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When You Stop Chasing Clients, The Right Ones Find You · Studio B Sessions

• 0:04
  Vipul Bindra: Welcome to another episode of Studio B Sessions with me, Bindra, the owner of Bindra Productions here in Orlando, Florida.
• 0:10
  Vipul Bindra: It's a podcast where we have unfiltered, raw, unedited conversations with other video professionals.
• 0:16
  Vipul Bindra: And Mario is again on the producer table helping us make this thing happen.
• 0:20
  Vipul Bindra: Hey guys, how are you today?
• 0:22
  Vipul Bindra: And our guest today is Jacob, an industry professional of many years who's been killing it.
• 0:28
  Vipul Bindra: Building a, you know, you've built essentially a really incredible small team of people and uh found yourself a really cool niche.
• 0:36
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, it's just incredible what you're doing.
• 0:38
  Vipul Bindra: Thanks, brother.
• 0:39
  Jacob Centeno: Well, first of all, thank you for having me back.
• 0:41
  Vipul Bindra: I know.
• 0:42
  Vipul Bindra: You're one of the few people who are, you know, coming back.
• 0:45
  Vipul Bindra: And again, it's not that everyone was great.
• 0:47
  Vipul Bindra: I'm just saying I just wanted it to be a lot of new people, but I also wanted to bring some favorites back from season one.
• 0:53
  Vipul Bindra: So thank you again for willing to do this again.
• 0:55
  Vipul Bindra: Absolutely.
• 0:55
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 0:56
  Jacob Centeno: I'm definitely, I was driving over here and I was thinking about all the things we talked about.
• 1:00
  Jacob Centeno: I'm like, okay, we have some evolved conversations to go over.
• 1:04
  Vipul Bindra: Exactly.
• 1:04
  Vipul Bindra: We can go deeper now.
• 1:05
  Vipul Bindra: We can actually see what worked, what didn't work, what we can do different.
• 1:08
  Vipul Bindra: I think it's just again, the whole point of this is uh is to just catch up.
• 1:12
  Vipul Bindra: And we were already gonna have these conversations, might as well let other people listen to it.
• 1:16
  Vipul Bindra: And you know, it's just entertainment.
• 1:18
  Vipul Bindra: You're cleaning the house, might as well listen to other people who think like you, then I know some random other podcasts.
• 1:23
  Vipul Bindra: And then for me, I love doing these when I'm driving.
• 1:26
  Vipul Bindra: You know, you're taking a road to Miami or Atlanta, play a podcast.
• 1:29
  Vipul Bindra: You know, uh as a filmmaker, I'm saying I like to listen to other filmmakers, right, than just random people.
• 1:35
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so this is fun.
• 1:36
  Vipul Bindra: So, how's things been?
• 1:37
  Vipul Bindra: How's what has changed in the last uh I don't know, seven, eight months?
• 1:41
  Vipul Bindra: Then let me talk.
• 1:43
  Jacob Centeno: Wow, so super crazy.
• 1:45
  Jacob Centeno: I mean, first things first, I really stopped trying to control my business all of last year.
• 1:56
  Jacob Centeno: It was really about trying to set myself up for success and trying to put you know uh conversations or people in place to exponentially grow for 2025.
• 2:11
  Jacob Centeno: And what I figured out was it was just causing me so much headache and heartache.
• 2:17
  Jacob Centeno: And so I just decided to like totally let go.
• 2:21
  Jacob Centeno: And that's really the biggest change.
• 2:24
  Jacob Centeno: And honestly, it's been like the best thing.
• 2:27
  Vipul Bindra: Really?
• 2:27
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 2:27
  Vipul Bindra: So what did you have to let go of?
• 2:30
  Jacob Centeno: Well, first of all, we did let go of a staff member.
• 2:33
  Jacob Centeno: Okay.
• 2:33
  Jacob Centeno: Um, that's always huge, changes the whole dynamic of everything entirely.
• 2:38
  Jacob Centeno: And I would say I stopped chasing clients um in between you know, those two things on the flip side, I had so much more peace and free time which I could invest in my family, my home or myself, like nerding out, playing games.
• 3:05
  Jacob Centeno: So and then it was really cool kind of when I just submitted to that to then have stuff come to me.
• 3:15
  Jacob Centeno: So in getting clients that I never could have dreamed of or pursued.
• 3:21
  Jacob Centeno: And so I was very, very fortunate to get a couple of those this year in 2025 without like any sales or what how do you think why do you think they found you?
• 3:32
  Vipul Bindra: How did they first find you and why did they pick you?
• 3:35
  Vipul Bindra: I guess would be the question.
• 3:37
  Jacob Centeno: So I'd say the the one that I'm thinking of in particular, it's a really it's a really gnarly story.
• 3:44
  Jacob Centeno: I I am contractually allowed to talk about the work.
• 3:49
  Jacob Centeno: Um so yeah, I'll just I'll go ahead and share.
• 3:55
  Jacob Centeno: I'll share it because I think it'll be valuable, it'll be super valuable to everybody.
• 3:59
  Jacob Centeno: But I had a I had a friend um who just personally cared about me and personally looked out for me, and then and it would invite me to networking events.
• 4:13
  Jacob Centeno: Uh her name is Callie, and so we had like a relationship, um, just kind of stayed in contact once a year, twice a year at these events, and then um she moved companies uh to a bigger company called Clarity Innovations, and she uh put my name in the hat for some video production.
• 4:36
  Jacob Centeno: They were revamping their website, and so she invited her team invited me to bid, and I bid on I did bid on the project, and it um I put put together a pretty gnarly number.
• 4:49
  Jacob Centeno: It was like I put together like 250k package or something like that.
• 4:53
  Jacob Centeno: But um, the scope was like huge.
• 4:56
  Jacob Centeno: Like the scope was it was like what is it, like a year's of con year, year worth of content, or what it wasn't it was mostly about having really pristine and very specific visuals.
• 5:07
  Jacob Centeno: Okay, like they wanted um their executives like outside of the office, so they wanted home life, they wanted and and and the way I saw that was like, okay, I'm gonna need crew to move, and they also wanted production done within like uh three weeks, and they wanted to cover like five to seven executives.
• 5:27
  Jacob Centeno: So in my head, I was doing math.
• 5:28
  Jacob Centeno: You gotta have teams of I have to have at least two teams shooting every single day, trying to hit maybe two people a day in just production, and then um the they wanted it turned around within uh it was like it was like two and a half months.
• 5:46
  Jacob Centeno: They wanted all the videos edited and they wanted VFX too.
• 5:49
  Jacob Centeno: And I was like, okay, I I have to hire a lot of people for this.
• 5:52
  Jacob Centeno: So I just did some rough numbers and then I put in the bid, and then um, you know, the we we didn't get it, and they were like, hey, you were you were definitely over, and I was like, okay, um, like I'm happy, I was almost happy they didn't select me because I knew that my life was gonna become like really it was gonna be horrible.
• 6:13
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so I was actually kind of glad I didn't get it, and then um as expected, uh they had tons of delays, and the website was delayed, and the videos didn't come in in three months, which would have changed my price entirely, yeah.
• 6:32
  Vipul Bindra: Uh and so So was them delays or the people who won the contract, the people who won the contract didn't do a good job of the contract.
• 6:39
  Jacob Centeno: They didn't satisfy the contract by the time, which we would have.
• 6:42
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, yeah.
• 6:43
  Jacob Centeno: But um, so that was there.
• 6:47
  Jacob Centeno: Well, again, I was like not worried, I wasn't like, oh, you guys skipped me or passed me or whatever.
• 6:54
  Jacob Centeno: I didn't criticize anything.
• 6:55
  Jacob Centeno: The videos came out, they were awesome.
• 6:57
  Jacob Centeno: You know, I congratulated them, thought they were amazing.
• 7:00
  Jacob Centeno: And then out of nowhere, um, this is a great example.
• 7:06
  Jacob Centeno: Me and my DP were in the airport getting ready to fly to San Diego, and the flight kept getting delayed.
• 7:12
  Jacob Centeno: I haven't had a delayed flight in like years out of MCO.
• 7:15
  Jacob Centeno: I mean, I know they happened, but I haven't had one in years.
• 7:19
  Jacob Centeno: And I was looking at him and I was like, I don't feel like we should go.
• 7:23
  Jacob Centeno: I got a bad feeling.
• 7:25
  Jacob Centeno: And so I called uh my client in San Diego and I said, I'm gonna pay uh a DP to come out.
• 7:32
  Jacob Centeno: And it was Al Albert Um Alberto, he's in San Diego, he's a DP, but okay.
• 7:38
  Jacob Centeno: Um he has a YouTube channel, pulled through, amazing product.
• 7:43
  Jacob Centeno: So we we stayed.
• 7:45
  Jacob Centeno: We we all of our gear, we drove right back home.
• 7:48
  Vipul Bindra: So you basically had a premonition, basically, or uh premonition is the right one uh that you did you shouldn't just get on the flight, you didn't, you just hired another DP, which is fine.
• 7:58
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, uh, because it's good to collaborate with other filmmakers.
• 8:01
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, uh, did something come out of that?
• 8:03
  Vipul Bindra: Was that correct?
• 8:04
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so here's where here's where the story comes.
• 8:06
  Jacob Centeno: Okay, so and and there was actually three delays.
• 8:09
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 8:09
  Jacob Centeno: So when the third one hit, yeah, I was like, I'm not going.
• 8:11
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 8:12
  Jacob Centeno: And and I just told the client, like, I'm bringing a DP.
• 8:15
  Jacob Centeno: Uh so the next day I get a call from Cali.
• 8:21
  Jacob Centeno: Her her team with Clarity Innovations is in Tampa for Soft Week, and she wants to know if we can come out and work with them.
• 8:29
  Jacob Centeno: And it was like really informal.
• 8:32
  Jacob Centeno: There was no like marketing team or anything.
• 8:34
  Jacob Centeno: She kind of just uh was able to get us there under her uh budget for their marketing for their presence at South Week.
• 8:44
  Jacob Centeno: And so we we just we were like, yeah, we'll go.
• 8:48
  Jacob Centeno: We showed up two days later, we spent the whole day with the team interviewing the executives, just run and gun, no setups, just like cameras on the fly, audio on the fly.
• 8:57
  Jacob Centeno: And um, and in hindsight, um the the team didn't really appreciate that we kind of backdoored the company's whole process, and so I then had to go through their whole onboarding process of like legal.
• 9:15
  Vipul Bindra: So we were like, I was signing a contract like retro actively because you had already technically worked with them, and they're like, Hey, you have all this onboarding process you gotta do.
• 9:25
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, that's what it was amazing because like whoa, like okay, I had to submit a bid, they didn't take it.
• 9:34
  Jacob Centeno: There's a massive competitive process for the bid process, yeah.
• 9:37
  Jacob Centeno: But then I was able to come in, do all this work, no bid, just they wanted to and then they had to retroactively onboard me.
• 9:44
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so it was it was that that was like one of the biggest examples of like whoa, like just let go, like just let go, stop trying to control it because things will come to you, yeah.
• 9:56
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm sure after, like you said, it didn't didn't get done on time.
• 10:00
  Vipul Bindra: I'm sure the executives or whatever the team there also went, like, see, you get what you pay for.
• 10:05
  Vipul Bindra: We probably picked a lower bid, and uh Jacob and his team could have done a better job.
• 10:10
  Vipul Bindra: Sure, it was a higher bid, but I'm sure you would have done it in time, probably done a better job.
• 10:15
  Vipul Bindra: So I think they also saw that probably, and they were like excited to work with you.
• 10:20
  Vipul Bindra: And like you said, you had an insider person there too, who's there looking out for you.
• 10:24
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:25
  Vipul Bindra: So all good things for sure.
• 10:27
  Vipul Bindra: But that's awesome, man.
• 10:28
  Vipul Bindra: That's what I'm saying.
• 10:29
  Vipul Bindra: You you let go and things came to you.
• 10:31
  Vipul Bindra: I I've I've had that happen a few times since we took, but I mean, this happens all the time, where they'll call me and they'll say, Hey, we need something, and uh uh, you know, it just doesn't work out.
• 10:40
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, hey, it doesn't seem like we're the right fit, you know, or or this is what it is, this is how I can help you based on what you're telling me, you know, what you're saying can't work or whatever.
• 10:50
  Vipul Bindra: And then they say, Okay, thank you.
• 10:51
  Vipul Bindra: And then, you know, you just go and you say, Okay, it didn't work out.
• 10:54
  Vipul Bindra: And then for them to then come back, like, hey, you know, you were you were right.
• 10:58
  Vipul Bindra: This is this is the way it's gonna be.
• 10:59
  Vipul Bindra: So can you please help us?
• 11:00
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, absolutely.
• 11:01
  Vipul Bindra: You know, then you also don't have to have ego and say, No, I I told you, and now I'm not gonna work with you.
• 11:06
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, no, absolutely, yeah, of course.
• 11:08
  Vipul Bindra: We are now we are in alignment, and it's okay if it took you a few days to go get other bids or talk to other people so you can come back and be in alignment with me.
• 11:18
  Vipul Bindra: And if you align, now you agree, and then we're all happy, then let's let's let's do it.
• 11:23
  Vipul Bindra: And uh, you know, I don't know.
• 11:25
  Vipul Bindra: I I I don't mind like letting go and then letting them have their process, and some people don't come back, and that's okay, you know, they were not my people.
• 11:33
  Jacob Centeno: So I find like one thing in order for that to happen, you have to have the time to be a subject matter expert.
• 11:45
  Jacob Centeno: You have to have the time or like the respect and the space of them acknowledging you that you have something that you know what you're doing that and it's it's interesting because I've been able to to achieve that with clients, like especially nonprofits, because I come to them wanting to help.
• 12:11
  Jacob Centeno: And so typically I consult for free, which gives me the foundation or the authority because I'm doing it for free, I have nothing to lose to say like you guys are making a big mistake by trying to do it this way.
• 12:24
  Jacob Centeno: And I've gotten a lot of business just like trying to help people and then being able to uh consult them and say, like, hey, um you know, this is there was an example a couple of years ago where I think we w talked about this last time, they wanted they wanted two sets.
• 12:43
  Jacob Centeno: I said it should be one.
• 12:45
  Jacob Centeno: There was redundancy issues of like, what if you lose footage, you don't have a good DP monitoring and um and vice versa, you can consult them on spending more, on investing more, right?
• 12:58
  Jacob Centeno: And but I think the the question for you that I have is when you're talking to a client, like when you are talking when you're talking to not a nonprofit, when you're when you're sitting with a an executive or a marketing department, how do you approach those conversations where and how do they evolve where you have the authority to give them advice that they deem valuable and they're like, oh, I should spend this, or oh, we shouldn't spend that.
• 13:34
  Jacob Centeno: Like a lot of that is obviously relationships long-term, but is there a short-term conversation?
• 13:39
  Vipul Bindra: You're right.
• 13:40
  Vipul Bindra: No, there has to be, like you said, they have to acknowledge who you are and what you do for them, right?
• 13:45
  Vipul Bindra: If you're just a videographer, then no, you cannot have that conversation and that relatability.
• 13:50
  Vipul Bindra: But yes, if you're a production company owner or just in general, you are their partner, you're their video partner, then they have that respect.
• 13:56
  Vipul Bindra: That can come from two ways either you having worked with them for years, or B, they already come from a referral or warm lead, like from a friend, where they're they know who you are.
• 14:05
  Vipul Bindra: They're like, no, this person knows what they're doing, right?
• 14:07
  Vipul Bindra: They help these brands or whatever.
• 14:10
  Vipul Bindra: So it can happen immediately, but has to come as a I would say a warm lead or somewhere where they kind of know who you are.
• 14:17
  Vipul Bindra: Because yeah, if they don't know you, then that respect isn't there.
• 14:19
  Vipul Bindra: And then that will need to be built.
• 14:21
  Vipul Bindra: But you're right, because it I at least approach conversations with very simply like, what is it that they need, right?
• 14:28
  Vipul Bindra: And a lot of times what they'll tell me is not what they actually need, unless they are a marketing person that knows video production, and that is nice too.
• 14:35
  Vipul Bindra: I I I I work with marketing manager who've worked at agencies that are like, yeah, I know we need an art director, we need a DP, we need a producer, I need this, this, this, right?
• 14:44
  Vipul Bindra: So it makes it a lot easy, like, oh, but our budget is only this.
• 14:47
  Vipul Bindra: So what do we eliminate?
• 14:48
  Vipul Bindra: Point is those ones are easy, but those are not everywhere.
• 14:51
  Vipul Bindra: Most of them, they don't understand our process.
• 14:53
  Vipul Bindra: They're just like, hey, I need a uh like I need a series of videos, or I need a video, and and and then this is what I need.
• 15:01
  Vipul Bindra: Like, what's the budget?
• 15:02
  Vipul Bindra: Or sometimes they don't even have a budget.
• 15:04
  Vipul Bindra: And then that's where you come in.
• 15:05
  Vipul Bindra: And I generally just approach the conversation with like genuineness to help them.
• 15:09
  Vipul Bindra: It's like, okay, yeah, you're you've obviously they want to talk to me.
• 15:12
  Vipul Bindra: You know, usually they've approached me.
• 15:13
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm like, let's talk.
• 15:15
  Vipul Bindra: And then it's just like figuring out, and then usually you start to find clues, you know.
• 15:19
  Vipul Bindra: So, what do you want to do?
• 15:20
  Vipul Bindra: What platform do you want to put it on?
• 15:21
  Vipul Bindra: What's the goal?
• 15:22
  Vipul Bindra: What's the timeline?
• 15:23
  Vipul Bindra: You know, uh, what's the budget?
• 15:25
  Vipul Bindra: And then let's say they say they have no budget, then like, do you have a reference video that you've done in the past or you that you liked that you were like, we want to do something like that?
• 15:32
  Vipul Bindra: Because then I can look at that video and I can get an idea that I'm like, hey, by the way, that video looks like it has a budget of at least you know six figures.
• 15:39
  Vipul Bindra: You're looking about hundred, hundred, to hundred fifty grand.
• 15:41
  Vipul Bindra: Is that within your budget?
• 15:42
  Vipul Bindra: Because you'll know few fat fast, like, yeah, that's that's what we're thinking of.
• 15:46
  Vipul Bindra: They won't flinch, or they're like, oh wow, it costs that much.
• 15:49
  Vipul Bindra: Then you know, then you can go, hey, here's a lower up tier option we can offer you.
• 15:53
  Vipul Bindra: Because it's not like we can't help them.
• 15:55
  Vipul Bindra: It's just like, you know, we can we can get there 90% there, but we can do this, this, this to get there.
• 16:00
  Vipul Bindra: Or if they don't flinch at that number, then you're like, okay, yeah, they they understand what this, or at least if they know they don't understand they can get there to the right numbers.
• 16:08
  Vipul Bindra: Then we can talk about okay, so this is how many shoot days we can do it in, this is the number of crew.
• 16:14
  Vipul Bindra: Do you think you'll be able to arrange what you need to arrange for us in those days?
• 16:17
  Vipul Bindra: And they can go yes, and they're low.
• 16:19
  Vipul Bindra: No, then I'm like, okay, then we need to add more to the budget because we're gonna need to add a couple more shoot days.
• 16:23
  Vipul Bindra: What I'm saying is it sounds silly, but they usually will give the answers.
• 16:26
  Vipul Bindra: You have to dig and you have to dig and dig and dig, and uh, it's easier when you know them, but even if you know know them, as long as you approach it with a point that I'm trying to help you, right?
• 16:37
  Vipul Bindra: Because at the end, you're not trying to take advantage of them or anything, you're just trying to literally figure out the scope of the project.
• 16:43
  Vipul Bindra: The easier you can get that, sometimes it's 30 seconds in, they already know, they give you the scope.
• 16:49
  Vipul Bindra: I don't need to elongate this meeting and waste their time just to show that I'm an expert.
• 16:53
  Vipul Bindra: I hope that makes sense.
• 16:54
  Vipul Bindra: If they give me what I need, I have the full scope, I know what I need to do.
• 16:58
  Vipul Bindra: We can recently had a $60,000 project that I closed.
• 17:03
  Vipul Bindra: Meeting didn't even go 30 seconds.
• 17:04
  Vipul Bindra: I'm not joking.
• 17:05
  Vipul Bindra: Client called me.
• 17:06
  Vipul Bindra: What do you need?
• 17:07
  Vipul Bindra: Do you need this?
• 17:08
  Vipul Bindra: What's the budget?
• 17:08
  Vipul Bindra: This is the budget.
• 17:09
  Vipul Bindra: How many shoot days?
• 17:10
  Vipul Bindra: This is the number of shoe days.
• 17:11
  Vipul Bindra: Can you do it, Vipple?
• 17:12
  Vipul Bindra: Yes, absolutely.
• 17:13
  Vipul Bindra: Done.
• 17:14
  Vipul Bindra: Sign, I'm sending you the contract.
• 17:16
  Vipul Bindra: I had the easiest contract to write for me too, because it's like they told me what they want.
• 17:20
  Vipul Bindra: So here's the scope.
• 17:21
  Vipul Bindra: And obviously, we can go a little outside, you know, there's wiggle rooms, but easiest meeting.
• 17:26
  Vipul Bindra: But sometimes you have to take two, three meetings, right?
• 17:28
  Vipul Bindra: You have to go back over and over to define the scope because they're like, oh, it'd be nice to do headshots that day.
• 17:33
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, okay, now that's the new thing with scope.
• 17:35
  Vipul Bindra: Let's add that.
• 17:36
  Vipul Bindra: So now we're adding photography to it.
• 17:38
  Vipul Bindra: That wasn't part of the thing at all.
• 17:40
  Vipul Bindra: And I think that's where it can be a long process to get there.
• 17:45
  Vipul Bindra: But once you work with a client over and over again, it just only gets easier and easier.
• 17:49
  Vipul Bindra: I hope that makes sense.
• 17:50
  Vipul Bindra: I do want to ask a question from Mario.
• 17:51
  Vipul Bindra: You had an opportunity recently to come to a meeting with me.
• 17:54
  Vipul Bindra: Now I I know it wasn't a sales type of meeting, it was still like a pre-production meeting.
• 17:59
  Vipul Bindra: What do you think about it?
• 18:00
  Vipul Bindra: Do you have any feedback or input?
• 18:03
  Mario Rangel: Well, uh, we have already worked with this client.
• 18:07
  Mario Rangel: Well, for more than more than me.
• 18:10
  Mario Rangel: I work with them like two times already.
• 18:13
  Mario Rangel: Uh and I think they they really are a great client.
• 18:18
  Mario Rangel: They're really uh good to work with.
• 18:22
  Mario Rangel: Um they listen, they listen to us, they listen to you.
• 18:26
  Mario Rangel: So I think the the the meeting went great.
• 18:29
  Mario Rangel: Um and I think they they help us know what uh as much as they can, obviously.
• 18:40
  Mario Rangel: They help us understand what what what is the project about what what is the video that we are doing and they make our our job uh easier to do.
• 18:51
  Mario Rangel: Um yeah.
• 18:52
  Vipul Bindra: Do you think the meeting meant the the way we wanted it to go?
• 18:55
  Vipul Bindra: That's the main thing.
• 18:56
  Vipul Bindra: I wanted to go like the direction of the meeting and how we approached getting to where we needed to go.
• 19:01
  Vipul Bindra: Because we needed to understand the scope of the work, right?
• 19:03
  Vipul Bindra: So what do you think about that?
• 19:06
  Mario Rangel: No, I I think it went great.
• 19:07
  Mario Rangel: It was like we understand everything that we that they wanted, like in 30 minutes.
• 19:13
  Mario Rangel: I think.
• 19:13
  Mario Rangel: Yeah, I think that and yeah, and I think uh and now we are shooting next week, we already know what they want.
• 19:20
  Mario Rangel: And it's a big I think it's a big project, right?
• 19:22
  Mario Rangel: It's a big scope.
• 19:24
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it's about 50, 50 ish grand.
• 19:26
  Mario Rangel: So yeah, yeah, so so but but in general, I think uh in just 30 minutes we understand what they wanted and yeah, and we're ready to to to make it happen, right?
• 19:37
  Vipul Bindra: To make it real.
• 19:38
  Vipul Bindra: There you go.
• 19:39
  Vipul Bindra: So uh that's uh again, and like I said, it's just and I was so glad you were there.
• 19:43
  Vipul Bindra: Helped me, you know.
• 19:43
  Vipul Bindra: I was I brought her him and Julie, I was like, so you know, handling production with me and then have handling the post-production with me.
• 19:50
  Vipul Bindra: I want everyone to be here, so we're all on the same page.
• 19:53
  Vipul Bindra: And I was surprised I had marked an hour for the meeting.
• 19:56
  Vipul Bindra: 30 minutes later, we were done because it was so easy.
• 19:59
  Vipul Bindra: We approached him.
• 19:59
  Vipul Bindra: I was just like, Do you have a reference video?
• 20:01
  Vipul Bindra: Same thing.
• 20:02
  Vipul Bindra: Because we had already signed the contract at this point.
• 20:04
  Vipul Bindra: I kind of understood what they wanted, but I had not seen a reference video.
• 20:06
  Vipul Bindra: And they were like, Well, we don't have one.
• 20:08
  Vipul Bindra: Actually, we do.
• 20:09
  Vipul Bindra: You know, it's amazing.
• 20:10
  Vipul Bindra: You're just asking that.
• 20:11
  Vipul Bindra: We were like, This would be nice.
• 20:13
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, Okay, do you have another one?
• 20:16
  Vipul Bindra: And then she showed me another one.
• 20:17
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, okay, here's what we can do.
• 20:19
  Vipul Bindra: Current scope of work, we cannot do that.
• 20:21
  Vipul Bindra: This is too low quality.
• 20:24
  Vipul Bindra: How about we merge the two?
• 20:25
  Vipul Bindra: We can make it, you know, interviews like this, but we can do B-roll like this.
• 20:28
  Vipul Bindra: I can do it in the current scope of work, same budget, not changing anything.
• 20:32
  Vipul Bindra: And the client was like, Yeah, that sounds awesome.
• 20:34
  Vipul Bindra: So it made it a lot easier, but I had to ask for that.
• 20:36
  Vipul Bindra: They they didn't even think about you know reference videos or anything like that.
• 20:40
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, so it's I think like that.
• 20:42
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know if that answers what you were thinking looking for.
• 20:44
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, it's just more like I don't know, approach it from a friendly standpoint, is what I try to do.
• 20:49
  Vipul Bindra: Now, not all clients are like that.
• 20:50
  Vipul Bindra: There's some type A personalities, that's where it gets difficult, and that's where I have to go.
• 20:55
  Vipul Bindra: Is this the client the right fit for me?
• 20:57
  Vipul Bindra: And it depends on the project.
• 20:59
  Vipul Bindra: Sometimes the project is so awesome that it's worth dealing with a personality, but sometimes it's like, eh, I don't know.
• 21:06
  Vipul Bindra: And that's where you if you have the time to get out and let somebody else have a have a go at it.
• 21:14
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and case in point, you know, the the job that I let them have.
• 21:18
  Jacob Centeno: I I think they did great, but at the same time, it it would have been a monster of a project.
• 21:23
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:24
  Vipul Bindra: 250 grand is no money to, you know, to you know, not look at like I mean, that's a huge amount of revenue to add to to the money.
• 21:32
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, uh, so yeah, I mean, but again, like you said, if no point going back and and being disappointed about it, because it sounds like you did the best that you could with the with the project parameters that were given.
• 21:45
  Vipul Bindra: And if they didn't see it, they didn't see it doesn't mean they didn't see in the future, though maybe you'll get way more opportunities now because they've seen what the other people can do and what you can do.
• 21:55
  Vipul Bindra: And that's why I I like to tell people like there's no competition, there's so much work.
• 21:59
  Vipul Bindra: In video production.
• 22:01
  Vipul Bindra: There's so many companies, and more and more need more and more content.
• 22:05
  Vipul Bindra: I think it's just about showcasing what you can do, continuously evolving yourself and doing the best.
• 22:11
  Vipul Bindra: And it doesn't matter what anyone else else is doing.
• 22:14
  Vipul Bindra: Clients will just automatically notice.
• 22:16
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, they did work with you, they worked with them.
• 22:18
  Vipul Bindra: Now they know how who works and what the processes are and how easy or difficult it is to work with whoever.
• 22:24
  Vipul Bindra: And then the next time it'll be very easy for them to pick who they want to go with, right?
• 22:29
  Vipul Bindra: And um, and I'm I'm pretty sure you did an amazing job that next time they won't hesitate to give you the RFP or whatever, right?
• 22:37
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 22:37
  Vipul Bindra: And if not, I'm sure you won't lose sleep over it.
• 22:40
  Jacob Centeno: No, no, yeah.
• 22:41
  Jacob Centeno: And you know, I mean, like, I have this theory that we have it, we have expenses, like it's like car your car, your mortgage, your health, your children, like you have these expenses.
• 22:55
  Jacob Centeno: And I just it it really hasn't changed since we first met years ago.
• 23:02
  Jacob Centeno: And all the freelancers and you know, subcontractors that I've met, I just feel like whatever our expenses, we get that we get that work.
• 23:14
  Jacob Centeno: Like we don't have to worry, we'll be covered, you know, and having faith in that that you'll be provided for.
• 23:22
  Vipul Bindra: It's like it's very important because you know you've been doing this long enough, and that's the trade of the business.
• 23:26
  Vipul Bindra: I think I'm sure at some point you think about it.
• 23:29
  Vipul Bindra: I know I do.
• 23:29
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, you know, like I'm used to making so much, but then earlier this year, for example, February was a very slow month for me, uh, which is not normal for me.
• 23:38
  Vipul Bindra: Like, you know, uh, but I think it was the economy or whatever.
• 23:42
  Vipul Bindra: At least that's what I'm saying.
• 23:43
  Vipul Bindra: Because I I did, but you know, it came the first week, and I'm like, I have no work, that makes no sense, you know.
• 23:49
  Vipul Bindra: So I picked up the phone, I called a few other production company owners I know, and they were like, Yeah, it's slow.
• 23:53
  Vipul Bindra: So I was like, okay.
• 23:54
  Vipul Bindra: First of all, it's not just me.
• 23:55
  Vipul Bindra: I didn't do something wrong.
• 23:56
  Vipul Bindra: And then you could go back and it's like, okay, so let me go back and now revisit uh what I can do here.
• 24:02
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, because clearly, tariffs, economy change, whatever, people are worried, my clients are not spending money.
• 24:08
  Vipul Bindra: Reshot a few.
• 24:09
  Vipul Bindra: They're like, Yeah, we're just holding off right now, we'll get back to you.
• 24:12
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm like, okay, now the it's out of my control situation.
• 24:15
  Vipul Bindra: I can sit here and panic, or I could just have faith.
• 24:18
  Vipul Bindra: And I I don't know, I talked with Julie when she was on the podcast.
• 24:21
  Vipul Bindra: It was like, so I can do two things.
• 24:23
  Vipul Bindra: I can be scared, I can quit, I can back up, or I'm gonna do what Bendra would do.
• 24:28
  Vipul Bindra: I'm gonna double down.
• 24:29
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, oh, economy's slow, let's let's go add it him, let's acquire more equipment, let's go done.
• 24:34
  Vipul Bindra: And I know other people think this is silly, but I'm like, no, I am not gonna quit.
• 24:38
  Vipul Bindra: I'm not gonna worry.
• 24:39
  Vipul Bindra: And look, it was uh February and March, and and we picked up smaller projects that normally I would pass off.
• 24:44
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, okay, so you needed something smaller, let's go do it.
• 24:47
  Vipul Bindra: And Mario helped me in a bunch of them, and we went out and we actually uh, you know, so like you said, there was enough work, bills were paid, everyone's good.
• 24:55
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, it wasn't the big massive projects, and come April, like bam, it was it's been crazy.
• 24:59
  Vipul Bindra: I haven't had day off, you know, for for months.
• 25:02
  Vipul Bindra: So you never know.
• 25:03
  Vipul Bindra: What I'm saying is uh I could look at that and blame a billion things for why, you know, I don't have work.
• 25:09
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, I can't control the economy, I can't control my clients, and it's not like if it I can control what I do, and if clearly they're not mad at me, there's uh you know, uncertain about the situation and the economy.
• 25:21
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, sure, but that doesn't mean the small company stops shooting, right?
• 25:25
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm like, well, they have projects, let's go do that, and they want to work with me.
• 25:28
  Vipul Bindra: Sure, the budgets may not be the highest, you know.
• 25:31
  Vipul Bindra: We're working three to five to six K videos, that's okay.
• 25:34
  Vipul Bindra: You know, we can give them huge value because now they get all this, right?
• 25:38
  Vipul Bindra: For for not much money, and uh, we had work, so you know, we were able to pay our bills.
• 25:44
  Vipul Bindra: So I think uh like you said, it's just a way of approaching it.
• 25:47
  Vipul Bindra: You can approach it from a sense of negativity, or you can approach it from a sense of positivity, and because humps will always happen in business.
• 25:54
  Vipul Bindra: That's just nature of business.
• 25:56
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, I'm sure, and I know you mentioned this on the last season.
• 25:59
  Vipul Bindra: There was time where you didn't have work for what, six months, and then the six months was amazing.
• 26:03
  Vipul Bindra: You killed it.
• 26:04
  Vipul Bindra: You know, that's just nature of business.
• 26:06
  Vipul Bindra: You can get sit there and and uh and look that six months go panic, but then you know, you have to look at the bigger picture, like no, we killed it the six months.
• 26:14
  Vipul Bindra: It's okay, like it's nature of the business.
• 26:16
  Vipul Bindra: We cannot take this time to uh which I want to jump into next, go into look into government contracts or whatever you're trying to do to to to expand your business and not look at it from the standpoint of why don't we have so much work?
• 26:28
  Vipul Bindra: Because that happens, you know, that's this nature of doing business.
• 26:32
  Vipul Bindra: So coming to that, I want to I would I would love people to know, follow up, because I know that's what last time we talked, that's what you're trying to do, trying to get more government contracts, trying to get in into those systems and and processes or whatever to be able to get those.
• 26:47
  Vipul Bindra: Did you have any luck?
• 26:48
  Vipul Bindra: Did you were you able to close any?
• 26:50
  Jacob Centeno: No.
• 26:50
  Jacob Centeno: So the only thing that has come out of applying for government contracts is a lot of spam mail from people who want my business.
• 26:59
  Jacob Centeno: Uh, once you're registered in the SAM system, which is the procurement system, they have a lot.
• 27:07
  Jacob Centeno: They they they actually procure contracts on a lot of different platforms, but Sam is the big one.
• 27:12
  Jacob Centeno: Uh and once I was registered, oh my gosh, I have just been solicited by hundreds and hundreds of uh you know other yeah, because your email becomes public then, right?
• 27:25
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 27:26
  Jacob Centeno: Everything everything becomes public.
• 27:28
  Jacob Centeno: But um I did submit so between now and the last time we spoke, I submit, I did put in two proposals.
• 27:40
  Jacob Centeno: They were requests for proposals, which is it's that's kind of the final stage.
• 27:45
  Jacob Centeno: And um, because you can have like requests for quote, you can have requests for information, you can have there's a lot of different stages in the process where what you know the government kind of goes through before they actually put out a request uh for a proposal or or whatever.
• 28:02
  Jacob Centeno: And so we did put in two packages.
• 28:04
  Jacob Centeno: They they typically take like me like three or four full days to put together, just like really looking at what is the job, what are what are the deliverables, what's the crew gonna be, how much time, logistics, making sure you're because it is very easy to um lose money on government contracts.
• 28:28
  Jacob Centeno: A lot of people do it, and then and then they once they realize the numbers aren't right, they they try to back up the product quality, and then and then the government gets a really lackluster product.
• 28:40
  Jacob Centeno: So I I don't want to be like that.
• 28:42
  Jacob Centeno: So I try to try to really look at the proposal and all the deliverables and make sure like I'm on the number.
• 28:50
  Jacob Centeno: And so I take my time and it takes time.
• 28:53
  Jacob Centeno: And so we submitted for a couple of cool projects we didn't we didn't hear back, but sometimes it's crazy.
• 29:01
  Jacob Centeno: Like I looked at one of the contracts, and one of them has been they've been soliciting proposals for almost a full year, and basically, like it's their prerogative.
• 29:14
  Jacob Centeno: They they'll look at oh, okay, we got 30 companies that submitted this.
• 29:18
  Jacob Centeno: We don't like any of them, so we're gonna keep going.
• 29:21
  Jacob Centeno: Let's put it out again.
• 29:23
  Jacob Centeno: And so it's like really hard, uh, and you don't know what they're doing on their end, or you know, sometimes administration lacks the funding for the human resources, so there's just a lot of factors that go into it.
• 29:35
  Vipul Bindra: Did that affect you in any way?
• 29:37
  Vipul Bindra: I know uh tariffs were a factor for my clients, like backing up a little bit.
• 29:41
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, do uh any of this economy, and I know doge was a thing like cut cutting government funding and spending and all that.
• 29:47
  Vipul Bindra: Did do you think that was any factor towards any of these, or no?
• 29:51
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, for sure.
• 29:53
  Jacob Centeno: I think what one of the proposals I put in was like directly impacted.
• 29:59
  Jacob Centeno: And I was like, how are they putting out a proposal right now?
• 30:02
  Jacob Centeno: Like I just saw on the news, like their resources got cut.
• 30:05
  Jacob Centeno: Like, this doesn't make any sense.
• 30:07
  Vipul Bindra: So that probably was.
• 30:08
  Vipul Bindra: It was supposed to be out, but then their resources got cut, so it's just in the middle of limbo.
• 30:13
  Vipul Bindra: What range are these types of RFPs?
• 30:15
  Vipul Bindra: So the ones that you submitted through the system, what is the kind of like the realistic range that people can expect from?
• 30:22
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so you can do a lot of research, it's great.
• 30:24
  Jacob Centeno: Like you can go on, I believe it's sam.gov and you can look at the awards, you can look through all these people that were awarded.
• 30:32
  Jacob Centeno: So I try to do a little bit of research and it's it's interesting.
• 30:36
  Jacob Centeno: Well, you know, I I really do feel like a lot of these uh these contract awards are done as a long-term conversation where you have access to these people and like you really know what they want, specifically in like you really refine your number.
• 30:54
  Jacob Centeno: So it's it's hard to look at a proposal and be like, oh yeah, this number is gonna, it's it's gonna be in this range.
• 31:01
  Jacob Centeno: Um, it's it's really hard to like guess that.
• 31:03
  Jacob Centeno: I think you have to be in conversation with them and really like just talk about the project long term and then arrive at a number, and then they put out the request for proposal and and then the numbers already established.
• 31:16
  Jacob Centeno: Makes sense.
• 31:17
  Jacob Centeno: But um, you know, we submitted one.
• 31:20
  Jacob Centeno: It was uh it was a really cool one in uh kind of Arizona around that uh area for the uh it's uh D I N E the I believe it's Danay, the tribe.
• 31:34
  Jacob Centeno: It's it's it's uh it's um Navajo, but it the proper uh term is is Danay, I believe.
• 31:42
  Jacob Centeno: And uh for forgive me if I'm wrong, but it was a federal contract to to produce a a completely unbiased story and heritage of that people.
• 31:54
  Jacob Centeno: Oh wow, so the government was paying for a filmmaking company to go in and and interview elders, and then like they could they could literally slander the government if they wanted, they could tell the story they the way they wanted, and the government would actually be able not to have a say or uh that's a pretty cool project.
• 32:12
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so we applied for that one in the scope.
• 32:15
  Jacob Centeno: I think I arrived at they were like a compet they they said a competitive bid would would have been around 50,000.
• 32:21
  Jacob Centeno: And I was like, there's I there's no way I can, but I wanted it, so I think I put in for like 7580.
• 32:31
  Jacob Centeno: That's it.
• 32:38
  Vipul Bindra: How many days were you thinking you'd spend there getting that content?
• 32:41
  Jacob Centeno: Well, the scope was big.
• 32:42
  Jacob Centeno: So, like, first of all, that they wanted pre-production, they wanted you to meet with elders, they wanted you before you even film anything.
• 32:48
  Jacob Centeno: Before you even film anything, they wanted you there speaking with them, getting to know them.
• 32:52
  Jacob Centeno: They wanted um, they wanted at least two shoot days in uh at separate ends of the year, so to cover seasons.
• 33:02
  Jacob Centeno: So that's like logistically, that's a flights in and out, flights in and out, how much crew.
• 33:07
  Jacob Centeno: And so I was really trying to do it bare bones, but um it's just so ultimately what they were looking for was somebody who was like in the city.
• 33:17
  Vipul Bindra: Who could just they wouldn't have the travel expense or whatever, yeah.
• 33:20
  Jacob Centeno: The problem is is like if there's not a good video storytelling company in the city, that project is just gonna get recycled again.
• 33:27
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, until until they up their price and they can get somebody that can actually do it, yeah.
• 33:32
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, that's the yeah, that's issue with I guess government contracts is it's not like a private con uh corporation where they can immediately make that change if they want to.
• 33:42
  Vipul Bindra: They can see that, hey, this isn't working out.
• 33:44
  Vipul Bindra: Because that's do see that a lot happens in corporate too, where they're like, no, we want somebody local because they don't want to pay for travel or whatever.
• 33:51
  Vipul Bindra: But then immediately they apply and then they'll see the type of bids they're getting and then they go, okay, maybe we need to expand the scope.
• 33:56
  Vipul Bindra: But they can do that sooner than you know, like you said, may take them government a while to do that.
• 34:02
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so interesting.
• 34:03
  Vipul Bindra: So, where has your most of your business been coming from?
• 34:05
  Vipul Bindra: Just past clients, referrals, Google?
• 34:09
  Jacob Centeno: So just past clients, um, letting them take the relationship where they want, and just trying to be more valuable to them.
• 34:20
  Jacob Centeno: And and like I've had clients where I'm like, there's they've they have a good product from us, they don't need more from us.
• 34:30
  Jacob Centeno: And this is a good relationship.
• 34:32
  Jacob Centeno: And then and then they come to me and they're like, hey, we have something totally different, you're the right person.
• 34:38
  Jacob Centeno: And so, you know, we end up doing instead of 50,000, we end up doing a hundred thousand with that client.
• 34:43
  Jacob Centeno: And so, and like part of me does not like getting a majority of you know our revenue from three to five people.
• 34:56
  Jacob Centeno: It's uncomfortable because it could go away at any time.
• 34:59
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, but it goes just back to the whole like have faith that the business will be there.
• 35:04
  Jacob Centeno: Like, I've never let I've never been let down.
• 35:07
  Jacob Centeno: If you look at you know, the seasons over the last four or five years, it's like, okay, that person came in out of nowhere, that person came in out of nowhere.
• 35:18
  Jacob Centeno: Like, I never talked to that client before, they approached me, and it's just uh always happens.
• 35:25
  Vipul Bindra: So exactly.
• 35:26
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you never know, but that is the key.
• 35:28
  Vipul Bindra: Most people I know that are successful with video, the truth is yes, majority of their business comes from under 10 clients, you know, sometimes under five clients, like you said, that is paying majority of the bills.
• 35:39
  Vipul Bindra: The truth is uh chances of finding, you know, 30, 50 new clients every month is just unrealistic.
• 35:45
  Vipul Bindra: So you do have one-off clients that come and go, right?
• 35:47
  Vipul Bindra: But majority of the income is those clients that love working with you and they constantly have need for video, and you are the company that is for them, right?
• 35:56
  Vipul Bindra: But there is a risk factor, obviously, anytime you do that, that any one of them could pull out any minute, and you're now that's a big chunk of hold that you know is left, you know, there.
• 36:06
  Vipul Bindra: But the the truth is that's just how it is.
• 36:08
  Vipul Bindra: I I don't know video people who are I'm talking doing good numbers.
• 36:12
  Vipul Bindra: Uh it's different when you're, you know, under 100K or whatever.
• 36:15
  Vipul Bindra: But when you're over six figures, that's usually how it is.
• 36:19
  Vipul Bindra: I'm saying most people I talk to, they're like, yeah, this is my agency, this is my people.
• 36:22
  Vipul Bindra: I do that, they just send me, and it's this just comes, right?
• 36:26
  Vipul Bindra: And then that doesn't mean you don't do outreach, that doesn't mean you should need reach new clients, uh, because some of them do get replaced, you know, over time.
• 36:34
  Vipul Bindra: But it's just how I guess the nature of the the beast, right?
• 36:38
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and you know, case in point, I I I don't remember if we covered this last time, but my the first biggest client that I had, which over three years was probably like I don't know, 150 to 200 in revenue.
• 36:55
  Jacob Centeno: Like after three years, they just cold turkey cut me off.
• 36:58
  Jacob Centeno: And you're like, uh, what are we gonna do?
• 37:01
  Vipul Bindra: Because you're relying on that revenue, yeah.
• 37:03
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and it's like, dang, what if we had that revenue?
• 37:06
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it's the agency you're talking about, right?
• 37:08
  Vipul Bindra: I think you had an agency that was giving you that much work, that, or it's a different company.
• 37:12
  Jacob Centeno: It was a construction company that we did uh incentive trips for.
• 37:16
  Jacob Centeno: They we it was amazing.
• 37:18
  Jacob Centeno: We would we would uh we went to Costa Rica with them, we went to the uh where do we go?
• 37:25
  Jacob Centeno: Texas, Austin, um just Colorado, like we kind of went everywhere with these guys for their incentive trips and sales training trips for their staff, and we would make everything look real sexy.
• 37:41
  Jacob Centeno: Um and uh yeah, they were a huge massive chunk of our business for the first three years, and then losing them was like, oh my gosh, like it was it's honestly been super hard to let go.
• 37:55
  Jacob Centeno: Like I I um I keep I try to keep in contact with a lot of them and just like hey, how are you doing, or keep up with birthdays and stuff like that, uh, and just under just understanding that video production is not a part of their business development anymore or right now.
• 38:13
  Vipul Bindra: So doesn't mean it won't be in the future, right?
• 38:15
  Vipul Bindra: Right, exactly.
• 38:16
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it's good to not burn bridges or you know, lose touch because you never know.
• 38:22
  Vipul Bindra: You never know.
• 38:22
  Vipul Bindra: And and and that's the thing about this business, yeah.
• 38:24
  Vipul Bindra: 100%.
• 38:25
  Vipul Bindra: And or if they even don't directly come, they may ever send you a referral or something, some other great opportunity, you know.
• 38:32
  Vipul Bindra: So yeah, it's really nice of you to keep touch, you know.
• 38:36
  Jacob Centeno: On that note, I think one of the most important things is people.
• 38:39
  Jacob Centeno: If you have a good relationship with somebody, like take care of that relationship.
• 38:46
  Jacob Centeno: It doesn't matter how low they you think they are in the company, it does not matter.
• 38:52
  Jacob Centeno: The way that I got that that contract that really launched my business was I did event marketing for the ad agency here in or in Orlando, and on one of the jobs, she was like brand new.
• 39:07
  Jacob Centeno: She was at sort of the bottom of the totem pole, very new.
• 39:11
  Jacob Centeno: I was always nice to her.
• 39:13
  Jacob Centeno: And then uh four years later, she had all the experience she needed.
• 39:18
  Jacob Centeno: She got acquired by another company, and she called me first.
• 39:22
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, because you were kind to her and you built a good relationship.
• 39:25
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, exactly.
• 39:26
  Vipul Bindra: People grow with you.
• 39:27
  Vipul Bindra: That's the that's why like people say, you know, is college worth it, film school.
• 39:31
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, not usually for skills, but it's good for networking because those people are gonna grow with you.
• 39:36
  Vipul Bindra: Guess what?
• 39:37
  Vipul Bindra: Everyone you graduate, not everyone obviously gives into the industry, but most of them that do, uh, they're gonna know you, right?
• 39:44
  Vipul Bindra: You network and they're gonna take you with you.
• 39:46
  Vipul Bindra: So even if a few of you get successful, either marketing managers here or directors here in some film company or whatever, at the end of the day, they can take you with them, right?
• 39:55
  Vipul Bindra: And and that's a huge advantage, the the value of networking.
• 39:59
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, because like I said, you never know what opportunities it's gonna create.
• 40:03
  Vipul Bindra: Um, so that's awesome.
• 40:05
  Vipul Bindra: Talk about gear.
• 40:06
  Vipul Bindra: I know last time we talked, you were literally about to get on a flight to DC to get combo stents.
• 40:11
  Vipul Bindra: It still amazes me, you know.
• 40:12
  Vipul Bindra: That's like one of the topics, like but I mean it made sense.
• 40:15
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, you you got them on a deal, uh, right?
• 40:18
  Vipul Bindra: But but point is, yeah, you were gonna literally get on a flight, go get some equipment, and drive it down.
• 40:23
  Vipul Bindra: So, how did that go?
• 40:24
  Vipul Bindra: And have you been, you know, acquiring more gear?
• 40:28
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so it went good.
• 40:31
  Jacob Centeno: Drive sucked, but I did it in record time.
• 40:34
  Jacob Centeno: Uh did not get pulled over, you know.
• 40:36
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, thank the Lord.
• 40:37
  Jacob Centeno: But uh made it made it back down safely.
• 40:40
  Jacob Centeno: I think I was like back in Orlando 12 hours later.
• 40:42
  Jacob Centeno: That's crazy, yeah, to think about.
• 40:44
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 40:45
  Jacob Centeno: With with all the gear.
• 40:46
  Jacob Centeno: Um what old did you get again?
• 40:48
  Vipul Bindra: Do you remember?
• 40:49
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so I pulled I I brought down like four C stands.
• 40:52
  Jacob Centeno: One of them needs a lot of WD 40 or is just trash.
• 40:55
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, that's what you get with auctions.
• 40:58
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 40:58
  Jacob Centeno: Uh I got two uh two combo.
• 41:02
  Jacob Centeno: I got a a junior roller.
• 41:05
  Jacob Centeno: Uh I got a big 12 by 12 with um I still haven't even uh popped that open.
• 41:13
  Jacob Centeno: It has uh two different types of diffusion in it.
• 41:17
  Jacob Centeno: And yeah, since since that, and there's other gear I just can't remember, but since getting that, I have I haven't used any of it.
• 41:29
  Jacob Centeno: Told you.
• 41:33
  Vipul Bindra: So what cameras are you using now?
• 41:37
  Jacob Centeno: So well, we just got back from a job where we actually put our two FS7s to use, which was great, and uh A7 IV and EOS R6 and GH5, the trustee of the H5.
• 41:50
  Jacob Centeno: Still still in deployment.
• 41:52
  Vipul Bindra: That's the part I love the GH5.
• 41:54
  Vipul Bindra: And that's what I tell people, you know.
• 41:56
  Vipul Bindra: Uh again, gear matters, but it also doesn't matter in a way that you know, GH5 made me a lot of money back when I started the company, 2018, I think, an early part of 2019.
• 42:05
  Vipul Bindra: Um, but that doesn't mean the camera was bad.
• 42:08
  Vipul Bindra: I just wanted autofocus over to the C200.
• 42:10
  Vipul Bindra: And look at you in 2025, still deploying the camera and it's still making you money.
• 42:16
  Vipul Bindra: So you know, yeah.
• 42:18
  Jacob Centeno: I mean, so for the for what we did with it was just really long roll times and just like locked off in the corner.
• 42:26
  Jacob Centeno: Um the the full frame sensors, we would we would get, you know, our b-roll shots are you know seven to fifteen second takes, but then the gh5 could catch whatever, just just because the roll, yeah.
• 42:40
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, yeah.
• 42:41
  Jacob Centeno: And then uh the fs sevens, honestly, I'm just romantic about them.
• 42:45
  Jacob Centeno: Um, I can use whatever cameras, but I like I wanna I want to break them.
• 42:51
  Vipul Bindra: Like I just want to use them until they're but they're still used everywhere because before the FX6 got popular, that's what yeah was used everywhere, yeah.
• 43:00
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so and and we like I used them with uh uh G Masters, and like it's just beautiful, it's just great.
• 43:07
  Jacob Centeno: So we have to go through, we're gonna play with the colors, and yeah, I mean, as long as the colors and everything comes out good, I'll can I'll continue to use the FS7s.
• 43:17
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, that's pretty good.
• 43:18
  Vipul Bindra: So basically, everything you were using is working great.
• 43:21
  Vipul Bindra: Everything new you acquired, or technically new to you from auction, has not been used.
• 43:26
  Vipul Bindra: That's kind of crazy to me to think about, right?
• 43:28
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it is.
• 43:29
  Vipul Bindra: Uh but uh so did you hold that idea?
• 43:32
  Vipul Bindra: I know you said you wanted to put together a van too.
• 43:34
  Vipul Bindra: Are you still doing that, or is that idea on hold since you're not really using any of this?
• 43:39
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so like stuff.
• 43:40
  Jacob Centeno: Financially, uh, my wife she has I think a year left on her car.
• 43:46
  Jacob Centeno: And so, like, after that, it's just the house, just the mortgage.
• 43:50
  Jacob Centeno: And so I could totally pull the trigger on a truck or whatever right now, van.
• 43:54
  Jacob Centeno: But um, just wanting to be like, well, first of all, I don't need it, I don't have clients that are like, hey, We need a grip package, it needs to come from you, or just doesn't make sense.
• 44:04
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 44:04
  Jacob Centeno: So I'm not rushing to make that investment just yet, but I do have a feeling that either this year or uh next year, um the the the the vehicle write-off is gonna make a lot of sense.
• 44:18
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, if you're making enough money, that's the other part of it.
• 44:20
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, you don't want to buy things just to buy it, but if it does make sense, the write-off, because you know, you if it's a business expense, you can write off pretty much the whole thing.
• 44:29
  Vipul Bindra: So that would be a huge benefit, you know, tax-wise too.
• 44:32
  Vipul Bindra: Um so yeah, I mean there's ways to look at it, but at the same time, to be honest, same thing.
• 44:36
  Vipul Bindra: I deployed the van January 1st this year.
• 44:39
  Vipul Bindra: It's been very helpful.
• 44:40
  Vipul Bindra: But the thing is, can I define straight up that, oh, by adding this van, I got additional revenue?
• 44:48
  Vipul Bindra: No, I think I got like a couple of jobs, I would say, where the van was the reason they hired me, right?
• 44:53
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but those were small jobs, they made not much difference to the overall revenue.
• 44:58
  Vipul Bindra: I'm saying the real jobs that actually paid the bills, none of them cared if I had the van.
• 45:04
  Vipul Bindra: Now, yes, has it been deployed for us and we've been enjoying it, yes, but it's a personal thing.
• 45:09
  Vipul Bindra: I hope that makes sense.
• 45:10
  Vipul Bindra: There's no justification to financials for having the van, right?
• 45:16
  Vipul Bindra: But the there's justification to how it may it made my life easy, not having to spend a whole day prepping and packing and then unpacking and reprepping, and and same thing for hiring people like uh Mario to come on set and where he's able to, you know, easily pull one card off, do the whole shoot without having to again bags after bags after bags.
• 45:34
  Vipul Bindra: So there's there's value, but the value is in dollars, if that makes sense.
• 45:38
  Vipul Bindra: It may be more time and ease of use, right?
• 45:40
  Vipul Bindra: Would you agree?
• 45:41
  Vipul Bindra: Has the van been a good help or no?
• 45:44
  Mario Rangel: Because it makes it um it makes every break is uh easier to to shoot like very convenient.
• 45:51
  Mario Rangel: And I and the at the end, uh it reduces the time like for setup.
• 45:58
  Mario Rangel: And I think that's valuable time that you can spend like in other more important stuff, like I don't know, uh getting another client, being on calls, right?
• 46:08
  Mario Rangel: Yeah, like that.
• 46:08
  Mario Rangel: Facts.
• 46:09
  Vipul Bindra: Also, I sometimes just call him just so I make sure he doesn't it's too easy.
• 46:15
  Vipul Bindra: No, I'm just kidding.
• 46:17
  Vipul Bindra: No, he that's a good value, and I I want you to listen from a third party because he has no intention, no incentive to say, you know, something great.
• 46:24
  Vipul Bindra: It's just that somebody I've hired as a freelancer being able to use it.
• 46:27
  Vipul Bindra: I think it just makes it easier.
• 46:28
  Vipul Bindra: Not that it was hard in the past, like you do now, right?
• 46:31
  Vipul Bindra: Bringing cases, but now uh the thing happens with cases is people go, which case does this go in?
• 46:36
  Vipul Bindra: Where does it go?
• 46:37
  Vipul Bindra: Which is a lot easier, like it's right there, right?
• 46:39
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, everything has a space there, so it makes it a lot easier to point it out.
• 46:43
  Vipul Bindra: Or once, like in 10 minutes, I could show you what goes where.
• 46:46
  Vipul Bindra: Do you it's not a big learning curve, but like I said, could I put dollars on it?
• 46:49
  Vipul Bindra: Was it worth it?
• 46:50
  Vipul Bindra: Because the van was 60 grand.
• 46:51
  Vipul Bindra: I think it was at least 10, 20 grand to upfit it.
• 46:54
  Vipul Bindra: So have I gained 80 grand of value?
• 46:57
  Vipul Bindra: Probably not, you know.
• 46:59
  Vipul Bindra: I could maybe say five grand of that was directly like revenue was responsible from the van.
• 47:05
  Vipul Bindra: It's not worth it, but it's worth it the other way.
• 47:08
  Vipul Bindra: So if you can justify that, like, hey, will it be easier?
• 47:10
  Vipul Bindra: The good thing is in the past, I would have to know if you need a combo stand, right?
• 47:14
  Vipul Bindra: I have to know, like, if you need a combo, sure, I'm bringing my combo.
• 47:17
  Vipul Bindra: Now it's like we have the combo the whole time.
• 47:19
  Vipul Bindra: Do we need it for most jobs?
• 47:21
  Vipul Bindra: No, right?
• 47:22
  Vipul Bindra: But here we are.
• 47:23
  Vipul Bindra: We want to do a menace arm rig or a big boom arm rig, right?
• 47:25
  Vipul Bindra: We're doing back here.
• 47:27
  Vipul Bindra: We can.
• 47:27
  Vipul Bindra: We don't have to tell the client, oh well, we didn't plan for it.
• 47:30
  Vipul Bindra: I hope that makes sense.
• 47:31
  Vipul Bindra: So, yeah, I don't know.
• 47:32
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but obviously you have to see if you can justify that or not.
• 47:36
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, I like so the way I approach my company and my clients, like, I I don't go through any marketing companies and I've defined my niche.
• 47:45
  Jacob Centeno: So the plan is I get referrals within my niche without having to go through any uh companies or any other agencies.
• 47:54
  Jacob Centeno: And so that allows me to decide what I want to bring to the table and how I want to do it, how I want to execute it, and ultimately be be responsible and a stakeholder for the end result.
• 48:08
  Jacob Centeno: And because of that, I uh I can relate to you in that like I brought the FS7s because I wanted to, I brought the GH5 because I wanted to, I brought the Sackler because I wanted to, I you know, bought a lot of pelicans because I wanted to, because I felt like it's what helped me get the job done uh safely, efficiently, and and and uh so I think there is like I'm lucky because I have that luxury to make those decisions for myself, but um you know, just going back to you with a van.
• 48:53
  Jacob Centeno: Me and my uh DP, we drove down in two cars filled with gear, two cars, right?
• 49:01
  Jacob Centeno: Because we couldn't fit it in one and then um you know we we had to set up our carts because we have to break them down to fit in the the cars, they're not vans, right?
• 49:12
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so we hit so setup time on carts, restocking gear on carts, rolling it into the hotel, out of the hotel, on location, off location, back into a car, right?
• 49:24
  Jacob Centeno: And so uh that's a lot of time, it's a lot of bending over.
• 49:30
  Jacob Centeno: And you know, if I was doing to be honest with you, if I was doing two of those a month, I'd be very tired.
• 49:36
  Jacob Centeno: I would.
• 49:37
  Vipul Bindra: Because like if it's a lot of work, yeah.
• 49:39
  Jacob Centeno: We did a week, it was a week of that job, and um, I could not do that like back to back, or I couldn't do two of those.
• 49:46
  Jacob Centeno: I could probably get by doing two of those a month, but um having you know, making an investment for myself, for my DP, for my crew is what you're talking about.
• 49:57
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, exactly.
• 49:58
  Jacob Centeno: That's what you're talking, and then the other thing is like you're adding more value because you're saying to all your clients, hey, I have I have all this stuff in my car, and that's just value added to you.
• 50:09
  Jacob Centeno: That's why you want to work with me next time because I bring this stuff.
• 50:12
  Vipul Bindra: But here's the thing none I can I can equally because I've been tracking.
• 50:16
  Vipul Bindra: That's what's the whole thing getting January 1st.
• 50:18
  Vipul Bindra: I can tell you none of the clients signed me up for that.
• 50:21
  Vipul Bindra: Now, the the value was there, like you said, the value added on that, saving that all that time, breaking down the carts, putting them back up, loading true value.
• 50:30
  Vipul Bindra: Uh obviously, you I don't know how to put a dollar number on that, right?
• 50:33
  Vipul Bindra: It would just have to be hours save times what I'm paying average or whatever.
• 50:37
  Vipul Bindra: Uh having calculated that.
• 50:39
  Vipul Bindra: But I can directly tell you not a single person outside of the two's jobs hired me because I had the van or cared.
• 50:47
  Vipul Bindra: Because even if I mentioned, yeah, we got cool van, and I was like, awesome, yeah.
• 50:50
  Vipul Bindra: Then they move on because they've already hired me.
• 50:52
  Vipul Bindra: If they're reaching out to me, we're talking about the project, they've already hired me.
• 50:55
  Vipul Bindra: Not a single person at all cared about the van.
• 50:59
  Vipul Bindra: Outside of, here's the funny thing, other filmmakers.
• 51:02
  Vipul Bindra: They learned about it, but it's cool.
• 51:04
  Vipul Bindra: Now, yes, was has the van been helpful?
• 51:06
  Vipul Bindra: Absolutely, like I said, saving my back, very helpful, but direct correlation to client, like where I can say, Oh, I have this van, you're all set.
• 51:15
  Vipul Bindra: They don't care, they already know that.
• 51:16
  Vipul Bindra: Um, you know, and and and um I don't know.
• 51:19
  Vipul Bindra: I I haven't been able to directly correlate to that.
• 51:22
  Vipul Bindra: Um, so it's I think more of a ease of use and efficiency gain than a financial gain.
• 51:28
  Vipul Bindra: Um, like I said, am I regretting it?
• 51:30
  Vipul Bindra: No, I'm saying I wouldn't change a thing because that's what I wanted.
• 51:32
  Vipul Bindra: I wanted to have everything out of hair somewhere for it to go.
• 51:36
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so that helps.
• 51:38
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but also being able to bring it to all the shoots, like Chicago shoot, it was so awesome.
• 51:42
  Vipul Bindra: I know we mentioned it multiple times, but being able to send Mario and Jared to just drive it all the way to Chicago, it's so easier.
• 51:48
  Vipul Bindra: That I got on a plane with literally nothing but a carry-on on me.
• 51:52
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, this is incredible.
• 51:53
  Vipul Bindra: Like, dude, not even have a backpack.
• 51:55
  Vipul Bindra: I'm talking like, you know, usually have a backpack, a carry-on, a couple of check bags.
• 51:59
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, yeah.
• 51:59
  Vipul Bindra: And and then you always bring lower tier gear because you know, not lower tier, but smaller gear for travel.
• 52:04
  Vipul Bindra: And here I am, I'm like, you're telling me this is all I have?
• 52:07
  Vipul Bindra: Uh you know, like uh Emmanuel was talking about.
• 52:09
  Vipul Bindra: We were we were a little disappointed.
• 52:11
  Vipul Bindra: We were put on Frontier.
• 52:12
  Vipul Bindra: Normally I would not be happy, but then I was like, you know what?
• 52:15
  Vipul Bindra: It doesn't matter.
• 52:15
  Vipul Bindra: I have no check back, I have nothing.
• 52:17
  Vipul Bindra: We just walked on the plane, put the carry on, sit down, chill, you know.
• 52:21
  Vipul Bindra: Like, I don't, I don't know.
• 52:22
  Vipul Bindra: Life was um it was nice.
• 52:25
  Vipul Bindra: I'm sure it wasn't the greatest for these guys who had to drive 20 hours.
• 52:29
  Vipul Bindra: And like you said, once we account for hotel time or whatever, 30 hours.
• 52:33
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but you know, uh, that's the advantage though.
• 52:36
  Vipul Bindra: That the advantage we had there was we were familiar with all the gear.
• 52:39
  Vipul Bindra: We opened the you know, the van and was like, everything's right here, everything's familiar, we know where everything goes, it's our gear.
• 52:46
  Vipul Bindra: The cost is also cheaper.
• 52:48
  Vipul Bindra: Because if you were you went to rent that half, and I say half, I mean it's probably way more now.
• 52:52
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, six, seven hundred thousand dollars worth of gear, it would be a lot of money to to to rent.
• 52:57
  Vipul Bindra: So so there was there was a benefit, I'm saying, to the van.
• 53:00
  Vipul Bindra: But again, it wasn't a cost benefit.
• 53:02
  Vipul Bindra: I didn't get paid more for having the van or sending the van there or whatever.
• 53:07
  Vipul Bindra: I hope that makes sense.
• 53:08
  Vipul Bindra: That's what I'm saying.
• 53:09
  Jacob Centeno: Uh, I don't know yet, and I guess I I can't wait to find out in a year or two if you do it, and you you can cost benefit analysis that so yeah, the way that the way that I've I've kind of built my company because you're right, you have, and it's interesting because I think we've built our companies in different ways, and we have, you know, I think you have more successful ways than I do, and I do think there's things that I can share that will help you.
• 53:35
  Jacob Centeno: So, like one of those is I kind of I kind of like for it's interesting.
• 53:42
  Jacob Centeno: I have different discussions with my clients retroactively.
• 53:46
  Jacob Centeno: So for instance, they say I'll have clients say, Hey, I uh noticed that the invoice um changed for this, like last year over year, it looks like uh a little bit more under this line item, under production or under post-production.
• 54:02
  Jacob Centeno: And then I'll explain whatever, like I'll explain, okay, good.
• 54:06
  Jacob Centeno: Um, I didn't know, I just wanted to know, just wanted to make sure there wasn't a mistake, or we're all good.
• 54:12
  Jacob Centeno: But what's interesting is like I just do my best to kind of cover the overarching cost of my assets or whatever.
• 54:24
  Jacob Centeno: So when I make a new investment, so like the van or whatever, I will then create an averaged-out cost and just our package overall.
• 54:33
  Jacob Centeno: So the package goes up, you know, the day rate goes up.
• 54:36
  Jacob Centeno: Um and you're the way I see it is is for me, for most of my work, you're buying the company for a day.
• 54:43
  Jacob Centeno: You're buying the company for a week.
• 54:45
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 54:46
  Jacob Centeno: And so we bring the assets, we bring the resources, the crew.
• 54:50
  Jacob Centeno: Um, I will I will uh talk with a client and advocate for maybe more crew, like things that are bigger line items, but as far as the the the company acquisition for a day, I there it's like a non-negotiable, right?
• 55:06
  Jacob Centeno: It's like, hey, you're acquiring director's monitors or my like seven different lighting packages, and I'm gonna choose what is gonna serve us the best, right?
• 55:19
  Jacob Centeno: Um no, that totally makes sense because that is the value that you provide.
• 55:23
  Jacob Centeno: But what's interesting is that I've had clients like because you say, like, oh, cool, you know, you show up on set and clients are like, oh, that's a really cool van, or that's it, that's the extent of it.
• 55:34
  Jacob Centeno: But what's the way I've had those conversations of like my investments, clients bringing up my investments is like, oh, in the invoice, it's like, oh, I could you explain what goes into production?
• 55:47
  Jacob Centeno: It's like, yeah, this, this, this, this.
• 55:49
  Jacob Centeno: And then they're like, Oh, okay, cool, I'm good with that.
• 55:52
  Jacob Centeno: And that's how I feel that appreciation for my investments that I make.
• 55:57
  Vipul Bindra: Makes sense.
• 55:57
  Vipul Bindra: See, I haven't had that client, and maybe that's the the difference of clientele, uh, because I I don't have I don't give uh first of all, there's two types of clients a service, right?
• 56:06
  Vipul Bindra: One is end clients, uh, that's where I make the majority of my money.
• 56:10
  Vipul Bindra: The second is um either agencies, or I'll say, even though it could be a third element, but helping other friends or other production companies, that's more like a minor thing, but I'll I'll lump it together.
• 56:21
  Vipul Bindra: When I'm working with sure agencies or other production companies or my friends, then yes, equipment's a big talk.
• 56:26
  Vipul Bindra: Like, hey, we want to use two FX6s, we can use two FX3s, sure, we'll use your 1200X or your 600X, whatever.
• 56:32
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, sure, whatever.
• 56:33
  Vipul Bindra: Here's the price, pay it.
• 56:35
  Vipul Bindra: But it's the lowest chunk.
• 56:36
  Vipul Bindra: I make the lowest money when I do that.
• 56:38
  Vipul Bindra: Like you, for example, hired me.
• 56:39
  Vipul Bindra: Then yeah, we could talk about gear, what we're gonna use, the van as an asset for probably hiring me or whatever.
• 56:44
  Vipul Bindra: But where I make the biggest chunk of money, we don't talk about that.
• 56:48
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, like for example, the meeting that Mario was talking about, the client called me.
• 56:52
  Vipul Bindra: Like they said, like, hey, we want this.
• 56:54
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, you know how much this costs, so what's the budget?
• 56:57
  Vipul Bindra: Because you know, whoever says the first number is the one who loses, right?
• 57:00
  Vipul Bindra: And and and again, I I I don't want to go too deep into the psychology of it, but my thing is I want to know, and and this isn't a new client, they know how much production costs.
• 57:09
  Vipul Bindra: And they they themselves were like, Well, yeah, this is how much this costs, this is gonna be about this much, so it's gonna come out to this much.
• 57:15
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, Well, then there you go.
• 57:17
  Vipul Bindra: That's the number.
• 57:17
  Vipul Bindra: Can you do it?
• 57:18
  Vipul Bindra: I did not say anything, right?
• 57:20
  Vipul Bindra: I am literally asking them, and they said, Yes.
• 57:22
  Vipul Bindra: And I now, of course, I'm not just arbitrarily coming in my brain.
• 57:26
  Vipul Bindra: I'm going, can I do this for the number they said?
• 57:28
  Vipul Bindra: How can I execute?
• 57:29
  Vipul Bindra: Can I do that?
• 57:30
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, a little tight, a little hair, good, but yes, I can make that happen.
• 57:33
  Vipul Bindra: And then that they we basically I'm like, so that's good.
• 57:36
  Vipul Bindra: Can I send you a proposal?
• 57:38
  Vipul Bindra: They're like, Yeah, we can work with that.
• 57:39
  Vipul Bindra: And I sent the proposal in.
• 57:40
  Vipul Bindra: Life couldn't be any simpler, easiest thing ever.
• 57:43
  Vipul Bindra: And that's very common for me because uh what I'm trying to say is there's no value.
• 57:48
  Vipul Bindra: Then I the proposal did not at one point say uh pre-production, production, post-production.
• 57:54
  Vipul Bindra: That's how I did in 2018.
• 57:55
  Vipul Bindra: I've I left that a long time ago.
• 57:57
  Vipul Bindra: The only thing I define in the contract is minimums.
• 57:59
  Vipul Bindra: Like, hey, you're gonna have minimum three production days, you're gonna have three-person crew, and you will have three cameras, just something so that there's a bare minimum for them, they can justify like what they're signing.
• 58:09
  Vipul Bindra: Like they will have this.
• 58:10
  Vipul Bindra: But I'm not doing that.
• 58:12
  Vipul Bindra: That's not why you hire Bendra.
• 58:13
  Vipul Bindra: I'm gonna show up with six cameras and six crew members, and we're gonna be there for six hours, uh, six days.
• 58:18
  Vipul Bindra: That's why I told my clients when they called, they were like, you know, um, they were like, hey, I just want to understand this because they do have, you know, when they were about to sign, I was like, hey, just so you know, this is the bare minimum you're gonna get, right?
• 58:29
  Vipul Bindra: You know me.
• 58:30
  Vipul Bindra: Every time I show up, I show up with an extra camera or extra person.
• 58:32
  Vipul Bindra: So this is the bare minimum you're gonna get.
• 58:34
  Vipul Bindra: That's what you're signing with me.
• 58:36
  Vipul Bindra: But just so you know, next two months, you will basically have full access to my company.
• 58:40
  Vipul Bindra: And you know, within reason, we're not gonna say no to you.
• 58:43
  Vipul Bindra: And they know that because you know you have a relationship, I wouldn't do this with a new client.
• 58:46
  Vipul Bindra: Right.
• 58:46
  Vipul Bindra: And they were like, absolutely, yeah, it makes sense.
• 58:49
  Vipul Bindra: Signed.
• 58:50
  Vipul Bindra: Easiest thing ever, right?
• 58:51
  Vipul Bindra: Invoice sent, payment received.
• 58:53
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, so point I'm trying to make is at no point was van a factor, equipment a factor, what camera was a factor, the number of crew was a factor.
• 59:01
  Vipul Bindra: And honestly, what I told them, it sounds funny.
• 59:04
  Vipul Bindra: If I told you, hey, give me 60 grand for three shoot days with three part people with three cameras, you would literally look at it and be like, uh, what?
• 59:11
  Vipul Bindra: No, thank you.
• 59:12
  Vipul Bindra: Right?
• 59:12
  Vipul Bindra: That sounds crazy, right?
• 59:13
  Vipul Bindra: But that's not what they actually bought.
• 59:15
  Vipul Bindra: What they bought is access to my entire team, my post-production team, pre-production, and days and days.
• 59:20
  Vipul Bindra: If they call me, I'm on call.
• 59:22
  Vipul Bindra: And not just them, there's multiple projects happening.
• 59:25
  Vipul Bindra: So if they I I literally told her, I was like, hey, do not go by this.
• 59:28
  Vipul Bindra: You tell me the day you need me, one of us is gonna be there, you know, to get that little thing because it's a little project over a long time.
• 59:36
  Vipul Bindra: It's like if we need to get this tiny thing, we're gonna be there.
• 59:39
  Vipul Bindra: I'm 30 minutes away.
• 59:40
  Vipul Bindra: I just need a 30-minute notice.
• 59:42
  Vipul Bindra: And even if I'm not in town, because I'm about to head to you know, Missouri, uh, I'm gonna send Mario.
• 59:46
  Vipul Bindra: Or if Mario's not available, I'm gonna get another person, right?
• 59:49
  Vipul Bindra: I have enough chain of people to call, but they're gonna get someone there for the 30 minutes that they need to capture whatever they need to capture.
• 59:56
  Vipul Bindra: And that's that's why they pay me the money, right?
• 59:59
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, I know exactly what you were saying, but I'm saying at no point did what I say, rather, I'm saying it's funny.
• 1:00:04
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, if they compare this code to anyone else with the price point, it looks stupid.
• 1:00:10
  Vipul Bindra: It makes no sense.
• 1:00:11
  Jacob Centeno: Well, and I want to say, you know, there's a way that it's like a little ah, was it uh is either the future or Blair Ends?
• 1:00:22
  Jacob Centeno: Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with those two, but they they go over a lot of sales proposals, yeah.
• 1:00:27
  Vipul Bindra: Chris Dow, right?
• 1:00:28
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, Chris Dough.
• 1:00:29
  Jacob Centeno: But um, there was an interesting, I picked it up years ago, and it was like, what is, you know, you take a job or you give you submit a proposal, but what is the amount of money where they your client calls you at one in the morning, you look at your phone, and you see your client's name.
• 1:00:47
  Jacob Centeno: What is the amount of money where you're gonna pick up the phone or hang up the phone or you're gonna go, hey, how you doing?
• 1:00:54
  Jacob Centeno: What what what can I do for you?
• 1:00:56
  Jacob Centeno: And that is that's a that's a great self-check for yourself because I think we we we have different experiences, we have different backgrounds, we have different uh resources available to us, insights, wisdom around what we do.
• 1:01:13
  Jacob Centeno: And that's what obviously the the client is paying for, right?
• 1:01:18
  Jacob Centeno: They're paying for all that, that access, right?
• 1:01:21
  Jacob Centeno: And so they do call, they do have questions.
• 1:01:24
  Jacob Centeno: It's like Saturday at noon, they're in the middle of an event, they want to talk to you now.
• 1:01:28
  Jacob Centeno: And so when they when they call you and you see that phone, there it has to be a number, yeah, right?
• 1:01:35
  Jacob Centeno: Because it it's like I've had I've had clients that are like, hey, DP rate, one day, 1500 bucks, and I'm like, yeah, cool, but I also know that you call at 9 p.m.
• 1:01:48
  Jacob Centeno: or I know that you call twice a week leading up to the thing, and it's not worth it.
• 1:01:54
  Jacob Centeno: I don't, I won't take it.
• 1:01:55
  Jacob Centeno: Exactly.
• 1:01:55
  Vipul Bindra: It's one thing if you just show up, do the job, you leave, but versus the amount of hours you're spending on it.
• 1:02:00
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:02:01
  Jacob Centeno: Versus having peace about like, yeah, this is a twenty thousand dollar job or a thirty thousand dollar job.
• 1:02:09
  Jacob Centeno: And it's like, no problem, call me whenever you want.
• 1:02:12
  Jacob Centeno: Like, if you have any questions at all, I don't mind you calling on the weekends.
• 1:02:17
  Jacob Centeno: Exactly.
• 1:02:17
  Vipul Bindra: No, I completely agree with you because certain clients will do that.
• 1:02:20
  Vipul Bindra: I will tell you.
• 1:02:21
  Vipul Bindra: They will at 3 p.m.
• 1:02:22
  Vipul Bindra: You're spending time with your family on a Sunday trying to watch Formula One.
• 1:02:26
  Vipul Bindra: They will call you and say, Hey, you got a minute for a chat?
• 1:02:28
  Vipul Bindra: And you have to go, yes or no?
• 1:02:30
  Vipul Bindra: And usually my answer is yes.
• 1:02:31
  Vipul Bindra: And that comes from just picking clients that you do want to work with, right?
• 1:02:34
  Vipul Bindra: If and I and I agree with you, if I don't feel like that about it, normally, let me remove February and March.
• 1:02:41
  Vipul Bindra: Those were the weird months for me.
• 1:02:42
  Vipul Bindra: But normally, yeah, for years, uh, it's been a long time since I would say after COVID, I have not taken a client where I'm like, I don't feel like I can give you my 100%.
• 1:02:51
  Vipul Bindra: And my whole thing is whatever price point, I do it that way.
• 1:02:54
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, I don't care if the budget is five grand or the budget is fifty grand or four hundred thousand or five hundred thousand, whatever.
• 1:03:01
  Vipul Bindra: Like the their scale of business.
• 1:03:03
  Vipul Bindra: Now, obviously, we already know if it's a five grand shoot, I'm only gonna commit to them one shoot day, you know, one post-production edit uh with one pre-production meeting, right?
• 1:03:13
  Vipul Bindra: So they kind of aware of it.
• 1:03:15
  Vipul Bindra: But if they call me for a few questions, usually when I'm saying one of that shoots, like, what do I wear?
• 1:03:19
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, are you are you guys gonna have microphones?
• 1:03:21
  Vipul Bindra: Like, I don't know.
• 1:03:22
  Vipul Bindra: I guess they don't get it.
• 1:03:22
  Vipul Bindra: Like, yeah, yes, we're gonna bring everything.
• 1:03:24
  Vipul Bindra: But what I'm saying is, but I try to at least personally make myself available uh 24-7 to my clients, but I do agree with you.
• 1:03:33
  Vipul Bindra: If I don't feel my heart's in it, I'd rather not take the project.
• 1:03:36
  Vipul Bindra: The only time I did that was, like I said, those two slow months.
• 1:03:38
  Vipul Bindra: Uh was, and again, even it wasn't that negative, it was just taking projects that I'm not usually a fan of.
• 1:03:43
  Vipul Bindra: And then I had to go back.
• 1:03:44
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, hey, what a uh like don't say yes if you're not happy with these projects.
• 1:03:48
  Vipul Bindra: Yes.
• 1:03:48
  Vipul Bindra: And like I said, as long as bounced back, and I was like, yeah, never.
• 1:03:51
  Vipul Bindra: And it was a good reminder, like, I'm hey, I'm taking projects just because slow.
• 1:03:55
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:03:55
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm just taking them to fulfill the full uh fill the calendar up.
• 1:03:58
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but you're right, you don't want to you want to take projects that your heart's not in it.
• 1:04:02
  Vipul Bindra: 100%.
• 1:04:02
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, you hit it on the head.
• 1:04:04
  Jacob Centeno: No, I mean, you learn through hard examples, like you have to learn hard lessons.
• 1:04:12
  Jacob Centeno: Like, I would have rather had said no to this.
• 1:04:14
  Jacob Centeno: And so, and that's why I did and have and continue to say no to a lot of projects.
• 1:04:20
  Jacob Centeno: It's like sometimes the money is there, sometimes it kind of makes sense, but I also know the the like peace that I'll have if I don't that I'm giving up, if I'm like yeah, stressed out or you know, bending my usual framework or processes to meet their needs, and it doesn't fit with anything I do.
• 1:04:41
  Jacob Centeno: It's like the and the other thing is I said no to a job recently, it was a week-long job, uh multi-crew.
• 1:04:48
  Jacob Centeno: And um what and and it was with the agency I used to work with, and I would have I I would have liked I I did the job uh for like four years in a row, once, twice a year.
• 1:05:02
  Jacob Centeno: Really fun job, uh lots of perks, lots of great food, uh lots of fun.
• 1:05:08
  Jacob Centeno: But what I realized was I I actually only say yes to similar jobs when it's in my niche now.
• 1:05:18
  Jacob Centeno: So like if if it's if if I'm uh like donating, proffering any amount of services, taking a uh like a discount or budget cut or whatever, or like uh doing any kind of free work, um it's it may only make sense for me to do that with my niche.
• 1:05:39
  Jacob Centeno: And so now it's so much easier to say no to everything.
• 1:05:44
  Jacob Centeno: It's like it's not in your it's not in my niche, uh but but hey, if you're in my niche and like you're not sure if you have the budget or the resources to work with me, it doesn't matter.
• 1:05:54
  Jacob Centeno: Call me now.
• 1:05:55
  Jacob Centeno: Like let's talk now because there's still a win win.
• 1:05:59
  Jacob Centeno: Where your network, your connections, your sponsoring companies, yeah, like or setting up a booth or getting uh being on a panel at your event in front of your clients and stuff like that.
• 1:06:13
  Jacob Centeno: So there's value that you can gain.
• 1:06:15
  Jacob Centeno: So there is, there is a ton of value, and but it has to be in your niche.
• 1:06:19
  Jacob Centeno: And um, I did a I tried to do a YouTube video on uh doing free videos, all the free videos I've done.
• 1:06:27
  Jacob Centeno: And um it came out okay, but essentially what I was trying to say was like do it in your niche.
• 1:06:34
  Jacob Centeno: Like, you know, I know a lot of videographers and photographers who either like, oh, I gotta get at bats, I gotta do free work.
• 1:06:44
  Jacob Centeno: It's like it I've learned through doing a lot of that that a lot of it didn't serve me in the long run.
• 1:06:52
  Jacob Centeno: You know, and what did serve me in the long run was when I started to like find my niche and and then the relationships in that niche, it was like I was carving a path and everybody in that path was getting word of mouth, that free work has always paid off for me.
• 1:07:10
  Jacob Centeno: Whereas you look at all the other free work I've done and it's like yeah, dead.
• 1:07:14
  Vipul Bindra: It's just exactly I think I I I I've always for free work as long as you volunteer.
• 1:07:20
  Vipul Bindra: My my my position on free work has always been if somebody is asking you to do free work for them, usually the answer is no because you know it's it's not the right dynamic.
• 1:07:31
  Vipul Bindra: But it's totally okay for you to do free work for other people, if that makes sense.
• 1:07:35
  Vipul Bindra: It's okay to volunteer like, hey, I love what your cause, I love what you're doing.
• 1:07:38
  Vipul Bindra: Let me come, like I said, sponsor this, make a video, whatever.
• 1:07:42
  Vipul Bindra: Because at the end, they it's a mutually beneficial relationship because now you wanted to do free work for them and they understand that the value they're getting is your your services and your video that's gonna help them gain whatever you're gonna do for them.
• 1:07:54
  Vipul Bindra: But now you're also benefiting because they from adding it to your portfolio, your reel, or just getting those networking connections or whatever.
• 1:08:02
  Vipul Bindra: I think it's totally worth it because at the end, nothing uh you know, you're gonna get something out of it, whether that's experience, whether that's you know, more clients or just uh connect or whatever it is.
• 1:08:14
  Vipul Bindra: I'm saying it uh I I totally believe in free work, especially if you know you're like, hey, what you know, if you sit down and you say, What would I be doing right now?
• 1:08:22
  Vipul Bindra: What can I do like that I really want to do?
• 1:08:24
  Vipul Bindra: And if it's if you can go achieve that just by and you have to do it for free, I would.
• 1:08:29
  Vipul Bindra: To me, that's worth it.
• 1:08:30
  Vipul Bindra: But now, like I said, the only time I say no is like that, uh, the opposite, where somebody calls you is like, hey, come make this video for free, man.
• 1:08:36
  Vipul Bindra: I'll give you exposure.
• 1:08:37
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, uh, exposure doesn't pay bills, no, thank you.
• 1:08:40
  Vipul Bindra: No, yeah, because that dynamic dynamic is completely wrong, right?
• 1:08:43
  Vipul Bindra: That's where they're just taking advantage of you.
• 1:08:45
  Vipul Bindra: There's no guarantee you'll get any return but exposure.
• 1:08:48
  Vipul Bindra: And that's as we all know, exposure bucks don't pay anything.
• 1:08:51
  Jacob Centeno: No, and I totally agree with you.
• 1:08:54
  Jacob Centeno: Like, there's a massive conversation.
• 1:08:56
  Jacob Centeno: So I'll give one example of like where it worked out really, really well for me.
• 1:09:01
  Jacob Centeno: So I had um a nonprofit reach out to me asking me if I could cover a multi-day event, it was like a four-day long event for them, and I got all the information I needed, and I felt like it was gonna be a two-person job.
• 1:09:18
  Jacob Centeno: And at the time, I want to say I quoted them probably like 10 10 grand, like eight to ten grand.
• 1:09:26
  Jacob Centeno: I do give a discount for nonprofits in my niche, and so uh they got back to me after I gave them my number, and they said that they actually only had three.
• 1:09:38
  Jacob Centeno: And so I what I did was I pulled an operator, and so I said, I'll that covers the operator, and then I'll pay for all post-production, like I'll I'll donate post-production, and I will allow the operator to do like two full days or like uh you know, just we'll be very particular about the time the operator is there to get the most out of them for you guys.
• 1:10:05
  Jacob Centeno: So they were like, wow, that sounds amazing! Like, we'll still get a highlight video and all this stuff.
• 1:10:10
  Jacob Centeno: And I was like, Yeah.
• 1:10:11
  Jacob Centeno: So we they booked us, right?
• 1:10:15
  Jacob Centeno: Three three thousand.
• 1:10:16
  Jacob Centeno: I booked the operator.
• 1:10:17
  Jacob Centeno: Two weeks later, I get a call from somebody and they're like, Hey, we work for um it's a consultant group up in DC, uh very, very well-known consulting company, and the nonprofit referred me to the yeah, and get like that's I don't know, probably been like uh like 200, you know, in the last couple of years, and it'll probably be another so guys.
• 1:10:45
  Jacob Centeno: I took a loss of what 7,000 for 200?
• 1:10:48
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it's totally worth it.
• 1:10:49
  Vipul Bindra: It's like the best marketing you can do, and that's why I'm like I totally uh like why video because it's uh all about doing the right thing and uh it comes back, but but you also have to do it with the intention of it not coming back.
• 1:11:02
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like also when you're already like, if I do this, they may refer me and I may get something.
• 1:11:07
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like that already, again, you start with that negative, I don't know, um, energy that just doesn't work.
• 1:11:12
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like if you just go out there, do good, do positive, you're like, hey, I want to help this nonprofit.
• 1:11:18
  Vipul Bindra: They're being honest with me, like they're being upfront with me, what we can do.
• 1:11:22
  Vipul Bindra: You want to be part of it, you help them, you know, and then hopefully something good comes out of it.
• 1:11:27
  Vipul Bindra: But you know, uh, and it did.
• 1:11:29
  Vipul Bindra: I think it's incredible.
• 1:11:30
  Vipul Bindra: And if you do that on a daily basis, I'm not saying discount your services for everyone, but you know when I help where help help is needed, yeah.
• 1:11:37
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like, and and even with clients who can pay full price, just do right by them.
• 1:11:41
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like it always comes back tenfold.
• 1:11:43
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, you'll get a referral that may be worth 10x the money, or you may get connects somewhere where you've been trying to get into, or it may just be access um, you know, to somewhere you want to have access to, or it may just be nothing but somebody, you know, you help with and they're always grateful.
• 1:11:58
  Vipul Bindra: It doesn't have to be something major, you know.
• 1:12:00
  Vipul Bindra: I've had where we've helped uh like I don't know, a government agency or whatever, um, or state agency, let's say more, uh, you know, state government agency where they were like so thankful.
• 1:12:11
  Vipul Bindra: They were like, This is this is so amazing.
• 1:12:13
  Vipul Bindra: And then, like I said, not expecting it, they did refer us some people that came to them and they were like, Oh, talk to Bendra or whatever.
• 1:12:19
  Vipul Bindra: You know, they made our videos, uh, and here you go, here's the video.
• 1:12:23
  Vipul Bindra: So you never know.
• 1:12:24
  Vipul Bindra: I'm saying we never did that with their intention because they came up, they're like, This is the RFP.
• 1:12:27
  Vipul Bindra: Our current part people who won the RFP dropped out.
• 1:12:30
  Vipul Bindra: So do you want it?
• 1:12:31
  Vipul Bindra: This is all it is, and and please tell us what you're donating, because they knew we would be donating our our portion of our services, and because you know, then they can report it back to whatever agency, like, hey, look, this is how much we got donation back.
• 1:12:45
  Vipul Bindra: Um, uh, so uh so anyway, I'm saying it's a win-win without we us trying to.
• 1:12:50
  Vipul Bindra: It was just us like, hey, is it this do we want to do this?
• 1:12:53
  Vipul Bindra: Absolutely.
• 1:12:54
  Vipul Bindra: You know, now how can we write off this amount?
• 1:12:56
  Vipul Bindra: Where can we get this extra portion?
• 1:12:59
  Vipul Bindra: Sure, profit is the easiest thing, right?
• 1:13:00
  Vipul Bindra: You're like, sure, we want to make profit.
• 1:13:02
  Vipul Bindra: Then it's like, I have costs, I gotta pay it, like you say, operators.
• 1:13:05
  Vipul Bindra: I gotta pay for posts, I gotta pay for all this extra thing, uh, and I gotta pay for my time.
• 1:13:10
  Vipul Bindra: And obviously, I'm not paying myself, but I'm like, where am I gonna make that back?
• 1:13:13
  Vipul Bindra: Right, you have to do other projects where you make that back.
• 1:13:16
  Vipul Bindra: So, either way, I mean that's on us to figure out, not for them.
• 1:13:19
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but like I say, uh, I've never been burned ever, uh, where I genuinely try to help someone with nothing that I wanted in return.
• 1:13:28
  Vipul Bindra: And I at least for me, like I said, this is 101.
• 1:13:31
  Vipul Bindra: And again, I guess you're there, your your ex examples are amazing too.
• 1:13:35
  Vipul Bindra: So I would just say run your business how you want to be, you know, treated.
• 1:13:38
  Vipul Bindra: And I think usually works out, right?
• 1:13:41
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:13:41
  Vipul Bindra: So tell us people about your niche.
• 1:13:43
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, hopefully they they they listen to season one episode, but like I know your your your niche is so interesting what you do and who you help.
• 1:13:51
  Jacob Centeno: So yeah, so it so when after my dad was killed in Afghanistan in 2005, which the 20th anniversary was actually yesterday, the June 28th.
• 1:14:04
  Jacob Centeno: Hate to date your podcast.
• 1:14:05
  Jacob Centeno: I'm sorry.
• 1:14:05
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, if this comes out in like seven months.
• 1:14:08
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, probably.
• 1:14:09
  Vipul Bindra: I'm just kidding.
• 1:14:10
  Jacob Centeno: But uh yeah, so 20th anniversary, and uh after losing, I was 15 at the time, and and so immediately I found out that I had a scholarship to go to college, that it that my uh college education would would be uh entirely paid for.
• 1:14:27
  Jacob Centeno: And so by several organizations, nonprofit organizations, so when I by the time I graduated, I just felt like I I truly felt like I I I owed so much.
• 1:14:38
  Jacob Centeno: And I know a lot of people would say, like, my dad made the sacrifice and that was there for me.
• 1:14:44
  Jacob Centeno: People made the decision to donate to stuff like that, but I was just so grateful for for my education and all that I got.
• 1:14:52
  Jacob Centeno: And so I dedicated so much time to raising money for those same foundations, working for them.
• 1:14:59
  Jacob Centeno: Uh work, you know, I worked in Jacksonville, Florida for uh foundation for a year.
• 1:15:05
  Jacob Centeno: I did some pretty crazy, like I did a low-to-high challenge, which was eight days from Death Valley to Mount Whitney.
• 1:15:13
  Jacob Centeno: It was like a over a hundred miles, like 40,000 feet in elevation elevation gain and loss.
• 1:15:18
  Jacob Centeno: My feet were done, I was dying at the end.
• 1:15:21
  Jacob Centeno: And I I did it like a lot of stuff like that to just pay it forward, pay it back, and that lasted about 10 years.
• 1:15:30
  Jacob Centeno: And and after 10 years, I started to sort of fall into video production.
• 1:15:37
  Jacob Centeno: So when I picked up a camera, a lot of those people were like, Come tell our story, and that's really how I fell in my niche.
• 1:15:48
  Jacob Centeno: I I did do a lot of other stuff.
• 1:15:49
  Jacob Centeno: I got ex when I worked, I had a portfolio of that stuff.
• 1:15:53
  Jacob Centeno: When I moved to Orlando, that job gave me exposure to restaurants, hotels, uh construction, uh I mean you you name it, like uh nonprofit organizations, a lot of stuff.
• 1:16:11
  Jacob Centeno: And so I got I I I I learned how to use the camera for kind of anything, to tell a story anywhere with any amount of time.
• 1:16:18
  Jacob Centeno: And so, excuse me, when I started my company, I had the experience to produce quality uh at scale, and and and then my niche was like almost even more hungry.
• 1:16:34
  Jacob Centeno: Like they saw that the quality was there, they saw the quantity was there, and so it was the rest is history.
• 1:16:41
  Jacob Centeno: Uh a lot of the nonprofits that g paid it uh towards me and and commemorating my dad's sacrifice and with the gifts that they they've you know given for my family, they ended up hiring us to do a lot of work, and that honestly, like a handful of like two, three organizations gave us exposure to their donor base.
• 1:17:08
  Jacob Centeno: And so the story was hey, that's Jacob.
• 1:17:12
  Jacob Centeno: We paid for his college, now he started a video company, now he's doing video for us.
• 1:17:16
  Jacob Centeno: And then a defense executive sitting at that same table was like, well, maybe he can do it for our company.
• 1:17:21
  Jacob Centeno: Let me put him in touch with our our guys.
• 1:17:23
  Jacob Centeno: And so just it was just my story.
• 1:17:26
  Jacob Centeno: It was like, it was where I fit, it was organic.
• 1:17:29
  Jacob Centeno: Like I wanted to pay it forward, so I was helping them.
• 1:17:32
  Jacob Centeno: And then the people in the room saw that, respected it, and wanted to invite me.
• 1:17:37
  Jacob Centeno: And so that's how over the last three years, uh, we really when we started our company, we spent two years kind of doing a little bit of everything.
• 1:17:46
  Jacob Centeno: Like we were, we were just putting food on the table.
• 1:17:49
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, but then really for the last three years, we we just dove into our niche.
• 1:17:54
  Jacob Centeno: And so now a majority of our money or revenue does come from from sort for profit contracting companies, defense and intelligence companies.
• 1:18:07
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and it's it's it's it's a crazy niche.
• 1:18:10
  Jacob Centeno: Like the people that come to me, I'm like, what do you do?
• 1:18:12
  Jacob Centeno: Like, oh, you know, we're we're yeah doing some pretty gnarly stuff and all over the world.
• 1:18:18
  Jacob Centeno: And I'm like, all right, let's do a video.
• 1:18:20
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, that's like so crazy to think about, yeah, who your clients are.
• 1:18:24
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, to be honest, we had like a missile designer last year who's a videographer on the on this show.
• 1:18:29
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, what's your day job again?
• 1:18:31
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, you work for one of these defense contractors making yeah uh missiles or designing missiles, and now you're like also going in filming somebody's wedding.
• 1:18:39
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, the the the the the contrast couldn't be you know like more, I'm just saying.
• 1:18:44
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so so, but at least I like your motivation.
• 1:18:48
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, you were just giving back because you were given so much because of what you went through, and you were like, hey, let me go give back to this community, and now it's giving back, giving you more tenfold back.
• 1:19:01
  Vipul Bindra: I know.
• 1:19:01
  Vipul Bindra: This is how it works, right?
• 1:19:03
  Jacob Centeno: I keep trying to pay it back and it keeps like, no, stop, I'm never gonna get out of debt.
• 1:19:07
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:19:08
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you'll always owe them debt, right?
• 1:19:10
  Vipul Bindra: Because but that's pretty cool though.
• 1:19:12
  Vipul Bindra: I think it makes purpose, you know.
• 1:19:14
  Vipul Bindra: Not that, you know, like I said, what you're doing is awesome.
• 1:19:17
  Vipul Bindra: I love video.
• 1:19:18
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like everyone needs a video.
• 1:19:20
  Vipul Bindra: But to have a mission behind it, to have a purpose behind it, um, you know, I don't know.
• 1:19:25
  Vipul Bindra: It just makes it worthwhile.
• 1:19:26
  Vipul Bindra: Like uh, like I said, I love what I do.
• 1:19:29
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but sometimes, you know, we get projects where we get to promote where we actually are making a difference.
• 1:19:34
  Vipul Bindra: That's why I love those projects because I'm like, yes, I don't mind promoting this company's bicycle or uh chemicals or products or whatever.
• 1:19:42
  Vipul Bindra: That's fine, that's good.
• 1:19:43
  Vipul Bindra: I like I like it, I like what I do.
• 1:19:45
  Vipul Bindra: But then when you help a company, like last year that the documentary where, you know, uh Six Minutes to Live, where we were talking about like cardiac arrest, sudden cardiac arrest, and uh raising awareness could actually save lives.
• 1:19:57
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, this is incredible.
• 1:19:59
  Vipul Bindra: You know, I'm happy to be part of this because uh not only is it we're making great images, right?
• 1:20:04
  Vipul Bindra: We're here to tell the story of what we love, like love doing video production, but now this this story is gonna most likely go out and make waves and impact.
• 1:20:13
  Vipul Bindra: And I don't know, it just feels good, right?
• 1:20:15
  Vipul Bindra: Uh on the inside, you're like, hey, my work makes a difference, you know, even though nobody's gonna see us, we're we're behind the scenes what we're doing, but they're gonna see the the impact that we're making, and I think that's to me worth it, yeah.
• 1:20:27
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and I just want to echo what you said with we love what we do.
• 1:20:33
  Jacob Centeno: I I remember going through COVID and I was working for the agency and we were at Mission Inn up in Howie in the Hills, and it's it's it's like 30 minutes north of Clermont, for those of you who aren't around or know the area, but they had to they had to let go of a lot of their staff and it was privately owned.
• 1:20:57
  Jacob Centeno: And I remember I showed up one day and there was a there was a uh a housekeeper who they wanted us to like tell her story, and it and she she was like a uh uh a 9-11 survivor, like she was she was at the towers when they fell.
• 1:21:13
  Jacob Centeno: And like she was like a housekeeper, and like she was like surviving through uh the pandemic and she was working for her family, and and it was just like that's why I love what I do.
• 1:21:25
  Jacob Centeno: It's for me, and and I can really find that in almost any job.
• 1:21:29
  Jacob Centeno: Like I've never been on a I mean I have been on a couple of jobs where I'm like I shouldn't be here right now, like this is really bad.
• 1:21:35
  Jacob Centeno: This is dumb.
• 1:21:36
  Jacob Centeno: But for the most part, it's been great to just tell people's stories and and and when you're interviewing or when you're getting to know subjects to really make them feel seen and to hear them and to listen to their story, and then and then to give them a platform, right?
• 1:21:58
  Jacob Centeno: Because that's what so much of our work is is we're we're you know, we're making people uh not famous, but we're giving them a platform, we're giving them a voice.
• 1:22:07
  Jacob Centeno: We're we're saying, hey, this is important, they're important, listen to what they have to say, and we're gonna polish it up so that uh you know the message is succinct, it's it's it's very clear.
• 1:22:17
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 1:22:18
  Jacob Centeno: And uh and when you give that to people, it's really, really rewarding.
• 1:22:22
  Jacob Centeno: And and it's a cool power to have.
• 1:22:25
  Vipul Bindra: That's awesome.
• 1:22:26
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, no, I like I said, that's that's what makes I think most successful people in video successful, and I think it's pretty much actually everything.
• 1:22:33
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, you know, if you love what you do, it just makes it easier.
• 1:22:36
  Vipul Bindra: It makes it easier to be awesome at it, it makes it easier for you to put the day in, day out, the hard work that goes behind the fun parts, right?
• 1:22:44
  Vipul Bindra: Because sure the shoots are fun, we're telling these stories, the hours and hours of non-fun that it takes, you know, it makes you want to just do that because you're like, hey, I love what I do, right?
• 1:22:54
  Vipul Bindra: It makes it worth it.
• 1:22:55
  Vipul Bindra: Um, switching gears, I want to talk pricing strategy.
• 1:22:57
  Vipul Bindra: Because I feel like we've thrown, we're uh you know, we've thrown so many numbers at people.
• 1:23:02
  Vipul Bindra: If somebody's listening and they don't know you and me, they're like 50,000, 40,000, 200,000.
• 1:23:06
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it's like, what are you talking about?
• 1:23:09
  Vipul Bindra: I can't make a you know a living here, I can make 50 grand.
• 1:23:11
  Vipul Bindra: So to give people an idea of pricing structure, like how to price videos, I feel like that's something that's for some reason it's the simplest thing, but it's gate kept a lot.
• 1:23:21
  Vipul Bindra: And even for me, when I started out, I'm like, I have no idea how to price, you know, because nobody wants to tell you that.
• 1:23:26
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like it'd be really cool to like, I don't know, talk about that.
• 1:23:30
  Vipul Bindra: Like, how do you price?
• 1:23:32
  Vipul Bindra: And I get it, it's there's levels to it, obviously, when you're starting, when you're mid tier, but anyway, talk about your pricing strategy.
• 1:23:38
  Vipul Bindra: How would you price a project?
• 1:23:39
  Vipul Bindra: How do you approach it?
• 1:23:40
  Vipul Bindra: How do you pick numbers that you know things like that?
• 1:23:44
  Jacob Centeno: So obviously it's always different when people approach you, the scope of the project, but if you're looking like I have no problem kind of putting my general scope and price range on my website.
• 1:23:59
  Jacob Centeno: I'm like one of the only video companies that does it.
• 1:24:02
  Jacob Centeno: And I just like it's a pet peeve of of mine.
• 1:24:08
  Jacob Centeno: And and and I don't think you know, I don't have anything against people who do it, but like I've looked at websites and I'm like, oh, I want to see how much the DP is, or I want to see how much they charge for their grip package, and they're like, custom, call now.
• 1:24:22
  Jacob Centeno: And I'm like, dude, I'm just trying to get data, you know.
• 1:24:25
  Jacob Centeno: Uh and so I wanted so in doing that, I wanted to put ourselves out there.
• 1:24:30
  Jacob Centeno: So if you look if you look on our website, pull it up, Mario.
• 1:24:33
  Jacob Centeno: You're you videographers out there.
• 1:24:34
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, we have essentially three different brackets, like pre-production, production, post-production.
• 1:24:42
  Jacob Centeno: And then honestly, if if you if you diagnose it, a lot of it doesn't make sense.
• 1:24:48
  Jacob Centeno: You're like, wait, what do you charge for editing?
• 1:24:50
  Jacob Centeno: Wait, doesn't that mean you make less than production days?
• 1:24:54
  Jacob Centeno: But it's it's just been what works really well for us and what's kind of kept us competitive with our clients.
• 1:25:00
  Jacob Centeno: Look at that.
• 1:25:00
  Vipul Bindra: Look at that beautiful website over there.
• 1:25:02
  Vipul Bindra: So, where is that?
• 1:25:03
  Vipul Bindra: I can't see a text, Mario.
• 1:25:05
  Vipul Bindra: Can you find uh where's pricing?
• 1:25:07
  Vipul Bindra: Look at that.
• 1:25:08
  Vipul Bindra: Right here.
• 1:25:10
  Vipul Bindra: Uh let's see.
• 1:25:11
  Vipul Bindra: Pricing.
• 1:25:12
  Vipul Bindra: Okay, let's go down.
• 1:25:13
  Vipul Bindra: Let's see what it says.
• 1:25:14
  Vipul Bindra: How much does it cost?
• 1:25:15
  Vipul Bindra: Look at that, how cleanly it's written.
• 1:25:17
  Vipul Bindra: What does it say?
• 1:25:17
  Vipul Bindra: 500?
• 1:25:18
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, pre-production.
• 1:25:19
  Vipul Bindra: Okay, I see now.
• 1:25:20
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, what video are you making for so pre-production?
• 1:25:23
  Jacob Centeno: And then if you notice below, we have per day.
• 1:25:26
  Jacob Centeno: So for pre-production, and and what the only thing I don't say on this is like you don't have to buy all these things together, like you can buy them individually.
• 1:25:36
  Jacob Centeno: But I just want to give an you know an idea to our clients of like, oh, okay, if I want to pay videographers to be on site, I'm gonna look at production, and this is how much I can expect to pay per day, and this is generally what I can expect to receive from them.
• 1:25:52
  Jacob Centeno: And so if you're a stranger looking at this, you probably have a lot of questions, but if you're in our in our niche, in our community, referral, word of mouth, then you you're like, you know what?
• 1:26:05
  Jacob Centeno: I know they have good work and I have a general idea of their pricing.
• 1:26:09
  Jacob Centeno: And so let me, you know what?
• 1:26:11
  Jacob Centeno: Like, I don't think this is out of scope, and maybe he'll work with me.
• 1:26:14
  Jacob Centeno: Let me reach out.
• 1:26:15
  Vipul Bindra: So if I'm understanding this correct, your lowest video would cost $500,000, $500, so $2,000 is the lowest video you would do is.
• 1:26:22
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, right.
• 1:26:23
  Jacob Centeno: Exactly.
• 1:26:23
  Jacob Centeno: And so there you go.
• 1:26:24
  Jacob Centeno: Make it simple.
• 1:26:25
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, we'd be willing to work with somebody at that.
• 1:26:27
  Jacob Centeno: It just, you know, it's like, what can my editor get done in less than one day of editing?
• 1:26:33
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:26:33
  Vipul Bindra: No, that makes sense.
• 1:26:34
  Vipul Bindra: And then uh, your you know, your higher range would be what 10 plus 2,500 plus so 15k, right?
• 1:26:41
  Vipul Bindra: That would be a higher range per day or per video that you're looking at, basically.
• 1:26:44
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and obviously you can go to custom stuff, but you get the point.
• 1:26:47
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, no, it makes it easy for people to understand.
• 1:26:49
  Jacob Centeno: And that's the average for us, right?
• 1:26:50
  Jacob Centeno: Like, and I kind of learned my lesson.
• 1:26:52
  Jacob Centeno: I got really, I think I bit off more than I could chew.
• 1:26:54
  Jacob Centeno: This this hasn't always been the same.
• 1:26:56
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and and the last pricing structure that I had was actually it was it was based off of our biggest paying jobs, which guess what?
• 1:27:06
  Jacob Centeno: They're like of the jobs, they're like two percent of my jobs.
• 1:27:10
  Vipul Bindra: So yeah, you don't want to scare people off.
• 1:27:13
  Vipul Bindra: Is there more to it, Mario?
• 1:27:14
  Vipul Bindra: Scroll down or no, is that yeah, you can scroll down.
• 1:27:17
  Vipul Bindra: Let's see.
• 1:27:18
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, look at that monthly packages.
• 1:27:21
  Vipul Bindra: Do they have pricing too?
• 1:27:22
  Jacob Centeno: Or yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:23
  Jacob Centeno: So those are our retainer packages right there.
• 1:27:26
  Jacob Centeno: So we have a social reels package, um, and then we have all these.
• 1:27:30
  Vipul Bindra: If you can zoom more, I can't see.
• 1:27:31
  Vipul Bindra: I know people probably at home can see.
• 1:27:33
  Vipul Bindra: For who's listening?
• 1:27:34
  Vipul Bindra: We're basically looking at uh um his website, Jacob's website.
• 1:27:39
  Vipul Bindra: It's called poor bear um stories.
• 1:27:41
  Vipul Bindra: Yep, poorbearstories.com and uh kind of like looking at options that he has pricing packages, which is pretty cool.
• 1:27:49
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, it's not normal to have all this straight up on your website.
• 1:27:52
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:27:53
  Vipul Bindra: So social package, reels about $2,500 a month, which is pretty pretty good pricing for five to seven reels.
• 1:27:59
  Vipul Bindra: Highlight video 3750.
• 1:28:04
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, and if you know, if you're anybody, if you're like a a real estate uh agency or you're a a general contractor and you come to my website and you look at my prices, they're not gonna make sense for you.
• 1:28:17
  Jacob Centeno: Right.
• 1:28:18
  Jacob Centeno: Because if you look at my social rules package, 2500, I know like a hundred kids right now who will do the same deliverable for you for 250 dollars.
• 1:28:30
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, right.
• 1:28:31
  Jacob Centeno: But I just want my my audience to know tailored to your brand guidelines, evolving editing techniques, and collaborative, right?
• 1:28:43
  Jacob Centeno: And that's what my my clientele wants and needs from me.
• 1:28:46
  Jacob Centeno: So this number for social reels will push a lot of people away.
• 1:28:53
  Jacob Centeno: But guess what?
• 1:28:54
  Jacob Centeno: We still have retainers, we still have people who pay us throughout the year to do this because it's valuable to them.
• 1:29:01
  Jacob Centeno: Exactly.
• 1:29:02
  Vipul Bindra: No, that makes sense.
• 1:29:03
  Vipul Bindra: Let me see some more, Mario.
• 1:29:04
  Vipul Bindra: Go down, scroll down.
• 1:29:05
  Vipul Bindra: Uh YouTube.
• 1:29:07
  Vipul Bindra: Okay, so that's customized stuff.
• 1:29:09
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:29:09
  Vipul Bindra: So what's on the left?
• 1:29:10
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, right.
• 1:29:11
  Vipul Bindra: My bad.
• 1:29:11
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:29:12
  Jacob Centeno: So you this is kind of where I'm hedging my bet.
• 1:29:14
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 1:29:15
  Jacob Centeno: That's that's all YouTube and that's all custom pricing.
• 1:29:18
  Jacob Centeno: Because what I figured out early on was in helping people with their YouTube presentation.
• 1:29:22
  Jacob Centeno: Keep going down.
• 1:29:23
  Jacob Centeno: If you have like if you have like a channel that has 10 views and you're helping them grow, that's not bad.
• 1:29:32
  Jacob Centeno: The SEO, the tagging, the thumbnail design for 10 videos is fine.
• 1:29:38
  Jacob Centeno: But when you have a client come to you and they have 10 years uh history with a thousand videos, that's why it's custom priced.
• 1:29:47
  Jacob Centeno: Exactly.
• 1:29:48
  Jacob Centeno: But I do like YouTube is where I'm hedging my bet and where I'm pushing my clients always because it's organic ranking.
• 1:29:56
  Jacob Centeno: Google SEO loves it.
• 1:29:58
  Jacob Centeno: The more videos you have with all the data, it it makes us look better.
• 1:30:02
  Jacob Centeno: It makes our job easier.
• 1:30:04
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 1:30:05
  Vipul Bindra: No, that's pretty cool.
• 1:30:06
  Vipul Bindra: No, that's uh that's really nice.
• 1:30:07
  Vipul Bindra: Thank you, Mario.
• 1:30:08
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, it basically uh I I like the way uh you're doing it again, not normal, but if it works for you, it works for you because it gives your clientele uh uh an idea of what to expect.
• 1:30:20
  Vipul Bindra: Um, now let me ask you this.
• 1:30:22
  Vipul Bindra: Have you had anyone look at this and get confused or no?
• 1:30:26
  Vipul Bindra: Like which package to pick, what rate, or whatever, or no?
• 1:30:31
  Jacob Centeno: Um, so we actually it's interesting the way it happens, but actually I shopped it with all my current clients.
• 1:30:37
  Jacob Centeno: Okay.
• 1:30:38
  Jacob Centeno: So like I was fully transparent and I was like, hey, you know, what do you guys think of this?
• 1:30:42
  Jacob Centeno: And they were like, Okay, this part's confusing.
• 1:30:45
  Jacob Centeno: What do you mean by this?
• 1:30:46
  Jacob Centeno: And so I I continue to refine it, but all of my current paying clients were like, Okay, it's good to go.
• 1:30:53
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, like we get it.
• 1:30:54
  Jacob Centeno: Um, that doesn't, I don't have data from other people or from people that chose not to work with us.
• 1:31:00
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, you know, I know people have clicked on the page, I know who has clicked on the page, and I know that they left, they watched it.
• 1:31:06
  Jacob Centeno: But the data that I do have is that we typically have one, two, three people that will reach out to us after two years of following us, after two years of looking at our website, after two years of knowing our pricing, and and and say, Hey, I have a project, I think it's time.
• 1:31:28
  Jacob Centeno: Can we talk about some stuff?
• 1:31:30
  Jacob Centeno: And so, really, what they're doing is they're just constantly getting data about my company.
• 1:31:35
  Jacob Centeno: They're like, what's he pricing at?
• 1:31:36
  Jacob Centeno: Is is he getting way out of his league?
• 1:31:39
  Jacob Centeno: What's his crew look like?
• 1:31:41
  Jacob Centeno: What's his quality look like?
• 1:31:43
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, like is he a good person?
• 1:31:45
  Jacob Centeno: Is he or do I not agree with his, you know, whatever?
• 1:31:50
  Jacob Centeno: And so that's you know, and then and then two years later, it's like they're like, hey, I've been watching you guys, I've been, you know, and I have a couple of questions, but I think we want to work with you, and I think we're ready, press go.
• 1:32:04
  Jacob Centeno: And and at that point, it makes it really easy to work with those people because they have all the data already.
• 1:32:10
  Vipul Bindra: No, that makes sense.
• 1:32:11
  Vipul Bindra: No, you're you're being upfront, and again, this is still a range, it's not like you said, two grand for video.
• 1:32:16
  Vipul Bindra: This that that's what I'm inferring from it.
• 1:32:18
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but they still have to reach out to you and talk to you about the project and the scope.
• 1:32:22
  Vipul Bindra: Because you know, if he needs 10 days of shooting, that that's just yeah, that's just an idea.
• 1:32:27
  Vipul Bindra: Uh hey, at the same time, talk about one something really new.
• 1:32:30
  Vipul Bindra: Uh well, that's a new one.
• 1:32:31
  Vipul Bindra: Something else I saw.
• 1:32:32
  Vipul Bindra: Pull up Key Light Cinema website.
• 1:32:34
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, yeah.
• 1:32:34
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so I just had a uh so I just met Mike, who's the owner of Key Light Cinema.
• 1:32:38
  Vipul Bindra: Uh yeah, Mike Wedissa.
• 1:32:40
  Vipul Bindra: And and then we had rented a Birano from him.
• 1:32:42
  Vipul Bindra: So I had a good chat with him when I was returning the Burano.
• 1:32:45
  Vipul Bindra: And so I happened to look up their website.
• 1:32:46
  Vipul Bindra: He just built his studio, dude.
• 1:32:48
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, he's building his studio right now, yeah.
• 1:32:50
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so but uh same thing.
• 1:32:52
  Vipul Bindra: But I I was very intrigued by how he does his pricing.
• 1:32:54
  Vipul Bindra: It's very again to me, every job's custom, right?
• 1:32:57
  Vipul Bindra: They call me, they tell me, I figure out the scope, I can give them the pricing.
• 1:33:00
  Vipul Bindra: Or they give me a pricing, and I'm the producer, I maximize the most.
• 1:33:04
  Vipul Bindra: But he had like everything like very old school, broken down.
• 1:33:07
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, keep going down.
• 1:33:08
  Vipul Bindra: Look, stop there.
• 1:33:09
  Vipul Bindra: Like, look, nine, yeah, DP 975.
• 1:33:12
  Vipul Bindra: You know, basic camera package, 650, two-ton grip package, um uh 550, and then teleprompter and operator, 900, hair and makeup, 750, right?
• 1:33:23
  Vipul Bindra: AC 650.
• 1:33:25
  Vipul Bindra: So audio tech is this gaffer 750.
• 1:33:27
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm like, okay, it makes it easy in a way.
• 1:33:29
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm like, okay, so if I need a gaffer and a grip truck, it's 750 plus whatever the grip rate was up there.
• 1:33:36
  Vipul Bindra: Then if I want to add a grip, okay, add that.
• 1:33:38
  Vipul Bindra: So point is it's it's very um old school in a way.
• 1:33:42
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, like you said, it's very transparent, it's up front, but then on the other side, uh, you know, that's not how things are done anymore, at least what I see.
• 1:33:51
  Vipul Bindra: Um, so but but I guess there's an ease of it.
• 1:33:54
  Vipul Bindra: It's like if you need an AC, uh, this is you need hair and makeup, uh, you know, or whatever.
• 1:33:59
  Vipul Bindra: You can easily go there, look at pricing.
• 1:34:00
  Vipul Bindra: You can call the guy, book it up.
• 1:34:02
  Vipul Bindra: Simple, but I think this is more aligned towards or what post-production is see, drone and licensed pilot and all that.
• 1:34:09
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, very easy, but I think this is to me more for production companies.
• 1:34:14
  Vipul Bindra: So this is one way to approach a lookup just what pricing should be, right?
• 1:34:17
  Vipul Bindra: This is this guy who's been here a long time doing real good work.
• 1:34:20
  Vipul Bindra: So you can kind of get a reference of what he's charging for either going himself or sending his team out.
• 1:34:27
  Vipul Bindra: But then uh it also gives you an idea.
• 1:34:29
  Vipul Bindra: You can you can go back um Mario to the to the podcast.
• 1:34:34
  Vipul Bindra: Uh awesome.
• 1:34:35
  Vipul Bindra: So and then the other thing I like is I like talking to him was you know, it makes it simple, but then you have to see that this is targeted towards other production company, other agencies, other uh marketing agency or whatever, like people who you're who who understand that lingo.
• 1:34:49
  Vipul Bindra: If one of my clients had told them a gaffer or a grip or or you know, that they're not gonna understand that.
• 1:34:55
  Vipul Bindra: Like they have no idea.
• 1:34:56
  Vipul Bindra: So I guess it's also who you're targeting.
• 1:34:59
  Vipul Bindra: And it's okay to have two different websites if you want to target both, or even on the same website, maybe having two pages for like, hey, end clients or I don't know, other production companies, or something like that.
• 1:35:09
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know the right way to obviously do it on a website.
• 1:35:11
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but what I'm saying is that so that like yours is more detailed, I felt like is for end clients, right?
• 1:35:17
  Vipul Bindra: Here's your options, and this was designed more towards other production companies, so people could do both, either or.
• 1:35:23
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but it's really neat for me because like I said, I've always been like, uh, I want to do packages.
• 1:35:28
  Vipul Bindra: And like I said, we talked about that.
• 1:35:30
  Vipul Bindra: But like to me, it's always been like the way at least I've done my business and it's worked for me is custom.
• 1:35:35
  Vipul Bindra: People call me to tell me what they want, or usually, like I said, the best I am is when they tell me the budget.
• 1:35:40
  Vipul Bindra: They're like, I've got X number of dollars, and this is kind of what I want to achieve.
• 1:35:44
  Vipul Bindra: And me figuring out how I can get the most out of it, right?
• 1:35:48
  Vipul Bindra: That money, and giving them the best video possible at that price point.
• 1:35:51
  Vipul Bindra: So I love doing that.
• 1:35:52
  Vipul Bindra: So it'd be hard to do when I'm giving them a set price point.
• 1:35:55
  Vipul Bindra: It's like, oh, five grand.
• 1:35:56
  Vipul Bindra: But what if we needed to do three shoot days or whatever?
• 1:35:59
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know.
• 1:36:00
  Vipul Bindra: Uh and uh I guess the the main thing I wanted people to see is A, what roughly pricing looks like, you know, so you can then price out your con your services, what you think is valued at, just giving some reference by point from you who's successful doing this, from Mike, who's successful doing this.
• 1:36:16
  Vipul Bindra: But then I think also it's picking who your target audience is, uh, right.
• 1:36:21
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, so and then there's another thing that I want to touch on, which is there, you know, there's this uh personality test called Clifton Strengths, right?
• 1:36:29
  Jacob Centeno: And I think it'd be worth you, your team, your team members doing.
• 1:36:34
  Jacob Centeno: I paid for my team to do it.
• 1:36:35
  Jacob Centeno: We have a coach that we speak to who who it's incredible how they're able to bring our our personality, our strengths and weaknesses into like how we make decisions.
• 1:36:46
  Jacob Centeno: And um and pricing is absolutely one of them.
• 1:36:48
  Jacob Centeno: And the difference is in pricing, the difference in jobs.
• 1:36:51
  Jacob Centeno: Like Mike is a strong uh DOP.
• 1:36:55
  Jacob Centeno: Now he he has great great stuff on his website, but the question I would ask is is he somebody that doesn't mind um assuring the end product?
• 1:37:11
  Jacob Centeno: Um, and I think that's where people like me and you are different from people like my DP or even David Moorefield.
• 1:37:19
  Jacob Centeno: David has said many, many times he loves he loves like, hey, I I'm so optimized.
• 1:37:25
  Jacob Centeno: I'm like in the bag, out of the bag, on the tripod, record, card, like everything is just dialed, right?
• 1:37:32
  Jacob Centeno: And he is who we rely on to execute that job and like my DP.
• 1:37:38
  Jacob Centeno: Whereas we then have to go to our client and say, I got everything we needed, it's gonna be incredible, and I can't wait for you to show the team.
• 1:37:48
  Jacob Centeno: And then we have to stand behind that product.
• 1:37:51
  Jacob Centeno: And over the years, doing that again and again and again, we build our reputation, we have our word of mouth or whatever, but um, we also, I mean, I'm very fortunate.
• 1:38:02
  Jacob Centeno: I haven't had any bad clients or or bad experiences where, you know, God forbid, uh corrupted media or um or uh I forget what that one insurance coverage it's like.
• 1:38:18
  Jacob Centeno: It's not slander, but it's like if you professional uh yeah, you like distort the image of the company in any way and they're sued for that, like you cannot be liable.
• 1:38:28
  Jacob Centeno: That's like an insurance that a production company has.
• 1:38:31
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah.
• 1:38:31
  Jacob Centeno: Now, if you ask my DP, does he want that liability?
• 1:38:36
  Jacob Centeno: He's gonna tell you, no, yeah, I don't want to do that.
• 1:38:38
  Jacob Centeno: Like, I want to be a DP.
• 1:38:40
  Jacob Centeno: And so that's how my pricing is.
• 1:38:42
  Jacob Centeno: My pricing is more about like the end result.
• 1:38:45
  Jacob Centeno: Like, we're a company where like you you're guaranteeing the end result, right?
• 1:38:50
  Jacob Centeno: And and I have done it again and again and again.
• 1:38:53
  Vipul Bindra: You can trust in that, and yeah, and and if your DP is not available, they're trusting you to make sure somebody else is available or the crew is right, they're on time.
• 1:39:01
  Vipul Bindra: But if they get sick, they called in the you have to call someone else.
• 1:39:04
  Vipul Bindra: That's what makes you a production company versus you know, you individually, right?
• 1:39:08
  Vipul Bindra: You individually it's like you are the person, and which is okay, like you said, David.
• 1:39:12
  Vipul Bindra: But if David gets sick, it's David.
• 1:39:14
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, he could still tap a friend in or send somebody, but I'm saying, you know, you're hiring David versus uh, you know, obviously, as a production company, you're hiring a company because the company's not responsible.
• 1:39:26
  Vipul Bindra: If they fixed a date with the crew, if last second somebody calls you and says, Hey, I'm sick or I can't make it or whatever, life happens, you know, then it's your head on the on the table.
• 1:39:36
  Vipul Bindra: You gotta figure out who's gonna come, who's gonna execute, who's gonna get that role done, how the shoot's still gonna happen, uh, because it's entirely on your shoulder, which is why you charge a certain rate because you have other expenses to pay for, whether that's insurance, whether that's equipment, because a lot of DPs again own a single camera package of that, right?
• 1:39:55
  Vipul Bindra: Um, like for me, it's like I want them to have the equipment I need, and I want to be able to supply that.
• 1:40:01
  Vipul Bindra: And um, and a lot of times, like like you said, people aren't gonna own the gaffers around here, don't have access to typically, because you know, it's a smaller market, the type of lights I want to use.
• 1:40:10
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm like, hey, I have the lights, go use them, right?
• 1:40:13
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, it makes it a lot easier to um to be able to bring in labor or bring in other collaborative people to bring in and make the things that happen that we want to happen for a client.
• 1:40:23
  Vipul Bindra: And then you price based on that.
• 1:40:25
  Vipul Bindra: And obviously, if it's just you, like you said, I or like I was saying earlier, uh, when I go help friends, I don't charge for any of that.
• 1:40:31
  Vipul Bindra: But I'm not responsible for you know storing that data for years or or or what happens, like you said, if uh the media get corrupted.
• 1:40:37
  Vipul Bindra: But if if I'm bringing gear, obviously I'm still bringing my high-quality stuff.
• 1:40:40
  Vipul Bindra: But I'm saying if I go help, I'm there to help.
• 1:40:43
  Vipul Bindra: I'm there to bring my years of experience, and that's has value, which is why they want me there, or bring a certain level of gear that has value.
• 1:40:50
  Vipul Bindra: But that's about it.
• 1:40:51
  Vipul Bindra: I'm not responsible for post, I'm responsible for pre-production.
• 1:40:54
  Vipul Bindra: If the the the talent is gonna show up or say their lines right, right?
• 1:40:58
  Vipul Bindra: Stuff that I'm responsible for when I'm the production company.
• 1:41:01
  Vipul Bindra: So there's there's you know, each side of the coin, and I guess everyone has to decide where they're happy with, and uh try and figure out obviously how to build a career and make a living doing that, right?
• 1:41:13
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, the other thing I want to touch on that is we the production company don't get paid to be the hero.
• 1:41:22
  Jacob Centeno: We are the last thing from the hero.
• 1:41:26
  Jacob Centeno: Uh we eat all the crap, we deal with all the BS, and then we make sure that somebody else is the hero at the end of the day.
• 1:41:34
  Jacob Centeno: And so whether it's my DP or my client or maybe their team, it's it's always them who are the heroes.
• 1:41:48
  Jacob Centeno: And you know, something interesting that happened actually this last week that we were in Tampa working at an event and um my uh my client has a has a week-long uh college prep uh camp, sort of, and they the the attendees, the students were asking for the photos from my DP uh directly.
• 1:42:18
  Jacob Centeno: And in years past, it's been an issue that I've dealt with as a production company.
• 1:42:23
  Jacob Centeno: There's a lot of beer bureaucracy I have to work around.
• 1:42:26
  Jacob Centeno: Um you know, most of them are minors, most of them need um um talent release or something.
• 1:42:35
  Jacob Centeno: Not it's uh the consent from their parents or uh you know what kind of public use or you know, just there's a lot of different things going on.
• 1:42:46
  Jacob Centeno: And and so my DP was like, oh yeah, of course, I'll you know, I'll give you the photos.
• 1:42:52
  Jacob Centeno: And I was like, oh my gosh.
• 1:42:54
  Jacob Centeno: And I talked to the staff and we got everything sorted out, and they fortunately uh had the parents all sign full releases on on the kids, and so he was able to do that.
• 1:43:08
  Jacob Centeno: Whereas in my head, as a production company, I am balancing, yeah, and it's not something that he understood.
• 1:43:14
  Jacob Centeno: Like we we kind of we bickered about it for a little bit, but it's something that I have like it's caused me stress and and and uh it's it's like bogged me down, or it's delayed post-production, or it's like been like two weeks of emails back and forth to the client, right?
• 1:43:36
  Jacob Centeno: Stuff that the production company has to deal with that the crew doesn't have to deal with, that I, you know, through that pain, I've in my head, I'm like, hey, make sure we don't send photos to kids, yeah, even if it's just them and they won, you know, they want to see themselves.
• 1:43:53
  Jacob Centeno: It's like pain, and so I carry that as a production company.
• 1:43:57
  Jacob Centeno: Um, but figured out a way, everything worked out, forms were good.
• 1:44:03
  Jacob Centeno: So I was like, Yeah, you know, DP, you can you can send everything off to them, and they can appreciate you, and they can tell you you're an amazing photographer, and like they can say thank you so much, and you know you're the hero, you're and you can feel like you had an awesome week here at the camp, but on the back end, the production company is always juggling the crap like that.
• 1:44:24
  Jacob Centeno: Like there's just a lot of bureaucracy and red tape that we know about that maybe the crew doesn't yeah, or they don't handle that, or they're not responsible for part of it.
• 1:44:34
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and and it's okay, not uh being a production company, I don't think for everyone.
• 1:44:39
  Vipul Bindra: So if if somebody wants to be a production company, awesome.
• 1:44:42
  Vipul Bindra: You know, I think it's I love what I do, uh, but uh but doesn't mean and like I said, I love also being a DP.
• 1:44:47
  Vipul Bindra: I love going to projects for my friends where like I said, I go, I help them a mess, and I give them the footage and I walk away and I'm like, this was awesome.
• 1:44:55
  Vipul Bindra: I'm not done.
• 1:44:56
  Vipul Bindra: Like I am done.
• 1:44:57
  Vipul Bindra: I have no idea, you know, the clients or whatever.
• 1:45:00
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, we tried to be bad, but you're good.
• 1:45:01
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, we what I did was good, but I'm saying before and after, it's not my responsibility.
• 1:45:06
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, I'm gonna do the best when I'm there.
• 1:45:08
  Vipul Bindra: But you get the point, and I love that too.
• 1:45:09
  Vipul Bindra: And it's okay, it's a good one of those shoots is a good, what do you call breathing room in between, uh, because then you're like, oh, chill, you know, like I don't have to worry about posts.
• 1:45:17
  Vipul Bindra: Julie doesn't have to be stressed out about more videos she gotta edit.
• 1:45:20
  Vipul Bindra: Right.
• 1:45:21
  Vipul Bindra: So it's a good, I think, balancing act of like I said, doing both.
• 1:45:25
  Vipul Bindra: And uh, and it's just I guess whoever's listening, if you know it's it's just finding uh what they enjoy, right?
• 1:45:32
  Vipul Bindra: And if and just doing that, I guess just do more of what you like, and sometimes it could be a mix of things or it could be just one, you know, like I only want to be a production company or I only want to be a DP, and then just pick the lane and do the best.
• 1:45:43
  Vipul Bindra: It is obviously going to be easier the more individual re-roll you take, obviously, but then also that means your potential to make money is lower.
• 1:45:53
  Vipul Bindra: But I mean a DP can make good money, so yeah, you can't complain, yeah.
• 1:45:57
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:58
  Vipul Bindra: Uh I was gonna say we're towards the tail end of uh of our podcast.
• 1:46:03
  Vipul Bindra: So anything else you want to touch on before we end?
• 1:46:05
  Jacob Centeno: No, I I was just gonna say, like, you know, I like on talking about my DP and DP's making good money, it feels good when you build a solid relationship with your camera guys, with your with your techs, with your crew, and you want to pay them more, and then you can pay them more.
• 1:46:27
  Jacob Centeno: That's a really cool feeling, and that's obviously something that only comes with time and experience, but um there is absolutely something to be said about being the best at your job, whether it's a production assistant or a DP or an AC uh or a DIT.
• 1:46:46
  Jacob Centeno: I mean, gosh, I love my DIT right now, it's freaking incredible.
• 1:46:51
  Jacob Centeno: Like every shoot, it's like I don't have to worry about this.
• 1:46:55
  Jacob Centeno: I can trust that you are going to like just zip through everything, and I'm so tired at the end of a 10, 12, 14 hour shoot, and my DIT comes and I can trust in that process.
• 1:47:06
  Jacob Centeno: That that's worth a lot to me.
• 1:47:08
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, because data is everything.
• 1:47:09
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, to be honest, we get paid to shoot, and what we're shooting is those zeros and ones on those cards.
• 1:47:15
  Vipul Bindra: If that gets lost, that's a that's yeah, that's very important.
• 1:47:19
  Vipul Bindra: I've I've seen on some shoots.
• 1:47:20
  Vipul Bindra: So now obviously we don't have a DIT because most shoots that I do, uh, I like to bring biggest cards and simultaneously record.
• 1:47:27
  Vipul Bindra: So that means we don't even touch the footage until we're back here in the studio where it's safe, you know, and then we have multiple options to pull it, and I will send one card to one card to just double safing everything.
• 1:47:39
  Vipul Bindra: But I'm saying a lot of times I've been on other people's shoots where we are or again, let me take back.
• 1:47:44
  Vipul Bindra: We do have DITs when we are using cameras where we do need to dump in between, obviously.
• 1:47:48
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but coming back to him, say I've been on shoots where I'm the DP or I'm helping out where they don't have a DIT and it makes no sense.
• 1:47:54
  Vipul Bindra: Like we're shooting an Alexa or whatever.
• 1:47:56
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, you are you are shooting Alexa Ari Raw on 256 gig cards.
• 1:48:03
  Vipul Bindra: You gotta dump every 15 minutes, yeah.
• 1:48:05
  Vipul Bindra: And and they don't have a count for that.
• 1:48:07
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, it's crazy.
• 1:48:08
  Vipul Bindra: And you don't aid, not only do you didn't you know account time-wise for that, but you also didn't account for somebody to actually do that.
• 1:48:15
  Vipul Bindra: Now, you know, somebody else in the team has to not take on that extra role, and there's a high chance they're not they have multiple roles now, they can mess up or something like that.
• 1:48:24
  Vipul Bindra: And those the you some of those cameras don't even have dual cards, they're only recording of that one card, so you know you better make sure that it's backed up twice somewhere, or else, you know, it the whole shoot, which costs tens of thousands of dollars, is a total loss because if you don't end up with the footage, then what were we doing here, right?
• 1:48:42
  Vipul Bindra: So that that is a big factor.
• 1:48:44
  Vipul Bindra: I totally agree with that.
• 1:48:45
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, when when we next time, I want to just nerd out with you on like storage, data, ethernet, 10 gigabit, like switches.
• 1:48:58
  Jacob Centeno: Like next time I want to get into that stuff.
• 1:49:01
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, absolutely.
• 1:49:01
  Vipul Bindra: I love nerding out.
• 1:49:02
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, that I think and that's what separates me.
• 1:49:05
  Vipul Bindra: At least I feel like I could be.
• 1:49:06
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like you know, what we do is a very, very creative thing and a very, very technical thing.
• 1:49:12
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so to do what we do, you have to be really good at everything.
• 1:49:15
  Vipul Bindra: And that means it takes either a lot of time or a lot of energy, which most people don't have.
• 1:49:19
  Vipul Bindra: And I think what helps me is I'm obsessed with this.
• 1:49:22
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so I'm always on top of like what's new, what's everything, like both technical side, like what are the specs?
• 1:49:27
  Vipul Bindra: How do we get the most out of this certain equipment?
• 1:49:29
  Vipul Bindra: Like, uh, and then the other side of it is like, what are the new things?
• 1:49:32
  Vipul Bindra: What's the new latest movie?
• 1:49:34
  Vipul Bindra: Like, how are they doing the new techniques?
• 1:49:35
  Vipul Bindra: What's what's the latest commercials?
• 1:49:37
  Vipul Bindra: You know, how are they doing?
• 1:49:38
  Vipul Bindra: So, you know, like there's two sides of it.
• 1:49:40
  Vipul Bindra: This test it does take a lot of time, to be honest.
• 1:49:42
  Vipul Bindra: Oh, yeah, to to to keep up with both.
• 1:49:45
  Vipul Bindra: It's already hard to do one side, and that's at least what I try to do.
• 1:49:48
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, oh, I that's my USB.
• 1:49:50
  Vipul Bindra: You know, I gotta, I gotta keep up with both, but it's hard.
• 1:49:52
  Vipul Bindra: No, but I love nerding out.
• 1:49:54
  Vipul Bindra: I think you've seen our server rack, uh uh, you know, how uh we have 10 gig it'll help Juliet.
• 1:49:59
  Vipul Bindra: It but also be able to send footage if we have remote people to clients or whatever.
• 1:50:04
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, I that that's a good topic.
• 1:50:06
  Vipul Bindra: I like it.
• 1:50:06
  Vipul Bindra: But I don't know how many people care about that, but it's very important.
• 1:50:09
  Vipul Bindra: Storage is key.
• 1:50:10
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, I know because a lot of people don't realize that, like as a production company, what we record is our of high value to us because that's what we were paid for.
• 1:50:20
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:50:20
  Vipul Bindra: I know uh it's hard to understand that, but like for for you know other people, like because if yes, we spent all that money hiring the people, the crew, like you said, talent release farms, all that crap.
• 1:50:32
  Vipul Bindra: But in the end, what we return home with was zeros and ones on some cards, yeah, or a drive.
• 1:50:37
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and and and and that's the value.
• 1:50:39
  Vipul Bindra: And you can keep you reusing, especially why people coming keep coming back to us, is because now once we have that, we have that, right?
• 1:50:47
  Vipul Bindra: We can keep using that even in future projects, some B-roll from here or some A roll from here, or whatever.
• 1:50:52
  Vipul Bindra: And as you build, as you keep working with a client for years, they're getting that value.
• 1:50:57
  Vipul Bindra: It's just storing terabytes of their data is expensive, yeah.
• 1:51:00
  Vipul Bindra: But it's but it's it's also valuable for them to keep coming back to you and me.
• 1:51:04
  Vipul Bindra: Yes, is because now we have an archive of years of data that we can you know deploy as needed in a project.
• 1:51:11
  Jacob Centeno: That's something that you and I are both nerdy about because uh from what I see, there are so many, a majority of companies out there who are like, we delete your data after a year.
• 1:51:23
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:51:23
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, to be real, I put that in the contract, but we don't actually delete it.
• 1:51:27
  Vipul Bindra: That's just so I'm like, I I don't guarantee any data after years.
• 1:51:30
  Vipul Bindra: Yes, but you're right, we do keep it, you know.
• 1:51:33
  Jacob Centeno: No, but I've so much value.
• 1:51:34
  Jacob Centeno: I've seen people like we we deleted that a year ago or two.
• 1:51:38
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and yeah, you don't want to actually delete anything.
• 1:51:40
  Vipul Bindra: Ideally, as a company, you want to keep everything you ever record because it's expensive.
• 1:51:45
  Jacob Centeno: You made a massive investment in your server rack, and um, and a lot of people are like seeing the the NAS analogy, QNAP, all those things pop up, and they're getting into it now that they have 25 terabytes of footage and they don't realize they don't want to be a production company anymore.
• 1:52:02
  Vipul Bindra: And and then they end up with drives, you know, stacks of drives, and you don't know what's gonna fail, which one is which.
• 1:52:07
  Vipul Bindra: It's just it's just a nightmare scenario.
• 1:52:10
  Vipul Bindra: Um, I feel like because then there's no redundancy, obviously.
• 1:52:13
  Vipul Bindra: Uh so yeah, those are the costs that people those are the what do you call uh indirect costs or uh or hidden costs that people don't see that we have to bear because it the because it's expensive to store terabytes and terabytes of data, and that's not accounting for the costs of then you know having redundant drives, then to uh uh if you want to send it to off-site for remote backup, those costs are very expensive.
• 1:52:34
  Jacob Centeno: Time.
• 1:52:35
  Jacob Centeno: How long does it take to get the data back?
• 1:52:37
  Jacob Centeno: Hey, we want that 10 terabytes you've shot for us over the last seven years.
• 1:52:41
  Jacob Centeno: Yeah, you know how that's gonna take me a little bit of time to especially with long-term storage.
• 1:52:45
  Vipul Bindra: The cheapest option for us is long-term storage with Glacier or uh Backblaze or whatever.
• 1:52:51
  Vipul Bindra: They don't, I don't know if you've tried, it takes forever for them to bring that back, even though you know they charge you if you ever actually need that back, because you know, again, it's long-term storage, so I don't know how they're storing it, but it's not like a hard drive just ready to spin up.
• 1:53:04
  Vipul Bindra: So it takes them a while, and and obviously some of these companies will send your drive and you return the drive or whatever.
• 1:53:10
  Vipul Bindra: But it's still I'm just saying it's it's costly, it's time consuming, and uh, but there's value to it if you do it correctly.
• 1:53:18
  Vipul Bindra: But we can talk about that next time.
• 1:53:19
  Vipul Bindra: Next time.
• 1:53:19
  Vipul Bindra: Next time.
• 1:53:20
  Vipul Bindra: But thank you, thank you, Jacob, for coming.
• 1:53:22
  Vipul Bindra: It's always a pleasure, man.
• 1:53:23
  Vipul Bindra: The conversations we have are incredible.
• 1:53:25
  Vipul Bindra: I also want to thank Mario for being on the producer desk and doing a killer job.
• 1:53:30
  Mario Rangel: Oh, thank you guys.
• 1:53:31
  Mario Rangel: It was a really great conversation.
• 1:53:33
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, thank you, and thank you uh to anyone who's listening or watching.
• 1:53:37
  Vipul Bindra: Until next time on Studio B sessions with me, Bendra.