I bought the red scarlet w super cool. I had a red and then I started shooting interviews with the red and the gh5 next to one another and I was like this isn't gonna work yeah, like I don't know.

Josh LeClair: 1:59:14

I can't really tell too much of a difference. I'm sure in some capacities you can. Anyways, um, I now live in an area where I can rent stuff if I need to, or I can hire contractors. So I'm not hoarding gear right now. Um, I kind of have my basic kit that I need yeah, and so a74.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:32

What drone are you using? Uh mavic air 3 mavic air 3 and any lights that you have, that you commonly reach for.

Josh LeClair: 1:59:39

I have well used aperture 300ds. Look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:43

Look at that people, 30 grand, 30 grand client with that equipment. Equipment doesn't matter plus, you said it best if you need something better, you can always rent it. It's not necessary to go out. Uh, you know, just buy. And, funny enough, we don't have time. Otherwise, I would love to go into my story with the heads and everything but next time. Next time, there's always next time.

Josh LeClair: 2:00:03

Absolutely.

Vipul Bindra: 2:00:04

But especially with you. I'm like I have not even barely touched the surface, and two hours is over, so we definitely need to do a part two, maybe next season. I would love to yeah, so again, thank you, thank you for coming. Thank you sharing your insights with us. I hope people learned something, because I learned a lot, I'm already going to go implement it and you know, I hope the same, but no, you're welcome to come back and I think we're going to definitely.

Vipul Bindra: 2:00:25

I already know for a fact we're going to continue this conversation in the next season. So thank you, josh. Before we go, is there anything else you want to share? Maybe tell people your instagram or youtube or wherever you want people to follow you, sure uh, leclairemedia is my website and instagram handle too.

Josh LeClair: 2:00:42

You can find me on either one of those perfect, awesome, thank you, sir, appreciate it, thank you.

Vipul Bindra: 2:00:46

Thank you. You're welcome back anytime again. Awesome, I appreciate it.