Vipul Bindra: 0:04

John, thank you for coming. It's always a pleasure talking to you and I know you're a busy man, so thank you for taking time out of your day to come here.

John Ruz: 0:12

Of course, my friend. Thank you so much for having me.

Vipul Bindra: 0:14

So it's funny enough. This podcast is so new, barely out. Like I was telling you I've had so many people request for you to be here because I've had like everyone come on and then when they're about to leave, they're like, well, you gotta have john on here. So it's like, yes, yes, but we're saving him. So you know, it's the second last episode of the season and um, like, first of all, why, how do you think you have this cult following in the? In the orlando filmmaker database, I guess? Um, I don't know, what do you think I feel like?

John Ruz: 0:42

um, I'm very transparent and I I like business. Um, and I feel like this industry lacks about that, lacks about talking about you know, being transparent, being in business, how to make your business profitable. It's very important that no one talks about exactly and what's crazy is we met at the first.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03

So, david, you're right, a friend had started filmmaker meetup and we met literally the first filmmaker meetup ever. Uh, and I had no idea what that was going to spawn into. And years later now here we are. Um, I want to know. Obviously, let's go back then. Right, where was your business then? What type of revenue were you doing? Did you have any employees or contractors? Tell me more. If you remember, I think it was like 2023, two years ago, I think. Two years ago. Yeah, two and a half years ago, roughly.

John Ruz: 1:34

It's kind of the same as of right now. Team-wise we have scaled. Right now we have expanded to Texas new market for JRP. So, going back a little bit, I co-own two businesses with Brian, my business partner. So one is JRP and the other one is Big Wave Productions. Jrp focuses more on architectural photography, videography, 3d tours, matterport tours, all that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59

So everything to do with real estate essentially right.

John Ruz: 2:02

Yes, and Big Wave is mostly commercials advertising conferences and all that.

Vipul Bindra: 2:10

So back when I met you so about two, two and a half years ago did you have both of them or you were only doing so. You still had both.

John Ruz: 2:16

We still had both.

Vipul Bindra: 2:18

Okay, and at that time, what type of revenue were you pulling in?

John Ruz: 2:23

We were making around. Let's say we have been from the start. We have been pulling six figures throughout. When I started, by myself, of course, I was hitting close to five figures, but when Brian came in as a 50% partner, we scaled the business and started pulling in six-figure figures.

Vipul Bindra: 2:46

Which is really good. Yeah. Now I want to know, two years later, how much have you scaled? Are you pulling like higher six figures? Have you reached seven figures? Where are you at right now?

John Ruz: 2:54

We haven't hit six figures. We're very close. This year might be the year that we hit six. You mean seven figures? Right, Seven figures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, Because I was like you're already six figures.

Vipul Bindra: 3:02

I know that. So are you at high six figures right now. High six figures, high six figures.

John Ruz: 3:07

That's pretty good I mean.

Vipul Bindra: 3:08

That's incredible, especially with the real estate. I don't know if people know I'm hoping because you know our audience is filmmakers but real estate is one of the lowest money-making markets, like you know, where you make the lowest money for the most amount of work and you have. You and your business partner have figured out a way to scale that business and make it profitable, which is an incredible feat. You know, in a market, like I said, that's saturated, that's low paying, plus you're doing high quality work and somehow making that work. How did you manage that? I want to know the beginning of it, I guess. How did you figure this formula out?

John Ruz: 3:42

Yeah, so when I started it was just myself charging $75 a shoot. Crazy, right yeah $75 for shooting, delivering everything that's crazy, that's crazy yeah. And now we are charging up to, you know, a real estate shoot, architectural shoot.

Vipul Bindra: 4:00

It can be up to $5,000, $7,000, $14,000 shoot, which is crazy to think about and remember. For commercial, okay, but like for real estate to be able to pull that numbers is very you know, you're in the high end of that market, correct, but Orlando has properties that can match that right, yeah, so Properties and agents and businesses that need that type of quality.

John Ruz: 4:27

You know we have in Connor the low tier end of real estate agents that might not have the budget to hire us, you know. But there's the other side of it, that they see the value in the investment right. So they tend to go towards us because we do like to target those people and tailor our business and our vision to what they want.

Vipul Bindra: 4:45

Yeah, and to be real in real estate, any successful agent knows that's how you're selling a property. Most people aren't just showing up, they're going through pictures, they're going through the Matterport tours. That's somebody who bought a home two, two and a half months ago. Basically, that is what you do you browse and then you pick your favorites and then you go see them in real life, right and with your agent, but you're not gonna go right if the photos don't make the great impression right and if the tour you know, then you do the 3d tour.

Vipul Bindra: 5:15

You can't imagine living there. And the best one is video and one of the reasons I gravitated towards this house. This was one of the few that had a video, and as soon as there was a video, I was like oh, now I can you know, because to me that's the biggest, most, uh, powerful one of them um, and then that made me want to. Oh, I definitely have to go see it right you appreciated that.

Vipul Bindra: 5:35

Yeah, exactly yeah, because they you know, it makes you be able to see the space even better. Right, it makes you be able to to picture you know everything in it. Um, so what's your? Uh, you would say a share of um ratio of like video to matterport to photos of what you're doing it's kind of crazy we have, when it, let's say, 2023, we were hitting mostly photos.

John Ruz: 5:58

Now it's video with reels, you know, tiktok being in place, reels being in place. Our content it's 70 video, 30 photos right now, which is, for me, it's crazy.

Vipul Bindra: 6:10

Yeah, to think about that, yeah because they, you, because, like you said, yeah, it was mostly photos, but agents have woken up, they're realizing that, uh, you know videos where the, where the play is, because now you can add emotion, you can add music, you can, you can, you can create the environment that that makes people want to live there right. Because that's who they're targeting right, Right and not only that, you know video.

John Ruz: 6:33

One key thing that we have in our business and the mentality of being in the business of real estate is that the assets that we provide not only helps sell the health faster but helps the brand of the agent right themselves, their personal brand, their business. They want to represent like they want to show up on camera and and the video right on the final edit.

John Ruz: 6:55

We target those people that appreciate the assets and the investment. You know, the other tier end don't see that value. Is that that why we? We just grew, grew, grew out of it?

Vipul Bindra: 7:06

yeah, exactly. And then and that's smart because, like you said, at the end of the day, um, you know those, you know, uh, they can pay more because they're selling more and uh, you know, these other agents just need to learn that. And until they're there, uh, you know, right, you, you just have to cater the market. That's good for business, because 75 dollars for shoot, I can't imagine yeah it's very hard.

Vipul Bindra: 7:28

So so tell me this, because it must have taken some kind of uh, you know something in you to want to do that. So why, what? Why what was so passionate that you were like I don't care if it's 75, I just want to do it. Um, what year was this, by the way, when you were doing this?

John Ruz: 7:43

2018, 2019.

Vipul Bindra: 7:46

Okay so you're charging $75 a box for a shoot right Right, like most real estate. By the way, this isn't unique. I've met people who are like very, very low budget. It's like it makes no sense, but that's what they're doing, right, the market is what it is.

John Ruz: 7:59

What it is, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 7:59

So. So what made you because there's some kind of push in you what made you want to be still okay with that rate?

John Ruz: 8:05

So you know one agent and one agent, clint, of ours. She was fantastic, she was working as a real estate agent and knew someone in the marketing team of one of the biggest builders in the US Nation One International and she's like you guys might be interested in working with this builder, you know, and she went into the office, referred us. We totally shot, shot for free for that client. Uh, because we knew the potential. I knew the potential brian wasn't part of of the equation. Now, um, and he's a really great piece of an important piece of my development in the business. Um, and she's like, hey, let's do photos for them for free, you know. And I'm like, okay, yeah, sure, and I shot it, edited everything for free. And then the marketing director saw it and he's like, okay, well, perfect, let's, let's keep you rolling. And I was shooting, you know. And he's like, okay, well, perfect, let's keep you rolling. And I was shooting, you know, two to three properties a week. Now I'm shooting 10 a day.

Vipul Bindra: 9:08

Wow, 15 a day. So it did help you doing it for free, because you all of a sudden went from two to three to 10, 15 a day. Right, then you can scale up. So, even though the price is low, right, you can make it up on the back end because you're doing way more, right?

John Ruz: 9:21

yeah, okay, and then one key thing is that brian came in, and brian is a veteran on the industry not, so how did you meet? Him, so I worked for him crazy part I. I was um I when I graduated full sail. I graduated from full sail okay film and I I promised myself that I will find something, um as fast possible. So I started emailing people studios every single day for a year, boom, boom boom back and forth.

John Ruz: 9:52

No one. I you know. I got some gigs here and there and my email was hey, I'm an intern, just graduated from full sale. I'm looking for opportunities. Do you have something? Please let me know. Here's a link to my portfolio.

Vipul Bindra: 10:04

And the sad part is I'll tell you this I get a ton of those because full sale, a lot of those emails, and then most they go unread. Or I try to be nice and I respond hey, send me some links, maybe your rates, I'll try and put you on a list. If somebody calls out I can call you, but out I can call you, but the truth is and this is just for people who are doing that I'm telling you it's not worth it. Maybe you'll get lucky. You're better off going in person, because here's the thing I don't mind bringing people for free, right? I just need to know who you are right, and an email is just the most terrible way to know who you are right and that's why those get ignored.

Vipul Bindra: 10:40

Right, because I'm just like I don't know your feel, you know your, your tone. How are you going to go with my client? Because last thing I want to do is I bring you in a shoot. Let's say I'm charging the client 15 grand for that commercial right and you come in for free, but you say something silly, or even if the silliest thing you'd say not you, but I'm just saying when somebody's new, they could go. I don't know how to set this light up the client goes, goes.

Vipul Bindra: 11:02

Oh, I'm paying this much for amateurs even though it's okay for you not to know, right, but if the client hears the perception changes, it hurts the business. So I need to be able to vet the people Cause then I know, okay, hey, you're not going to say something silly. And if you do need to cost cause, it's okay, whole perception. And these conversations need to be had in person, not over email. So I highly recommend if you're going to reach out by email, then just ask for coffee, right? Just say hey, let's meet. I would love to just pick your brain for a little bit and most people will say yes, versus you know, hire me. Because then it's like here's my portfolio. It doesn't matter what your portfolio is, right, I don't know the person. So I think that's far more important.

John Ruz: 11:46

Anyway, tangent, but I want to tell people how to get out of that rut.

Vipul Bindra: 11:48

Key point yeah just meet for coffee. Get them to know you as a person because, trust me you, anyone will teach you. I so many people on those podcasts will happily bring anyone new and teach them right what they won't do is just bring a stranger on set so just don't be a stranger, go meet people anyway. So, yes, so you had, you had that experience, which I I hope I wasn't one of the ones but I apologize if I was? Uh, because that happens, that happens daily it's so crazy how often that happens.

Vipul Bindra: 12:15

But yes, so you tried.

John Ruz: 12:16

Obviously couldn't find something I tried, you couldn't find something. And then brian replied back hey, which is awesome. So, yeah, you never know, yeah, right he's like, hey, yeah, perfect, let's, let's meet up at this spot um dress. Dress accordingly to the occasion and you know what? My first get? What was for rolex 24 daytona, you know for the interior designer yeah, it was great.

John Ruz: 12:39

Wow, I'm like, oh my god, this, this is what I love to do. You know, this is great. This is an amazing opportunity. So fast forward. Um covet hit 2020. Yeah, best brian's business. Um was mostly into, you know, commercials and advertising and conferences, which dried up.

Vipul Bindra: 12:58

Yeah, pretty much yeah so my business.

John Ruz: 13:01

At the time I was working for that builder, pulling my hair out because I didn't have a team. I was working for myself.

Vipul Bindra: 13:08

You know I'm like 10, 15 shoes. It's crazy yeah.

John Ruz: 13:11

I was working, I was pulling 12 hours days shooting, plus then all night editing then QCing and delivering, which is just crazy. I wasn't getting burned out. The client was getting super annoyed of not hitting delivery times. You know, and real estate it's, it's a fast turnaround, it's 24 hours turnaround, so you have to shoot and deliver in 24 hours.

Vipul Bindra: 13:34

You know it's, that's what they expect, because they want to put the listing out.

John Ruz: 13:37

Yeah, right, so um, he came in. Well, I'm like, hey, brian, I'm sorry, but I need so much help right now. He's like, oh my God, yes, perfect, this works great. I don't I, you know I'm not doing anything, let's do that. And you know, he, he came in as a producer and helped me you know, randomly run, randomly client and, and you know that been some ideas. And he's like hey, helping me edit, helping me just manage things, helping me book stuff on the calendar. And I'm like, okay, cool, well, this is working. I'm having a team player right here, so this is great.

Vipul Bindra: 14:10

But that's incredible to think about. Hold on a minute. You started right. You reached out to somebody who responded out of sea of emails and he hired you. He brought you on right. He's more experienced and now, because of covid, tide have turned. Now he's coming in to partner with you because he his work dried up. So you never know people that hire you could end up working with you, right, uh. So now he's like oh, I, my work dried up, let's partner together. But because he's so experienced, he can come in and kind of find efficiencies I'm missing in the process right, he, he is a veteran on producing.

John Ruz: 14:45

You know scaling the business, the business developing, so he was a key, essential part to you know, jrp, not only scaling, but you know making profit, making numbers, because if you're pulling 75 bucks a shoot, yeah with edit editors in place and paying myself you're like pulling one dollar profits exactly, which is like nothing in orlando.

Vipul Bindra: 15:08

Good luck, uh. So. So essentially, he came in, he. So you were the talent at that time, right? He's now the the business brains, right? So what do you guys do to scale it or or to to make it better?

John Ruz: 15:21

right. So this client really helped us visualize the future of this business. So, it's like, okay, well, we have to target home builders, interior designers, architects that have bulk of business, have 15, 20 shoots at that time and we're like, okay, well, we can pull in a shooter contractor right here. All of our shooters are contractors. None of them are employees. The only two employees on our two entities are Brian and I, and that's it. We, only we only.

Vipul Bindra: 15:51

So I do the same thing the contractor formula even though I have people you know who get a lot of work from us. But it worked for me, which is so funny. When I started the company, I wanted to replicate. They had full-time employees, so I'm so glad I didn't. This is the better format, but what made?

John Ruz: 16:10

you go with this format where you bring in contractors versus employees. We were running out of money so fast with employees. We tried with one of our first contractors. We put it on a W-2 basis. We said no, no we can't.

Vipul Bindra: 16:27

It's so much Because you have to then the overhead and all that, right, right, and you have to have the current, yeah, recurring revenue, right, yeah, exactly we're like maybe the contractor rates will work and we we're targeting contractors that not only specify in real estate, but they only they.

John Ruz: 16:42

They mostly do weddings on the weekends, so they have the weekdays pretty much open and that's where we come in look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 16:48

We don't shoot for the weekends. That's pretty smart. So you basically went out and you said hey, here's wedding videographers who are free during the weekdays. Come do real estate for us be contractors. That's smart. So what were you, or what are you paying them? On average, a shoot.

John Ruz: 17:04

So it can vary depending on the season. We have slow season and high season. Our shooters can make from $2,500 a month to up to $10,000 a month.

Vipul Bindra: 17:16

That's pretty good for a contractor Right. And then how were you able to up your rate? Did you go back to that same builder and say I want to go from 75 to I don't know, 150, 200, whatever? You upped your rate, did you go back to that same builder and say I want to go from 75 to, I don't know, 150, 200, whatever you up to your rate to? Um, how did you manage that conversation? Or did you just have to find a whole new client to up the rate?

John Ruz: 17:33

not really. You know um with brian.

John Ruz: 17:35

He's like okay, john, you have to see the business through what we're working for this is a builder that's pulling billions of dollars and probably doing a six you know budget a year for marketing. So you have to think about how much we're going to charge them, how much we're going to pay our contractor, our editors, our backend team, qc team, and then we have to figure out a number that we can pull to the client, right. So we find out that packaging our pricing with photo, video matter, port work, great for profits and for the client, right? So we we came in with the for the client with several pricing tiers and uh packages, and what ended up happening? They're like okay, well, let's take for every single home to stick with this package, and for bigger shoots, for moto homes, for you know, more involved shoots, let's go custom, right? Yeah so, and that's what happened so.

Vipul Bindra: 18:30

So you were able to build packages that and your real estate is a very good market where you can do that. So give us an example of your current packages so people, and with some example pricing, so people can understand what clients are paying and what the deliverables are like you know photos, video, whatever, so what? What did packages look like?

John Ruz: 18:48

Some examples so we have three packages and we have something that's called price anchoring, right? So we have our high tier list that can cost up to 2,500 bucks and includes photos, video, matterport tours, landing pages, marketing kits and 2D floor plans. Then we have our middle tier. That can cost you $250,. That includes photo video, a cinematic tour and a floor plan, but you take out the Matterport tour. And then we have our lowest tier that can cost you $950, and it only includes photo video and drone.

Vipul Bindra: 19:26

That's it. That's about it. No, matterport, no, or floor plan, but that's smart. So you were able to tier up, but it makes it easy for the client to go. This times this many properties, very easy for them to also get the services that they want and they don't have to worry about any of the overhead. So that makes absolute sense. Now, how did you take a market that's used to cheap photographers and have them accept this rate or these tiers? Did you have to do anything on the business side, in your sales side, or what did you do? Or you just had to find those clients.

John Ruz: 20:00

The most important thing is to treat a client as a partner, right? You are their marketing extension, not you're a single vendor, right? So whenever we can make that connection with that client, they just open up. They're like hey guys, you know we have X amount of budget, let's plan ahead, right, what we can do with this, right? So that way we find the right qualified clients, right qualified people and, you know, they become friends at the end of the day.

John Ruz: 20:31

We are friends with every single client that we have. We have a close connection with that person because we want that not only for the business but as a relationship. You know we want to treat them as partners, not just another vendor.

Vipul Bindra: 20:48

No, absolutely. So you're partnering with them, you're offering them a very easy offer that they can accept. Plus, they have scalability, so they have a higher tier property they can scale up to hire or even a custom price point. Then how does the pipeline matter, Like, do they reach out to you or do you have a project manager? How does that like? Walk me through an example, timeline right, you reach out to this person. This person calls this person this you know?

John Ruz: 21:14

you know what I mean, right? So yeah, we have a pretty simple system. Some, some people overly complicates these stuff and the project managers are Brian and I.

Vipul Bindra: 21:26

Yeah, that complicates this stuff and the project managers are brian and I.

John Ruz: 21:27

yeah, that's there you go because you are the relationship builders. So we want direct contact with the client. They want to speak directly to the owners, to the both of us, because we are their friends, their partners. They understand us and we understand them right. So we, if we try to put someone in place to replace us, especially building this relationship for three, four years, something might crack right so we don't want that with our clients.

John Ruz: 21:50

We want direct content with them. So whenever they have a project, they email their call or like hey guys, we have this project coming up, can you quote me for it? You know, and send a quote for that, perfect.

Vipul Bindra: 22:01

So they reach out to you and they say, let's say you've obviously signed them up so they have two new properties coming up, whatever. So they let you know. Is it by email or how do they typically contact you?

John Ruz: 22:12

email, I'm guessing, or phone, so we have a platform um that's partnered with us. It's called tonimo. It's mostly a crm for real estate photographers um there's other ones in there this hd photo hub. There's um, you know, ario, spiro, whatever.

Vipul Bindra: 22:29

So we we were on hd photo hub with transition to tonimo for their built-in crm system that they have they can either book themselves online oh, perfect, so they have like an account right so they can just go in and schedule it. Perfect, so it's pretty fully automated.

John Ruz: 22:45

So we don't sometimes if they have a special project, bulk project, like hey, we have 15 houses coming up, of course we want to target that online or over email Right, of course. So when they have one-off shoots here and there, it's better for them to book themselves, see the real-time availability from all of our shooters and book it.

Vipul Bindra: 23:06

Okay, that's awesome. So they can just go in, they can enter it, they can even specify a specific shooter if they want to, if they like someone better, obviously, and they schedule it. Then what happens? Does the shooter get in, because they have probably on the app platform too, right, so the shooter gets a thing.

John Ruz: 23:30

Like you got to have, probably on the on the platform too, right, so the shooter gets the thing. Like you gotta go shoot that. So we have, um, all of our contractors have a jrp email, right, gmail account, yeah, attached to it. So, um, my assistant, gene virtual assistant, and myself and brian manage pretty much the entire dashboard of the bulk of the google calendar, right, so our contractors can mark themselves off if they want to work or not, right, or if they have another shoots coming in in the schedule, right. That schedule ties in into our online booking platform where clients and which is great, the client has a, you know, not dedicated photographer or videographer, but preferred vendor or photographer or videographer, so they can choose, or the system automatically chooses for them that partner and they let them choose a time and date for the shoot.

John Ruz: 24:12

So when that shoot comes in, it pops into the Google schedule, it sends an email confirmation to the client, of course, to the shooter. It sends a text message to the shooter and to the client and it automatically notifies our editors that there's a job posting to the shooter and to the client and it automatically notifies our editors that there's a job posting in progress that needs to be edited, so that's perfect.

Vipul Bindra: 24:30

So essentially you've automated to the point. The client, once you onboard them, has a platform access to your crm software. They can go in, right. They can select everything. The system automatically alerts everyone, both the contracted shooter and the client, right, they meet up, uh, and then goes plus. At the same time the editors know, hey, this project is coming up in the pipeline, right. So that's perfect. So the shooter shows up, they do their thing. How long is typical real estate shoot? A couple hours at most.

John Ruz: 24:59

So it varies. If you're doing photos only, it might take 30 minutes. If we're doing the whole, it might take 30 minutes. If we're doing the whole package, it might take three hours. Yes, three hours, okay perfect.

Vipul Bindra: 25:06

So let's assume they did photos and video, the typical stuff, and then they applied it back to the same platform. Is there a different platform to send the footage back to it?

John Ruz: 25:15

So the platform is attached to Dropbox, which is fantastic. We pay for the business thing and we get, oh my God, unlimited storage, pretty much. So. All of our shooters have a dropbox account attached to the jrp email and they get an email where I don't recommend dropbox for like big files.

Vipul Bindra: 25:34

I think it's good for real estate. I've had a terrible experience with dropbox yeah, but again, that's because we I'm sending files at 100 gigabytes.

John Ruz: 25:41

200 gigabytes, it doesn't work for that. For us it's like 20 megabytes. Yeah, exactly, and that's perfect for that.

Vipul Bindra: 25:47

So, yeah, so it integrates, so they just upload it it uploads it.

John Ruz: 25:52

Well, each shooter has their own dedicated folder that it's linked with our editors, our project managers that's Gene, and our QC people, that's Michelle and Eduardo, right, so all of them are all tied together into one folder and everything is pretty much. You know, notifications all the way. So we have Slack built in, right, intuit Gmail baked in, so we have, so they get a Slack notification hey footage was uploaded, right, or photos were uploaded, so the editor is just on it, they started.

Vipul Bindra: 26:23

And then what's the delivery? Does that CRM are uploaded, so the editor is just on it, they start it and then what's? The delivery. Does that crm platform?

John Ruz: 26:28

handle delivery, so they just upload it back back in back to the client so it doesn't go to mls.

Vipul Bindra: 26:31

The client has to put it on mls, correct? Okay, so your team just gives the client the, the deliverables, right, and then you're the agent most likely the client, right. So the agent will then do the whole mls thing. Okay, correct, that's perfect. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, I want to talk more into now your employees, or your contractors. Yeah, so, there are they any anyone in america besides you and brian? Are they all internet well, shooters are. But I'm saying your editors and your virtual assistant and your qc people, are they all us-based or are they foreign-based? Foreign-based? Look at that all of them, and exactly why you're here.

John Ruz: 27:05

I want to I want to talk because I I have.

Vipul Bindra: 27:06

By the way, if for somebody doesn't know, um, all my people are us based, except for my animation team, which is based out of india. So it's okay, I'm all for. You know, taking advantage of skilled people, right, um, you know, in in a different country and getting them work. So I want to know is how you came up with that concept? What is your? Idea brian's idea and then how you went about recruiting them. Did you use a specific platform?

John Ruz: 27:31

yeah. So the funny story is whenever, when I was editing the photos, right, I got a message on instagram from a vietnamese editor right, hey, john, I can. Oh, you know, I can edit your photos for 80 cents. I'm like wait a minute. Okay, well, I can. That means I can send my photos to edit for this price and I can have them ready in no time, in 12 hours eight hours and for real estate.

Vipul Bindra: 27:58

It's not like you have a lot of photos, you're like 20 photos right and something like that. Right so the cost wouldn't be that high.

John Ruz: 28:03

Yeah, right, so you're, you're pulling 25 bucks, you know, off of a shoot, 30 bucks for the editor. Yeah, you know, um, and I'm like, does that mean I need, like I can alleviate myself from editing? And that changed the game, right? So I've gone through several editors, because you have to test right, and there's either Facebook groups that have a ton of online editors that can work for you. It's become so popular now that you might get 30, 40, I get 40 DMs a day, 30 DMs a day from editors. Hey, can I work for you? Hey, can I work for you?

Vipul Bindra: 28:40

So you, can then go vet who's? Because that's one of the hardest things I've found is and I have US-based editors. Even then, hardest thing for me is finding and you met my leader and, but you know, and then she has to handle all the other editors. It's a pain, because finding somebody who can get your vision, who can do it right and do it fast, is very difficult.

John Ruz: 28:59

You'd be amazed how many editors are not the right fit.

Vipul Bindra: 29:05

So you have to go through a few right to get to to the ones that work, and then you want to keep them. You don't want them to go no so so you go, so you get now obviously a lot of dms and a lot of people so you're just going through their profiles, kind of vetting them right maybe giving them a project or two to test out right.

John Ruz: 29:18

So each project that we give to a new editor, it's a test job and it's three photos. So I've developed a system where I know if on those three photos it's it's shown that you can prove to my to yourself that.

Vipul Bindra: 29:32

So they have like what bad color or bad dynamic range just three photos.

John Ruz: 29:35

I already know if it's a good or not good wonder if we can leak the photos.

Vipul Bindra: 29:41

No, that's very smart, so that's good. So you found three photos that you know very hard to edit. Right, you send that to them. You know, if they edit them good, they're good and then they, they pass the grp test. That's, that's so good.

John Ruz: 29:52

And then um, you know, we have stocked with one editor for three years now which her, her team is amazing and crazy part. They, they expanded because of us, because of our bulk of business, and we saw, we love that success for them right. We know how important this stuff is for them, so we might get some photos and videos from their office, Like hey, John, thank you so much for being a client. Look what you guys made for us so great. You can see them.

Vipul Bindra: 30:22

So you're supporting them and they're expanding because you're expanding right, so that's amazing. So you partner with this and they already have their in-house editors right, they might have 30 editors in there, yeah so that's incredible, and they know the, the level of quality you're expecting, so they do it. And then how does your qc teamwork are they based out of?

John Ruz: 30:40

uh, you know, same country right, you said v Vietnam was your first Yep, you like Vietnamese people.

Vipul Bindra: 30:46

I love Vietnamese food. By the way, a lot of people, and I didn't know this until I discovered Vietnamese food. Apparently there's a huge Vietnamese population in Orlando. We have literally a little Saigon in downtown Orlando.

John Ruz: 30:59

Really, I didn't know that.

Vipul Bindra: 31:00

Oh my God, and we have incredible Vietnamese food here in Orlando and a huge Vietnamese population and I had no idea for the first few years. I lived here until I discovered it, so you got to go to little Saigon in downtown, but I love Vietnamese food so it's pretty cool. So how did you find your QC people? Same thing, and what are they checking for? What is the QC? Quality control?

John Ruz: 31:31

What are they essentially checking? To what is the the you?

Vipul Bindra: 31:33

know qc quality control. What are they?

John Ruz: 31:33

essentially checking um to make sure that you know before they they released I guess the content. Yeah, so our qc team, we found them through upwork, right? Okay, so we have either um, upwork or fiverr that you know, um that provide those virtual assistants.

Vipul Bindra: 31:41

We post a job in there and you just get get into and do you still go through upwork, or have you now moved them off upwork, since you work right with them so much?

John Ruz: 31:49

one of our key thing is to move them out of out of upwork right because of the fees, yeah, they take 15 off, 15, 15 of their cot and some fees from us so it's like both of you save basically by going, especially if it's a regular thing.

Vipul Bindra: 32:03

I get it's a one-off thing, uh, but if it's like a regular thing move them up, bring them into your system. That's great. So what are they checking for? What's the qc that they're doing?

John Ruz: 32:12

so michelle is one of our qc teams and she is mainly looking for inconsistency in color. Are the verticals or straighten? Um, if there's reflections on the floors, if there's trash outside, if there are cracks on your driveway, stuff like that, yeah, some, some key things that make our quality better than the other. It's like that.

Vipul Bindra: 32:34

It just make sure that the little details are taken care of exactly how do you find a qc person, because they have to be very detail oriented. But how do you test that? It was easy for the, for the editor, because, like you said, you have three photos. Do you have a method to test the qc people?

John Ruz: 32:49

so same thing.

Vipul Bindra: 32:50

Three photos so your photos already hidden trash and reflection.

John Ruz: 32:54

Look at that that's so smart three photos and as soon as we edit it yeah we just wanted to see if she saw the details in there. Right, the little small details. Of course we gave her instructions because, no, a lot of them don't follow instructions.

Vipul Bindra: 33:09

Yeah, so that's all you want, you, right? You're you're happy to obviously train them like hey, here's what you should be looking out for, and we do that yeah and and, and she did obviously the person you ended up going with right, and so what's the process then? They catch this and then send it back to the editor, I'm guessing with notes like hey, this is wrong.

John Ruz: 33:25

So if it's a bigger mistake, like inconsistency in coloring between photo and photo, we send them back to the editor. If it's something that they can pull off on Photoshop real quick, they can do them.

Vipul Bindra: 33:35

They can do them so, but you know we have our partner, our editing partner in Vietnam.

John Ruz: 33:40

She's amazing. She knows our quality, she knows what we're looking for. You know, there's some months that from the bulk of business that we give her some inconsistencies here and there, but that's fine.

Vipul Bindra: 33:52

Yeah, exactly, we're human plus, like you said, she has a team so right, you never know. There may be inconsistencies, which is why quality control is so important. Right, by the way, for my company, none of my videos ever go out. I don't care if I was not involved, because there's a lot of projects now where I'm not involved. I will not release a video to a client until I've seen it, so unfortunately I don't have a team.

Vipul Bindra: 34:13

I'm not as big as you I am the qc, but for me it's like my name is on the company which I want to talk to you about the name of the company yeah, silly again. I wish I picked a different name, but now it's like it's Bindra.

John Ruz: 34:22

Productions. I am the Bindra. Nothing leaves my you yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 34:27

Because I'm like my name can't be on it until.

John Ruz: 34:30

I'm saying yes.

Vipul Bindra: 34:31

Yeah, so how did you pick JRP? Because you know that's your name right. John Ruse Productions.

John Ruz: 34:36

Yeah, Again in my opinion, we should name companies after a name after name, but, oh my god, I did it, you did it, I did it so was it just like me, like laziness, or what? Yeah, that's it I'm like okay, well, let's call it myself. Uh, don't lose. Production is easy. Right too late to change now, right once you once you scale and you're like I don't know if you've thought about it.

Vipul Bindra: 34:55

I've thought about many times. I'm like, oh, I should have picked a different name because you know I wanted to be bigger than me. But it's like harder, because now I'm like over established, it's hard to change it right.

John Ruz: 35:04

Have you thought of that too? A lot, yeah, a lot. And sometimes I'm thinking, what boards should I change the jrp to like something right? Yeah, I can change that like I can change something to to that, right, but it's so hard, exactly so yeah, I don't know what you make out of it.

Vipul Bindra: 35:21

Maybe you know, uh, hire, uh, what do you call a focus group? To come with some, but you don't know what you'd make out of it. Maybe you know, hire, what do you?

John Ruz: 35:24

call it a focus group to come up with something, but you don't need to.

Vipul Bindra: 35:26

That's what. I'm saying Same thing happened with me. Even though I want to, it's just like at this point. We're established. People don't care. People call me Bindra.

Vipul Bindra: 35:33

They just call me by my last name, because that's the name of the company and different where it wasn't my name. But too late, right. So, uh, you know, so you, you, you're one of the other people that's going through that. So, but hey, uh, you found success. I love the. The process. It's fully automated. Um, with you know, contracted us shooters, you're giving them work, right. Um, uh, then you have contracted, uh, these, um the remote foreign workers that they're getting work. Everyone's happy, right.

John Ruz: 36:04

And at the end of the day, um, you're able to give your clients a better product at the end, which is what matters at the end to them, right? And the biggest part is that we talk to them. To the client it's like, hey, what do you guys need? And we are very transparent with our clients. Hey, we are implementing new QC procedures for your project to guarantee that you guys are getting the best quality in the next project. So just want to be transparent with them.

John Ruz: 36:30

Because, again, you are an extension of their business, you're an extension of their marketing team, right? They want to help them.

Vipul Bindra: 36:36

Exactly so this is my next thing I want to ask you is basically how does this? Now, obviously, the process works, you figured it out, you got the right people and you're doing the management side, but how do you? The biggest thing, I think, is customer service to a business. It's so crazy, but people don't realize how important customer service is because, you don't know right the client, obviously, the process is good you make sure the photos are good, but you don't know what the agent feels, feels.

Vipul Bindra: 37:03

It's very important to know where they are at feedback and all that. So how do you create that feedback, luke? Do you do like a manual call in, check in or do you do like a survey? How do you know the agents are happy with what they're getting and their needs are matter whatever? Tell me that, because to me that's more important than the whole process that we've talked about so far, even though obviously the product is the thing they're buying, right, but it's the experience right. So how do you manage that?

John Ruz: 37:30

Crazy part is that we did not implement that until last year.

Vipul Bindra: 37:35

Oh, wow.

John Ruz: 37:35

Right, we just sent you photos and peace out.

Vipul Bindra: 37:38

Right, exactly.

John Ruz: 37:40

With our builder clients, bigger high-end VIP clients we do have a relationship. So we ask them stuff For our real estate agents. We didn't have a system right. It's easy to send an email, but if you're doing 20, 30 shoots a day, it gets hard, yeah, and you don't want to be spamming them either?

Vipul Bindra: 38:00

Then they're like I don't want these many emails. So what's the?

John Ruz: 38:04

process that you implemented. So our platform offers a follow-up email now automatically. So we just hit the what's this platform?

Vipul Bindra: 38:11

again, it's called tonimo okay, I don't know this. But hey, people in the real estate. Okay, go ahead, tonimo. So it has like a feedback loop in built into it.

John Ruz: 38:20

Okay, so it has a trigger built in when you complete the actual project and send the completed project. It waits two days to send a follow up. Like hey, just wanted to check in. Were the photos up to par for your work quality? If there's any changes, please let me know. You know we don't want them to attack them right away. Asking questions. So, two days is the perfect, you know threshold that we find.

Vipul Bindra: 38:43

Exactly. That's awesome. And then what I want to know is what's the take rate? Because you know, not everyone responds. And usually when they respond is when there's a problem, not when they're happy. So what did you find? Do you have a percentage Like how many? What's the response rate to those? Emails A lot Actually, really.

John Ruz: 38:59

It's high, so much this looks fantastic. That's really good because it's not the common thing typically people don't respond no, so that's pretty good. So you have a high.

Vipul Bindra: 39:06

But again, your, your clients are agents, so it's right, different, uh. But so they're responding. And then you do get positive. What's your ratio? Positive to negative?

John Ruz: 39:15

um, if you have numbers again, you know, we, I don't want to, I just don't want to brag, but we do such a great, my team does a great job and it's okay to brag.

Vipul Bindra: 39:25

Look, you came here from public demand. You must be doing something good. So no, it's okay to brag. So you're saying it's mostly positive.

John Ruz: 39:36

Mostly positive and when you do get negative what is it generally?

Vipul Bindra: 39:40

Is it QC or what are they finding negative?

John Ruz: 39:43

When we encounter negative feedback, we love that. We really target the. You know we help them. We jump in right away. We stopped everything and just help that client figure out what happened right. We have messed up of course.

John Ruz: 39:58

We have missed shoots, we have missed delivery, we have missed deadlines, of course, and you know, not because of technology, because of us as well. So we have to, you know, take on that right. So we have to make sure the client knows that we are taking care of them. We're like, hey, we F up. Sorry, we're going to fix it right away.

Vipul Bindra: 40:19

Exactly so. You're just basically do you reach for a phone? Do you reach for text Phone? Just basically, are you, do you reach?

John Ruz: 40:24

for a phone. Do you reach?

Vipul Bindra: 40:25

for text phone phone. You're calling them right immediately. You're like, hey, I apologize, let me fix the issue.

John Ruz: 40:28

And generally it's just that date timeline mix up or it just didn't get done in time, or whatever yeah, that's a typical thing I, I'm shy, I I don't like, I'm an introvert I don't like speaking to people right, and brian has taught me to call them because I'm like, oh no, I messed up. Let me send you a text message real quick.

Vipul Bindra: 40:48

No, no, no.

John Ruz: 40:49

Call them. They want to hear you say I'm so sorry, I'm going to fix it right now, right away, you know no, I completely agree with you.

Vipul Bindra: 40:57

I'm an introvert too, and that was the struggle. I didn't like, you know, talking to people, right.

Vipul Bindra: 41:04

I grew up a generation with text. But the crazy thing is the number one thing, yeah, you have to implement in your business is call. Like it's so funny, I've changed Again. I don't call for like hi, hello to my friends, but I'm like client. No, I'm calling immediately Because to me that conversation, that one-to-one, is so important. An email cannot get the tone right. It's just, it's not possible, it is not and it's not fixable. But, like you said, it's very important to stop. I'm like if something goes wrong, especially if it's rare for me, I'm like no, no, no, we stop. We literally call and we're like what's wrong?

Vipul Bindra: 41:41

Like how did we fix it? It's funny the I've talked about this like two incidents I can think of in last year that went wrong with me had nothing to do with us, even though they're blaming. So one, literally, and this is I'm saying I do a lot of productions. Two, was I offered this client a free? You know we did a course for this client and she wanted uh, you know she had to choose between english and spanish. She only had money to do one version.

Vipul Bindra: 42:04

So, me being kind, and obviously her market was more English speaking, even though her native is Spanish, we went with English version. But I was like, shouldn't do that. I was like, oh, I'll be nice and I'll give you a free dubbed version of Spanish until you can afford to get the Spanish version made. No, it didn't go through the translation. She said okay, but you know you don't know the language and, funny enough, again, I had Emmanuel with me in the meeting, so somebody who speaks Spanish. But point is she said I got it, you know. I was like remember, this is free and this is just dubbing, it's not an edited nothing. We're just putting Spanish audio, your voice on it, right until you know you're ready. So we delivered the english video amazing, love it. And then the complaint I got was the spanish version is not edited.

Vipul Bindra: 42:50

It doesn't match my lips, obviously it's dubbing if we're not gonna match the lip, but but the client doesn't get. And then so I was like I'm trying to do customer service, you know. Immediately I'm like let me call you. I'm trying to explain to you and even after I had the conversation, I was like I don't think she gets it Because I'm like ma'am, it's dubbing, your lips are not going to match, you know, because it's a different language, even though you're saying the same thing when you translate.

John Ruz: 43:12

It's different, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 43:13

So anyway, so that was my one, and then the other one was a client. We recorded a speech. It went amazing. Remember the live speech I'm saying with an audience, not where we can stop, not a studio speech. His pocket got inside out and he was unhappy with my crew for that. I'm like we were in the back of the room. You're speaking to 300 people.

John Ruz: 43:33

We're not going to stop you in the middle of it or that's not even our job anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 43:36

But I'm saying but then you still had to apologize. I was like, look, apologize. Next time when we film your speech I will personally check your pocket and your wardrobe to make sure. I mean, ideally I want a wardrobe person there if that's important, right, exactly. But obviously clients don't get it. So no, no, we don't need a wardrobe. I said, okay, don't worry about it, I will check it. So you know you have to do that, even though it sounds silly. At the end of the day I'm like come on, I don't get complaints here, I don't want to ruin my reputation over a pocket being inside out.

Vipul Bindra: 44:05

And, funny enough, it went through three of their team members and nobody noticed it because it's a small thing, but the first moment a client mentioned it to them, the video is off. It's like we can't share it anymore and I'm like I get it, but at the same time I don't. It's a live speech, things are not.

Vipul Bindra: 44:22

anyway, you get my point, I know. So I've had two complaints, like I said, in the last two years that I can think of, and then both of them had nothing to do with me. Even then, I still had to call and apologize because at the end day, that's what you can do and that's what you need to do, because customer service is important.

John Ruz: 44:39

It's the most important, it's the backbone.

Vipul Bindra: 44:40

Yeah, you know, even though you're like I don't know how I can control a pocket. But I'm gonna apologize and I'm gonna say next time we'll look out for it you know, because that's all you can do. Right, but it is the difference between being successful and not being successful.

Vipul Bindra: 44:54

Right, right, 100 yeah, customer service is one of our main things that we strive for on both businesses, on jrp and big wave, you know and, like you said, the biggest thing is don't email, don't text, hang up, call, talk to the client you know, because you know there's nothing better than that you know because you can immediately figure out what they're thinking, what they're going through. You can hear the emotions in the voice.

John Ruz: 45:21

You can't get that through text or email.

Vipul Bindra: 45:23

So that's incredible, but it sounds like you built an incredible real estate business. Thank you, it's mostly automated.

Vipul Bindra: 45:29

Obviously, nobody can replace you having to go find the leads and you know having to do, you know customer service yourself or whatever. There's obviously things you and your business partner are doing. Now are you doing all the sales too, or do you have a sales team? So Brian and I do the sales? Okay, so you're basically bringing in the business, You're making sure everyone's happy, You've automated the middle process, the grunt work, essentially, but those people are happy too, because they're getting paid more than they would either in their country or as a freelancer in America right.

Vipul Bindra: 46:02

Because it's like we talked about real estate industry doesn't pay well and you're trying to offer people higher pay, so that's why they want to work with you, and then the clients get a better product. You know, everyone wins. Kind of seems like at the end.

John Ruz: 46:14

We have heard feedback from our contractors that we are one of the highest pay per project contractor rates for real estate that they have worked for, so that tells us something right, yeah, that's incredible.

Vipul Bindra: 46:27

Now here's what I want to know what's, what type of profit percentage are you aiming for? What are you getting? Let's be realistic to 2024, like, are you aiming for like 80, 60, 40 roughly. What are you at the end, after all, expenses paid, not counting taxes? Uh, obviously, but what is your, your, your, your profit that you're trying to pull?

John Ruz: 46:47

it's pretty high.

Vipul Bindra: 46:48

Um, we don't have that much of overhead, right, so no but I mean, you still have people costs right contractor costs yeah, so after you take out your remote, because things like that's your cost, right right cost is contractors and important employees, so you're able to put what 80, 90 percent, or is it lower?

Vipul Bindra: 47:04

no, it's low, it's 70, which is pretty high yeah like I said, I'm at 20 so big, big, big up uh, so 70 is really good right and you're doing seems like financially really well and thank you, something that went probably really good for you. Your real estate market went crazy in Orlando and it literally went skyrocket. So I'm guessing when that was happening. You had plenty of work. I'm guessing Plenty. Yeah, it was more like catching up to the amount of work.

John Ruz: 47:37

Yeah we, we are. You know, since 2020 we have capped um not lower 2000 shoots a year for jrp.

Vipul Bindra: 47:46

That's crazy now here's what I want to know real estate took a downturn, yeah this year especially because you know again what goes up must come down. Yeah so how are you managing that? Did you? Did you have to cut hours or like, because, let's be real, the real estate market is down right now yeah so obviously it's not as down.

Vipul Bindra: 48:05

It's still high compared to where we started, right, but it's not where it was like peaking, like where people were willing to pay 30, 40, 50k above listing price, right. Um, now you know, people can even ask for a discount, like, hey, I just I bought a home, um at the end of last year and, um, like I said, I was able to ask for closing costs, which is you couldn't have thought of that ever.

Vipul Bindra: 48:25

I was like, look, I'll pay your, you know, a decent price. I think I paid good price for the home, but I was like I need more right, but you couldn't have done that in the past, right? Not in orlando, right? Yeah? Yeah, they wouldn't have done that in the past.

John Ruz: 48:37

Right, not in Orlando. Right, yeah, not in Orlando.

Vipul Bindra: 48:38

Yeah, they wouldn't have even entertained your offer and here I'm trying to negotiate with them. Even my real estate agent was like even for this market, are you sure, Are you sure? No, I was like yeah, yeah, no, I want it, let's do it. I was like, no, let's send it. Because I, anyway, I know enough people like you in real estate. I'm like I know where the market's at, anyway, which is crazy for Orlando, but how did that affect your business? How did it hurt your business?

John Ruz: 49:02

And yeah, kind of like that you know we have been pretty smart on diversifying and we don't throw all of our eggs in one basket. We don't just service real estate agents.

John Ruz: 49:15

We service builders and builders keep building. Yeah right, they have so much inventory right now and you know, in covid they got so much marketing budget and they, they are spending it throughout the years now and you know, for us, we we have been busy because of builders, because of interior designers and, um, you know, custom home builders, architects and all that. That's's so smart, real estate.

Vipul Bindra: 49:38

Yeah, you got to diversify. You're absolutely right. Here's the opposite of the advantage of it. Now that you say that, again, I'm not an expert like you are, but here's what I noticed Because, like you said, home down. But when I was buying, my agent was like all these new homes, you know, and showing me all these communities. Because here's what happened when the demand went like this, all these builders started building new communities and now that, when they're ready, the market is down, right, but that's an advantage for you because now they have inventory they need to sell, they need to make photos, videos, obviously, to sell this inventory. So we have actually high demand and I guess I would have loved to buy one of these new homes, but they all come with HOAs and what are they called?

John Ruz: 50:19

CDDs and I was like, nah, I don't want to pay that.

Vipul Bindra: 50:23

So you know I got intrigued. There were some really nice homes down in Claremont. I was amazed how many people, by the way, live in Claremont. Half the people on my podcast so far have been from Claremont. But really beautiful homes and I was like, oh, they look really nice. But then you know, you go. How far is it from the airport?

John Ruz: 50:39

And I'm flying so much.

Vipul Bindra: 50:40

And then, on top of that, I was like I don't want to pay this HOA. I don't want to pay this CDD Plus. Then where am I going to park the van? You know like. But they're beautiful homes, they're incredible and their inventory is guess. So you basically moved or you already were diversified.

John Ruz: 51:03

So it wasn't like it doesn't hit us hard, yeah, that hard.

Vipul Bindra: 51:05

So how much would you say? Your business is down right now from the peak, is it like-? So, personally, we were up, so you're up still.

John Ruz: 51:13

So you didn't suffer at all? No, we. This week alone we have 20 shoots this week and it's january. It's the second week of january, you know it's like, oh my god crazy business, yeah, exactly and you know it's january. Florida market it's crazy, especially with home builders. They it doesn't stop. We don't have breaks until the. We are shooting up to the 31st of December, nonstop.

Vipul Bindra: 51:40

Look at that. So you're basically killing it in terms of demand, and I'm guessing most of it is because of repeat business, right? You're trying to keep the agents, the builders, the interior designers on board, so it's much easier I'm guessing, cheaper, right? Have you calculated your customer acquisition costs or no?

John Ruz: 51:58

Not really Okay, that's because.

Vipul Bindra: 52:00

I guess it's mostly boots on the ground, handshaking Right. Are you doing any kind of ads? Oh, I know you are Cause I've seen some now that you say that I I sent corrected to my own question. But yeah, so when did you Instagram ads or any kind of advertising? Have you always been doing it, or is this new or so we we started advertising on Google a couple months ago and we had hits on our website.

John Ruz: 52:25

We were pulling numbers and but no, no conversions. It's crazy, no conversion at all. You know we get non-qualified leads. It's it's crazy. And you know Google has been so weird that at at 3 am ona random saturday, it just peaks 30 000 views on the website and then monday, three views and it's like, oh my god, I'm paying three thousand dollars a month for exposure here, right?

Vipul Bindra: 52:52

yeah, I've had bad luck with google ads too. They've been like I've not had any um luck getting anything, like you said, qualified leads out of that right but then you tried what instagram is. Are you doing anything besides instagram or right now, no instagram?

John Ruz: 53:05

so instagram is where you are at.

Vipul Bindra: 53:07

Yeah, how did?

John Ruz: 53:07

that go it. It's been incredible. We have pulled in an incredible amount of numbers that already have paid off for the entire worth of our ad spend through the year right so and we're pulling between 50 and 100 a post each. Each reel that we have, that we know it's going to be targeted to a specific audience, let's say builders or real estate agents, or architectural photography or something like that right.

Vipul Bindra: 53:36

Plus, it can be hyper-local right, because you're trying to target what, which I know we'll talk about your expansion into other markets, but you're currently marketing what? Florida or Central Florida? What's your main market Central?

John Ruz: 53:47

Florida.

Vipul Bindra: 53:47

Central Florida. So it makes it easy because you can hyper-local builders in Central Florida put $100, you'd say roughly in a post, something like that, that's it. And then what type of numbers are you pulling in roughly?

John Ruz: 53:58

We are getting. You know, we just had 60 leads from one video $100 for 60 leads yeah, that is incredible, incredible, incredible numbers. Yeah, and we have got-, do you have?

Vipul Bindra: 54:12

any conversion rates yet or not yet, not yet. I'm still, it's so yeah that we haven't.

John Ruz: 54:17

Still, we we got some bookings over there. We got some pretty amazing qualified clients. Look at that very good qualified clients that booked that. You weren't thinking, oh my god, this client. I, I thought this client might just book one shoot. No, she ended up booking five shoots through the entire month.

Vipul Bindra: 54:36

what's your lowest thing? I'm guessing it's like some kind of photography package, right? What's roughly average there, the lowest of the totem pole?

John Ruz: 54:43

now I'm saying Lowest, it's photos only and it starts at $175.

Vipul Bindra: 54:47

Okay. So, just so you know, I'm just saying $100 at your highest spend $175 times five. I'm saying if they were at the lowest level, $175 times five, which is that one client you're already like you know what, at least what 10x-ing your, if not more your, roi. So it's like totally worth it.

John Ruz: 55:09

It's crazy. And the crazy part is she went and booked for our anchored package, which has a retail price of, you know, $1,200.

Vipul Bindra: 55:18

So look at that.

John Ruz: 55:19

So it was obviously way for our anchored package which has a retail price of, you know, 1200 bucks. So look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 55:23

So it was obviously way more than the bare minimum, but I would say, even at the bare minimum it would have been worth it, right? But obviously you know most people aren't going to pick, you know.

John Ruz: 55:28

And you know, I met the client. I drove to Ocala to make her and she's like oh, you are the guy from the video. I didn't know you were shooting my house, thank you, and that connection, yeah, I think, just made a lifetime client. You know exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 55:42

It's like oh, yeah, plus, now you're the guy they saw and you are the guy who's showing up, right, just like uh. I don't want to compare us to uh attorneys, but you know the a lot of the injury ones, they purposefully, you know, put their face on there because, right, you know it matches right uh who they're gonna meet, um, until they pass you off. Right, they're like, hey, new client, sign the paper. All right, see you, here's your actual attorney yeah uh, yeah, it's a strange process, uh, but that's incredible that it's working for you.

John Ruz: 56:10

Yeah, and uh, that's more expansion, more leads, right, you said more revenue, yeah and one tip yeah, real quick, before we change um, if you are pulling ads through meta or instagram, do it through desktop, not not do it through the, through the app on the phone. It will save you 30, right it's crazy.

Vipul Bindra: 56:31

Yeah, 30 just by starting the pro.

John Ruz: 56:33

Uh, no, just just by throwing the ad on the desktop instead of the app.

Vipul Bindra: 56:37

It's crazy.

John Ruz: 56:39

I never thought of that until I saw it. I'm like, oh, because there's probably higher demand for mobile right, yeah, that's a good tip. Thank you, john. Look at that, we're already learning.

Vipul Bindra: 56:49

I may play with them. I've even had Ben on the podcast and he has such great things to say that I may actually test. Uh, test my waters with. Like I said, I tried a bunch of this stuff, but it was six years ago and then, like seven business skyrocketed. I stopped that behind. I was like I don't need to worry about it. But now I'm like, hey, I'm ready to expand, I'm trying to make it bigger than me. It'd be so cool to experiment, uh. But but here's the good, the interesting aspect of it I'm the behind the scenes guy. You have to put your face on it. You have to go in front of the camera and make these ads.

Vipul Bindra: 57:21

What made you pick it to be you versus your partner? And then, how is it being?

John Ruz: 57:28

in front of camera. I haven't talked to Brian about why he doesn't like to be on camera. I feel like I don't know, it's something that I don't know right, and he's not camera shy, but I think he doesn't like to. You know, just do that kind of stuff. You know, I feel like I have developed this personality of you know being on camera. I love being on camera and, you know, talk to people. I've developed talking to people and just being out of my shell a little bit more through the years to really just speak with that person in front of the camera. That's, that's viewing the video. I just want to connect with you. Yeah, right, so, um, I don't know, I don't know, I have that's a good question some people do that where they create a persona.

Vipul Bindra: 58:15

Have you done that?

John Ruz: 58:16

yeah, he's my. This is who I'm talking to their name is shane.

Vipul Bindra: 58:20

You know they have five, five properties. They need to right get photo. Have you done that or no?

John Ruz: 58:24

not really.

Vipul Bindra: 58:24

No, you're just just saying like I'm talking to whoever my client, whoever, yeah, yeah, okay uh, but you're doing that one-on-one conversation right?

John Ruz: 58:31

and um, I feel like if, if I'm the one speaking, um, you know, if doing the face of the company, another that brian does and brian does way more than me on that in that aspect um, but on social media per se, right? Um, if I'm showing myself on on social media and then meet that client about what happened, I feel like I'm making a greater connection rather than showing, um, we can hire someone else, we can hire a spokesperson for jrp or big wave to do that right, yeah but in our mentality it's like okay, what, what type of client do you want to attract right?

John Ruz: 59:08

and for us, having that direct connection with the client and having them as a friend and your partner, it's way more important rather than just scaling and building a bigger brand and all that Right.

Vipul Bindra: 59:21

Then what made you going to go to Texas?

John Ruz: 59:23

Well, we have one of our clients, um, that served HQs in Texas right In San Antonio, and for years we have been, you know, thinking of expanding to to Texas right. The Texas market real estate market's fantastic. It's huge. It's very similar to. Florida and that client is growing rapidly very rapidly.

John Ruz: 59:47

So the we have two clients, we have our main builder client and our staging a partner, um down in San Antonio, and they, they were like hey guys, we're not doing this kind of service that we're doing providing photos with staging on our HQ, on our city. Why don't you guys? In two weeks they gave us two freaking weeks to move everything.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:15

Wow, so you had to find new contractors. Everything Right, and plus, what they want is virtually stage photos, right? No, no. Actual stage photos. Oh, actual stage photos, because that's the thing. Right? Virtual staging Right. I don't like it, but that's the thing.

John Ruz: 1:00:27

You up for that. You know virtual staging can be a great asset to you. Know someone that's needs to sell something fast.

Vipul Bindra: 1:00:38

Staging matters so much, because then they can see that when they actually come in too, instead of virtual. There, it's right, it's just in the photos, right?

John Ruz: 1:00:46

so, um, you know that that staging client really, um you know, we we have been working for, for them for six years. We have been building a relationship so deeply that they don't look elsewhere, and that's what we want right, that's so incredible.

John Ruz: 1:01:02

In Texas. We're like well, we have plans in the future to expand into Texas, right, and this is such a great opportunity to do it. So I think it was June or July last year that we made that leap, and now we have three contractors, and we have one in San Antonio, one in Austin, two in Austin and then one in Dallas.

Vipul Bindra: 1:01:26

Look at that. So you're doing incredible. You're expanding. Do you need to? Since this is such an automated process, do you need to travel or no? You can, just no, so you don't even need to actually go to texas to make this happen, right?

John Ruz: 1:01:39

look at you. Yeah, so we travel to texas to set up yeah, initially, yeah, initially to train our contractors, meet them, have dinner and lunch and just see where they're looking right, exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 1:01:50

How do you find them? Did you go to the groups? Or indeed, indeed, oh, look, look at you. Oh, my goodness, you've basically used everything You're like. I have Upwork, I have.

John Ruz: 1:02:01

Indeed, I have everything that's incredible. The tools are there for you. Yeah, I mean use them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:06

So seems like you're doing really good. Thank you Then why the expansion into or, when that happened, to the commercial and the other side of it? Because you have that other company right you mentioned. When did that came about and why that addition to real?

John Ruz: 1:02:21

estate. So Meet Big Wave or Big Wave Production. Meet Big Wave is our IG. Big Wave Productions came to be because Brian had Brian Adams Photographics and then I had John Bruce Productions. So by the time that we working together, I was working for him, for his clients, he's working.

John Ruz: 1:02:42

He was working for me for um, my clients and we're like you know what, let's just do one entity and we both love the ocean, we both love um the waves and you know the water and all that. So we we were like let's do big wave.

Vipul Bindra: 1:02:57

Right.

John Ruz: 1:02:58

And a big wave came to be. And what year was this same time, or it was 2019.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:03

Okay, sorry.

John Ruz: 1:03:04

Uh 2021. 2021.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:07

That's when you yeah, so you're doing real estate, obviously, but now you, you combine these two entities to become one, right?

John Ruz: 1:03:19

And uh, uh, what type of work are you targeting in the corporate and commercial world? So we're doing mostly corporate shoots um interview style.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:24

Uh we're doing interview b-roll, the typical interview b-roll.

John Ruz: 1:03:26

We're doing mostly um seminars, um, you know, conferences. We have a manufacturer facility, um device, um provider in sarasota that builds wheelchairs and, you know, lifts and elevators for people with disabilities. So we we do around five shoots a year for them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:03:50

Amazing, we have one upcoming in Connecticut in more than one of our largest one, that we have built with them Awesome, so that's incredible. And then let's first find out how do you find these clients for that? Because obviously your real estate much easier automated these clients actually before that. What's your average rate that you're trying to target for these type of projects? Because it's going to be much higher right Per project that you're going to charge for this. So what range are you trying to hit?

John Ruz: 1:04:23

Oh, we are doing, you know, 10,000 plus. Yeah, exactly.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:27

So much higher, so much harder to find than a simple Instagram ad, right? So how are you finding these clients?

John Ruz: 1:04:33

They are past clients from Brian B-A-P-G. Right, they have been Brian. As I said, brian has been such a great partner that he pulled in his past clients and it's like, okay, let's rail them into Big Wave and introduce them to the company, to the new company. It's like it's not Brian. So he already had clients that he brought in Okay.

Vipul Bindra: 1:04:56

So do you find any new clients, or is there any process of finding new clients?

John Ruz: 1:05:00

We have found new clients through agencies. We work a lot with agencies and mainly Google. Either Google or referrals. A lot comes from referrals from both businesses. From the JRP and the Meet Big Wave. Big Wave Productions come from referrals, okay.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:16

That's awesome. So, essentially, you're you leaned into, you know your exit. Past clients, clients you have now, and I'm sure one of these real estate agents probably, or the bid builders go. We need a commercial, we need something, and then you can be like. We have that service where we can. So you said about 10 K above is what you're targeting. Talk about this new upcoming production. What's the rough budget for it and what's the deliverables look like?

John Ruz: 1:05:40

So we are delivering 90 videos. Wow, that's a lot.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:44

It's two weeks. Two weeks of production, so 14 days of shoot.

John Ruz: 1:05:48

We're doing 10 days of complete shooting, so 10 days of shooting a whole load of deliverables, a whole lot.

Vipul Bindra: 1:05:56

What's the price range? Roughly the whole production cost.

John Ruz: 1:06:03

We build 160,000,.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:07

I believe that's actually pretty good for that amount of deliverables. What type of videos are there? That's a lot of videos.

John Ruz: 1:06:12

Lifestyle videos Lifestyle videos.

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:16

So what industry are they in? Some kind of product or something Correct? Okay, a product, a lot of product shoots it's in their hq or wherever you're filming. Are you getting a studio we are doing on location, on location, and then what role in these productions do you and him play? So are you like, like, is he the dp? Are you directing? Like, how are you dividing your tasks?

John Ruz: 1:06:38

It's great because with this client we have built such a good relationship that we of course we have to pull the team right, the crew to pull this off, because it's a big shoot, but Brian and I are I'm the DP, brian is the director, producer and lifestyle photographer right, okay?

Vipul Bindra: 1:06:57

awesome. We might have other crew members.

John Ruz: 1:06:58

I'm the DP, Brian is the director, producer and lifestyle photographer. Okay, Awesome, we might have other crew members that assist with wardrobe talent producing, managing, railing people, you know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:07

So what's the crew size? Going to be roughly.

John Ruz: 1:07:09

We're thinking of being five, five.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:13

Okay, just so people hear this.

John Ruz: 1:07:14

Let's summarize this what?

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:16

you just said so, five person crew yeah, 10 day this. Let's summarize this, what you just said so, five-person crew yeah, 10-day shoot, not including the client though, yeah, of course. So five-person crew, 10-day shoot, right, $160,000 with 90 deliverables. Right, and how long?

John Ruz: 1:07:34

are these deliverables 30 seconds long, 30-second deliverable.

Vipul Bindra: 1:07:37

Yeah, okay, let that sink in. I'm going to repeat myself, because to me, this is what people need to hear Right, right Again. Five person crew, 10 days of production, $160,000, 90 30 second deliverables. Right, dude, that's it. Go sell that now I mean, that's what it's about, right? And then, um, now, uh, what type of profit margin? Because you know it's typically not as high when you're doing um such big productions. However, right seems like you have a small crew, so you should be able to pull pretty good profit what profit margin are you aiming for again?

John Ruz: 1:08:18

it's not been done yet, so so right. Um, I'm not sure. Brian is the total producer for this one, so I'm not sure, 100 sure what the project but roughly in these type of projects.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:29

What do you aim?

John Ruz: 1:08:29

for he, he aims high he aims to high profit, so that's why we keep our cost low, yeah so 50 to 70, you would say, or probably which is incredible to pull that kind of profit.

Vipul Bindra: 1:08:40

And I think it comes down to his relationship, right? It's why the client's trusting you 100%. So it's going to be with models and stuff, right, there's no actual company interviews in there right, nope, just models yeah just models You're going to do, do it with them. That's incredible. Thank you, uh, and and this is obviously, I'm guessing years of building relationship, right, four years with this client. So that's that's incredible. Yeah, um, what would you tell people? Because a lot of people want, obviously, now that the people hear this, because, people have asked me.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:09

It's like oh, how do you get them like relationship? I want to say something more than that, so I would love to hear uh, people hear this. Obviously that's like a dream gig for somebody.

John Ruz: 1:09:18

Yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:18

Because you know, at the end of the day, even with editing, you're what Two, three weeks into the whole thing, right? That's basically it, that's it, and you can make $160,000. Let's assume after all costs you pull in $100,000. And I'm going low, sounds like, because you guys are pulling way more profit than a typical production.

Vipul Bindra: 1:09:33

Because you know most agencies would come in and charge a 40% production fee, so their profit would be 40% and you can most likely pull 60, 70% here. So you can make $100,000, $120,000 in 10 days. Maybe, let's add, because you know you do spend time pre-production, post-production. So three weeks you can make that's a huge profit. Most people that are listening to this are trying to make that in a year. What would you suggest to them Realistically, you know, because let's be real it doesn't happen in a day.

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:04

It's years of building a relationship with client and trust. How would you say they start or try to get gigs like this?

John Ruz: 1:10:15

I will say it's not luck, it's grind. You have to grind as as much as possible to you know, find this true client, because you, you know, one, yes, can change everything right so I feel like searching for that type of client. If you search for it, you will never find it if it comes to you, naturally right.

John Ruz: 1:10:37

So you just have to grind and grind and, just you know, level up and change that mentality, because people think that we cannot make a living doing this stuff and we can't oh yeah, we can make killer we can make a killer living two people sitting right here and all the other people have been here.

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:53

Everyone's making a killer yeah doing this.

Vipul Bindra: 1:10:55

So it's definitely doable. I think you just have to think from a business mindset, right, and you have to uh figure out efficiencies and sops correct and uh get it, you know, right, because then you're not fighting to make money, you're actually just out there doing what you love to do, right and I feel like when you change that perspective and you show that the clients that you are not a freelancer or someone that you know potentially doesn't want to build something bigger, or shows that you know stuff like that, you know I feel like that client.

John Ruz: 1:11:28

When clients sees that, I feel like your mentality changes and eventually you get way more, bigger business and better business.

Vipul Bindra: 1:11:38

You know exactly, and uh, like I said, it's also relationship building and trust building, because that's ultimately what leads them to trust you. Right, you know, being able to tell their brand image and how they want it to be done. Now, um, did you? Uh? How do you price a gig like this? I mean, uh, did you do it? Oh, just deliverables divided by per deliverable times, the number of you know like simple math, or did you have other things?

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:01

you're going, oh, how much can I profit? Like, how did you guys build this price? I'm saying Right.

John Ruz: 1:12:08

Brian's method is profit vision. It's like how much profit can I pull from this shoot? You know we don't cut corners. We try to just work with the same team, have the same rate. We know what we're expecting to. You know um, have expenses from and just. You know just calculate from that yeah, right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:29

So and then uh, did you. So you said same team, are you flying your people in or you are hiring local people there?

John Ruz: 1:12:35

we are hiring local if we need to. Uh, brian is the the actual brains of the operation, so he's doing the producer right part of it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:12:43

So he's going to handle all that, that's pretty cool so you just come in, you're like I'm the dp uh, do you get 50 of the profit?

John Ruz: 1:12:50

that's incredible. Where do I find partnership like that? No, actually, um, you know, no, no, I'm not saying you do a lot of work. Yeah, he has inputs that I will give him to him, but I don't want to discount what you do I'm just saying you put it yourself there.

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:04

I was like uh, you're dp, you get half the profit. Let me meet brian I was like huh john who no, no, uh, but that's's incredible that you two have built a business You're partnering. Then that's a second business. That's not even like you know one, like you have two businesses Right and you're killing it in both. Thank you and again, I think people can see that it's from that business mindset. It's not once have you said this is the camera I'm going to use. This is the camera I'm going to use.

John Ruz: 1:13:36

This is the settings I'm going to use.

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:37

I'm the DP, I'm going to have five people under me, but that's what the mindset people get when they get the DP. You won't believe how many times I listen to it. I'm the DP and I'm like who cares?

John Ruz: 1:13:46

Yeah, exactly right, and I was that person five years ago.

Vipul Bindra: 1:13:50

So what brought about the change? How can people change the mindset?

John Ruz: 1:13:53

I think just thinking bigger. You can think bigger and you can think more of like a business instead of a individual person. I don't, I don't mind if you're an individual person. You know some people absolutely love one man crew, just a freelancer, and I, I absolutely love that. I applaud to that. Some days I'm like I just wish I just have my little camera and that's it. Right, that's my creative. I never wish that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:19

I'm always wishing for bigger Cause. You know, that's what I'm finding. I'm always like trying to, you know, bring in more, and I have clients all the way. Cause to be real, I don't want to say that, like I have clients where it's just me doing some interview and B-roll. Here's the footage to you know $400,000, $500,000 shoot. We have 50 people on set right and everything in between. So it varies. It's a huge difference, but I'm always trying to reach the higher number I'm like I want to bring more people.

Vipul Bindra: 1:14:50

I want to have better you know content better sets better everything, but obviously not everyone's budget can scale. Yeah, exactly. So you have to obviously find or like. They're like oh no, we just need a couple interviews, right, just need one man crew. And it's like okay, well, the day is available, let's do it. You know what I mean.

John Ruz: 1:15:04

But but I'm always trying to, you know, be like I don't want, you know, I want bigger sets, bigger crews, because I think you make something better when you collaborate yeah, um, I know.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:08

Uh, it's not why I brought you here. I want to talk more business, but I want to know what camera are you planning to use for this shoot. Do you have anything in mind? How do you go about like as a dp because it sounds also fashion oriented, where camera matters, look matters. How are you gonna pick your camera or what are you leaning towards? I want to know more gear, just so people can hear what type of gear is used these type of shoots to be honest, it's gonna be the canon r5 canon r5 look at that wow, that's it.

John Ruz: 1:15:37

We have a red komodo, yeah, but you're not planning to use it nope, no.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:41

Why is the canon r5 the better product?

John Ruz: 1:15:43

workflow. Okay, and you're doing photos too.

Vipul Bindra: 1:15:45

I'm guessing it's both photos and videos, so it's going back and forth brian is doing the photos, I'm doing the video.

John Ruz: 1:15:51

Um, but workflow wise, it works for me, right, and it works for the client and it works for the looks that the client are wanting. They, they are in high tech. They don't want the shiny stuff on set, they don't. They don't want that, they don't like that and they don't care about that they just want to have the assets available for them to pull in and just distribute. That's it awesome.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:13

So you're gonna use canon r5? Are you gonna shoot in log or no? Yeah, for sure, okay, I was about to just walk away from the set if you had said no, but I mean, hey look, it works, it works that's why we're having this conversation? Because look at the end of the day, I want people to know um. You know, obviously work is good. I've looked at it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:35

But I want people to know that's not why you have work. You work because of business sense and looked at it. But I want people to know that's not why you have work. You work because of your business sense. And that's just the truth. You want to be on the comments and just say I can make something better?

John Ruz: 1:16:46

Yes, I already say sure, 100%, absolutely.

Vipul Bindra: 1:16:49

You know it doesn't matter, the client doesn't care. That's the truth. The client cares about the people, the relationships, the trust, and that's just what's more important than your skill. I'm not saying don't be good at your craft. It's very important, but that's not what sells big projects.

John Ruz: 1:17:06

It's just the truth.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:08

And that's what the point of this is for people to hear the real truth, not something fake. Let me come in. I hate those courses that have shown up all over. I will help you scale your business. I'm like look we'll help you scale it for free with no, no incentive, yeah unless you have a real estate photo I don't know what else is used to sell right anyway. Um, so I love that. Thanks, like I said, for sharing this.

Vipul Bindra: 1:17:33

Uh, so you're gonna use canon r5, you're going to shoot and log thank goodness, I mean hey, uh, and then, um, and, like I said, you're going to give them deliverables, clients going to be happy. How do you send, because that's a lot of deliverables? How do you get a sign off on it? Do you use frameio or dropbox or what? What? Yeah, what's your process?

John Ruz: 1:17:55

dropbox and frameio um, and we started implementing frameio with this client and they absolutely love it, yeah because it's for this, many deliverables that I can't imagine with. Dropbox.

John Ruz: 1:18:04

Again, like I said, Dropbox is good, but when you start to scale up, it just starts to break on you really fast and I'm going to knock on wood, but I'm pretty sure that we are not going to have too many revisions, because we already know what the client wants yeah, because you have an existing relationship. So they already know the look, they already know the result and we know they're like okay, well, you know, this is the tentative deliverables, and we're like I'm pretty sure that we know what you guys need.

Vipul Bindra: 1:18:33

You know exactly at this point and and here's the the money question. So let's say you've talked to them, you've presented. Do you present like a proposal or do you just say the number on the phone? How do you present the initial number? Let's proposal proposal. So you to do the proposal? Uh, they can visually see it. Are you on the phone with them or you just send it?

John Ruz: 1:18:53

because you've already had the, the conversation, yeah it, yeah, it's pure conversation through email. They're like hey, we have this shoot. They call it the massive shoot.

John Ruz: 1:19:02

So, it's going to be the massive shoot on March. It's going to entail this, this, this. It's going to be throughout nine days, 10 days of shooting. Do we need 90 approximate deliverables? Can you put something together and in your proposal, do you fully break down or is this a big number? No, you fully break down. So how do you break it down? By, like, what's your process? It's going to be creative fee, photography fee, video fee, video editing fee. You know distributions and so all that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:19:28

Okay, perfect and then, once they obviously accept it, how do you split the payment? Or do you not split it, like what's the payment schedule when you get your payment? 50%?

John Ruz: 1:19:37

upfront 50% at delivery. Okay, that's it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:19:40

That's simple. And then do you give them obviously 80 grand, so you're going to give them wire transfer, I'm guessing.

John Ruz: 1:19:46

Yeah, for sure. And then before delivery that's a huge amount.

Vipul Bindra: 1:19:49

Right, they have to do it before you give them deliverables have built so a good relationship.

John Ruz: 1:19:55

But I I recommend before db deliver for most clients, but if you have a relationship.

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:00

You don't care, you're just going to deliver them and then they'll pay you whenever they pay, you do they? Pay normally on time. Oh, for sure this guy yeah exactly what I'm saying bigger amounts, the checks come faster. Uh, I'm guessing wire transfer, though not a check for correct yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, pretty standard, so pretty standard yep, all right, so that's incredible. Now I want to know is the second biggest project you did? So people can know you know what the scale level is uh what's the second biggest project you've done for them ever?

Vipul Bindra: 1:20:28

uh? Price-wise or roughly it's been 45 40 grand, so exactly see, you can scale up because way more, way more because because you know, like they know, the the shoot is massive, right, the deliverables are high, so it doesn't mean um, you know, if you get a 10, 20, 30k client, that can't one day become 100 150 200k client because you know you scale with them right. Uh, so what was the rough deliverables in that 40k?

John Ruz: 1:20:58

um, we were delivering 10 videos, 15 videos, I think. So pretty, pretty standard, same thing, same calculation, roughly. And this was local, not traveling, so you didn't have to travel. No, there's no travel cost.

Vipul Bindra: 1:21:10

So that's pretty good, so people can have some idea. Uh, and then for your typical uh, you know the typical corporate stuff, which is when most videos end up being, which is like talking head, you know, b-roll right, whatever needs to be edited into brand video, testimony, whatever do you have like a pricing structure that you aim for there.

John Ruz: 1:21:30

Like this is the range we want to be at, because that's typical standard right, long production um from uh, brian and I have talked I um our day rate start at 1750, I believe, and it goes up from that um it. It depends, but, brian, I see it depending on you, know who is this company right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:21:52

like. So you're doing value-based pricing right, depending on the company, if coca-cola calls the rates higher. Yeah if you know, joe schmo calls it's lower uh, what do you aim for with edited? Because you know that's obviously your day rate. That's how you're calculating day rate, probably editing fee. So what's your average? You would say total for a small to mid-sized company that you're aiming for after editing.

John Ruz: 1:22:14

You know um nick, who is our editor that's based in texas he does.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:20

So you do have an american, us based correct editor for this type of work.

John Ruz: 1:22:24

Yeah, okay for uh, me, uh for big wave, okay, um, he, his day rate is 1200, around 1200. So if we're pulling, you know, a 40 grand shoot we might giving him. You know he he might ask 2000.

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:42

You know, make sense, yeah so so for a tip, do you do like. So what's your minimum? Sounds like you add his 1200 your 1750 the most bare minimum shoot a client can get is 4k right, right. Can they get anything lower than that?

Vipul Bindra: 1:22:56

anything, no right we don't budge it doesn't make sense anyway, because your rates yeah, yeah so that's going to be you shooting right and then him editing and the company, obviously, I'm guessing, will pull profit from both right correct companies to make money too. That's incredible, I mean. And look, that knows people. The scale 4k, 160. Have you done anything bigger than 160 or is this your biggest project, biggest project? So that's the scale Now between the two companies. What's your percentage Like? Is JRP like 60, 70% of your business and this one like? What's the divide between the two?

John Ruz: 1:23:28

It's 60, 40. 60, 40. Jrp 40.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:32

So JRP still is the primary moneymaker, but this is getting there almost seems like.

John Ruz: 1:23:38

Big wave pulls in bigger profits than JRP still is a primary moneymaker, but this is getting there. Almost seems like Big wave pulls in bigger profits than JRP though. Oh, that's incredible.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:43

So because you know real estate, I don't know why I'm shocked. That makes sense. Yeah, real estate, yeah.

John Ruz: 1:23:51

Pulls in bigger profits than JRP.

Vipul Bindra: 1:23:53

So what's your game plan? Are you trying to grow both, but do you have a certain focus? And what are you two thinking about the future?

John Ruz: 1:24:02

I feel like JRP is going to scale through the nation. We'll be in different markets in the next five years. We really want to track with this staging client that has been partnered with us. So I feel like if they expand we will spend with them um test the water, see what works what, what doesn't. With jrp we're tending to expand a lot into different markets. You know, girl, the the team um bigger and with big wave, I think, just staying the same really.

John Ruz: 1:24:37

We want bigger clients. You know this type of shoots that we're doing for this type of client in Connecticut. You know, on March I feel like that type of client. That's what we really strive for.

Vipul Bindra: 1:24:50

Exactly, and so that's incredible. So your expansion plan with GRP is very simple and I think it would work, because you've tested the market You've obviously done it here so now all you have to do is just go to these other markets and just expand and, just as we know, with the real estate market, it's down. That means it's going to go back up, so it won't be that long until it's going back up.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:14

And then you'll be able to expand even faster. How do you plan on managing it, Because it seems like once it becomes large enough, do you plan on like do you think you'll lose? Because here's my thing, Right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:27

Like me, for two years I've been trying to find someone to you know, because you know I'm a filmmaker first, but I had to learn business because that's how you make money Right. I had to learn business because that's how you make money right and that's what your clients care about. But I try to be bringing both together right. The point is I've been trying for years to find somebody to go do the sales so I can focus on the creative and then the production, being the producer, director, dp.

Vipul Bindra: 1:25:53

But I haven't been able to Because, like I said, nobody's passionate and driven enough where I'm like I can let them do your thing, because you know the people who are good, they're already doing it Right, and people who are not good at it, I don't think they need to be here Right. So the point is, I haven't been able to find a suitable I'm saying replacement and obviously, and I'm happy to do it up until then because it's not like I'm burned out or anything.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:18

I just want to do more of the production and save time. So, on your side now, once this happens I don't know if you guys have even thought about this yet how are you going to manage it? Because you're going to have to probably bring regional manager or something but, then how do you keep that? What makes you you is the relationships, the quality control, the customer service, and then you have to let go, and then that's when cracks happen.

John Ruz: 1:26:40

You know that's when scaling is really hard, really hard, so have you two thought about that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:26:44

How are you going to solve the problem in the next five years, which sounds like a long time. It's not in business terms.

John Ruz: 1:26:52

So have you thought about that? That thought has, you know, passed through my head, but, you know, just doing what I'm doing right now seems to be working. Um, and you know, just keep our guys happy, it's the most important thing, you know, it's the building. Really, I'm stride, I strive for building relationships. So, um, that thought of hiring, you know, head managers might come for sure. Um, that's, that's an a great idea and it potentially is going to happen.

Vipul Bindra: 1:27:27

yeah, if you spend, yeah, let's say two, I don't know, let's guess, right, the bigger markets. You go to texas, you go to california, go to new york, right, right, uh, I don't know how you manage that all by yourself, right, it will be impossible exactly yeah but then have you thought, and then again, it's okay if you haven't, because like I said it's far away right now right you're only going to your second market but I'm just saying, when you go, five markets, six markets, right, I don't know how you can be there and you can't, then you know, how do you, how do you manage the same thing you know, without you being able to do all of it?

John Ruz: 1:28:01

I feel like not that all of our clients are, not that I have preference from client to client, but I feel like VIP clients deserve a little bit extra right.

John Ruz: 1:28:14

So if we have a VIP client, let's say, on another market, I have to show up right. So if we do some mistake or something like that, I do have to show up right. So if if we do some mistake or something that I, I do have to show up that, what that? What happened in in in austin couple weeks after we launch? Um, you know, one of our contractors messed up. I had to show up for the client and I flew in back in, did the shoot for the client, flew back out. So I feel like that type of customer service still need to be there throughout no, absolutely and then that's exactly what I expected you would have done, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:50

you're like oh, I'm on a plane, even though it may not be profitable at that point.

John Ruz: 1:28:54

Yeah, because you have to get a hotel. Yeah, for sure to fly.

Vipul Bindra: 1:28:56

But then that's what you have to do, right, right, and then you slowly fix it, I guess right okay um and um.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:04

Now talk about um somebody and I know I have more topics, man, we got to talk about virtual assistants, okay, but but before we get there, I do want to talk, like I want to give people real advice. So you figured out and I felt like your partner brian was sounds like after talking to you was a key reason that you guys are able to you, you know, like, do it faster, better together, and pandemic was just the reason that that happened. Right, but talk to somebody like who's listening, maybe new, you know, maybe they know. Let's say that let's not talk about craft, let's say they know how to make a good video, cause that's like the number one thing.

Vipul Bindra: 1:29:39

How do they, especially on the production side of it, like how do they get higher paying clients? How do they find success? How do they grow? Because you know when you're and I'm sure you've been there when you're you know not making that much money, you're just worried about life. How do I pay my bills, how do I pay my mortgage, how do I pay my rent or my food or whatever? You can't worry about scaling and you know automation and all that, but but that is what leads them to there. So how does somebody from here go here, or what would you do? Maybe they can try and copy it like now, tomorrow, like you lose everything, you have to start from scratch. Here's a brand new company, you know rpg productions. I don't know. So how? So how do you? How do you? You know how? What would you do?

John Ruz: 1:30:24

Um, I feel like you have to find work for free. I feel like you first you have to build up a portfolio, uh, build some sort of um credibility in the industry, and then we kind of use a method that maybe some people don't use it, which is the DM method, instagram DM method where we I actually record myself right and offer something for them right, something I can be a 50% off or an incentive here and there to that client, and that's how their name on it Like oh man, I love that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:05

Okay, personalized, yeah, that's my favorite way. Uh, when I tell people how to promote, it's like, right, make it custom, make it for them. Yeah, so you record a video, you send it to them, incredible through instagram, dm through instagram, and it works. And it works because it's just for them.

John Ruz: 1:31:19

Yeah, when you do the shoot, then you can build up up to, let's say, five clients. Right, those five clients are now. You know you, you build your portfolio, you have a product to sell, right, something to sell yeah then you can go to other companies. Hey, this is what I've done for this five clients let's do that let's do something for you yeah, and I feel like that. It's a snowball effect boom, boom, boom. Yeah, and you have that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:31:48

That's a proven strategy, right. So if you're doing this to instagram and you can do this in person as well, right, boots on the ground. But essentially the idea is you offer them something. Maybe in the beginning, you offer a free shoot, right, and then you slowly maybe offer 50 or whatever. At the end of the day, you offer a free shoot, right, and then you slowly maybe offer 50% or whatever. At the end of the day, you build a portfolio. When you have the portfolio, you find their competitors or similar industries and you go to them and you're like look, this is what I did for them. This is the rate. Do you want to do it? It's a very simple offer, because at that point you're no longer like, hey, look at my skill or what I can do right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:24

So, hey, I'm look at my skill or what I can do, right, right, so you have to kill it, obviously on the first few right now. Don't keep always doing work for free.

John Ruz: 1:32:27

This is just so you can build a portfolio, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:32:30

yeah, that's, that's fair, because then somebody else is getting a good video. You're learning, you're getting that high-end content.

John Ruz: 1:32:35

Yeah, very smart um and you know good strategy. That's a strategy in my advice. Really, it's just to grind every single day, like I, I did. I I when, when I didn't thought of the instagram method that we offer right now, I was doing it. I was pulling it off off silo, I was going into the, you know, sending message to the agent. I was pulling, I was searching their names, pulling into google or facebook, searching for further emails, tapping their emails and look, hey, xyc. I see that you don't have a video on xyc property. Um, do you want to do that? Do you want to do something for free? Do you want to? I can do this for you right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:17

Look at that, add value for them, right?

John Ruz: 1:33:19

that was more interested in it than just right you have to research them before offering something, Exactly Because if you don't know them, you don't know what they need. Then they will never buy it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:30

And at the end of the day, look, here's the truth. If you keep doing it over and over again, you may fail. You may not find success. But most businesses fail within first year of business and then the next is five years. If you just make it past five years, success is right there right. The reason most businesses don't is because most people are not. It's not because they're not good, it's because they just stop trying right just don't give up, right, you know what I mean.

Vipul Bindra: 1:33:57

Keep at it, keep at it. You'll find success, hopefully sooner than five years. Right, exactly, exactly, hopefully, not that, but I'm saying that is, you know, the idea is, anyone can find success. As long as you know, you're trying to be better Now, don't keep doing the same thing for five years.

John Ruz: 1:34:13

Nothing's going to change.

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:14

But the idea is to you know, just keep doing at it, keep getting better at it and offer people value, you know, and then people want it. Why wouldn't they want to help you or hire you or whatever? Because, at the end of the day, here's the truth. In the market that you're in talk about real estate, they need videos, they need photos, they need Matterport. There is no like, if and buts about it. The question is are you going to be the person providing?

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:36

it for them, and then are you going to be able to scale it? Because, again, sure, sure, you can go find 100 clients at 50 bucks, but what's the point? If you can't just survive or be sane doing it. You know, because I knew someone, I was like dude, what shoot is this? Oh yeah, this is my 10th shoot how much are you charging?

Vipul Bindra: 1:34:53

50 bucks. I'm like, come on, you're telling me you made 500 bucks and I just walked in this meeting and charged this client because I hired someone. You know they wanted to learn right I was like I'm happy to bring you. And, um, they came for the shoot. Great guy, awesome guy. And then, as soon as, like most people you know we do a big shoot and we hang out he's like no, I have another real estate shoot oh my god he's like how many?

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:14

he's like oh, I did your half day shoot, plus I have 10 real estate shoots and I was like how much are you getting paid? 50 bucks. I'm like you're telling me I paid you. I, uh, you know. And then also on my side, I'm like I paid him. I was like are you telling me I paid you for? Five of your shoots I know, I'm not, I obviously paid him for the video, but what I'm saying is oh my god so for him that even that 250 that fell low to me was really high, right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:35:38

But then you have to look at the other mindset. The grind is so crazy and then I'm like I'm here charging this client 10, 20 grand to make this one video. It just feels, you know, so, so weird. I'm like holy crap, and he's gonna work all day to make 500 from real estate on a normal day crazy.

John Ruz: 1:35:57

Yeah, that's not sustainable I'm saying anywhere, especially in orlando, good luck living off of that, jesus plus yeah I mean, you have to eat some point, so anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 1:36:06

So what I'm saying is yeah, you don't want to be, you want to figure out a way to scale it in a way where it makes sense, uh, but it also, you know, doesn't burn you out, right, and you can have a life, because at the end you know, otherwise I don't know why you're doing it right, exactly there's better ways to make money if you just want to work.

John Ruz: 1:36:22

12 14 hours.

Vipul Bindra: 1:36:24

You might as well go find a different job. But that's incredible. So what about the other side of it? So let's say they don't want to do real estate, they want to do commercial and corporate video. Would you do the same thing? Uh, would your suggestion be just find similar industries make a video and then any other tips or tricks that you have that you can think about. I love that one where it's like oh, do it on desktop, it's cheaper.

Vipul Bindra: 1:36:47

Yeah, I think people can definitely take advantage of that, but what would? What else? Do you have any other tips or tricks? You'd say.

John Ruz: 1:36:55

Just that, that mentality of you know you can make it, you can just thrive doing what you love. You know it's nothing, it takes work, but it truly does. It's a feeling that just of I don't know how to put it together, but it's something that I cannot explain right. I'm so happy to do this for a living and I wish someone looking at this right now that it's struggling and looking just just- go through.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:28

Or even if they're, you know they're 80k and they're like how do I get to 800k? You know, whatever like that.

John Ruz: 1:37:34

It's that mindset talk to your clients. Yeah, like they will help you get there too, like, you can upsell products, you can upsell services, you can upsell everything to your client right, talk to them, you know, and in the corp and commercial world.

Vipul Bindra: 1:37:50

I've said this over and over again your data is hugely valuable because here's what you can do. If they hire you and they say make me a testimonial video, you go get b-roll, you get interviews. Sure, you sell them for whatever 3k, let's say right. But now you own all that extra footage. Why can't you put together that B-roll and make them a quick I don't know teaser, social or something video? And now you can go back hey, do you want this? It's going to be X or whatever price. You can keep using that content and as you work with them more, you have bigger and bigger library. Use the content to make more money, yep 100%.

John Ruz: 1:38:25

Yeah, do you want to chat about virtual assistants now?

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:32

So this is the main thing I learned from you in the beginning, and I'm doing something similar, so I did get an assistant, but mine's US-based. However, I feel like I'm spending too much money. I hope she's not listening to this, but you know what I mean. I feel like I'm spending too much money. I hope she's not listening to this, but you know what I mean. I feel like you're doing it the smarter way Getting somebody from Vietnam, I'm guessing again. Is that your favorite country, or what?

Vipul Bindra: 1:38:52

So you know like they are great hardworking people, that's awesome Because you know at the end of the day here's the thing Like we've talked about, you only have so many hours in the day. You need to do high-level tasks and a lot of the stuff we do is just silly email stuff. As you saw, literally walking, I'm like I need to respond to these emails. I'm like I don't have time for that. Point is, if somebody can come in, take that time off, fix your calendar, get some meetings done, meetings scheduled, basic responses to email. It can be a game changer. And you found the formula, which is virtual assistants, which I think is perfect because it's not that expensive and a lot of businesses can afford it. So tell more about how did you think of that, how did you go about finding a good assistant, and you know again how it's been able to help you.

John Ruz: 1:39:41

Yeah, so we hired our first virtual assistant, uh, back in 2023, and it really changed the game on replying to text messages, replying to emails, you know stuff, just daunting tasks here and there. And Jean may may make such a great job on, you know, providing customer service to our clients and all that. So, um, she went in and changed the game for us. You know where did you find her? Um, brian found her and he brought her into both businesses pretty much, but I'm pretty sure he found her through Upwork.

Vipul Bindra: 1:40:25

Upwork perfect Best platform. A lot of people have mentioned to go find you know, report employees or whatever. So once you found her and then, how did you integrate her into the business, because I know you were mentioning that before like you know, was able to do a lot of things. What are the things that a virtual assistant can do, so daunting tasks?

John Ruz: 1:40:43

everyday, know was able to do a lot of things. What are the things that a virtual assistant can do? So daunting tasks, everyday tasks, replying to simple emails, texts, you know, um, managing social media accounts pretty much just the she can do. She can manage my business pretty much. You know she knows the backend of everything. She can book shoots for a client. If a client wants to shoot a, if the client wants to book a shoot, right right there. Right, if we, if we, get a text message or an email, she can reply back. Right, that's incredible.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:11

So anything that you do think of this and that's a lot right you do on social media, text or email, they can accomplish right which is like 80 of our manual labor tasks right that we have to do outside of, obviously, shoot. So that's incredible and and they're not that expensive, right. So what? What could somebody realistically let's say they want to, they like the idea because I, I like the idea.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:33

I think this is the one of the best things I ever heard from you. I was like, oh, this sounds like a game changer, so I want to get a virtual assistant. Uh, what could I roughly get one for? To do the type of tasks you know that could help.

John Ruz: 1:41:45

You'll be surprised um. You can find someone for three dollars an hour.

Vipul Bindra: 1:41:50

We pay gene five dollars an hour and roughly how many hours do you think you use?

John Ruz: 1:41:55

she works full-time, full-time so that's what eight hours roughly you say in a day, because obviously some days I'm sure very varies.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:01

So that's what, uh, five tens, I don't know I'm doing math over here uh, I don't know, a couple thousand a month you'd say yeah, yeah, I mean, that's not bad considering that's a full-time employee doing anything and everything with email thing and, like you said, you could find somebody cheaper. That's obviously sounds like a good assistant. You could find them for what?

John Ruz: 1:42:22

two, three dollars an hour probably right and it will do a great job, like, for example, our qc michelle right um, we have a set uh 250 a week for her. Uh, eduardo, it's 50 bucks a week right, look at that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:36

So finding somebody for 50 bucks a week and they are extremely happy, right?

John Ruz: 1:42:43

yeah, because that's like a lot of money when you translate into to the, to the current currency over there in vietnam?

Vipul Bindra: 1:42:49

uh, do they? Uh, does the time difference play into it or they're just used to working american hours?

John Ruz: 1:42:56

they. They are not trained, but when we hire them, we ask them if they can work US time-based. And they're like yeah, I'm all that time so I can work. That's perfect, yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:08

Because I don't think it's that vast. It's not like yeah, so that's incredible. And then they're willing to work. They love the pay because you know, in their country that's a lot of pay. Correct Versus for us to think about somebody for 50 to 250 a week. Correct is just yeah, that's not right. Like I said, I I feel ashamed when I'm bringing a pa for 250.

John Ruz: 1:43:28

I'm like can you?

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:29

please be a pa for 250 and I'm like uh I'm I'm begging them. I was like what, uh, in here you're like you don't know, work the whole week for me. But that could be a game changer, like I said, because, like I said, most time I'm just tired of emails how do? You do text messages, do you have to have some kind of platform, because I like iMessage. That's been my key.

Vipul Bindra: 1:43:48

I did try to do so here's my experience For a few years I'd used an app, so you know the business phone was an app you could access from computer everywhere. But then I found that people love the iMessage. You know question mark, you know all the response things that you can do on iMessage, so I moved it back. So it's on my phone direct. That is my number. I even I don't even have my personal number anymore. It's just how it is.

John Ruz: 1:44:14

So yeah, I just did.

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:15

I was like well, if everyone just calls me here and all I talk about is video, all my friends are video people.

John Ruz: 1:44:19

It's like what is business?

Vipul Bindra: 1:44:21

versus personal right. I was like two, three people who use my personal number. Here's my business number Just call it on that. So that's what ended up with me. I started the proper way with the virtual phone thing. It became my now real phone Plus. Now I can do all the iMessage thing. That's what I was lacking, why I was like I need to do this. But the disadvantage would that be? I can't just give my now text messages to someone remotely right. So you probably am using, I guess, in an app-based system.

John Ruz: 1:44:48

So we tried, uh, google voice, google voice. Yeah, that's exactly what I was using google voice for a couple uh years actually and it worked great. But the um calling feature was so bad, right it we. We had lags or we will cut off or um. You know, if we're sending a text message repeatedly to to people, they will block us. Because you know, if we're sending appointment reminders 30 a day- it's the exact same thing. It's the exact same template.

John Ruz: 1:45:18

They will block you from scamming right um, we switched back to open phone and our platform isn't attached. It has like a burner phone. So it's an attached to open phone. So it's great. Tonamo is great on sending for text reminders through a burner phone that was yeah, they stop or block, it's not you anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:39

Yeah right. So that's actually very smart, because you don't want to take your business number and have your clients block you. Oh my God.

John Ruz: 1:45:46

It was painful yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 1:45:47

So that is so. But the negative of that is and again, maybe you don't have that issue Because, like I said, I have clients who have to, you know, do the iMessage, the group chats all that. You definitely can't do that with that right. You can't, so this only works. So maybe it's good to have two numbers you know, so it's a, it's good to to have a number. Obviously that is through a virtual system, correct, and which one did you say you use?

John Ruz: 1:46:10

now Open phone, open phone.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:11

Okay, I've heard of that, is it a good system.

John Ruz: 1:46:13

It is how expensive, is it?

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:18

It's not that expensive. Yeah, you can't even get a regular phone for that.

John Ruz: 1:46:21

And Gene is in, brian and myself are in, and that's it. We both three are top 10. And what I absolutely love about Open Phone is that if a client sends a message, you can actually have a conversation with your vitro system and internal team off of that message. Like how can I reply to this, or should we reply this?

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:43

this, this Should we say it yeah, whatever, so you can have A-B testing between the team. It's like, hey, is this better or this better? That's pretty cool, yeah.

John Ruz: 1:46:51

Or you can just add Gene, Like. Just reply to the text.

Vipul Bindra: 1:46:56

Okay, so she can respond or whatever, and it's pretty amazing.

John Ruz: 1:47:00

It's very good and we have two lines. We have the Florida and Texas line in there.

Vipul Bindra: 1:47:04

And then for emails, I'm guessing it's just appointments, basic delivery questions, correct, anything that we're not thinking of. Because I want people to expand, because you know most people go, I don't need an assistant. I want people to know what all so anything else?

John Ruz: 1:47:31

you can think of out of the ordinary, of what we're talking here, that people can use an assistant for they can do um, that we're not talking about following up on dm message with your bistros virtual assistant. So whenever I send a, a video message, I have a google sheet that I created with eduardo um and we both are in there and I just literally mark whomever I'm dming and he knows. Okay, this person needs to be follow up and he actually managed the conversation and quote-unquote sales.

Vipul Bindra: 1:47:51

Look at that so you can automate your responses I just say one, and that's it 50 bucks a week worth it, totally worth it, yeah oh, my goodness. And then, um, uh, because yeah, even one shoot, it's, yeah, paid for and that's a cheap photo shoot. It's not even like and that's a cheap photo shoot, it's not even like an expensive shoot, and Eduardo does the photo selection too overnight.

John Ruz: 1:48:09

So we kill two birds with one stone.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:13

So for $50 a week. He works what? Eight hours a day, five days a week. Is that the schedule? Is it more he?

John Ruz: 1:48:18

works four hours a day.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:19

Four hours, that means so long. Yeah, two hours for instagram, two hours for photo selection. So four hours five times a week. I'm guessing five days, correct, okay?

John Ruz: 1:48:29

that's again. That's still pretty good, I mean uh and uh.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:33

The question now I have is are these their real names? Are they actually called gene and eduardo, or these are made up names? I don't know so that's what they told you.

John Ruz: 1:48:43

Yeah, wow, yeah, and you've never been like, because you know if you've been to ever. Do you eat Vietnamese food or no? I do, yeah, Okay, I'm just making sure.

Vipul Bindra: 1:48:56

It'd be funny. You're like I have all these Vietnamese people in Manhattan.

John Ruz: 1:48:58

I mean, which is fine. I mean you don't have to yeah, but uh, so anyway.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:01

But I'm saying, when you go to these restaurants, the names are, you know, I can't say right, so I'm just like uh uh, tran and yeah or yeah, stuff like that yeah, exactly so. So they probably have, I'm guessing real names, so they came with their name you wouldn't make them you wouldn't give them the names.

Vipul Bindra: 1:49:17

They already have the american yeah, okay um, and then so when you pay them another thing so for american contractors, you contractors you know we do W-2 or W-9 for the contractors, right. And then you have to send them the 1099 or whatever. Right, again, not tax advice, this is just given. So how do you handle that? Like because it's an international Contractor?

John Ruz: 1:49:40

Yeah, do you have to still do 1099 or no? Because they shouldn? You have to still do 1099 or no? Because they don't do. They shouldn't have to pay taxes in america, right? Yeah, it's a special document. Uh, we use gusto as our payroll partner and gusto takes everything away from us. It's like we send an invitation link. They just fill out the information and that's it okay that's, and then it pays them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:00

And then right, so what if they have a legal name?

John Ruz: 1:50:02

they probably put it with that platform, you don't even have to worry about it, right?

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:06

and what does this type of platform cost for somebody who wants to use it?

John Ruz: 1:50:10

um, actually I'm not sure. Okay, and that's. I don't see those numbers. Let me just look it up. Right gusto? You said gusto g-u-s-t-o.

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:17

I'm guessing correct, and is that just for your international people, or is it for your local contractors? So you're using that for all your payroll but mostly contractors. You don't have to pay out what the taxes and stuff, right, because that's them, because they're contractors correct.

John Ruz: 1:50:32

That's pretty cool, so they're able to even use, you know, do international all of our contractors send us their invoices and we just enter that into the platform.

Vipul Bindra: 1:50:41

Yeah, yeah and then, uh, you don't even have to worry about taxing. I'm guessing the platform just takes care of it. That is incredible, because that's what my question was. I don't have, obviously. Uh, I wouldn't know, like, how would you even handle vietnam? You know taxes or anything? Right or, and again, it doesn't have to be that country.

John Ruz: 1:50:57

That's just who you're using like you said I have people in india, so you can have people you know all over, yeah, so it's just finding the right people for you, yeah and um, you know, at the end of the day, especially the tasks that don't really need somebody to be local, I think that's incredible like I said, I got a virtual assistant, but she's from us based and I'm like I'm thinking about adding a couple more virtual ones because I feel like the costs are, you know, when you're doing in american dollars it's a it's a little, I but, but my initial idea was.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:28

Here's, like I said, where I screwed up um again tiffany's great, no offense but you know I was like, oh, you could then take calls and I didn't want to have to somebody, you know, with a, with an accent or whatever, right, yeah, even though the owner has a slight accent. But you know, we'll just keep it that. But then I realized quickly, because of my fiasco with the, I was like, oh, they can't even call and answer the phone anyway. So the whole thing didn't really go to plan. So I was like, oh, that's good, okay, you just handle emails and stuff. But then I'm like, uh, an international assistant works so much better for that.

Vipul Bindra: 1:51:58

Yeah.

John Ruz: 1:52:05

Uh, and they can automate so much and save so much time, and now all that time I could go do other things? Yeah, exactly, or?

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:08

be on more shoots or whatever. Plus, then I don't have to miss it, because so many times what happens with my calendar is I'll manually like uh, like later today, literally after this, I'm supposed to meet a buddy to discuss some, you know, future growth stuff and I'm like, uh, I almost forgot to add in the calendar. And then, then you know, jill was like oh, after the podcast, what do you have to do? And I was like nothing. And then I was like no.

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:30

I got to have a meeting. So you know, like that Sometimes you miss things Right, because you know it's me scheduling, because it wasn't through an automated system. This is me texting or calling, correct and going. Oh, I need to add it, and usually yeah, usually I'll go in the calendar and add it, but sometimes you know you forget. You're human, right, and but that could throw up everything. I hate double bookings because I never want to cancel with someone, right, because I double booked or whatever, because that makes you look unprofessional, right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:52:58

So, that happens to us all the time before we had that platform, and that's so good that you do have the platform now because, like you said, that's like the yeah, easiest way to look unprofessional without being unprofessional because you didn't do it on purpose.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:07

Yeah, yeah, it just happens, oh no so, um, so that's incredible that you figured this whole formula out and I feel like so many people could take advantage of that. Um, and and think of this way. You don't have to be this successful right to do it right, even if you're making 80 100 grand a year. Think of this way. If you can just take away somebody like eduardo half a day, right, five days a week, 50 bucks a week, I know you can afford it. Yeah, you spend more than that on coffee, I know, and and again, I don't want to go into that stupid argument because you know some people also take yeah, take it too far, like don't drink coffee, but I know filmmakers drink coffee and they will happily pay 10 bucks at Starbucks for it.

Vipul Bindra: 1:53:48

So I'm just saying and this could save so much more time for us to have more meetings, more outreach, more whatever it's a hack and you double triple your revenue because now you have double triple the time for me. Like I triple the time, yeah, for me, right, like I here's what I'm bad at and I'm already seeing the use of it I take, um, I go on sets.

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:07

I'll usually even, despite my being crazy busy being director I will still take some photos or something right or people will send me if it's, if I'm doing a remote producer thing and I have some photos, and I'll always ask, hey, send me some photos. But then I never get to posting it because I'm so busy. And then, you know, I move from project to project to project to project and it's like, um, then you look at your social media like I didn't post anything and then it'd be so cool to just be able to go to someone like there you go there, just make posts.

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:36

You know it doesn't, because it's not like I'm trying to make revenue from it. I just want to be able to share what we're up to, and it'd be so cool to have somebody, like you said virtual, and it's a lot easier. I don't feel at all weird about sharing my business instagram with someone and meta has now the photo scheduler for instagram.

John Ruz: 1:54:54

Yeah, so they can even do that. It's free, does?

Vipul Bindra: 1:54:57

it schedule video or no?

John Ruz: 1:54:58

yeah, videos, video, everything. That's what I'm saying.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:00

That'd be so cool they can and that's the platform. So I like uh which I know facebook is old but still it's good for you know ceos and stuff that I deal with, but facebook, instagram can do that way, done through meta right, and then I think it's just linkedin right. So it shouldn't be that hard and I know they have a managing tool, correct. So if somebody was doing that they could just go in one day.

John Ruz: 1:55:21

That's their task schedule for the whole week, Gene might have already the entire year booked out with social media posts.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:29

Dude this is a hack. This is genuinely a hack. People, if you learn anything today it's just hire virtual assistants, because I'm telling you like I said, we've talked about this before and even just listening to you a little bit, I was like my wheels were turning and I was like this is incredible yeah if somebody could just do these basic things for me.

Vipul Bindra: 1:55:49

Like I said, ideally I'd like somebody to take the phone over to right and I don't know how to do that without having multiple numbers right, but once I figured that out, that's, like I said, my big task it would like change everything. Yeah, because because so much time I'm spending on all this stuff that it's like hurting my business, right? Not that I'm hurting for revenue, but I could definitely be doing better or spending more time with family or whatever.

John Ruz: 1:56:13

Yeah, the worst thing that we can do is leave a client hanging. Yeah Right, it's like okay, she texted us at 9am and we haven't responded.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:21

At 3pm it's am and we haven't responded at 3 pm. It's like, um, I have to tell this story, this worst thing I've done, and I'll say it publicly. So here's what happened and this is a recent one, so I I partnered with the chambers right so as being, uh, you know, of indian origin. Indian american chamber of commerce locally here is one of my partners, okay so we do their annual gala and, uh, I did this air last.

Vipul Bindra: 1:56:42

What september? I would say um. So I did their annual gala, like always, you know. And um, you know, I just do it to be to be partners because you know we are technically sponsoring majority of the cost. They pay us some but you know, at the end I'm saying I'm not doing that to make money, right, so we just want the businesses there to see our content, yeah and, and you know, help the chamber.

Vipul Bindra: 1:57:05

So anyway, so I make the videos and, like they do, one of their board members introduced me to somebody for marketing or whatever at. Orlando Health. So which is a very good contact locally Right. So they're like hey, this person said hi and I was like, oh yeah, we'd love to talk, you know, because my whole thing is, once I show up up on set, they're not going anywhere.

Vipul Bindra: 1:57:24

but you have to first type show on set, right, because you know they don't know what I can do until I show up on set. That's just correct yeah because you're just another video person in their mind. Uh, until you, like you said, we build that relationship, so anyway, so he introduced me, vorn lead, because that's one of their surgeons you know, like uh point is, it's a very good lead, plus I'm having direct, so I shake hands.

Vipul Bindra: 1:57:44

He even forwards me their number and he never says so I know it's legit because he's like, hey, this is, this is someone important, right, you know, catch up. So as a business owner, I'm saying at least I should just connect, say hi, follow up, and guess what happens, because I'm so busy I just go from that shoot to fly to another shoot, to something, something, something and something.

Vipul Bindra: 1:58:03

And it gets stopped, point is yeah, and it's like, and then he reaches out a few weeks later. He's like, hey, have you reached out? And I was like, oh, oops, sorry. And now I'm like then my brain goes, ah, this may be too late. And now, four months, six months later, I go, crap, I should have reached out. And now it's too late. That would be awkward. It's like what are you again right? So I never reached out.

Vipul Bindra: 1:58:23

So I'm saying that was a good lead, right, that was wasted because you know I'm busy and you know anyway, and and that could have been so easy because it was in my text, right, because somebody could have followed up and all we had to say was nice meeting you. You know, let's chat, or something like it wasn't point is a huge lead lost because of my being busy. Who thought you'd be losing?

Vipul Bindra: 1:58:49

business, because you have business anyway, it's crazy, but and these are the type of leads that matter, because at the end day, like you, I'm trying to find or like I have a few and I'm trying to find more of these clients that just bring repeat business right we keep doing bigger and better productions for them.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:05

They're happy, they make money. We make money. At the end of the day, we're not chasing clients all day, every day. Right, that's what we want. Like you have the one you're talking about in Connecticut, yeah, and it could have been one of them, who knows, we'll never find out and it Mexicala, but I don't know if you can reintroduce to reintroduce, I don't know, and one year later that would be weird. But at the end of the day, I take it as full responsibility as an owner because, again, it's my company.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:32

But I can't keep doing that. If I kept doing that, I'm going to, for sure you know, go out of business.

John Ruz: 1:59:37

Right.

Vipul Bindra: 1:59:37

Meeting new people, building the relationships is very important, is very important, and I think, as we talked about virtual assistants, is, I think, the perfect, perfect example of what you can do to get there. Anyway, like I said, you have so many amazing hacks that you figured out. You're so young. How old are you? 28. Dude, at 28,. You have figured out formula for success in two different avenues of video. You have figured out automation. You have figured out formula for success in two different avenues of video. You have figured out automation. You have figured out you know revenue and how to expand, how to scale. What do you attribute to? You're definitely, you know, like I said, not normal. So what makes you different, you would say, than you know other people around you?

John Ruz: 2:00:23

The people I surround myself to. It's just that, just finding true valuable assets, the people that you it's not what you know, it's who you know, right. So I feel like the people that surround you and the information. I'm a good listener. When it's time for me to listen, I listen and just analyze everything and you know that's what makes me me pretty much yeah.

Vipul Bindra: 2:00:51

And, like I say, you're killing it so before we go. Before we wrap up, like I said, I could talk to you for so long. And, like I said, your request to people want to listen to this. I'm hoping you know this gets a. Not that I care, but I mean I do want more people to get value. A lot of people listen and get value out of this.

Vipul Bindra: 2:01:08

I want to know, before we go, any other hacks immediately that you can think of, or just ideas to share with people that they could implement, you know, just to help them either be efficient or find more business or something else.

John Ruz: 2:01:26

Can you think of something on top of your head? Um, don't over complicate stuff pretty much, uh, because you can think automations, virtual assistants yeah you know platforms to schedule crm people and blah blah. All these stuff might seem like a huge headache, but when you implement all these stuff, I can be surfing while my business is working.

Vipul Bindra: 2:01:44

Yes, right, that is so smart and I want people to know yes this does sound daunting. Uh, I was talking to a buddy of mine been on the podcast but he was like I have nothing like this he didn't even have a contract, wow, um, doesn't end making over six figures, and you know.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:00

and then the crazy thing is that's okay, you know, at the end of the day, look, you figured out what a lot of people haven't you know. And then the crazy thing is that's okay, you know, at the end of the day, look, you figured out what a lot of people haven't. You know, build good products. You got your craft right. You figured out the business side of it. All this can happen. All you have to do and I know this is a thing with entrepreneurs, especially new business owners don't want to spend money Like, so they want to take everything, but spend money go hire the professionals money, like.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:23

So they want to take everything but spend money. Go hire the professionals because, like you said, you can hire somebody to come and automate for you. You cannot hire somebody to automate sales for you, correct?

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:30

I mean, I'm talking relationship relationship you have to do relationship, you have to understand how to vet people and hire them at the top level, and if you can't do that, you cannot scale. But guess what? You can hire people to do taxes, accounting, payroll, like we've talked about. We gave you gave names of the software to use. You know, use quickbooks, I mean like there's so many different ways to simplify these things correct.

Vipul Bindra: 2:02:54

And if you don't want to do it yourself, hire somebody to do in vietnam yeah, to do it and they will happily do it and you go out and do the other stuff, but remember, there's no like tell me if I'm wrong. There's no way to replace the other aspect of it you have to go out and do the relationship building. There's no way to automate that right. Am I missing it? Nope no, okay, no so, yeah, that's the key thing that you need to be good at.

John Ruz: 2:03:17

The rest can be figured out I wish we can just clone ourselves and just, oh, that'd be, that'd be great.

Vipul Bindra: 2:03:22

But then I'm like wouldn't my clone want to listen to me? Because I wouldn't want to. Right, have you ever thought about that? Yeah, because what makes you a leader is you know you go, do things right.

John Ruz: 2:03:32

There's no way your clone will be a follower because your clone will be a leader and you cannot have too many leaders.

Vipul Bindra: 2:03:38

That's true, because I'm like I don't need me, I need um. You know what you have virtual. I need a gene and I need an eduardo yeah because I feel like they can help me so much more, and at the end of the day, I can then focus on relationship building. Better videos, better craft better you know sales, so that's incredible. Thank you, john. Thank you, uh. This has been incredible. I learned so much I hope people listening did too amazing and uh, like I said, you're welcome back anytime.

Vipul Bindra: 2:04:08

Thank, you before we go tell people where they can follow you, your instagram or whatever, I don't know yeah, so instagram for jrp is meet jrp, big wave is meet big wave.

John Ruz: 2:04:21

That's it.

Vipul Bindra: 2:04:22

And then youtube for, uh, both companies, it's the exact same thing do you post a lot on youtube? What are you posting type of content on?

John Ruz: 2:04:29

youtube I'm posting for jrp big wave is still a work in progress. Uh, for youtube I'm posting you know, walk through like very high and walk through videos of multi-million dollar homes so the good ones, you know, the high end, right, and I'm posting a little bit of bts.

Vipul Bindra: 2:04:43

I really want to follow david's advice, oh yeah, through videos of multi-million dollar homes. So the good ones, you know, the high-end ones is the ones you share, and I'm posting a little bit of BTS.

John Ruz: 2:04:46

I really want to follow David's advice.

Vipul Bindra: 2:04:48

Oh yeah, that's a smart, smart thing. Yeah, become like a micro-influencer, essentially because, then you're already the leader in the space, but people need to know that right.

John Ruz: 2:04:56

Right.

Vipul Bindra: 2:04:57

And they can, once you do all the vlogging and BTS stuff that's pretty cool. I'm going to go find it and then see your progress. Like I said, I don't know if I can do that. This is the best I can do. Share free, valuable information, though it's a very smart move. At the end of the day, you help other people, plus you gain an audience.

John Ruz: 2:05:16

I love helping people.

Vipul Bindra: 2:05:19

I could talk to you for hours. I love all these little things. Like I I said, there's the filmmaker in me yeah, who would love to talk about cameras and stuff, but the other side of me just loves the the business like, especially the automation, because I love when you build, uh like standard operating procedures, sops, where then you know, then things just happen. Right, you like?

Vipul Bindra: 2:05:37

you go to a team member whoever you're like, okay, this is what I want you to do, right, and then it, then it gets done. That's it. It's like, wow, right, like this is like holy moly.

John Ruz: 2:05:46

You record it once.

Vipul Bindra: 2:05:48

Yeah, and then it's forever.

John Ruz: 2:05:49

Exactly, you don't have to repeat that again, and again, and again.

Vipul Bindra: 2:05:51

Exactly, and then and do the same thing, which is what we're doing for clients.

John Ruz: 2:05:55

Right.

Vipul Bindra: 2:06:04

Make them courses or the same thing. Just do it for yourself and it'll be a game changer. Game changer, like I said, this has been incredible. We love to have you back in season two, uh, but I'm excited. But and good luck to your company I can't wait to see your expansions and hopefully this year we'll try and find a way to collaborate, like I said, looking forward to it. You see my van it's ready to go, let's roll it impressive.

Vipul Bindra: 2:06:20

Yeah, oh, thank you, but, like you know, let's, let's go. Uh, you know, uh, like I said, let's just kill it this year, let's go and uh like I said, we'll follow up uh later in the next season.

John Ruz: 2:06:29

Thank you, thank you.