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How To Get Hired By ESPN Without Film School · Studio B Sessions

• 0:04
  Vipul Bindra: Welcome to another episode of Studio B Sessions with me, Bindra.
• 0:07
  Vipul Bindra: I'm the owner of Bindra Productions here in Orlando.
• 0:10
  Vipul Bindra: And these are unedited, raw, unfiltered conversations with other video professionals.
• 0:15
  Vipul Bindra: And just like the rest of the season, we have Mario on the producer table.
• 0:19
  Vipul Bindra: So thank you for helping us.
• 0:21
  Mario Rangel: How are you?
• 0:21
  Mario Rangel: How are you today?
• 0:22
  Vipul Bindra: And our guest today is Dalton, the owner of a video agency.
• 0:27
  Vipul Bindra: You've been doing this for a while and you're very successful at it.
• 0:31
  Vipul Bindra: So apparently hard to get.
• 0:32
  Vipul Bindra: So thank you for coming.
• 0:34
  Dalton Smith: Appreciate it.
• 0:34
  Dalton Smith: Thank you for having me.
• 0:35
  Dalton Smith: Glad to be here.
• 0:36
  Dalton Smith: This is an epic setup.
• 0:37
  Dalton Smith: Glad to be in here one other time.
• 0:38
  Dalton Smith: And I think I can safely say you have like the dream production garage.
• 0:42
  Dalton Smith: Well, thank you.
• 0:42
  Vipul Bindra: Thank you.
• 0:42
  Vipul Bindra: Appreciate it.
• 0:43
  Vipul Bindra: This was quickly thrown up.
• 0:44
  Vipul Bindra: I was working with Adam.
• 0:46
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know if you know him, uh David's friend.
• 0:48
  Vipul Bindra: And literally I owe him a lot of coffees.
• 0:51
  Vipul Bindra: Well, good.
• 0:52
  Vipul Bindra: I'll get to that in a second.
• 0:54
  Vipul Bindra: So, anyway, so I actually came from shoot with him at like 6 p.m.
• 0:57
  Vipul Bindra: and we had to start at like eight, the first podcast ever.
• 0:59
  Vipul Bindra: So this is like two hours, and I'm calling Mario, supposed to help me.
• 1:03
  Vipul Bindra: And then uh behold, he was busy stuck in a meeting.
• 1:06
  Vipul Bindra: So I was like, okay, I'm doing all this.
• 1:07
  Vipul Bindra: So I think it turned out really good for a couple hours.
• 1:10
  Vipul Bindra: I think uh the setup looks really neat, and that's kind of what I wanted to do season one.
• 1:14
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but I wasn't able to because I didn't have the time and the resources of Mario to be able to cut between multiple cameras, so it ended up being one camera.
• 1:22
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:22
  Vipul Bindra: But I'm so glad now it's you know, multicam, you have your own camera to look at.
• 1:26
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, no, and having a having a Mario is critical.
• 1:28
  Dalton Smith: Shout out to Mario.
• 1:29
  Dalton Smith: Like you always gotta, you know, have that guy right there to because you know did you use our Jamie, yeah.
• 1:33
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:34
  Dalton Smith: That's what I'm saying.
• 1:35
  Dalton Smith: Like, you gotta have it.
• 1:36
  Dalton Smith: I guess.
• 1:36
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, now we can pull up things.
• 1:37
  Vipul Bindra: It's been so awesome to be able to actually look at uh uh people's websites because I had somebody who's like, I put prices on the website, and I know I don't do that, yeah.
• 1:44
  Dalton Smith: So it's really cool to be able to just pull that up in real time and actually see it because we weren't able to do that last season.
• 1:50
  Vipul Bindra: So, anyway, the number one thing about you, funny enough, I had David on the podcast, right?
• 1:54
  Vipul Bindra: So you came up.
• 1:54
  Vipul Bindra: I was just saying that before we started.
• 1:56
  Vipul Bindra: And the first thing, uh, something I was like, yeah, I'm looking forward to talking to Dalton on his episode.
• 2:01
  Vipul Bindra: He's like, I'm I'm surprised that you got him.
• 2:03
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, what does that mean?
• 2:05
  Vipul Bindra: You know, so I mean, I'm glad that I have you, but you must be hard to get.
• 2:09
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it's uh it's it's just because how I do it, it's it's very irregular.
• 2:14
  Dalton Smith: I say no to very little.
• 2:16
  Dalton Smith: I'm working on that, but I just have so many things I like to do, man.
• 2:21
  Dalton Smith: Um, and I'm you know, family man, big with my family, and we structure a lot of time towards it, I would say in intentionally, but big family goals, big work goals takes up a lot of time.
• 2:33
  Vipul Bindra: No, I had uh again talk about Adam.
• 2:35
  Vipul Bindra: I had a great conversation about him balancing life.
• 2:38
  Vipul Bindra: Family and work is very important.
• 2:40
  Vipul Bindra: And uh, same thing, he told me, like, yeah, he's been trying to get coffee with you for a while.
• 2:44
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and so you owe him a lot of coffees.
• 2:46
  Dalton Smith: No, shout out to Adam though, love his work, and uh shout out to you, the dads, man.
• 2:50
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I know.
• 2:51
  Dalton Smith: I don't know if you know who Jared Sanders is, uh super talented guy on the Space Coast.
• 2:55
  Dalton Smith: I was just telling him like all the dads, the production, because for me, it's the hardest thing that I've introduced to my timeline.
• 3:05
  Dalton Smith: I've gone through a lot of different stuff, business, personal, family, COVID, right?
• 3:11
  Dalton Smith: All these changes, but uh yeah, that was a big one.
• 3:14
  Vipul Bindra: So yeah, no, it's it's it's you know the catch 22, and I'm so glad at least you and and Adam, both of you are you know, paying full attention to it, and that's kind of where I feel like I need to do more.
• 3:25
  Vipul Bindra: Not that we don't spend time as a family, but kind of like I love this, you know, this is a passion.
• 3:29
  Vipul Bindra: So, for example, I had a few days, I had like said three-day shoots and I had four days, and then I had another shoot.
• 3:34
  Vipul Bindra: So I was like, okay, this is the next season of podcast.
• 3:37
  Vipul Bindra: So I I scheduled it, I schedule everyone, I packed my days, uh, you know, like five episodes uh, you know, a day.
• 3:43
  Vipul Bindra: And and uh then I was like, yeah, you know, I I'm not gonna see my kids now six days in a row.
• 3:48
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, they're there.
• 3:49
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 3:49
  Vipul Bindra: But you know what I mean?
• 3:50
  Vipul Bindra: And then I was like, that's the other side of it.
• 3:52
  Vipul Bindra: I'm really enjoying this, I'm really enjoying these episodes.
• 3:55
  Vipul Bindra: We're sharing so much uh entertainment and knowledge and all that.
• 3:58
  Vipul Bindra: But then I'm like, at the same time, I'm like, oh, I gotta then make up.
• 4:00
  Vipul Bindra: I gotta spend so many days with my family to make sure that you know I'm I'm paying attention to that side of it too.
• 4:06
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 4:06
  Dalton Smith: And it's the balance is hard.
• 4:08
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it's very hard.
• 4:08
  Dalton Smith: It's it's single-handedly the most important thing, in my opinion, in your entire life.
• 4:13
  Dalton Smith: And it's hard because I joke that life is so contradictory.
• 4:16
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 4:16
  Dalton Smith: Even even like, you know, with my wife.
• 4:19
  Dalton Smith: Um when she met me, the things that she wanted and saw in me, I'm this entrepreneurial guy and I'm surfing and inventor in the world.
• 4:28
  Dalton Smith: Well, now those are still great features, but those are things that are also challenging to our family environment.
• 4:32
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 4:32
  Dalton Smith: You know, they take time.
• 4:33
  Dalton Smith: So that balance has been hard.
• 4:36
  Dalton Smith: But if you're down for it and you got the right spouse and you're driven with your business in the right way, I'm not saying it's not hard, but it's like, I don't know, it's rewarding.
• 4:46
  Dalton Smith: So I feel like I'm finally getting somewhere in the last like year.
• 4:48
  Dalton Smith: Not that I wasn't anywhere I didn't want to be, but I have just big ambitions to just get better, you know?
• 4:52
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 4:53
  Vipul Bindra: No, and that's good to have.
• 4:54
  Vipul Bindra: You and I have big ambitions, and like you said, you need one spouse and a family that supports it.
• 4:58
  Vipul Bindra: And um, like I said, you have to find that balance.
• 5:01
  Vipul Bindra: That's a fine line that everyone has to obviously find what that is for them.
• 5:05
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, like I was engaged.
• 5:06
  Dalton Smith: I always talk about this, and I'll make it short here, but I was engaged.
• 5:09
  Dalton Smith: I was a few months out, like three months out, went to lunch, and my fiance at the time walked out.
• 5:14
  Dalton Smith: Oh, wow.
• 5:14
  Dalton Smith: Cold turkey.
• 5:15
  Dalton Smith: And it just made me question everything.
• 5:18
  Dalton Smith: You know, I had to get down to like my roots of who I was.
• 5:21
  Dalton Smith: It made me reset.
• 5:23
  Dalton Smith: But the the core of my passion for filmmaking and being a business owner and doing this survived that, which was it meant a lot because uh it was the hardest thing I've ever been through.
• 5:34
  Dalton Smith: Um, but I'm obviously in the most amazing place now.
• 5:36
  Dalton Smith: I got my beautiful wife, I got my two-year-old baby girl.
• 5:38
  Dalton Smith: Look at that.
• 5:39
  Vipul Bindra: Um it was meant to be, and that's the the perspective that you have to look at from.
• 5:44
  Vipul Bindra: I know hindsight is always 2020, but in that moment, because we all have tough moments, we always have where you're the the worst moment.
• 5:51
  Vipul Bindra: You know, I've talked to Alex a couple of times here on the podcast, and you know, what he was going through uh last uh a few years ago, through the same thing, a divorce, you know, kids, all that.
• 5:59
  Vipul Bindra: And it's like it can be very difficult to run a company uh during that time, which what you have to remember though is people who make it through those tough times are the people who are successful, are the ones who can now look back and be like, hey, that was actually a very teachable moment.
• 6:14
  Vipul Bindra: That was what was best for me, even though at that moment that felt like everything was falling apart.
• 6:19
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you have to get past it to to kind of look back at the benefit, I guess, in a way.
• 6:24
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and it's a double-sided sword, you know, it it can and and will hurt you, which could hurt your business when these things in life happen.
• 6:32
  Dalton Smith: So it's important.
• 6:32
  Dalton Smith: I'm like a big mental health advocate, but on the other side of the sword is where the strength comes from, where the perseverance comes from.
• 6:39
  Dalton Smith: So, you know, I was talking with my mom recently just about growing up and where I'm at and just being a father and all the changes.
• 6:44
  Dalton Smith: And she was like, Man, like I wish I could have done maybe some things differently for you.
• 6:48
  Dalton Smith: And I was like, No, no, no, no, because you did the best you could, and I believe that.
• 6:52
  Dalton Smith: And if you took a single thing from my path, then you would take where I'm at now away.
• 6:56
  Vipul Bindra: Exactly.
• 6:56
  Vipul Bindra: You know what I mean?
• 6:57
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you are because of what you went through.
• 6:59
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, no one changed that, yeah.
• 7:00
  Dalton Smith: So I love to advocate for the the balance to to it should be fun.
• 7:04
  Dalton Smith: Like, we should all make money, but we should we should enjoy this.
• 7:07
  Dalton Smith: It's it's because I joke because like I've been one-wheeling in the morning again to this to the beach.
• 7:11
  Dalton Smith: I'm blessed to live that close to the beach, and I don't even go, you know?
• 7:15
  Dalton Smith: So I've been making the time and I joke, I'm like, I'm such a crappy boss.
• 7:19
  Dalton Smith: You know, I set the schedule for me.
• 7:22
  Dalton Smith: So you have to choose all that balance to make sure it's epic and fun and you're making money because I don't play with the money side either.
• 7:29
  Dalton Smith: It's very important to me.
• 7:30
  Dalton Smith: So, you know, yeah, you gotta again balance.
• 7:33
  Vipul Bindra: I guess that's the word for the episode.
• 7:35
  Vipul Bindra: But uh, talk to me about uh obviously I know a little bit about you.
• 7:38
  Vipul Bindra: Like, you know, we've met a few times.
• 7:40
  Vipul Bindra: We I also met you at David's meetup.
• 7:42
  Vipul Bindra: Uh is I think the first time where we connected.
• 7:44
  Vipul Bindra: He brought you out.
• 7:45
  Vipul Bindra: Um, so you know, you surf.
• 7:48
  Vipul Bindra: I guess that's where the love started, right?
• 7:50
  Vipul Bindra: Tell tell me more about like how did video production became the thing.
• 7:54
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, definitely, I would say on traditional route.
• 7:56
  Dalton Smith: I was 13, and I don't know if you ever heard of a cartoon Rocket Power.
• 8:02
  Mario Rangel: No.
• 8:02
  Dalton Smith: Uh it's the first seed of this.
• 8:06
  Dalton Smith: It uh group of surfers, uh they're all kids, like 13 in California.
• 8:10
  Dalton Smith: It's an animated show, and one of the kids' name is Twister, and he has a camera.
• 8:13
  Dalton Smith: He has a VHS, you know, style camera, and he's filming all the surfing, the snowboarding skateboarding.
• 8:19
  Dalton Smith: So growing up, I'm that age, it seemed so tangible.
• 8:21
  Dalton Smith: I wanted to be Twister.
• 8:23
  Dalton Smith: So yeah, I had a you know, Sony handicam, um, not full-size tape, but not the mini DVs yet.
• 8:30
  Dalton Smith: It was like the in-between ones, the like the full-size DVs.
• 8:33
  Dalton Smith: And uh, yeah, man, just started making skate videos, filming stuff at my house.
• 8:37
  Dalton Smith: And then very little really evolved from that until I got to high school.
• 8:41
  Dalton Smith: And the first big thing was I got a GoPro, I had a really rough high school experience, actually dropped out, got my GED, and at the time I was going in a not great direction.
• 8:52
  Dalton Smith: So we were looking at the future, and we just decided I needed to get out of that environment.
• 8:55
  Dalton Smith: So at that same time, I get my GED, I'm doing surf lessons, I'm doing kayak tours, and I'm really excited because even though it seems small, I'm going in such a good direction.
• 9:05
  Dalton Smith: You know, out of trouble, I'm away from these things.
• 9:08
  Dalton Smith: And my brother gives me a GoPro.
• 9:10
  Dalton Smith: And I joke because if I had to pick one thing, I don't want to say a GoPro is bigger than a person, but if I had to pick one thing that where it really changed it and made it happen is the GoPro.
• 9:22
  Dalton Smith: Because when I got that thing, it it just flipped the switch.
• 9:26
  Dalton Smith: And so 21.
• 9:27
  Dalton Smith: So we're making surf videos, we're doing kayak tours, we're going out to Orlando to party at the clubs for the first time, and we're making all these videos.
• 9:34
  Dalton Smith: So our entry was YouTube.
• 9:36
  Dalton Smith: So I posted some videos, a couple of them were some I would say slightly sketchy stunts, uh jumping into pools um off of hotels and stuff.
• 9:46
  Dalton Smith: But we're 21 and it's like safe fun, it's like reasonable fun.
• 9:50
  Dalton Smith: So even my mom is stoked on it.
• 9:53
  Dalton Smith: You know, she's like, Man, he's figuring this thing out, he's got a job.
• 9:56
  Dalton Smith: And that went on for the summer, but I didn't realize I was planting these seeds.
• 10:01
  Dalton Smith: I made this skim board video, and now I'm getting branding involved.
• 10:05
  Dalton Smith: And uh the big ticker was Corey Howell, uh, was a Ronjon team writer.
• 10:10
  Dalton Smith: He got introduced to me through the network, and I uh ended up in Puerto Rico with him.
• 10:14
  Dalton Smith: All these kids were done on money, and I got this photo, and he said, send it to my team manager, and they bought it.
• 10:19
  Dalton Smith: Um 500 bucks, and it was in perpetuity, so I didn't know anything about it, but five hundred dollars to take one photo was I couldn't even really comprehend it at the time.
• 10:30
  Dalton Smith: I was like, we made it like we're done, we're done, we can wrap up shop.
• 10:34
  Dalton Smith: We have five hundred dollars, yeah.
• 10:36
  Dalton Smith: But that the the chain just kept going.
• 10:39
  Dalton Smith: Um, and frankly, I saw Corey.
• 10:42
  Dalton Smith: I remember we were at Surf Expo and he went in there and he was like the mayor.
• 10:46
  Dalton Smith: Like he's just the king because Corey had like the looks, the talent, he was like an A plus student, he had the whole thing.
• 10:53
  Dalton Smith: And so I'm realizing these stickers on his board are not just stickers, they're real estate.
• 10:57
  Dalton Smith: And he's getting paid to represent these brands.
• 11:01
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 11:01
  Dalton Smith: And so I started pitching for me to get sponsored in the 2014 to 17 time frame.
• 11:08
  Dalton Smith: So like GoPro was on like the explosion.
• 11:11
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, Go poll was like this huge, thriving third party market for parts.
• 11:17
  Dalton Smith: And I was making ghetto rigged Home Depot PVC polls at home.
• 11:22
  Dalton Smith: So that was an unintentional, perfect.
• 11:25
  Dalton Smith: I I literally was doing that at the time it was happening.
• 11:28
  Dalton Smith: So man, I was just like, I won't I don't want to say begging for money, yeah, but I was going to Surf Expo and like, hey, sunscreen, flippers for scuba diving, whatever.
• 11:37
  Dalton Smith: And everybody just started throwing us product and money.
• 11:39
  Dalton Smith: And we just got the ball rolling.
• 11:41
  Dalton Smith: And years went by, we turned it into tourism.
• 11:43
  Dalton Smith: That was the I think the where I think tourism is where we took it from like me and David and Tristan.
• 11:49
  Dalton Smith: Shout out to the boys.
• 11:50
  Dalton Smith: Kind of just doing pickup work, you know, figuring out what that even meant to this agency hired us.
• 11:58
  Dalton Smith: They have this large volume, they've they know what they want.
• 12:01
  Dalton Smith: They're giving us preset details, and then that went on for years.
• 12:05
  Dalton Smith: I mean, that you can ask David.
• 12:07
  Dalton Smith: He talked about it in one of his I didn't even know how much I paid him.
• 12:10
  Dalton Smith: He talked about it in one of them when we did that relationship, it went up and up and up for a few years.
• 12:16
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 12:16
  Dalton Smith: And then, like most things, there was an eventual change.
• 12:18
  Mario Rangel: Exactly.
• 12:19
  Dalton Smith: And it went away.
• 12:20
  Dalton Smith: It was just it was probably worse for him than it was for me.
• 12:23
  Vipul Bindra: Because he talked about it, because that was a transition.
• 12:25
  Vipul Bindra: I think he was like I said, you guys was doing this for years, and like you said, it went away, and then he had a pivot.
• 12:30
  Vipul Bindra: You know, yeah, exactly.
• 12:32
  Dalton Smith: It was not planned.
• 12:34
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it was that agency, I'm guessing, pulling the plug, or yeah, so and I can talk about it lightly, but there was uh a budget and it's a government agency, so that budget is tax, like you know, it's very sensitive, and there was overspending.
• 12:47
  Dalton Smith: Okay, and so the internal team dissolved a bunch of finger pointing, and then Florida Today got involved.
• 12:54
  Dalton Smith: And essentially, our whole involvement was relationship-based.
• 12:57
  Dalton Smith: Like, skills are awesome, who you are is awesome.
• 13:00
  Dalton Smith: But when a new set of people come into a building and their relationships are gone, yeah, you're you're and that's how it works, you know.
• 13:05
  Vipul Bindra: To be honest, like I've done some tourism work too.
• 13:07
  Vipul Bindra: Funny enough, going back a little bit, you say you it's untraditional.
• 13:11
  Vipul Bindra: Most people I talk to, uh, I feel I'm untraditional because I didn't come from most people have background either.
• 13:17
  Vipul Bindra: They loved skateboarding and they wanted to make video.
• 13:18
  Vipul Bindra: They were BMX making videos, surfing, they were making videos.
• 13:21
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like a lot of people I talk to, they started with uh this type of passion where video wasn't initially the thing, it was something they love, and then they were filming that, and then video became the whole thing.
• 13:32
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 13:33
  Vipul Bindra: And uh I find that as a common thread.
• 13:36
  Vipul Bindra: And you guys, a GoPro in your hand is amazing.
• 13:39
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, because you know, that what you can capture.
• 13:41
  Vipul Bindra: Funny enough, I had a GoPros, and I was like, I'm never using them because I'm filming on you know the bigger cameras or whatever.
• 13:46
  Vipul Bindra: So they sat in the drawer until the tourism department called me and I was like, perfect, where are these GoPros?
• 13:51
  Vipul Bindra: Dust them off, get them out.
• 13:53
  Vipul Bindra: It was so awesome to be able to do BMX, you know, uh kayaking, canoeing, all that, you know, hiking stuff.
• 13:58
  Vipul Bindra: So yeah, I love tourism stuff, and I was like, this is so awesome.
• 14:01
  Vipul Bindra: I'm not sitting in an office capturing some content.
• 14:04
  Vipul Bindra: So that's really awesome.
• 14:05
  Vipul Bindra: Uh like cool that you were able to kind of jump in and uh, like you said, do pickup shoots or whatever for the tourism department.
• 14:13
  Vipul Bindra: You could you're talking about locally here in Florida, right?
• 14:16
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so it's the Space Coast Office of Tourism.
• 14:18
  Dalton Smith: And so it it really was like, you know, I'm a faith guy, but I'm also a timing guy.
• 14:23
  Dalton Smith: I think I'm talented, but I really think I just worked hard and didn't give up.
• 14:26
  Dalton Smith: And because frankly, the whole environment of it, it just it's too perfect because I do the work because it's good, but we bleed Space Coast colors, like literally.
• 14:35
  Dalton Smith: I was born and raised there.
• 14:36
  Dalton Smith: I know everything, every rock.
• 14:38
  Dalton Smith: So when we do productions there, the ease comes from so much of our background.
• 14:43
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, like I can do any project and we need something, and I joke, but it's probably true.
• 14:48
  Dalton Smith: I have a bigger B-roll stockpile of the Space Coast than the Space Coast does.
• 14:52
  Dalton Smith: Probably.
• 14:53
  Dalton Smith: And they come to me.
• 14:54
  Dalton Smith: They come to me for everything, and I love that.
• 14:56
  Dalton Smith: And it's funny because with bigger agencies, sometimes it's not really about that relationship, it's about getting the job done.
• 15:03
  Dalton Smith: So they'll go to these bigger agencies and then the bigger agencies will call us.
• 15:06
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 15:07
  Dalton Smith: So it's it's very cool that at the end of the day, who we are and who we've worked with really plays as much of a role as the work, you know.
• 15:16
  Vipul Bindra: And and that's true, you know, and I've talked numerous times about this, but to be real, it's all relationships.
• 15:21
  Vipul Bindra: At the end of the day, it's who you know and uh who knows who they know.
• 15:27
  Vipul Bindra: You know, that's how connections are formed.
• 15:28
  Vipul Bindra: Networking is a bigger part of this than uh uh I mean, not that skill doesn't matter.
• 15:34
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, skill matters.
• 15:35
  Vipul Bindra: You gotta be able to uh, you know, then do what you sign up for.
• 15:39
  Vipul Bindra: So, question Do you think it's bigger?
• 15:41
  Vipul Bindra: Networking is bigger than, yeah, skill any day.
• 15:44
  Dalton Smith: And people should remember this.
• 15:46
  Vipul Bindra: Absolutely.
• 15:46
  Vipul Bindra: Because no, I've said this before.
• 15:48
  Vipul Bindra: If you can go find the client, you can hire one of us to come do the project.
• 15:52
  Vipul Bindra: All day that's the easy part.
• 15:54
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, uh I've seen it the other way.
• 15:57
  Vipul Bindra: I've seen people then take that advice, go close a 10k deal, and then just try to do it themselves and fail miserably.
• 16:03
  Vipul Bindra: The client hates them, everyone's has a bad experience.
• 16:06
  Vipul Bindra: But most of the time, I'm saying people are smart.
• 16:08
  Vipul Bindra: They basically take you go get the gig, right?
• 16:11
  Vipul Bindra: You you build the networking, you build a relationship, and then A, obviously, figure it out.
• 16:15
  Vipul Bindra: It's not that complicated.
• 16:17
  Vipul Bindra: We don't do brain surgery here.
• 16:18
  Vipul Bindra: But if we can't, that's when you go, you know, look around your network, you find the people who know what they're doing.
• 16:23
  Dalton Smith: And that network, like you said, it's not just on like the relationship of booking a client because they know who you are.
• 16:29
  Dalton Smith: It's leaning on the professional that you know to either execute it at like a hey, I'm ready to do it, or it just hit the fan.
• 16:36
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I need help.
• 16:37
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 16:38
  Dalton Smith: And having those people, and what you do, I see you all the time.
• 16:40
  Dalton Smith: I see you going to your community events, doing your chamber of commerce, doing your podcast.
• 16:45
  Dalton Smith: So, like for me, Facebook has made me an undisclosed amount of money.
• 16:52
  Dalton Smith: I don't even know because it is the why.
• 16:54
  Dalton Smith: So I don't market, we don't run ads.
• 16:57
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I've got a lot of views from different places, but they're so random.
• 17:01
  Dalton Smith: It's like shooting ducks, you know what I mean?
• 17:03
  Dalton Smith: But my Facebook is so specific and strategic, and it's got this huge, it's the hub, it's the center point.
• 17:09
  Dalton Smith: I've got all these little stars of like Instagram and YouTube, and they're all there's lots of people there, but it's kind of a mosh pit.
• 17:16
  Dalton Smith: My Facebook is so dedicated, it it's the backbone of like everything I make.
• 17:22
  Vipul Bindra: That's so crazy that you know, for so many people, Facebook is dead.
• 17:25
  Vipul Bindra: And then here you are saying, like, look, Facebook is where you're getting majority, or not majority, but a lot of your money from uh because you've dialed it in, and you know, and that's that's that's a that's a way to say, you know, uh, where it doesn't it may work for somebody, it it it can work for someone else.
• 17:44
  Vipul Bindra: You shouldn't you can't knock it.
• 17:45
  Dalton Smith: You got you gotta try it.
• 17:46
  Dalton Smith: And like from you know, for real, like I've I fell into it, so I've had this knack of doing something.
• 17:53
  Dalton Smith: I don't want to say because I'm so smart, I think I'm just feeling it and unintentionally being on trend with it, right?
• 18:02
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so live streaming on Facebook.
• 18:04
  Dalton Smith: It's super funny because like you notice how the live streaming thing is so big right now, not what we do, but like the Twitch and like people just driving on their own.
• 18:11
  Dalton Smith: So one of my guys that I work with at ESPN, I'm very irregular, I'm not the normal production guy.
• 18:16
  Dalton Smith: So I'm very much an entertainer and like an on-camera personality for a lot of my stuff, as much as I'm behind it.
• 18:22
  Dalton Smith: So one of the guys I'm uh with at work, he's like, dude, you need to like start streaming like all your crazy stuff all the time.
• 18:27
  Dalton Smith: I was like, it's like maybe I should.
• 18:29
  Dalton Smith: So the reason is going back to Facebook, like 2016.
• 18:33
  Dalton Smith: I'm probably like about to move out of my mom's house to my first place, and Facebook introduces live streaming.
• 18:39
  Dalton Smith: And I jump into it and I start doing these things called tip of the day.
• 18:42
  Dalton Smith: I don't even know why the first one was.
• 18:44
  Dalton Smith: And I've probably done thousands, and I'll start it up, I do them to this day.
• 18:48
  Dalton Smith: I'll usually wait for something to annoy me or become a problem in my life that I'm struggling with, or see something and I'll speak on it and try to make it a positive.
• 18:57
  Dalton Smith: And people have really enjoyed it.
• 18:58
  Dalton Smith: So I did it and did it and did it, and then in like 2017, a hurricane hit our area and I went live.
• 19:06
  Dalton Smith: And I went over the bridge, and then I didn't know this, but the bridge got closed behind me.
• 19:10
  Dalton Smith: So I'm beachside, I'm live.
• 19:12
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, every not everybody, but more people left than usual because this looked to be like a seriously bad one, and it was pretty bad.
• 19:19
  Dalton Smith: It ripped the tops of a lot of um gas stations and structures and car ports.
• 19:24
  Dalton Smith: So when I got to my townhouse, I was pretty blown away.
• 19:28
  Dalton Smith: Like the damage was pretty legit.
• 19:30
  Dalton Smith: So the numbers are climbing.
• 19:31
  Dalton Smith: Usually it was like 10 people, 20 people watching.
• 19:33
  Dalton Smith: Now there's like 50, 100, 1000.
• 19:36
  Dalton Smith: We got to like 10 or 20,000 concurrent viewers, and we went for like 11 hours.
• 19:41
  Dalton Smith: Well, what happened is someone's like, Hey, can you go over two streets?
• 19:45
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, my grandma lives there.
• 19:47
  Dalton Smith: Hey, can you go down this way?
• 19:48
  Dalton Smith: My dad owns that restaurant.
• 19:50
  Dalton Smith: Hey, can you check on my cat?
• 19:51
  Dalton Smith: And we so we were having fun with it.
• 19:54
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but what we didn't realize is it was making a relationship.
• 19:57
  Dalton Smith: And all these people, when I when it was done, I got letters of people like not just saying thank you, like they're like pouring out their soul to me and talking about how much we made them feel better and we did this thing for the community.
• 20:08
  Dalton Smith: I had people give me gift cards for gas and dinner.
• 20:11
  Dalton Smith: To this day, I will walk in the publics and I'll see it, and I can tell by their face because like they don't want to say it, but they want to say it.
• 20:19
  Dalton Smith: And they'll walk up like, are you the hurricane guy?
• 20:22
  Dalton Smith: And it cracks me up because uh it's this little thing.
• 20:25
  Dalton Smith: So the point is that they liked it, they liked us, they stuck around.
• 20:28
  Dalton Smith: There is, I don't even know how many relationships came from it.
• 20:31
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I don't I have no idea how many jobs came from it.
• 20:34
  Dalton Smith: And every story I've told, now my baby, you know what I mean?
• 20:37
  Dalton Smith: All these things have become a part of the center point.
• 20:40
  Dalton Smith: So ESPN, people ask me all the time, how did you get the ESPN?
• 20:43
  Dalton Smith: She watched the hurricane feed, dude.
• 20:46
  Vipul Bindra: That's how you get ESPN.
• 20:47
  Vipul Bindra: You go out and stand the hurricane.
• 20:49
  Vipul Bindra: People like yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 20:51
  Vipul Bindra: They want to discount you.
• 20:52
  Vipul Bindra: You actually provided a service.
• 20:54
  Vipul Bindra: You did provide content people wanted to watch.
• 20:56
  Vipul Bindra: Because you know, if the hurricane's coming, people want to see what's happening.
• 21:00
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, I was sent out uh to for the through the Red Cross to cover the damage after the last two hurricanes.
• 21:06
  Vipul Bindra: So people want the content, you know.
• 21:08
  Dalton Smith: So it wasn't it wasn't just luck or anything, but but the important part, like you said, is I posted the live video in 2017.
• 21:14
  Dalton Smith: She called me in 2023.
• 21:17
  Dalton Smith: Look at that.
• 21:18
  Dalton Smith: So my goodness.
• 21:19
  Dalton Smith: She watched me as this eclectic group of just crazy Florida people because, dude, we're hanging out at helicopters, and then we're jumping out of a helicopter with Doug Flutie, and now we're surfing with it.
• 21:30
  Dalton Smith: So she just watched it and she owned a home in Brevard County.
• 21:34
  Dalton Smith: That was her connection to the video.
• 21:35
  Dalton Smith: So ESPN buys this uh I don't even know, it wasn't even an A703 at the time.
• 21:41
  Dalton Smith: It's like an A7R, and they stuck it on a RS3 and they were like, put it on the set, but they didn't know how to do it.
• 21:48
  Dalton Smith: So Fox had done it.
• 21:50
  Dalton Smith: I don't know what whose idea it was, but it makes sense, you know?
• 21:53
  Dalton Smith: They called it the poor man's gimbal.
• 21:54
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and it looks pretty good.
• 21:56
  Dalton Smith: So the crew we work with runs the BH photo.
• 21:59
  Dalton Smith: In Manhattan, buys just whatever, and um the the operator was the problem.
• 22:05
  Dalton Smith: Because all these guys are traditional broadcast guys.
• 22:08
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, they're they're used to shoulder mounts and stuff.
• 22:10
  Vipul Bindra: Hard cameras.
• 22:10
  Vipul Bindra: Not running.
• 22:11
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 22:12
  Vipul Bindra: Tiny little gimbal.
• 22:14
  Vipul Bindra: And it takes the you know, the gimbal walk.
• 22:16
  Vipul Bindra: Talk about why I bought the run in 8k, because I was tired of the the ninja walk, right?
• 22:20
  Vipul Bindra: That you gotta do.
• 22:21
  Vipul Bindra: Uh but yes, you don't feel the gimbal walk as much.
• 22:24
  Vipul Bindra: Well, again, I don't want to speak too much.
• 22:26
  Vipul Bindra: I'm an expert on that.
• 22:26
  Vipul Bindra: Yes, but that's I thought the is the point, right?
• 22:29
  Vipul Bindra: Because you know, it has the fourth axis, so you don't have to like ninja walk as much.
• 22:32
  Dalton Smith: There's a guy named Gary uh in Brevard County, his name's Gary V.
• 22:36
  Dalton Smith: He does um a bunch of stuff with that, and Justin said um he doesn't even look like he's trying.
• 22:42
  Vipul Bindra: Oh yeah.
• 22:43
  Vipul Bindra: He's just literally like just what I was like, if we can add that, you know, make our jobs easier.
• 22:47
  Vipul Bindra: But coming back to what you were saying, yeah, if you're a traditional guy and you just buy a gimbal and you think you can operate it, uh again, yes, in a way, it's electronic, it works, but there's a skill to it.
• 22:58
  Vipul Bindra: There's an there's a walk to it that if you don't know how to do, there is, you're not gonna, yeah.
• 23:02
  Vipul Bindra: And there's levels to it.
• 23:03
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, there's not just I can use a gimbal or not use a gimbal.
• 23:06
  Dalton Smith: And there's like guys that are really great with intricate movements.
• 23:09
  Dalton Smith: There are guys that are great, like my buddy Che does these insane, it's like he's flying an FPV around the room.
• 23:15
  Dalton Smith: I don't even know how he moves that quick.
• 23:16
  Dalton Smith: So yeah, there's there's a method to the madness, right?
• 23:19
  Dalton Smith: And I come from like the glide cam generation, so I flew glide cams for years, and I kind of love having that appreciation for it, but you know, it's not required, man.
• 23:29
  Dalton Smith: You know, and I I told my wife that I remember when I started in like 2012, 13, my first camera was like a D5000, a Nikon.
• 23:38
  Dalton Smith: And so I ran these like mirror bodies with just like Tokina 14 to 24, kit little 1835, like not ideal, not cinema.
• 23:50
  Dalton Smith: And uh I remember a lot of people were still kind of aggressive towards the idea of digital at the time.
• 23:55
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 23:56
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, there's a little bit of loading.
• 23:58
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, yeah, there's a reason films alive.
• 24:00
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, yeah.
• 24:00
  Vipul Bindra: But the new Jurassic Park Jurassic World was shot in film, so it has to be, you know, the dinosaurs will not look great in digital, you know.
• 24:09
  Vipul Bindra: For sure.
• 24:10
  Dalton Smith: David Morfield just sent that to me.
• 24:12
  Vipul Bindra: I'm gonna drag him to the theater with me.
• 24:13
  Vipul Bindra: It's like it had to be on film because the dinosaurs would not look great on digital, you know what I mean?
• 24:19
  Vipul Bindra: Anyway, but no, no, I'm all I I don't want to make it seem like I don't like film.
• 24:23
  Vipul Bindra: I love film.
• 24:24
  Dalton Smith: No, I like the idea of it all works though.
• 24:27
  Vipul Bindra: And and to be honest, like I said, I started personally on those mini DV tapes too as a kid because that's what we had.
• 24:32
  Vipul Bindra: I started with those, and funny enough, I went to digital because uh then I was like, I want one of my own too, you know, and then the the the the camcorders or whatever, I'm talking long time ago, but was DVD-based.
• 24:44
  Vipul Bindra: And the the thing was tape was so easy because uh the and I'm talking we had an older thing, uh, but I would plug it in, you know, you can basically pull the the tape off.
• 24:54
  Vipul Bindra: It cut so well in uh whatever I was using at that time.
• 24:58
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know.
• 24:58
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, you would just play it back to your computer.
• 25:00
  Vipul Bindra: Exactly, and it would work.
• 25:02
  Vipul Bindra: But as soon as we got the DVD, I was so excited, I was like, oh, it's all digital, right?
• 25:05
  Vipul Bindra: Nice.
• 25:05
  Vipul Bindra: Dude, that that MPEG, whatever the footage format was, that thing would not cut like no my poor computer back then, and you know, computers weren't that fast.
• 25:13
  Vipul Bindra: Anyway, I would a copy pasting was a pain, and then when you would be done with it, it wouldn't cut at least what I had access to.
• 25:20
  Vipul Bindra: So that was a pain until I went back to uh, you know, I went to school, and it was so weird because they were still using broadcast cameras with tapes on it.
• 25:28
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, thank goodness I can pull footage off it.
• 25:30
  Vipul Bindra: It wasn't until I got the T4i where I was like, oh, SD card, this is a lot easier to, you know, work with digital.
• 25:37
  Dalton Smith: Well, dude, and shout out to David Moorefield again because like he is so funny to me.
• 25:42
  Dalton Smith: I'm so enamored by David just because I've known him for so long and what he's doing right now is it's so David, but it's also not from like traditional what I grew up with, right?
• 25:51
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, like David and I were like skating together.
• 25:54
  Dalton Smith: Like I had him on my like skate team.
• 25:56
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 25:57
  Dalton Smith: So 2014 time frame, I made like a little skate, skim, surf team.
• 26:01
  Dalton Smith: And like David was like on a skating with us, and he had done a lot of stuff with his brother, and he was filming like skate contests and making little content.
• 26:10
  Dalton Smith: But to this day, he's just got that eye, and it's funny because he does it now, it's that like documentary eye, you know what I mean?
• 26:15
  Dalton Smith: He just he didn't need the gimbal or all the flashy stuff.
• 26:19
  Dalton Smith: He could do these great shots with a tripod or just handheld, not moving either.
• 26:23
  Dalton Smith: And I and I loved that about him.
• 26:24
  Vipul Bindra: So yeah, and what I like about both of you, I think it's just uh what sets you apart, and you've already said it, is that what I don't do is that you and I'm trying to now, obviously, but is that you guys create content.
• 26:37
  Vipul Bindra: See, the thing is obviously you're doing this professionally.
• 26:40
  Vipul Bindra: David is doing professionally, he's making money, but he's still vlogging, he's still making content.
• 26:45
  Vipul Bindra: You're like you said, you're on Facebook Live, you're on you're you're putting your tips out or whatever.
• 26:49
  Vipul Bindra: You guys were creating content, you're making your skateboarding content or whatever from day one.
• 26:55
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, I feel like at least that's what I see, and I I think is what sets you apart from let's say other guys, is because you guys are creating, and let's say the way I see it, if you weren't even making a living off this, you'd still be making some kind of content.
• 27:06
  Vipul Bindra: Yes.
• 27:07
  Vipul Bindra: And when you when you love what you know what you do and you just want to share, then I think I don't know, it just it's it just makes you different.
• 27:15
  Vipul Bindra: It makes you where, like you said, people just want to come to you and they want to work with you.
• 27:19
  Vipul Bindra: Uh and uh and I and to be honest, that's the best thing that happened to me getting to know David.
• 27:24
  Vipul Bindra: It I grew up with YouTube.
• 27:25
  Vipul Bindra: I was posting videos before Google bought YouTube as a kid, you know, silly videos.
• 27:30
  Vipul Bindra: Hopefully, nobody can ever find those.
• 27:32
  Vipul Bindra: But yeah, I'm saying YouTube isn't the the the problem, but to be honest, yes, my my career when I started, I just wanted to do tech reviews.
• 27:39
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, that's where the camera love came from, right?
• 27:42
  Vipul Bindra: Because I wanted to be on camera, talk about technology, that's what I love.
• 27:45
  Vipul Bindra: And funny enough, I could have so built a career with that, and I tried to go the traditional route.
• 27:50
  Vipul Bindra: Let me go on TV on a tech show because those used to be a thing before YouTube, right?
• 27:54
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and then now think about it, it was like so stupid.
• 27:56
  Vipul Bindra: Here I am having fun on YouTube, not even considering that this could be where I post the content, trying to run towards these news networks, trying to be because that's the option I had for the tech show.
• 28:07
  Vipul Bindra: Uh and uh like I said, I started a bunch of YouTube channels or stuff, whatever.
• 28:11
  Vipul Bindra: But when I started doing this professionally, where people started paying me 2010 and Rwards, I never once considered YouTube as the place to put my content, even though I was all in on YouTube.
• 28:22
  Vipul Bindra: Do you see what I'm saying?
• 28:23
  Dalton Smith: Like and until now, and I'm like, well, and I say that I got lucky a lot because I didn't have time to think about the strategy before I started.
• 28:30
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I literally just jumped.
• 28:32
  Dalton Smith: So our YouTube channel, I remember my brother had opened a new gym.
• 28:37
  Dalton Smith: It was in Cocoa Beach, there was nobody there.
• 28:39
  Dalton Smith: And me and my buddy Tyler Rago, if anybody founded the company with me, it was him.
• 28:43
  Dalton Smith: So, in that, like, I'm getting out of trouble, I'm getting a job, what are we gonna do?
• 28:48
  Dalton Smith: We're partying.
• 28:49
  Dalton Smith: He had an okay home setup, but it wasn't perfect.
• 28:52
  Dalton Smith: So he just wanted to be out of his house.
• 28:54
  Dalton Smith: So he'd come stay with me.
• 28:55
  Dalton Smith: And during that summer, my mom was like, whatever, as long as you guys aren't in jail, then fine.
• 28:59
  Dalton Smith: So him and I were the ones creating that content.
• 29:02
  Dalton Smith: And so that first day at the gym, we dumped like 30 videos on YouTube.
• 29:06
  Dalton Smith: No plan, no, like literally just uploaded all of them.
• 29:09
  Dalton Smith: And like, mind you, content was so scarce at the time compared to now.
• 29:13
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 29:14
  Dalton Smith: So we were like, I felt like we were like pioneers, you know, like especially locally, like globally, it was early, but locally, it was just a there's nobody was doing it.
• 29:27
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, nobody.
• 29:28
  Dalton Smith: So when we made these videos, you know, a lot of people have questioned my tactics with money, charging enough, doing enough, whatever.
• 29:36
  Dalton Smith: But I've been so relationship-based and taken so much risk on things that have ended up turning around that I don't even look at it like that anymore, man.
• 29:44
  Dalton Smith: Like I calculate my expenses, I calculate my mortgage, yeah, but I don't calculate the return on all these things because I've seen so much weird stuff turn into the to the literal pool of gold from from just a relationship I took a risk on.
• 30:01
  Dalton Smith: Exactly.
• 30:01
  Vipul Bindra: And and that's what this is.
• 30:03
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, my most money comes from, you know, like everyone, five, ten top clients, and all of those are relationships.
• 30:08
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, if those people left those company, who knows, you know, what it's gonna be.
• 30:13
  Vipul Bindra: And that's why a lot of people are gonna be able to do that.
• 30:14
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, they're like, hey, how are you gonna uh can you introduce me to one of these agencies?
• 30:19
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, but I don't know the agency.
• 30:20
  Vipul Bindra: I know this one person that we're I'm friends with or I've known for a few years.
• 30:24
  Dalton Smith: And even that, it's like your relationship might be this one tunnel of relationships.
• 30:31
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 30:32
  Dalton Smith: So yeah, it's it's hard to bridge or throw other things in sometimes.
• 30:36
  Dalton Smith: And and I overanalyze, I'm super emotional and I love to like communicate and like you don't always get that uh through and through all the way.
• 30:46
  Dalton Smith: It's not it's not their job, you know, they're not married to you.
• 30:48
  Dalton Smith: So as an entrepreneur, you know, you could drive yourself crazy sitting there trying to uh manage a predict and I don't want to say manipulate, but stay in control of everything.
• 30:57
  Dalton Smith: And uh it's as little as like people not communicating back to you the way that you would, you know, respectfully communicate to them.
• 31:04
  Dalton Smith: And it it's not it's not personal.
• 31:06
  Dalton Smith: Is it perfect or right or the way?
• 31:08
  Dalton Smith: Maybe not, but it's like you just have to focus and you'd stay the course.
• 31:11
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 31:12
  Dalton Smith: You just have to keep swinging and keep going.
• 31:13
  Dalton Smith: Cause in the last like year, I just got out of it.
• 31:16
  Dalton Smith: I got in this weird slump and I didn't even realize I was slipping.
• 31:18
  Dalton Smith: I was just, I don't know, like getting older, like getting out of my bed definitely hurts a little more.
• 31:24
  Dalton Smith: Um just finding it the finding it so difficult to to go surfing, to go skateboarding, to be able to be home and just like realizing how much money, you know what I mean?
• 31:34
  Dalton Smith: It's like the older you get, it's like a trap.
• 31:36
  Dalton Smith: It's like more aware you get, the more like this world is actually like a wicked thing, you know.
• 31:41
  Dalton Smith: But it doesn't have to be like that.
• 31:44
  Dalton Smith: So I got here by let's let me really let's recap this.
• 31:49
  Dalton Smith: I got here by dropping out of high school, starting a YouTube channel, partying with my friend, doing surf lessons and posting YouTube videos.
• 31:57
  Dalton Smith: And that made everything happen.
• 32:00
  Vipul Bindra: So and just so you know, there's a high chance of you did that you are not gonna make it for high chance you're not gonna make it.
• 32:06
  Dalton Smith: So what it was is it was doing the next best thing for me, right?
• 32:11
  Dalton Smith: So getting out of a jail cell, literally, and deciding to create a YouTube channel and do surf lessons and create content was such a positive direction for my life.
• 32:23
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, that was such an increase, but it was also situational.
• 32:27
  Dalton Smith: I was 21.
• 32:28
  Dalton Smith: If I was 31, so everybody has to nurture their own setup, right?
• 32:32
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but you you just gotta, it's so lame, but it's from frozen.
• 32:35
  Dalton Smith: I don't know how many I've seen frozen 3,000 times this month with my daughter, but she says to do the next right thing, you know?
• 32:42
  Dalton Smith: And I and I truly believe that because when I look back, yeah, dude, yeah, frozen quotes in the podcast, bro.
• 32:50
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, uh but no, that's same thing.
• 32:53
  Vipul Bindra: My my my you know content I watch now is you it changes you because I wouldn't be watching half the content I watch with my kids if I didn't have the kids because yeah, yeah.
• 33:02
  Dalton Smith: Well, and dude, it it did something to my brain.
• 33:05
  Dalton Smith: I've always been like an emotional person, but dude, yeah, it it it's it's such a cool thing because it if you're ready, you can use it to fuel who you are, fuel your business.
• 33:19
  Dalton Smith: Like I wanna dude, we had the biggest year we've ever had last year, and trust me, it didn't feel that way in the process because it was so hard.
• 33:27
  Dalton Smith: But it means that I can, you know?
• 33:30
  Dalton Smith: And so I've realized that life's gonna do what it wants.
• 33:34
  Dalton Smith: So if you have those core discipline sets and you work hard and just remember that it's gonna do this, like it's gonna do this.
• 33:43
  Dalton Smith: And don't freak out.
• 33:44
  Dalton Smith: My dad used to always say, be like the duck.
• 33:47
  Dalton Smith: Um, if you see a duck in a pond, it's just sitting there, you know, there's no ripples on the surface.
• 33:53
  Dalton Smith: If it sees you, an alligator or whatever starts to move, you don't see any ripples, but the duck's moving.
• 33:59
  Dalton Smith: He's kicking out of the water, he's not responding.
• 34:01
  Dalton Smith: So it was funny because that always sat with me, and I do not respond like the duck.
• 34:05
  Dalton Smith: I respond like a drowning cat at times.
• 34:08
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 34:08
  Dalton Smith: Um, and I'm learning that the responses don't have to be immediate.
• 34:12
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, you don't have to freak out.
• 34:13
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 34:14
  Vipul Bindra: And and that's the the lesson in the business, you know.
• 34:16
  Vipul Bindra: Look, we are no matter how much awesome you may or we may think we are, and or other people may think we're doing, we are small cogs in the wheel of United States economy or the world economy.
• 34:29
  Vipul Bindra: We cannot control how that moves.
• 34:31
  Vipul Bindra: Like earlier this year, for example, for me, like I've been going, you know, growth after growth after growth, no slump since like six, seven years ago.
• 34:39
  Vipul Bindra: And then here comes February.
• 34:41
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, uh, you know, and it's like dead.
• 34:44
  Vipul Bindra: And I was and January was busy.
• 34:45
  Vipul Bindra: I am like killing it when January's supposed to be.
• 34:48
  Dalton Smith: I remember you telling me about this.
• 34:49
  Vipul Bindra: And then exactly, and I'm like, what's happening?
• 34:51
  Vipul Bindra: Uh why's my calendar not booked?
• 34:53
  Vipul Bindra: And all the inquiries I'm getting are smaller shoots.
• 34:56
  Vipul Bindra: So I reach out to a few production company owners I know, and they're like, Yeah, it's slower too.
• 35:00
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, okay.
• 35:00
  Vipul Bindra: So not just me, right?
• 35:02
  Vipul Bindra: At that point, you know, if it's me, then I gotta change something.
• 35:04
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, oh, it's just uh concerns out of you know, things out of my control.
• 35:09
  Vipul Bindra: Then I reach out to a few clients, they're like, Yeah, we're just holding off.
• 35:11
  Vipul Bindra: We don't know where things are heading.
• 35:13
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, okay, awesome.
• 35:15
  Vipul Bindra: All right, I'll take these smaller shoots, more opportunities for me to go make make more connections, help other friends on shoots.
• 35:21
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, you know, and and the whole thing at that point was just making it past the slump, right?
• 35:26
  Vipul Bindra: And hey, because we've got mortgage, we got bills, we got you know things to do, and it's not like luckily work completely run out, it's just we're not doing major things, we're doing smaller things, and that's okay.
• 35:37
  Vipul Bindra: We pivoted, Mario came in, helped me on a bunch of shoots.
• 35:40
  Vipul Bindra: Sure, they weren't 10 people shoot, there were two people shoots, but we killed them.
• 35:43
  Vipul Bindra: And guess what?
• 35:44
  Vipul Bindra: And that's what you do, yeah.
• 35:45
  Vipul Bindra: Exactly.
• 35:46
  Vipul Bindra: And then we passed, and March was the same, and now I'm starting to get worried and come April 1st, no joke.
• 35:51
  Vipul Bindra: It's been killer, not had any minute.
• 35:53
  Vipul Bindra: Like you said, I'm going day after day after day, like, and calendar keeps getting full.
• 35:57
  Vipul Bindra: And so I'm like, you cannot predict, I'm saying there was 60 days where I'm like freaking out.
• 36:01
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, but you at that time, there's two things you can do either you can, you know, kind of like panic, or you can just be like, hey, I'm gonna double down.
• 36:10
  Vipul Bindra: This is what I love.
• 36:11
  Vipul Bindra: I just have to pass this hump, and I'm sure this will happen again, you never know, right?
• 36:15
  Vipul Bindra: Uh you cannot predict the economy.
• 36:18
  Vipul Bindra: And I like I said, maybe somebody can.
• 36:19
  Vipul Bindra: I am I can't.
• 36:20
  Vipul Bindra: So I'm just gonna keep doing what I love.
• 36:23
  Vipul Bindra: And if one of those dips again comes, then you just you know, just you go past it, right?
• 36:28
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, I don't know.
• 36:29
  Dalton Smith: It's hard to predict like the economy, but it's way harder to predict your little tiny microeconomy.
• 36:34
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, you know what I mean?
• 36:35
  Dalton Smith: Exactly.
• 36:35
  Dalton Smith: And especially when some of those decisions are being made outside of your zone, outside of your realm, you just have to keep moving.
• 36:42
  Dalton Smith: So, what I've been trying to do is, you know, I've been asking myself, what did I do to get here?
• 36:47
  Dalton Smith: Like, there's nothing wrong with trying some new tactics.
• 36:49
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 36:50
  Dalton Smith: Hired a new guy, he's uh basically doing all the dirty legwork to help us get some of these government contracts, like RFP-based stuff.
• 36:57
  Dalton Smith: I'll never do it.
• 36:58
  Dalton Smith: I don't have the time.
• 36:58
  Dalton Smith: I've got to go like this all day, every day.
• 37:00
  Dalton Smith: So um, we are trying some new things, but I was like, oh, well, how did I get here?
• 37:04
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, uh, I didn't get here by freaking out and thinking I'm not gonna make it.
• 37:07
  Dalton Smith: I got here by being definitely not like arrogant, but really stoked and excited and like not necessarily needing a lot of approval.
• 37:15
  Dalton Smith: Just I dude, I've done like five of my own little shows.
• 37:18
  Dalton Smith: However, people looked at it, it didn't matter because at the end of the day, it got me to the place.
• 37:23
  Dalton Smith: So, dude, I've just been creating content, making stuff.
• 37:26
  Dalton Smith: I've finally got a vlog and I sat down and did the dang intro the other day and shouted David out.
• 37:31
  Dalton Smith: So now I'm really screwed because I definitely started it.
• 37:33
  Vipul Bindra: Um same thing to me, and I'm like, hey, we gotta do it.
• 37:37
  Vipul Bindra: Shout out to him, right?
• 37:38
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but and and dude, frankly, it's super cool that you're doing this.
• 37:42
  Dalton Smith: It's cool that David did his thing.
• 37:45
  Dalton Smith: I the reason I'm trying to commit to it is because for a decade now I've uh re-entered and exited something similar six, seven, eight times.
• 37:55
  Dalton Smith: And it's because I wanted to do something, but I couldn't really hone in on what.
• 38:00
  Dalton Smith: And I've realized the importance of setting a real goal.
• 38:02
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it's it's so much more obtainable when you set it and then come backwards.
• 38:07
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 38:08
  Dalton Smith: What do I do to get there?
• 38:09
  Dalton Smith: So I really, I really funneled in, and it's kind of what we talked about at the beginning of this.
• 38:13
  Dalton Smith: I asked myself, what is important for me to share?
• 38:15
  Dalton Smith: And what do I really think people could could uh you know pull some value from?
• 38:19
  Dalton Smith: Because not in a negative way, there's so much structured uh data content out there on how to build businesses and shoot.
• 38:27
  Dalton Smith: It's like I want to talk about the story, the balance, the family.
• 38:30
  Dalton Smith: How am I doing this but not losing my wife in the process?
• 38:34
  Dalton Smith: How am I doing this and not losing myself in the process?
• 38:37
  Dalton Smith: Exactly.
• 38:38
  Dalton Smith: So that's what that'll be, and I'm excited because again, something in me keeps pushing to want to tell that story, right?
• 38:44
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 38:45
  Dalton Smith: Um, and David doing his damn thing got me so excited, and that's so cool that not calling him old yet, uh, but for him to be doing something at this stage after he's already been you know what I mean, to pivot and create a whole new direction and then the results from it.
• 39:01
  Vipul Bindra: And I like how transparent he is with sharing his results.
• 39:04
  Vipul Bindra: Because here's the thing you know, there's a bunch of stuff on YouTube, but um uh the summary of all this is you should do YouTube.
• 39:10
  Vipul Bindra: There you go.
• 39:11
  Vipul Bindra: That's the lesson learned.
• 39:12
  Vipul Bindra: But coming back to it, look, there's the actual YouTuber audience, and they're peddling products to you because they're in the business of being a YouTuber, right?
• 39:21
  Vipul Bindra: The goal is you get a sponsorship, you push the product, then you move on to the next product, you move on to the next product, which is fine.
• 39:28
  Vipul Bindra: That's the business you're in, but they're not filmmakers.
• 39:30
  Vipul Bindra: A lot of people go onto these channels and learn, oh, what camera I need to buy and stuff.
• 39:34
  Vipul Bindra: What I like about what David is doing, this is a real guy getting his money from actually doing these jobs.
• 39:40
  Vipul Bindra: He's telling you real-world problems he's solving and real-world products that he's buying to actually solve his problems.
• 39:47
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know.
• 39:48
  Vipul Bindra: I feel like you read his comments, yeah.
• 39:50
  Vipul Bindra: They're they're amazing.
• 39:50
  Vipul Bindra: And then also um talk about um uh cranky cameraman that he put me to.
• 39:55
  Vipul Bindra: Have you seen that, Jerry?
• 39:56
  Dalton Smith: Well, he credits him as you know, yeah, one of the first things he saw.
• 39:59
  Dalton Smith: And it's so cool because I've said this with David before.
• 40:03
  Dalton Smith: I just in life was a little bit standoffish in certain scenarios because the way that I was brought up and some stuff that happened, you know, it definitely can alter the way that you approach people.
• 40:13
  Dalton Smith: And I definitely didn't get like a like a red carpet entry or anything into um even like surfing culture and um like content creation within that, and just even my it can get weird, man.
• 40:27
  Dalton Smith: And so it definitely closed me off.
• 40:28
  Dalton Smith: And I have dealt with a lot of stuff that have made me want to kind of turtle mode and not share, but I've realized that I've held out from stuff that frankly could help other people, and I don't want to try to keep that back from people.
• 40:41
  Dalton Smith: And two, I was missing out on this, this this awesome network of people.
• 40:47
  Dalton Smith: And I realized too, like I'm out here thinking for all these years, it's like 50-50, like one in two people are gonna get you.
• 40:54
  Dalton Smith: It's not like that, it's one in a thousand, you know.
• 40:57
  Dalton Smith: And if you don't uh have it in you to take that risk to meet people, you're never gonna meet your wife, you're never gonna meet your friends, you're never gonna meet those people to help your business.
• 41:06
  Dalton Smith: So I've been taking a lot of risk and meeting people.
• 41:10
  Dalton Smith: And I went on Instagram recently and I want to grow the business, right?
• 41:14
  Dalton Smith: I've been looking at you and all these people, and I'm inspired, and I've started to think about where I want to go.
• 41:18
  Dalton Smith: And I kind of had an idea of what I needed, but I didn't know what to call it or what it or who did it.
• 41:22
  Dalton Smith: So I got on Instagram and I literally said that I was like, hey guys, I'm trying to grow this thing.
• 41:27
  Dalton Smith: I don't even know what it is, I don't know what it's called, but this is what I'm thinking.
• 41:31
  Dalton Smith: If that even sounds like you know a person like that, so a few people hit me up, and so and some stuff's happening.
• 41:38
  Dalton Smith: And it like it's like the ESPN thing.
• 41:41
  Dalton Smith: The people were from here, but they're living in other places, but they got connected to me through this post, and I was just like, all I had to do is just be willing to say I need help.
• 41:48
  Vipul Bindra: Exactly.
• 41:48
  Vipul Bindra: And people are there, and and that's the the part.
• 41:51
  Vipul Bindra: Talk about why I wanted to do this because when I started, you know, I was in Florida doing freelancing, I left for a few years, and I uh all I wanted to do was I was in a miserable job, right?
• 42:00
  Vipul Bindra: I've only had two jobs in my life.
• 42:01
  Vipul Bindra: Disney was fine, but they didn't pay me enough.
• 42:03
  Vipul Bindra: So I left, got a job that paid me well, and I was like, I'm miserable, I don't want to do this, right?
• 42:08
  Vipul Bindra: I love video production.
• 42:09
  Vipul Bindra: Isn't that funny?
• 42:09
  Vipul Bindra: So you did both sides of the spectrum, exactly, right?
• 42:12
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, I uh because at Disney I was doing the tech stuff, the magic.
• 42:15
  Vipul Bindra: It was cool, but again, that Disney doesn't pay you well.
• 42:18
  Vipul Bindra: I did get to eat at all the fancy restaurants for free, so I'm not gonna clean me.
• 42:21
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, so yeah, anyway, coming back to the real topic, but the the thing was, so now I'm like, here I am.
• 42:27
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, okay, I'm gonna just go all in.
• 42:29
  Vipul Bindra: I'm gonna make a real production company.
• 42:31
  Vipul Bindra: I'm in the middle of nowhere, Alabama.
• 42:33
  Vipul Bindra: I, you know, there's barely any video people here.
• 42:35
  Vipul Bindra: There's one company that's already established, won't return my calls, and because I'm trying to, you know, connect or whatever.
• 42:41
  Vipul Bindra: And then there's a bunch of people around me.
• 42:43
  Vipul Bindra: They're like, we're right next to Nashville, we're right next to Memphis.
• 42:46
  Vipul Bindra: You're not gonna get here.
• 42:48
  Vipul Bindra: There's not even an airport, you know, until an hour away.
• 42:51
  Vipul Bindra: And you know, I could have taken that negative energy, what I'm saying, and and could have been like, okay, I'll stay at my job.
• 42:56
  Vipul Bindra: And I was like, no, I gotta, I gotta start my thing.
• 42:59
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm so glad I did.
• 43:00
  Vipul Bindra: Uh because, like I said, people say I couldn't even make a thousand bucks.
• 43:03
  Vipul Bindra: First week, closed over 30 grand in deals, right?
• 43:05
  Vipul Bindra: So you cannot listen to other people, what I'm saying.
• 43:08
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm talking middle of nowhere, Alabama.
• 43:10
  Vipul Bindra: So it's much much easier if you're in a bigger market.
• 43:13
  Vipul Bindra: That's why I don't also like when people are like, oh, if I was in a bigger city, no, it's like people think that if you go to the spot where the dude nailed the big fish, you're gonna nail the big fish.
• 43:26
  Dalton Smith: But it does not work like that.
• 43:27
  Dalton Smith: The fish is gonna move.
• 43:29
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it's not gonna like that bait.
• 43:30
  Dalton Smith: So you know what a Rolodex is?
• 43:33
  Dalton Smith: So I remember someone made Are you trying to aid yourself to the audience?
• 43:38
  Vipul Bindra: A little bit.
• 43:38
  Dalton Smith: So for anybody that uh hopefully everybody is, but a Rolodex is just a little booklet for all of your business cards.
• 43:43
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 43:44
  Dalton Smith: And it's a it was it was and is a powerful thing, right?
• 43:46
  Dalton Smith: Because it's it's a book of information and people.
• 43:49
  Dalton Smith: So the way I look at information, I feel like research is dead.
• 43:52
  Dalton Smith: No one has the ability to do informed decisions anymore.
• 43:55
  Dalton Smith: And that is unless chat GPT tells them to, yeah.
• 43:58
  Dalton Smith: Which chat GPT.
• 43:59
  Dalton Smith: Should be one of your sources, right?
• 44:01
  Dalton Smith: So you should still be able to cite and do this stuff.
• 44:05
  Dalton Smith: And so, like, I like digital, but I learned on film.
• 44:08
  Dalton Smith: I like my digital gimbal, but I learned with the glide cam.
• 44:11
  Dalton Smith: You don't have to, but I think there's value to it, you know.
• 44:13
  Dalton Smith: But the Rolodex concept is that when you meet somebody, do not take me as your lord and savior.
• 44:20
  Dalton Smith: I am possibly a fraction of a group of information that can help you get where you want to be.
• 44:25
  Dalton Smith: But I'm just one little card in your Rolodex.
• 44:28
  Vipul Bindra: So and what's crazy to me is why I I just wanted to do this because like I said, I stumbled my way through because I knew enough about business.
• 44:35
  Vipul Bindra: I knew enough, obviously, about video production, but I had no examples, nobody to lean to, nobody to ask for advice to.
• 44:41
  Vipul Bindra: And like so, obviously, the the right thing was to move back to Florida, which I did.
• 44:45
  Vipul Bindra: But the point I'm trying to make is why I wanted to do this is to be able to give people access to so many different varieties of ideas, a just for entertainment, to listen to people that you think like you or at least have similar interests, but also there's golden nuggets, like you said, they're in there, they can learn from you because the way you approach it is completely different for me.
• 45:05
  Vipul Bindra: I most people don't know what I do until, like I said, I met David a couple years.
• 45:09
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, okay, maybe I need to start podcasts, maybe I need to share.
• 45:12
  Vipul Bindra: Now I'm trying the vlogging thing since to David, right?
• 45:15
  Vipul Bindra: It's really hard, by the way.
• 45:16
  Vipul Bindra: It's really hard to be directing or DP with a freaking phone on my face.
• 45:20
  Vipul Bindra: It looks so weird.
• 45:21
  Dalton Smith: Well, it's not just the physical effort, it's your brain.
• 45:24
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, you're you know what I mean?
• 45:25
  Dalton Smith: You're literally sending a whole other channel, and the channel is not, is this on and recording me?
• 45:31
  Dalton Smith: You're entertaining it, you're doing, you know what I mean?
• 45:34
  Dalton Smith: It's it's it is extraordinarily difficult.
• 45:36
  Dalton Smith: But back to David, need to stop giving this.
• 45:38
  Dalton Smith: We're giving this man too much credit with that.
• 45:39
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, exactly.
• 45:40
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, we need to stop talking about it.
• 45:41
  Dalton Smith: But his simplicity, yeah, doing it.
• 45:43
  Dalton Smith: Shooting it with his phone, editing on a phone, editing on the phone.
• 45:46
  Dalton Smith: So, with my blog that I'm about to do, I am doing it regardless of what is available, right?
• 45:54
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I'm gonna do it and just get it moving because I've realized I've had so many cool ideas die because I waited too long, you know?
• 46:02
  Dalton Smith: So I've got a couple cool things, and life is funny, man, and life, and I'm a big affirmations guy, and I've got a couple things, including I'm doing I love animals.
• 46:10
  Dalton Smith: If you had, if you asked me, like, Don, what do you want?
• 46:12
  Dalton Smith: What are your dreams?
• 46:13
  Dalton Smith: I've thought about that question a lot and I've narrowed it down.
• 46:15
  Dalton Smith: If I could really do one thing and not have to worry about money, I would host uh an adventure wildlife show.
• 46:22
  Dalton Smith: I would love to work with anybody that's so similar.
• 46:24
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, dude, we're jungle boys.
• 46:25
  Vipul Bindra: He didn't say animal, but he was like, Yeah, he wants to do a wildlife type of show, you know, like travel show basically is his dream.
• 46:30
  Vipul Bindra: That's so crazy.
• 46:31
  Vipul Bindra: Okay, we're not gonna take up a David anymore.
• 46:33
  Vipul Bindra: This isn't about animal.
• 46:34
  Vipul Bindra: I will definitely say the summary of this is he's made you at least or inspired you at least to start a vlog.
• 46:42
  Vipul Bindra: He did for me.
• 46:42
  Vipul Bindra: So we'll see how it goes.
• 46:44
  Vipul Bindra: I don't know, I can't guarantee I'll continue, but I am definitely trying what you're doing.
• 46:47
  Dalton Smith: If you do, yeah, I'd love to see it.
• 46:50
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, just because from my perspective, watching you, it is so cool how different you are.
• 46:55
  Dalton Smith: And I used to be afraid of being so different.
• 46:58
  Dalton Smith: When I pull up around guys like you, dude, I know that I'm like this like rusty basket of bolts, but I have met so many guys like you that I carry a lot of respect for.
• 47:09
  Dalton Smith: Well, thank you.
• 47:10
  Dalton Smith: And they like like me.
• 47:12
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and they like and I'm like, wait a second, is this okay?
• 47:15
  Dalton Smith: And I've realized it is.
• 47:17
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and there's I I think look, like we couldn't be any different, but we couldn't be any similar.
• 47:22
  Vipul Bindra: You know, it's so contrast.
• 47:23
  Vipul Bindra: Like, you know, you go surfing, I don't even like the beach.
• 47:26
  Vipul Bindra: Unless I'm getting paid to be on the beach, I'm not going.
• 47:28
  Vipul Bindra: And my kids love the beach, so it's like a contrast.
• 47:30
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, I have to suffer for them to enjoy, and it's okay.
• 47:33
  Vipul Bindra: You know, I I'm like, uh, you know, and and you're like the surfer dude, right?
• 47:37
  Vipul Bindra: Like you love surfing, skating, all that complete opposite of me.
• 47:40
  Vipul Bindra: And yet, and here's on the other side, I couldn't love anything more than content creation, making content, helping my clients succeed.
• 47:47
  Vipul Bindra: And that's so similar between us, and that's okay.
• 47:49
  Vipul Bindra: The whole point of this is like people can hopefully find their path.
• 47:52
  Vipul Bindra: Uh and and it could be like mine, it could be yours.
• 47:55
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, for years I've just I was just doing my thing.
• 47:57
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, uh believe it or not, up until I met David, because that was around that time, I think it was end of 22.
• 48:03
  Vipul Bindra: So for four years, when I started the company, I set a rule.
• 48:07
  Vipul Bindra: We only worked with you if we film, edit, post, every like the whole thing.
• 48:11
  Vipul Bindra: You can imagine how many clients I said or potential clients that said no to.
• 48:15
  Vipul Bindra: So I wasn't even taking a job if I that meant giving you a card at the end or footage at the end of it.
• 48:20
  Vipul Bindra: And then I had to go at end of 2020.
• 48:22
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, why have I set this arbitrary rule for myself?
• 48:25
  Vipul Bindra: I love filming, and we can only handle so much post.
• 48:28
  Vipul Bindra: So I could be doing so much more work by opening myself and to be able to hang out with people like David, to be hang able to hang out with people like Adam.
• 48:36
  Vipul Bindra: And that was one of the best decisions I made.
• 48:39
  Vipul Bindra: But I guess I had to go through that years of just only doing my content and like I said, living in my own bubble uh where I wasn't interacting with that many video people unless I was just hiring them.
• 48:48
  Vipul Bindra: And like I said, I don't want to ever go back to that.
• 48:50
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, because making that change is good, but but living it that way is really good too.
• 48:54
  Dalton Smith: And I think people lose the value of that.
• 48:56
  Dalton Smith: And I just think people hate to hear, oh, the good the good's gonna be worth it.
• 49:00
  Dalton Smith: Oh, it's and I know that that really sucks when you're at the beginning of your journey.
• 49:04
  Dalton Smith: I know that's not what you want to hear, but it is so critical.
• 49:07
  Dalton Smith: I cannot scream loud enough that adversity breeds greatness and that the the redirecting, I can't really like I don't know, man.
• 49:14
  Dalton Smith: Like if you're going through the woods and you're lost and you keep hitting the wrong stuff, but it gets you to the final destination, all that other crap doesn't matter, right?
• 49:20
  Dalton Smith: You got there, yeah.
• 49:21
  Dalton Smith: You you may be feeling like you're being led astray, but if you're working, you're moving, and you're pivoting, you gotta get there, you know?
• 49:27
  Dalton Smith: Exactly.
• 49:28
  Dalton Smith: So um I've turned directions that didn't really like a couple years ago, I started doing some stuff that's very similar to what I'm doing right now.
• 49:35
  Dalton Smith: And I look back and I'm like, okay, I can see where I was going.
• 49:38
  Dalton Smith: And then I kind of abandoned it, and then now I'm seeing, like, okay, and that's part of it.
• 49:43
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and I would love to watch your content.
• 49:44
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, I can't wait to see your vlogs and what you do because I was like, I like watching people who are actually in it, doing it, and then sharing what they learn from it or their life or everything in general.
• 49:55
  Vipul Bindra: So I think you will have amazing content to share.
• 49:58
  Vipul Bindra: I want to pivot a little bit.
• 49:59
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:59
  Vipul Bindra: Let's go like real stuff, like okay.
• 50:02
  Vipul Bindra: By the way, like I said, the entire point of this podcast is we don't like to gatekeep.
• 50:05
  Vipul Bindra: So I've had people here talk about quite literally project breakdowns, how much money they make, how they do ads.
• 50:11
  Vipul Bindra: You don't have to be transparent, but I'm saying you can be.
• 50:13
  Vipul Bindra: We like to be, we'd like to not gatekeep here.
• 50:16
  Vipul Bindra: But I really want to go more into how do you because I think what most people see you and get envious is like how to get ESP and how to get all these Florida Tourism, all these bigger clients.
• 50:25
  Vipul Bindra: And I know you kind of talked a little bit about ESP and but what is your approach today to like getting, and I know you're trying a few things.
• 50:32
  Vipul Bindra: So, what is your approach to like somebody's like, I won't I have no idea how to get clients?
• 50:35
  Vipul Bindra: What would you tell somebody like that?
• 50:38
  Dalton Smith: So where I'm at today is I'm starting to know now more than ever who I'm looking for and who's looking for me.
• 50:48
  Dalton Smith: So I don't like to DQ my company from anything.
• 50:51
  Dalton Smith: So I look at it as is this Dalton work, specialty work with me or one of these people that has to be there, or is this like swimming pool work where anybody from the network can chew on it?
• 51:03
  Dalton Smith: So on the swimming pool work, I'll take anything.
• 51:05
  Dalton Smith: Anything you got, big, small, whatever.
• 51:07
  Dalton Smith: But in that uh Dalton specialty work, I'm realizing who my people are, and it is this uh long story of what Dalton loves, which is uh high intensity, difficult to obtain, action sports, underwater, out of a plane, on a boat, and I'm realizing by taking in other uh aspects like live streaming in a difficult scenario, doing uh photography of a model underwater.
• 51:36
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 51:36
  Dalton Smith: These areas that are very difficult.
• 51:38
  Dalton Smith: I'm finding this niche.
• 51:40
  Dalton Smith: And as much as it's a niche, it it there's uh there's not as many people wanting to hang out in there.
• 51:45
  Dalton Smith: So I think that by listening to what's responding.
• 51:49
  Dalton Smith: So I hired someone to do my website recently, and they told me something very interesting, and I learned something about myself.
• 51:53
  Dalton Smith: I hired her to do my website for my weddings, and she's asked me all these questions about her weddings.
• 51:58
  Dalton Smith: And frankly, I was a little, I well, not embarrassed, but I was just like, I thought look, I just post stuff and people call me and we do it, and then we go back for the next one.
• 52:04
  Dalton Smith: What she made me realize is I'm like, yeah, she's like, tell me about your clients.
• 52:08
  Dalton Smith: I'm like, Well, they're usually chill, really chill.
• 52:11
  Dalton Smith: They're kind of like me.
• 52:12
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and then she's like, and so what she she's like, she's like, dude, you're attracting them, they're seeing your work.
• 52:18
  Dalton Smith: Their friends are telling them that you guys are these like cool dudes that like because half of MPI productions 100% is is the vibe.
• 52:26
  Dalton Smith: Like these guys and girls know that we do great work, but they whether it's like the Florida Fin Fest up in Jacksonville, who I've worked with forever, yes, we do great work, but by like knowing how to mingle with the artists and not make problems and just be a flow, you know what I mean?
• 52:43
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it's important.
• 52:44
  Dalton Smith: So that um that's a huge thing for us, is how we make our clients feel.
• 52:48
  Dalton Smith: But when I started, dude, I don't know if this is advisable, but I took anything and everything.
• 52:53
  Dalton Smith: And I look at it like fishing.
• 52:54
  Dalton Smith: I took a hundred fishing rods with a hundred hooks, with a hundred different kinds of bait and threw them all out.
• 52:59
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, we started doing weddings, and I liked them because I was getting fed, they were nice most times, I was getting paid decent, and nobody was gonna stop getting married.
• 53:09
  Dalton Smith: So that was like the equipment job, which we can all relate in some way.
• 53:12
  Dalton Smith: Exactly.
• 53:13
  Dalton Smith: Um, so I recommend that.
• 53:14
  Dalton Smith: And I always give this example.
• 53:16
  Dalton Smith: Let's say you are working a full-time job anywhere, and like, you know, this is your full-time job, and like up here, you want to be a filmmaker or photographer.
• 53:24
  Dalton Smith: I don't recommend this.
• 53:25
  Dalton Smith: That's not uh it's it's you you're you're likely gonna fail, you're likely gonna quit, you're likely gonna go back to a job.
• 53:32
  Dalton Smith: And I've seen people try to like quit their job and buy all the stuff, and then they have to sell everything.
• 53:37
  Dalton Smith: So I think about it like taking weight off, putting it over.
• 53:41
  Dalton Smith: You got a full-time job, you're not gonna love it, dude.
• 53:44
  Dalton Smith: But you need to literally bleed out the eyes up early, up late.
• 53:48
  Dalton Smith: You don't got lunch break because you're chopped like, dude, I'm not that enjoyable when I'm in hustle mode because there is no dead time.
• 53:55
  Dalton Smith: I if we're in a car, I have been known to pay people to drive my vehicle because God forbid I'm gonna sit in a car for 12 hours and not squeeze the lemon.
• 54:05
  Dalton Smith: So, yeah, man, I I just think that you have to just start.
• 54:08
  Dalton Smith: You have to just get out there and find something that makes money because when you find something, it can it could be anything, it could be birthdays, it could be weddings, it could be small commercials, whatever.
• 54:17
  Dalton Smith: Just find a thing that works.
• 54:19
  Dalton Smith: And then I just think knocking into stuff just randomly has helped me the most.
• 54:24
  Dalton Smith: Like, I said yes to some jobs that maybe other people would say they're not qualified for.
• 54:30
  Dalton Smith: But like, dude, if you call me and you're telling me to point the camera in that direction, unless I don't have that equipment, we can do it.
• 54:37
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so we take a lot of risk, and when it works, man.
• 54:42
  Vipul Bindra: Do you have an example?
• 54:42
  Vipul Bindra: You don't have to be specific with like the company or whatever, where you took something where you clearly were like, I'm not qualified, but you you overcame that or whatever, or you did it at least.
• 54:51
  Dalton Smith: Told Visit Florida I could do a scuba diving project and I wasn't scuba certified.
• 54:55
  Vipul Bindra: Look at that.
• 54:55
  Dalton Smith: Hung up the phone and called a scuba shop.
• 54:57
  Vipul Bindra: Look at that, and you started just training.
• 54:59
  Dalton Smith: I called in, I set up a private relationship, I made content with the scuba shop, shout out Seminole Scuba, and they um made a relationship with me to give me all my equipment, train me, train my team.
• 55:11
  Dalton Smith: And since then, I've done two more rounds of people I brought back to get scuba certified.
• 55:15
  Dalton Smith: Some of those people have become like advanced divers, like cave divers, which is really cool.
• 55:22
  Dalton Smith: And we're doing the live stream that you're helping me with the equipment for the underwater thing.
• 55:28
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I'm doing a dive after and rewinding to that project.
• 55:33
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I got scuba certified because it wasn't it, it was a camera problem and a depth problem.
• 55:38
  Dalton Smith: So I can free dive 50, 60 feet and get a quick shot, but I can't hang out down there and and shoot.
• 55:44
  Dalton Smith: My water housing that I had was a surf water housing, so it's only for like splash and small pressure, not 10-15 feet.
• 55:52
  Dalton Smith: So I invested into a scuba housing, and now we can go 200 feet with the housing.
• 55:57
  Vipul Bindra: So what camera do you have in that housing?
• 55:59
  Dalton Smith: It's an A7S3.
• 56:00
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, dude.
• 56:02
  Vipul Bindra: Which housings are so expensive, by the way.
• 56:04
  Vipul Bindra: Having looked at them, because we do do some.
• 56:06
  Vipul Bindra: I know I don't like water, but I do do some uh stuff in water.
• 56:09
  Vipul Bindra: Uh I uh so I've looked into the house housings, and I'm like, they're so expensive.
• 56:13
  Vipul Bindra: So I usually end up just hiring someone who has it.
• 56:15
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, Ike light.
• 56:16
  Dalton Smith: That's the one that we use.
• 56:18
  Dalton Smith: And the way I look at it now is it's like the surf housings are cool.
• 56:22
  Dalton Smith: I used um Aqua Tech for years, and it's kind of like a plastic mold, but Ike light is almost the same weight, and it's like it just goes deeper.
• 56:30
  Dalton Smith: And it had more, it had more gear options.
• 56:32
  Dalton Smith: Like, dude, the Ike Light, I could control my whole camera.
• 56:36
  Dalton Smith: I'm I'm down there like changing my focus point, my focus speed.
• 56:40
  Dalton Smith: I'm looking at clips.
• 56:41
  Dalton Smith: It's awesome.
• 56:42
  Dalton Smith: So, yeah, that was a big one.
• 56:44
  Dalton Smith: Um, and then another big one for Visit Florida.
• 56:46
  Dalton Smith: They called me, they said that they had this huge project.
• 56:49
  Dalton Smith: They they even said, like, we know you're gonna want to say yes.
• 56:52
  Dalton Smith: But if you cannot guarantee that you can do it, please tell us no.
• 56:56
  Dalton Smith: And it's we're gonna scratch it.
• 56:58
  Dalton Smith: They wanted to do this like dream uh dry tortuga shoot.
• 57:02
  Dalton Smith: So dry tortugas is Fort Jefferson.
• 57:04
  Dalton Smith: For anybody that doesn't know, it's the first multi-tier traditional fort, like you would think of with uh all the cannons across up as the first one.
• 57:13
  Dalton Smith: And we put it near the Gulf off of um Key West.
• 57:17
  Dalton Smith: It's about 60 miles out, and it was meant to defend us from that whole open area of the deep water.
• 57:21
  Dalton Smith: So they wanted to do a seaplane, but we can't shoot uh aerials of the dry tortugas from a seaplane.
• 57:30
  Dalton Smith: We also can't do a drone because it's national park and there's all these breeding birds there.
• 57:35
  Dalton Smith: We can't do a helicopter because there's regulations against the birds being anywhere near them with that.
• 57:40
  Dalton Smith: So I say yes and I'm like, I'll figure it out.
• 57:45
  Dalton Smith: So I make some phone calls and I find a seaplane guy.
• 57:48
  Dalton Smith: He's like, I'll fly you there.
• 57:49
  Dalton Smith: But we're gonna have to figure this out because if you're in the seaplane for part of it, we're gonna have to figure out how you're gonna be shooting the seaplane.
• 57:56
  Dalton Smith: I'm like, I'll figure it out.
• 57:57
  Dalton Smith: We're gonna need boats, so boats, boats, and planes.
• 57:59
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 57:59
  Dalton Smith: And then he's like, and you're not gonna be able to shoot your beautiful dry Tortugas photos from my plane because you'll see my wing.
• 58:05
  Dalton Smith: He's like, You need a gyrocopter.
• 58:07
  Dalton Smith: I got you.
• 58:08
  Dalton Smith: So he hooks me up with this guy, gyro Jimmy, in this thing the size of a freaking golf cart that flies, dude, it's the sketchiest thing I've ever seen in my life.
• 58:16
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and it takes off like a plane, but you're not going fast enough to take off, and then it just lifts in the air.
• 58:21
  Mario Rangel: Wow.
• 58:22
  Dalton Smith: And like we fly out to the dry tour too.
• 58:24
  Dalton Smith: So, anyways, he pulled it off.
• 58:25
  Dalton Smith: Permits, national parks, FAA, um, whoever regulates the wildlife out there.
• 58:31
  Dalton Smith: And how it worked was day one, I went to the airport to do the gyrocopter flight.
• 58:36
  Dalton Smith: I get there, and the pilot says he needs fuel.
• 58:39
  Dalton Smith: So the man hands me two bags, rubber bags, and he's like, Yeah, I don't have a car.
• 58:45
  Dalton Smith: I drove down here or flew down here.
• 58:47
  Dalton Smith: So I'm like, I have a rented moped.
• 58:50
  Dalton Smith: So I get on my moped and go to the gas station like a mile away, and I fill up 20 gallons of gas unleaded for this gyrocopter, and then which I'm terrified by the way.
• 59:00
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 59:00
  Dalton Smith: And so he flies us out there, and mind you, it is 60 miles of blue.
• 59:05
  Dalton Smith: And so I asked him for he took, I was like, yo, dude, I was like, I know you're in the military military and stuff, and I don't want to disrespect you, but what does this look like if it doesn't go right?
• 59:12
  Dalton Smith: Like, what does our like you know what moment look like?
• 59:14
  Dalton Smith: He's like, um we're fine.
• 59:18
  Dalton Smith: Okay, he's like, it's gonna be great.
• 59:19
  Dalton Smith: And I'm like, okay, he's like, helicopter, bad stuff.
• 59:22
  Dalton Smith: It's fully underpower.
• 59:23
  Dalton Smith: So if you lose either, you're in trouble.
• 59:25
  Dalton Smith: The only thing you can do is spin against it and just fall less hard.
• 59:29
  Dalton Smith: A gyrocopter is already falling, it's like a kite or a plane.
• 59:33
  Dalton Smith: So you can literally glide it down.
• 59:34
  Dalton Smith: Like, okay, so we're not gonna just crash into the ocean.
• 59:36
  Dalton Smith: So uh we do the shit best experience of my life, dude.
• 59:39
  Dalton Smith: Shout out to Jimmy.
• 59:40
  Dalton Smith: If you ever can get in a gyrocopter, do it.
• 59:42
  Dalton Smith: It was insane.
• 59:43
  Dalton Smith: Um, to this day, the photos we got are still used as like their landmark dry Tortugas photos.
• 59:49
  Dalton Smith: It was we couldn't have asked for a better day.
• 59:52
  Dalton Smith: The next day we went and my team went with two conks with this like legendary fishing team and took two boats over to the dry tortugas.
• 1:00:00
  Dalton Smith: And then I got on the seaplane and we flew out there and they filmed it from the boat, and then I got the couple shots we needed from in the cockpit.
• 1:00:07
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, um, wow, and then we land, shoot the whole thing, got the birds, didn't disrupt the birds.
• 1:00:13
  Dalton Smith: The birds literally were coming up to the camera.
• 1:00:15
  Dalton Smith: It was so cool.
• 1:00:16
  Dalton Smith: Seaplane leaves, we go back with the boat.
• 1:00:20
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, okay.
• 1:00:21
  Dalton Smith: So I came on a seaplane, leave on a boat, we get to the boat marina, and then we realize we don't have we're not at our car.
• 1:00:30
  Dalton Smith: We left the car at the airport, and we're like one key over from Key West.
• 1:00:34
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, we got my one wheel, so I hop on my one wheel, dude, and I do like a half-hour ride to Key West.
• 1:00:40
  Dalton Smith: And in my head, man, I was like, this is nuts.
• 1:00:43
  Dalton Smith: Because it was an interview with a park ranger, B-roll, underwater, the birds, permits, and we did the whole thing.
• 1:00:52
  Vipul Bindra: That's that's nuts.
• 1:00:54
  Dalton Smith: And so that's my proudest project as far as no, that's really awesome.
• 1:00:57
  Vipul Bindra: And that's what makes you, in my opinion, a great producer because that's what it is.
• 1:01:01
  Vipul Bindra: You know, clients will give you obviously I get some nuts requests, but nothing like that.
• 1:01:05
  Vipul Bindra: You know, clients will will give you projects where it's like you have no idea how to execute it, but that's what makes you a good producer.
• 1:01:12
  Vipul Bindra: And in my opinion, you're not lying when you say yes, because I have enough confidence that there's nothing in the corporate commercial world I can do.
• 1:01:20
  Vipul Bindra: Like I had last year, a big project where they're like, Yeah, we want to construct a set, it's a house.
• 1:01:24
  Vipul Bindra: Water's gonna be dripping all over the house like it's raining, but like it's pouring rain, essentially, is the way I would call it, or whatever.
• 1:01:32
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, sure, we got it.
• 1:01:34
  Vipul Bindra: And you know, like you say, you yes, and then I'm like, okay, let me call every person I know who can build a set.
• 1:01:39
  Vipul Bindra: Let me call every person I know.
• 1:01:40
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, and that's what makes us the producers.
• 1:01:43
  Vipul Bindra: And and you know, like I said, how much I enjoy directing and being a DP.
• 1:01:48
  Vipul Bindra: I love being the producer too, because that is what makes you a good one, right?
• 1:01:52
  Vipul Bindra: Because you being able to find the right people, it's not like it can't be done, you just have to find the right people with the right equipment, with the right knowledge within the budget to execute that, right?
• 1:02:01
  Vipul Bindra: And and it's fun, but like I said, that's really cool.
• 1:02:03
  Vipul Bindra: I've never done anything like that.
• 1:02:05
  Dalton Smith: But well, it's funny because I didn't think of myself as a director or a DP or anything until I don't know, like years in, years in, because I was just doing it.
• 1:02:14
  Dalton Smith: I didn't know what the job roles were.
• 1:02:16
  Dalton Smith: So it was actually really funny when I learned how many people actually participate in these roles.
• 1:02:23
  Dalton Smith: And it gave me some confidence that I was figuring stuff out, the not just the hard way, but I didn't even know what it was called.
• 1:02:29
  Dalton Smith: I was finding things and finding solutions to things I couldn't even identify.
• 1:02:32
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and um it what was really funny is when we went to broadcast like to ESPN.
• 1:02:38
  Dalton Smith: Oh my god, I didn't want to open my mouth for the first couple fights because these people were speaking Japanese, dude.
• 1:02:44
  Dalton Smith: I couldn't hear anything.
• 1:02:45
  Dalton Smith: And it's really funny.
• 1:02:46
  Dalton Smith: I'll tell you a funny story.
• 1:02:47
  Dalton Smith: My like you guys have heard enough about how we are just kind of YouTube street backdoor entry, like we're just the GoPro guys, dude.
• 1:02:53
  Dalton Smith: We are on this broadcast set with just these elite people, and our director, I would imagine, is like most directors, I haven't worked with any others, but his name is Aladdin, and he's one of the dude, and he is like fun and cool but stern, and he runs a show.
• 1:03:09
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so JD uh is trying to get an answer to a question.
• 1:03:14
  Dalton Smith: And now that I know the show, when he's doing a big graphics run, or I you know when to shut up now.
• 1:03:20
  Dalton Smith: We didn't know when to shut up, and JD's trying to get his attention.
• 1:03:23
  Dalton Smith: I'm like, I was like, I was like, maybe not.
• 1:03:25
  Dalton Smith: And he's like, So what he would say is he'd say, he'd you know, hit the channel for Aladdin, and everybody hears it.
• 1:03:30
  Dalton Smith: He'd say Aladdin 13, and he didn't reply.
• 1:03:33
  Dalton Smith: And I saw him gonna do it, I was like, Don't do it again.
• 1:03:35
  Dalton Smith: And he says Aladdin 13.
• 1:03:36
  Dalton Smith: Aladdin says layout.
• 1:03:38
  Dalton Smith: We don't know what layout means.
• 1:03:40
  Dalton Smith: And then he's like, lay out, and then JD does it again, and he's like, shut the and then like so.
• 1:03:45
  Dalton Smith: I joke to this day.
• 1:03:46
  Dalton Smith: I'm like, yeah, go ask JD what layout means.
• 1:03:48
  Dalton Smith: Go ask JD how we learn what that means.
• 1:03:51
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but I mean, uh uh that's that's part of the job, right?
• 1:03:54
  Vipul Bindra: You learn more on the job.
• 1:03:55
  Vipul Bindra: I've said this in the past too, like, not that film school has no value, but I'm like, I could teach anyone like in three months the whole job way faster than four years of school because you know, the what you experience in real world is is crazy, uh, but it's fast, and you can it's real world experience, which is not the same thing as you know what you learn at school.
• 1:04:14
  Vipul Bindra: But that's pretty cool.
• 1:04:15
  Vipul Bindra: I've been out of the broadcast world for a while.
• 1:04:17
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, I kind of started professionally uh from school as a broadcast.
• 1:04:21
  Vipul Bindra: And yeah, it was the same thing.
• 1:04:22
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, they had uh we were doing some kind of award shows or whatever, and you know, uh the the things that happen on set, I still don't forget the story.
• 1:04:29
  Vipul Bindra: That's why I was like, I never want to work here.
• 1:04:31
  Vipul Bindra: So I was there, I'm like doing my dream job, right?
• 1:04:33
  Vipul Bindra: Like at a tech show.
• 1:04:34
  Vipul Bindra: Uh again, remember, this is back before YouTube tech wasn't that big of a thing.
• 1:04:39
  Vipul Bindra: Point is uh something.
• 1:04:41
  Vipul Bindra: So the director, the main boss lady told me, you know, like, hey, I need you here, because everyone knew I immediately like, you know, I know more about tech than most people who work on the show because they're more filmmaking people.
• 1:04:51
  Vipul Bindra: So anyway, she was like, I need you here at 6:30 a.m.
• 1:04:53
  Vipul Bindra: I'll send the car or whatever.
• 1:04:54
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, sure, got it.
• 1:04:56
  Vipul Bindra: So, and then the guy who's supposed to be my supervisor under her, the producer of the show, he's like, Why are you gonna be here that early?
• 1:05:03
  Vipul Bindra: You know, come here at 8, 9, whatever.
• 1:05:04
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, Are you sure?
• 1:05:06
  Vipul Bindra: She said 6:30.
• 1:05:07
  Vipul Bindra: She's like, No, no, no, yeah, don't worry about it.
• 1:05:09
  Vipul Bindra: So I and funny enough, 5:30 a.m.
• 1:05:12
  Vipul Bindra: got the car guy, you know, whatever the company has cars, whatever.
• 1:05:15
  Vipul Bindra: They call me, it's like, hey, I'm here to pick you.
• 1:05:16
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, dude, what are you doing here?
• 1:05:18
  Vipul Bindra: I don't need to go till like 8 9, whatever.
• 1:05:20
  Vipul Bindra: I was like, he's like, okay, I'll just wait out.
• 1:05:22
  Vipul Bindra: So I just slept for two, three hours and I show up on set, like, must have been like 8 39.
• 1:05:26
  Vipul Bindra: That lady looked at me.
• 1:05:28
  Vipul Bindra: Um the showrunner, and she's like, and then you know, I've never been sworn at like work.
• 1:05:33
  Vipul Bindra: She's like, What are you doing?
• 1:05:34
  Vipul Bindra: I told you 6 30 a.m.
• 1:05:35
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, and I'm like, do I throw this producer under the bus?
• 1:05:38
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:05:38
  Vipul Bindra: Or what?
• 1:05:39
  Vipul Bindra: And then I was like, I don't want to be in this environment.
• 1:05:41
  Vipul Bindra: Like the miscommunication that's happening is nuts.
• 1:05:45
  Vipul Bindra: And uh, and I'm like, and this is a high pressure environment.
• 1:05:47
  Vipul Bindra: You know, it's live television award show, whatever you gonna call it.
• 1:05:51
  Vipul Bindra: And I'm like, uh, you know, this may not be the dream show.
• 1:05:54
  Vipul Bindra: And Disney was calling me back then for the whole college program thing.
• 1:05:58
  Vipul Bindra: So I was like, you know what?
• 1:05:59
  Vipul Bindra: Gonna go do the college program.
• 1:06:01
  Vipul Bindra: I'm done.
• 1:06:01
  Vipul Bindra: So, uh, so but it was kind of like broadcast can be uh it can be like high pressure, yeah, and it's hit and miss, yeah.
• 1:06:08
  Dalton Smith: And I like it, and that's another thing, just to tap into that.
• 1:06:12
  Dalton Smith: That is another thing that we're focusing on.
• 1:06:14
  Dalton Smith: So I've realized the point of entry there, narrow.
• 1:06:17
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 1:06:18
  Dalton Smith: That you have got to be recommended or know somebody and have some kind of experience.
• 1:06:23
  Dalton Smith: So the fact that we even got brought in was nuts, it was nuts.
• 1:06:26
  Dalton Smith: And the reason the connection wasn't just that she saw us, she saw us hang out at helicopters.
• 1:06:31
  Dalton Smith: She saw us with this very similar camera.
• 1:06:34
  Dalton Smith: I don't know if she knew or not whether it's the same body, but literally, dude, we pull up and open it and it's an A7S, whatever, on a gimbal.
• 1:06:40
  Dalton Smith: So it was easy for us.
• 1:06:42
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, we did not just flow with the program, we developed the program.
• 1:06:46
  Dalton Smith: That backpack sucked.
• 1:06:48
  Dalton Smith: That gimbal was a disaster.
• 1:06:49
  Dalton Smith: I'm so proud of that thing.
• 1:06:50
  Dalton Smith: Like to this day, I'd love for anybody on your channel, everybody keep their eyes open.
• 1:06:55
  Dalton Smith: Look when you watch sports, NFL, NHL, whatever, look for the shallow depth of cam.
• 1:07:02
  Dalton Smith: For us, it's the shark cam and it's on a gimbal.
• 1:07:04
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 1:07:04
  Dalton Smith: Somebody out there, tell me if you've ever seen another one that has a uh servo zoom on it.
• 1:07:10
  Dalton Smith: It's easy to do, but we don't see anybody do it.
• 1:07:12
  Dalton Smith: And we did it like two years ago, and we're so proud of it because some of the shots that we've shared are so dynamic.
• 1:07:19
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 1:07:20
  Dalton Smith: It's like a dang jib on the ground.
• 1:07:22
  Dalton Smith: It's awesome, like free-floating.
• 1:07:24
  Dalton Smith: So we we developed that whole thing into what it is, and like I'm now pitching like our variations of it to other places that we can use it.
• 1:07:32
  Dalton Smith: But here's the point.
• 1:07:34
  Dalton Smith: And David was so enamored by this.
• 1:07:36
  Dalton Smith: He says to me when we were surfing, he's like, dude, you know what's weird about your ESPN thing?
• 1:07:39
  Dalton Smith: I was like, What?
• 1:07:39
  Dalton Smith: He's like, forget your whole shark camera thing.
• 1:07:42
  Dalton Smith: The fact that they bring you there, call you a vendor, and give you this role, and they're like, Want to play with the handheld?
• 1:07:50
  Dalton Smith: Like, what?
• 1:07:52
  Dalton Smith: He's like, you he's like, the fact that they've got you there as a vendor and they want, and so what happened is the first fight we ever did.
• 1:07:59
  Dalton Smith: I don't know what I was thinking.
• 1:08:00
  Dalton Smith: They're having the camera meeting, and I'm I guess I was just excited.
• 1:08:03
  Dalton Smith: They're like, Yeah, we need someone to run camera three, camera three.
• 1:08:05
  Dalton Smith: No one says anything.
• 1:08:06
  Dalton Smith: I was like, I'll do it.
• 1:08:07
  Dalton Smith: And everyone's like, all right, bye.
• 1:08:09
  Dalton Smith: And they leave, and I'm like, I don't know how to do it.
• 1:08:12
  Dalton Smith: I said I would do it.
• 1:08:13
  Dalton Smith: So I go grab the first guy we met, and I was like, yo, Joe.
• 1:08:15
  Dalton Smith: I was like, I was like, I've never been on a broadcast in my life.
• 1:08:17
  Dalton Smith: I've never touched one of these cameras, I don't know anything.
• 1:08:19
  Dalton Smith: So he starts teaching me, and then this other guy comes over to help.
• 1:08:22
  Dalton Smith: And this other guy comes over to help.
• 1:08:23
  Dalton Smith: So I've worked at least 40 boxing events.
• 1:08:30
  Dalton Smith: I've probably done it.
• 1:08:31
  Vipul Bindra: You've operated like a box camera or whatever, like a handheld.
• 1:08:34
  Dalton Smith: So I've probably done over a hundred rounds of boxing handheld.
• 1:08:38
  Dalton Smith: And Aladdin's a really cool direct guy, and he told me he's like, you know, he says it all the time.
• 1:08:42
  Dalton Smith: He's he he gives me a lot of credit for how far I've come.
• 1:08:45
  Dalton Smith: And he tells me I'm one of the better guys he's got to film boxing handheld.
• 1:08:48
  Dalton Smith: Dude, they went and gave me a whole other thread of opportunity and skill.
• 1:08:53
  Dalton Smith: The last fight we just did, they put me on a hard camera, and so I'm in the chair running this freaking machine that I know nothing about, but I know how to operate.
• 1:09:04
  Dalton Smith: You know what I mean?
• 1:09:04
  Dalton Smith: I got steady hands and it went really well.
• 1:09:06
  Dalton Smith: So they're trying to set me up for whatever's next.
• 1:09:09
  Dalton Smith: And I can't say too much here, but ESPN hired us and contracted with us as vendors to provide a camera.
• 1:09:17
  Dalton Smith: Top rank is their partner for boxing promotions.
• 1:09:21
  Dalton Smith: They liked what we did and they wanted more services.
• 1:09:25
  Dalton Smith: So they actually had us provide two cameras.
• 1:09:27
  Dalton Smith: Then that was a manual.
• 1:09:28
  Dalton Smith: So if you saw a manual style with me a lot, that was top rank.
• 1:09:32
  Dalton Smith: So a manual is being paid, we know what MPI was being paid by Top Rank and ESPN.
• 1:09:37
  Dalton Smith: Okay, so we were now double dipping to both.
• 1:09:40
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:09:40
  Dalton Smith: Well, the contract's up.
• 1:09:41
  Dalton Smith: Seven year, $100 million contract up.
• 1:09:44
  Dalton Smith: Of course, we step in at the end of the day and contract, but it's up.
• 1:09:47
  Dalton Smith: There's only one fight left, and it's in two weeks.
• 1:09:51
  Dalton Smith: So over the last year, the conversation has come about.
• 1:09:56
  Dalton Smith: Media loves to chew on crap and spit it out.
• 1:10:00
  Dalton Smith: So the the last the first six months was just BS.
• 1:10:04
  Dalton Smith: There was nothing tangible.
• 1:10:05
  Dalton Smith: The last six months have been really stressful.
• 1:10:07
  Dalton Smith: I don't want to say really, but you can kind of feel it.
• 1:10:09
  Dalton Smith: And every show we were waiting, and they didn't even talk about it about four months ago.
• 1:10:13
  Dalton Smith: And they came in, they're like, so we don't know anything.
• 1:10:17
  Dalton Smith: When we know something will tell you, but we don't know anything.
• 1:10:19
  Dalton Smith: And you know, every fight, like they slowly talk about it more.
• 1:10:22
  Dalton Smith: The last fight we did, everybody kind of knew it.
• 1:10:24
  Dalton Smith: They came out and they said they didn't renew.
• 1:10:26
  Dalton Smith: So, you know, it's a big thing for all these people, us included.
• 1:10:29
  Dalton Smith: We do 25 to 30 fights a year, and mind you, the directors, the everybody, it's like a 50-60 person team.
• 1:10:36
  Dalton Smith: Well, they're all gonna go somewhere.
• 1:10:38
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so what we're realizing is this is an opportunity.
• 1:10:42
  Dalton Smith: And I can't tell anybody yet because I don't even know what it is yet, but I've been getting some interesting text messages asking, can you send me this?
• 1:10:51
  Dalton Smith: Are you capable of that?
• 1:10:52
  Dalton Smith: And I would not be surprised if we get the opportunity to bridge into other uh other parts of USPN.
• 1:11:00
  Vipul Bindra: That's really awesome though.
• 1:11:01
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, to be honest, if somebody looks at it, yes, they already know broadcast, but they wanted to kind of mix our world with their world.
• 1:11:09
  Vipul Bindra: And and to be honest, they need that camera because it looks so cool, you know, shallow depth of field.
• 1:11:14
  Vipul Bindra: It's what people are used to now, also.
• 1:11:16
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, but anyway, that you were able to come in, like you said, develop the program, build this for them, partner with them, kind of bring them, bring this our world to broadcast world.
• 1:11:27
  Vipul Bindra: And then not only that, but also took this opportunity to run hardcam and other stuff.
• 1:11:31
  Vipul Bindra: That's not technically, you know, you're not on the broadcast side, but to help them on the broadcast side too.
• 1:11:37
  Vipul Bindra: That makes you kind of like an invaluable partner.
• 1:11:39
  Vipul Bindra: And even if they don't renew the contract, somebody will, and they'll need that camera.
• 1:11:44
  Dalton Smith: So there's a chance that our phone rings twice because they ESPN may or may not go into boxing.
• 1:11:51
  Dalton Smith: There's actually uh a few of us thinking they will eventually, but they might take a break.
• 1:11:56
  Dalton Smith: They because they've done this, they they tend to kind of just focus bigger on other areas.
• 1:12:00
  Dalton Smith: So ESPN might just not need us for boxing, but they might need us for some other stuff.
• 1:12:04
  Dalton Smith: Look at that.
• 1:12:05
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, top rank, they got a boxing program to run and they got events to broadcast.
• 1:12:11
  Dalton Smith: So if we were just regular camera operators, I feel like it would be a little bit harder for us to stand out.
• 1:12:17
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but we're the only camera that does that, and it's kind of like giving someone crack and then taking it away because it is so built into their show.
• 1:12:27
  Dalton Smith: And um, they just did uh a fight last weekend, and I didn't know this, but since I've been there, people have pressured me.
• 1:12:34
  Dalton Smith: Like, I'm not even kidding.
• 1:12:35
  Dalton Smith: First month in, a couple guys came to me and they wanted to see the backpack.
• 1:12:38
  Dalton Smith: So I don't make the backpack.
• 1:12:39
  Dalton Smith: So anybody that doesn't know what we actually do at ESPN, we have a backpack that is provided by a company that has a bunch of jump sites and it's like a well over a hundred thousand dollar setup, traditional RF, and we are literally going through walls and walls and walls of concrete live streaming from the locker rooms.
• 1:12:56
  Dalton Smith: So they apparently do other fights.
• 1:13:00
  Dalton Smith: I didn't know this.
• 1:13:00
  Dalton Smith: I thought we did every fight.
• 1:13:02
  Dalton Smith: Well, one of the guys like, no, he's like, Top rank is doing another 50 fights a year outside.
• 1:13:07
  Dalton Smith: I was like, right now, they're like, Yeah, they're like, there might be opportunity there.
• 1:13:12
  Dalton Smith: So um, now that this is off, I was like, Well, I want to watch.
• 1:13:15
  Dalton Smith: So I watched one.
• 1:13:16
  Dalton Smith: They're in an they're in a limbo phase right now.
• 1:13:19
  Dalton Smith: It looks like they're just kind of doing bare knuckles, no pun intended, just to kind of like get by.
• 1:13:23
  Dalton Smith: But yeah, man, I'm not freaked out because I've realized like every time something like this has happened, like example, the office of tourism, right?
• 1:13:31
  Dalton Smith: David, Dalton, we're all doing it.
• 1:13:32
  Dalton Smith: 2018 rolls around, goes away.
• 1:13:36
  Dalton Smith: I was like, uh, what are we gonna do?
• 1:13:39
  Dalton Smith: I wrote an email to visit Florida.
• 1:13:41
  Dalton Smith: A year later, they responded, threw me on a job, and then put us on a bunch of projects, and we haven't heard from them in a while.
• 1:13:49
  Dalton Smith: So now I'm knocking on other doors.
• 1:13:51
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:13:51
  Dalton Smith: But that's what's what it is, man.
• 1:13:53
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, it's always finding.
• 1:13:54
  Vipul Bindra: And you know, big fish, like I said, most people I know, and I again, this is why I like to tell people look, you can go on YouTube and again listen to people who don't do this for a living or whatever.
• 1:14:03
  Vipul Bindra: The reality is, now that I've, like I said, I've come out of the little thing, I know enough people around the country, traveled enough.
• 1:14:10
  Vipul Bindra: Every person I know who does seven figures or more in video production, like I said, they make most of their money from five to ten of their top clients.
• 1:14:16
  Vipul Bindra: But that doesn't mean those clients are there forever.
• 1:14:19
  Vipul Bindra: They do cycle in and out.
• 1:14:20
  Vipul Bindra: And you have to constantly be looking for either smaller fish that becomes into that big fish or just another big fish to uh get in.
• 1:14:28
  Vipul Bindra: Because you cannot count on a company to just stay with you.
• 1:14:31
  Vipul Bindra: Obviously, there are some clients that just are there, they're you're just your client.
• 1:14:34
  Vipul Bindra: But like you said, in this situation, you're you have great partnerships with ESPN, but if they decide to not renew the contract, that has nothing to do with you what you're doing, but then you will have to now go and look for opportunities, whether that's with ESPN in a different avenue or other people who are not doing boxing, or and that's just one part of your business, right?
• 1:14:53
  Vipul Bindra: Because you're already told me you're doing vettings, you're doing corporate, you're doing live streaming, you're doing sports, tourism.
• 1:15:00
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, what else are you not doing, huh?
• 1:15:02
  Dalton Smith: No, and I like to I like to say yes to everything, but I'm also trying to be more intentional.
• 1:15:07
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 1:15:08
  Dalton Smith: So I've asked myself, like, if I want to not work a hundred hours a week eventually, and just because I can wear nine hats, God forbid anything happened to me, we'd be in deep trouble trying to find people to do it.
• 1:15:18
  Dalton Smith: Not to say I'm like a master, but yeah, like it's it's almost dangerous, right?
• 1:15:23
  Dalton Smith: So we're starting to ask ourselves what's viable, what are we good at?
• 1:15:26
  Dalton Smith: What makes the most return?
• 1:15:28
  Dalton Smith: Um, and so yeah, and I'm really building and I've said this for years, and I really can feel it happening.
• 1:15:32
  Dalton Smith: We're building legs of the agency where they're really acting independently.
• 1:15:37
  Dalton Smith: And um, it it's exciting because now more than ever, I don't just feel like we're growing, like we're growing intentionally, and I know we're going.
• 1:15:43
  Dalton Smith: And I'd like to touch on that ESPN one more time just because I I want people to know where my head was at and where I've gone with this.
• 1:15:50
  Dalton Smith: So when I got the call from ESPN, my wife was pregnant.
• 1:15:53
  Dalton Smith: She was probably around five, six months pregnant, and she was totally fine with the first fight.
• 1:15:58
  Dalton Smith: But then when they called me again a week after I got home, she got nervous because she was like, I see where this is going.
• 1:16:03
  Dalton Smith: I had to do, I think, three or four fights within the first couple months, but then I had to tell them.
• 1:16:08
  Dalton Smith: I had to tell ESPN and Disney, hey, I know you just found me.
• 1:16:11
  Dalton Smith: You want to give me this super special job, but I'm really uh I'm really serious about my family time, so I'm gonna need five months off for my baby.
• 1:16:19
  Dalton Smith: Um good luck with that.
• 1:16:21
  Vipul Bindra: I mean, you you uh I'll let you tell, but I think you you did the right thing, what you did, right?
• 1:16:25
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so I told him I was like, it's non-negotiable.
• 1:16:27
  Dalton Smith: However, I have the exact skill sets you need, and I can train these people.
• 1:16:34
  Dalton Smith: But then it was like, first of all, it was like capabilities, and then it was legalities.
• 1:16:38
  Dalton Smith: They're like, Well, that's great.
• 1:16:39
  Dalton Smith: We have you approved, not these other dudes.
• 1:16:42
  Dalton Smith: So we became a vendor within two months, which they try not to do.
• 1:16:46
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and it worked out in our favor.
• 1:16:48
  Vipul Bindra: And then um because that's the smart move.
• 1:16:50
  Vipul Bindra: You don't want it to be you, you want it to be your company, yeah.
• 1:16:52
  Dalton Smith: And I told him, I was like, guys, I was like, whether my wife is about to have a baby or not, this is gonna be a problem.
• 1:16:56
  Dalton Smith: I was like, a lot of the guys that work these shows just work broadcast shows.
• 1:17:00
  Dalton Smith: Now that doesn't mean that they can't have a conflict of interest for soccer and football on the same weekend, but they don't run a whole agency back in Florida.
• 1:17:08
  Dalton Smith: So I was like, you guys need to do this with me.
• 1:17:10
  Dalton Smith: And then they saw the value of doing, and then we started talking multiple cameras and doing extra coverage.
• 1:17:17
  Dalton Smith: And so uh I want you guys to think about this.
• 1:17:19
  Dalton Smith: It it went um for you know a year, probably and a half, just I want to say uninterrupted, just fights making money, you know, good work and got the balance with the family, my wife.
• 1:17:30
  Dalton Smith: We had a good system, and then we start thinking about the end of the contract.
• 1:17:34
  Dalton Smith: I remember like even like six months in, I was like, dude, I was like, JD, this freaking contract's up.
• 1:17:38
  Dalton Smith: He's like two years later, bro.
• 1:17:40
  Dalton Smith: Don't even worry.
• 1:17:41
  Dalton Smith: And then we're a year out, and then we're starting to think.
• 1:17:43
  Dalton Smith: So think about this last year where I've seen it coming down to the last six months where I know it's not gonna happen.
• 1:17:47
  Dalton Smith: So, what I did is I went to ChatGPT as one of my sources, and then I went to Google and I searched the internet and I started looking for what is the vibe in the boxing world and the broadcast world, what is the future?
• 1:17:58
  Dalton Smith: What it what are people anticipating?
• 1:18:00
  Dalton Smith: I could go on and on, but it's a combination of what Saudi's doing um with uh DZone and a couple of these other entities, and then the whole streaming thing.
• 1:18:08
  Dalton Smith: But there's gonna be this mishmash of entities and there's gonna be a shift of power, but how it goes down is gonna take time.
• 1:18:14
  Dalton Smith: So my prediction was they're not gonna renew and they didn't renew.
• 1:18:18
  Dalton Smith: I still think top rank is gonna go with a combination of like a streaming service, DZone, they're gonna do like a combo thing.
• 1:18:24
  Dalton Smith: ESPN, whatever.
• 1:18:26
  Dalton Smith: So I asked myself, if we lose this, what are we gonna do?
• 1:18:29
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 1:18:29
  Dalton Smith: I we because like this is like this trumped any of our other relationships based on several factors quantity of services, you know, 25 to 30 a year, number of days, and then just the structure of how well they paid.
• 1:18:46
  Dalton Smith: Um the zero post-production, it it it was the it was like, oh my god.
• 1:18:52
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:18:52
  Dalton Smith: So what I did is I came up with a structure of how are we gonna approach this without pissing off our client, but planning for our future.
• 1:18:59
  Dalton Smith: So I did so much research, even with Chat GPT.
• 1:19:04
  Dalton Smith: I spent days, hours and hours and hours doing deep dives and finding out what was the best option.
• 1:19:10
  Dalton Smith: So I have this document.
• 1:19:11
  Dalton Smith: It is so long, dude.
• 1:19:12
  Dalton Smith: It's from Chat GPT, but it's like I think 10 pages.
• 1:19:16
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:19:16
  Dalton Smith: And it discusses the relationship between the networks, who is who, who's the player in what sport.
• 1:19:21
  Dalton Smith: And what I've learned is that there's only a couple people that you need to talk to, the producers and directors.
• 1:19:26
  Dalton Smith: And I know who to ask.
• 1:19:27
  Dalton Smith: So then I said, okay, how and when do I go about this?
• 1:19:30
  Dalton Smith: And my guys are all gung-ho, like, let's go, let's, you know, let's take over the world.
• 1:19:34
  Dalton Smith: And I'm like, hold on.
• 1:19:35
  Dalton Smith: Let's see where the people that got us in the front door want to go first.
• 1:19:39
  Dalton Smith: So the last fight, they announced that it wasn't happening.
• 1:19:43
  Dalton Smith: I was prepared for that.
• 1:19:44
  Dalton Smith: But then they said, um, team meeting over here with the vendors.
• 1:19:48
  Dalton Smith: And there was a little conversation I can't discuss.
• 1:19:50
  Dalton Smith: And then um, I went and I said, There's more I need to know.
• 1:19:54
  Dalton Smith: I want to, I don't want to like I want to say two things.
• 1:19:56
  Dalton Smith: One, my this is my wife's suggestion, it was very brilliant.
• 1:19:58
  Dalton Smith: She's like, Dolphin, before you even ask anything, go tell them thank you for such an incredible opportunity.
• 1:20:04
  Dalton Smith: So we sat down and I have a great relationship with them.
• 1:20:06
  Dalton Smith: And I was just, you know, thank you.
• 1:20:08
  Dalton Smith: Regardless, this has been the most incredible thing in my life.
• 1:20:11
  Dalton Smith: But knowing you're not gonna roll over and die, because I know that you've been doing this for 20, 30 years and you're gonna end up somewhere.
• 1:20:17
  Dalton Smith: Let's just say, for all intents and purposes, you do have an idea of where you want to go.
• 1:20:21
  Dalton Smith: And maybe the MPI Shark Boys might be able to join you.
• 1:20:24
  Dalton Smith: Just let me know.
• 1:20:26
  Dalton Smith: And I basically told her that they the they reserve first dibs on us.
• 1:20:30
  Dalton Smith: And her response to me was Dalton, I can put you in contact with any of these guys.
• 1:20:36
  Dalton Smith: It's that because that's how it works.
• 1:20:37
  Dalton Smith: They look for the people in the network that recommend the people for the services they need.
• 1:20:41
  Dalton Smith: We play a hot potato, that's how it works.
• 1:20:43
  Dalton Smith: But I can't do that because it'll be a conflict because they're because I'm gonna need you.
• 1:20:47
  Dalton Smith: So it was just so amazing to me that I'm not trying to say I predicted it, but I went into it with a plan, an A, a B.
• 1:20:55
  Dalton Smith: And so I still don't know anything.
• 1:20:57
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, I know nothing.
• 1:20:58
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but there's opportunity, and that's exciting.
• 1:21:01
  Vipul Bindra: And that's what what entrepreneurship is, right?
• 1:21:04
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, because uh, you know, you you're basically building your own path, you're carving opportunity, and even when one opportunity goes away, it doesn't mean it's the end, it's the beginning of another one.
• 1:21:16
  Vipul Bindra: Um, that's really awesome, man.
• 1:21:17
  Vipul Bindra: Like I said, I'm really excited about what's for the future and what you've been doing.
• 1:21:21
  Vipul Bindra: Also, you're one of the few people I know that actually has W-2s, right?
• 1:21:25
  Vipul Bindra: You actually have full-time guys because I had like last year I calculated I had over a hundred freelancers, but they were all 1099s, even you know, uh Julie and Mario, people who've been helping me recently.
• 1:21:35
  Vipul Bindra: They're all 1099s.
• 1:21:36
  Vipul Bindra: So what uh why do you think you and again, there's no right or wrong answer.
• 1:21:40
  Vipul Bindra: This is just no emotion.
• 1:21:41
  Vipul Bindra: This is a great question.
• 1:21:42
  Vipul Bindra: Why do you think you have W-2s?
• 1:21:43
  Vipul Bindra: And how many do you have right now?
• 1:21:46
  Dalton Smith: Uh, myself included, three.
• 1:21:47
  Dalton Smith: Three?
• 1:21:48
  Dalton Smith: So three W four W2s?
• 1:21:49
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, three.
• 1:21:50
  Vipul Bindra: No, and then you, I'm sure you have 1099s too, obviously.
• 1:21:52
  Dalton Smith: A lot of 1099s.
• 1:21:54
  Dalton Smith: So I I will try to give you guys the non-theatrical version as I call it.
• 1:21:58
  Dalton Smith: So, what happened is COVID hits.
• 1:22:00
  Dalton Smith: That was the scariest thing instantaneously overnight.
• 1:22:03
  Dalton Smith: I mean, I literally lost every single contract in one day.
• 1:22:07
  Dalton Smith: I was getting my tattoo done, and I remember my phone going off, and it was just like it was like a joke.
• 1:22:12
  Dalton Smith: It was like a sick joke.
• 1:22:13
  Dalton Smith: It was a rainy day, and it it was insane.
• 1:22:16
  Dalton Smith: It was like they all like let's all tell Dalton at the same time.
• 1:22:19
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, so I'm a worrier, and because the whole world was kind of screwed, no offense, I was not worrying.
• 1:22:26
  Dalton Smith: I was it was weird, it was somber.
• 1:22:28
  Dalton Smith: I do great in hurricanes.
• 1:22:29
  Dalton Smith: I'm a great first responder.
• 1:22:30
  Dalton Smith: So when it's really hit, I'm actually better in those positions than if you if there's a fire and I'm saving you guys, I will be way more relaxed than if you tell me there might be a fire.
• 1:22:42
  Dalton Smith: Does it make sense?
• 1:22:43
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:22:43
  Dalton Smith: So COVID was this great reset.
• 1:22:46
  Dalton Smith: And then these kids walked into my front door.
• 1:22:49
  Dalton Smith: So it was JD and Gavin.
• 1:22:51
  Dalton Smith: It's a long story, but these kids fell into my lap, and everybody like David, I called them and I was like, Hey, I love you, but count on zero dollars and zero cents from me for the rest of 2020.
• 1:23:01
  Dalton Smith: Like I don't care what comes in this door, the future is scary.
• 1:23:05
  Dalton Smith: I've got a hold of my money.
• 1:23:06
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 1:23:07
  Dalton Smith: And then JD walks in the door and I meet him, I meet him and Gavin, and then we hung out for like a week, not even.
• 1:23:12
  Dalton Smith: And then like I had these new watches from Freestyle.
• 1:23:16
  Dalton Smith: And um, it's like, why don't you guys take them?
• 1:23:18
  Dalton Smith: You know, they're fresh out of high school, they're skimboarder surfers, hang out with these girls.
• 1:23:21
  Dalton Smith: I'm like, go take some pictures.
• 1:23:22
  Dalton Smith: Let me see how you guys do.
• 1:23:23
  Dalton Smith: Have fun.
• 1:23:24
  Dalton Smith: They look great.
• 1:23:25
  Dalton Smith: So then I just I just had this, I was like, dude, I was like, why don't you guys just hang out with me for the summer?
• 1:23:29
  Dalton Smith: I'll float you guys a few hundred bucks each.
• 1:23:31
  Dalton Smith: You can learn.
• 1:23:32
  Dalton Smith: We're not gonna do anything.
• 1:23:33
  Dalton Smith: I was like, we're just gonna hang out.
• 1:23:34
  Dalton Smith: I was like, I barely have paid work right now.
• 1:23:36
  Dalton Smith: And so, dude, we're watching Peter McKinnon.
• 1:23:38
  Dalton Smith: We're throwing down coffee b-roll challenges in the living room.
• 1:23:42
  Dalton Smith: I'm dropping watches into fish tanks and doing high shutter stuff.
• 1:23:45
  Dalton Smith: And it was great for me, dude, because I turned into like a little crackhead for TikTok and creative ideas.
• 1:23:52
  Dalton Smith: I bought a probe lens.
• 1:23:53
  Dalton Smith: It was funny, dude.
• 1:23:54
  Dalton Smith: I don't know what the hell I was thinking.
• 1:23:55
  Dalton Smith: It's mid-COVID.
• 1:23:56
  Dalton Smith: And I'm like, $2,000 probe lens, buy it.
• 1:23:58
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 1:23:59
  Dalton Smith: And it was so funny.
• 1:24:00
  Dalton Smith: You got one over there.
• 1:24:01
  Dalton Smith: I can see one right now, dude.
• 1:24:02
  Dalton Smith: I can see a probe lens from here.
• 1:24:03
  Dalton Smith: So it was just funny because people think I make crazy decisions, but I follow the passion and I follow the feeling, and I was so excited and inspired by that.
• 1:24:12
  Dalton Smith: That stupid lens definitely paid for itself.
• 1:24:14
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:24:14
  Dalton Smith: So these guys, I just kept turning the heat up as they got better.
• 1:24:19
  Dalton Smith: And then they went from like um kind of like training to like a paid intern to like a job to okay, a more serious job.
• 1:24:28
  Dalton Smith: And the problem, and it's not necessarily a problem, is it only works if the point of entry is very low.
• 1:24:35
  Dalton Smith: They're young, they're living at home.
• 1:24:37
  Dalton Smith: If you got a mortgage or anything, it's not gonna work because I'm not paying that much.
• 1:24:40
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but there's this interesting opportunity where if you come in later, so now we got Trevor, Trevor is benefiting from the growth from JD and Gavin.
• 1:24:49
  Dalton Smith: So his initial pay rate was triple what theirs was.
• 1:24:54
  Dalton Smith: So we're getting him to a bigger place earlier.
• 1:24:57
  Dalton Smith: But we've had some conversations recently, and we don't know what the future holds.
• 1:25:01
  Dalton Smith: And we talked about what he would like to do, and it was funny because it's kind of a buku conversation and shout out to Emmanuel.
• 1:25:10
  Vipul Bindra: He said, You talk about the Torres or the Gal Galli?
• 1:25:13
  Vipul Bindra: Emmanuel Torres.
• 1:25:14
  Dalton Smith: He's such a question guy.
• 1:25:16
  Dalton Smith: That's why I asked you a couple questions here.
• 1:25:17
  Dalton Smith: I realized I never asked freaking questions.
• 1:25:19
  Dalton Smith: And he uh I was like, I was like, you know what?
• 1:25:21
  Dalton Smith: I'm gonna pull an emmanual.
• 1:25:22
  Dalton Smith: I looked at Trevor and I was like, what do you want?
• 1:25:25
  Vipul Bindra: He called me recently, said he wanted to build an RV and live in it or something.
• 1:25:29
  Dalton Smith: Me and him have been talking about that for anyway, yeah.
• 1:25:31
  Dalton Smith: He's so awesome.
• 1:25:32
  Dalton Smith: Shout out to Emmanuel.
• 1:25:33
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, um, and he uh yeah, he's encouraged me to ask questions.
• 1:25:36
  Dalton Smith: So I asked Trevor, I was like, you know, what do you want?
• 1:25:38
  Dalton Smith: What do you want to make?
• 1:25:39
  Dalton Smith: If you had to make a decision between more money and your because that's where life gets spicy when you make those decisions.
• 1:25:46
  Dalton Smith: So I got some great information.
• 1:25:47
  Dalton Smith: And mind you, the kid loads at like Windows 98 speed because he's he's a great communicator, but he's not me where he's just gushing out.
• 1:25:55
  Dalton Smith: So I realized that like by just sitting there and giving him the time to talk, dude, it took him like almost 10 minutes to really even get the wheels rolling, but we had a great conversation.
• 1:26:04
  Dalton Smith: I don't know if we will provide a uh a thing that makes him not need to go get a job, but we realized that there's levels in between that we could meet at where he could he could work with us.
• 1:26:15
  Dalton Smith: He goes so it was just so nice to take everything I've learned with working with these other kids in the past and be able to provide a better structure, have those conversations earlier.
• 1:26:23
  Dalton Smith: But dude, last night, me and Trevor were at Island Root at freaking one in the morning, uh filming Slightly Stupid in Iration, which uh are two groups that I grew up, dude.
• 1:26:33
  Dalton Smith: Like it was crazy because I'm sitting there listening to them.
• 1:26:35
  Dalton Smith: I'm 34, I'm tired as hell.
• 1:26:38
  Dalton Smith: My baby's at home, but I'm just listening to this music and thinking about how I've got this 20-year-old kid with me.
• 1:26:43
  Dalton Smith: And when I was 20 years old, I was doing road trips on like borrowed mom money to go snorkeling listening to this music, you know.
• 1:26:52
  Dalton Smith: So it's just very full circle.
• 1:26:54
  Dalton Smith: And so the whole concept with that program is with no offense intended, these kids had no proper training or skills.
• 1:27:02
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, but I can teach anybody anything that wants to work.
• 1:27:07
  Dalton Smith: So all three of these kids, there was no uh there was no open job posting.
• 1:27:13
  Dalton Smith: It was literally, I I like you, and you've got a thing.
• 1:27:17
  Dalton Smith: And so Trevor did that.
• 1:27:18
  Dalton Smith: He he came in and I sent him to a job and he was supposed to shoot BTS and it was like a helicopter tour, and he was shooting with my Z cam.
• 1:27:24
  Dalton Smith: I think I've even told you this story.
• 1:27:26
  Dalton Smith: I can't remember, but dude, I used like five of his shots in the main cut.
• 1:27:29
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, and I'm going through it and I'm like, and dude, I remember calling him like bro, you're good.
• 1:27:34
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, like that's good.
• 1:27:35
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, you sometimes you know that's how you can find talent, you know.
• 1:27:38
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:39
  Vipul Bindra: Because you're like, you're supposed to be doing BTS, but this is good enough to to go in the main cut, which talk about Z Cam.
• 1:27:44
  Vipul Bindra: So you're you you use Z Cam?
• 1:27:46
  Vipul Bindra: You're one of the few people.
• 1:27:47
  Vipul Bindra: What are the cameras you got?
• 1:27:48
  Vipul Bindra: What's the drop that in there subtly?
• 1:27:50
  Vipul Bindra: I'm like, uh what?
• 1:27:51
  Vipul Bindra: Uh I mean, not that there's anything wrong with Z Cam, just not that many people running a production company with a a Z Cam in it as a good lineup, yeah.
• 1:28:00
  Dalton Smith: They just have made such strange decisions as an agency.
• 1:28:02
  Dalton Smith: But then meanwhile, they've been used in such prominent uh productions, like frickin' the new uh Tom Cruise movie has oh that whole plane scene is Z Cam.
• 1:28:13
  Vipul Bindra: No, I didn't know that.
• 1:28:14
  Dalton Smith: Bro, go to Z Cam.
• 1:28:15
  Dalton Smith: If anybody wants to learn about Z Cam, go tread carefully because they are being interesting with their involvement of the future of their cameras.
• 1:28:22
  Dalton Smith: But if you want to just look and learn, go to their Facebook page.
• 1:28:25
  Dalton Smith: It's just Z Cam E2.
• 1:28:26
  Dalton Smith: I have recommended non-Zcam users to go to the Z Cam Facebook page because real directors are there, real colorists are there.
• 1:28:34
  Dalton Smith: And I was really impressed by the things I learned.
• 1:28:37
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:28:37
  Dalton Smith: But I got brought in by Tristan Laravie.
• 1:28:40
  Dalton Smith: So Tristan bought this sketchy little box camera, dude.
• 1:28:44
  Dalton Smith: It's 2017.
• 1:28:45
  Dalton Smith: This kid goes and buys a China cam and no one knows anything about it.
• 1:28:50
  Dalton Smith: And I remember like our computers were really not stoked on the data at that time.
• 1:28:56
  Dalton Smith: And like I was mad at him if he gave me that footage.
• 1:28:59
  Dalton Smith: But then he taught me how to proxy.
• 1:29:01
  Dalton Smith: I had never proxied before.
• 1:29:02
  Dalton Smith: So we're in the keys and he shoots this footage of me in like 75 VFR.
• 1:29:07
  Dalton Smith: And like the what you'll see is everybody that loves the Z cam will speak on how beautiful the Rec 709 is.
• 1:29:14
  Dalton Smith: It's more like an S Cinitone or like even a corrected log.
• 1:29:18
  Dalton Smith: Like it's just beautiful.
• 1:29:20
  Dalton Smith: It's so great.
• 1:29:21
  Dalton Smith: And he gives it to me, and it was proxied, so it worked.
• 1:29:24
  Dalton Smith: I was like, Wow.
• 1:29:25
  Dalton Smith: I want one.
• 1:29:27
  Dalton Smith: So this poor kid built it out himself.
• 1:29:30
  Dalton Smith: They're modular.
• 1:29:31
  Dalton Smith: So he got every.
• 1:29:32
  Dalton Smith: And then I literally looked at it, I was like, small rig, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:35
  Dalton Smith: Amazon.
• 1:29:37
  Dalton Smith: I just ordered the whole thing.
• 1:29:39
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:29:39
  Dalton Smith: And they were great, man.
• 1:29:41
  Dalton Smith: I shot full Z Cam from 2019 to 2022.
• 1:29:46
  Dalton Smith: Uh 20.
• 1:29:47
  Dalton Smith: No.
• 1:29:47
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, it was like 2018 to 2022.
• 1:29:49
  Dalton Smith: I had three of them.
• 1:29:49
  Dalton Smith: And I dude, I even had it on my Ronin with a follow-up.
• 1:29:56
  Vipul Bindra: Yeah.
• 1:29:56
  Vipul Bindra: But so you have a Z Cam A7S III.
• 1:29:59
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, think of anything else?
• 1:30:00
  Dalton Smith: We so we got like six or seven A7S3s.
• 1:30:03
  Dalton Smith: Okay.
• 1:30:03
  Vipul Bindra: We've got two or three, maybe like your workhorse seems like A7S.
• 1:30:07
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, we use them predominantly.
• 1:30:08
  Dalton Smith: And then we had, dude, well, ESPN.
• 1:30:11
  Dalton Smith: So it was it was a good problem.
• 1:30:12
  Dalton Smith: They were paying us enough for it to make sense, but dude, every time we needed to do something there, it's like we'd buy it and put it on the truck, just be like, bye.
• 1:30:18
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, because we got three on the truck.
• 1:30:20
  Dalton Smith: Um, but yeah, we got like six or seven of those, uh, two A7R, like four and a five.
• 1:30:26
  Dalton Smith: Uh I've still got one of my old Nikons.
• 1:30:28
  Dalton Smith: I think we've got like eight GoPros, two or three Osmo Pockets, an Inspire two, Mavic three.
• 1:30:34
  Dalton Smith: And um, yeah, like last night, man, like it's so cool how I can spread so thin now.
• 1:30:40
  Dalton Smith: Yeah, like I can make a freaking an extra team pack.
• 1:30:44
  Mario Rangel: Yeah.
• 1:30:44
  Dalton Smith: As like the fifth pack, you know, recently is PN, like last second.
• 1:30:48
  Dalton Smith: They're like, Yeah, can you do a third shark?
• 1:30:50
  Dalton Smith: And we were like, um they're on your truck.
• 1:30:53
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:30:54
  Dalton Smith: And the problem they own them, I'm guessing.
• 1:30:56
  Vipul Bindra: That's why they're no, there are.
• 1:30:57
  Vipul Bindra: But they just they travel with the truck.
• 1:31:00
  Vipul Bindra: Okay, yeah.
• 1:31:01
  Dalton Smith: So what would happen is like in a way was a big fight.
• 1:31:04
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:31:04
  Dalton Smith: And they decided they wanted to do a third camera.
• 1:31:07
  Dalton Smith: The truck gets there, but top rank has a road pack.
• 1:31:10
  Dalton Smith: So the road pack is in the truck, but it's at the back of the truck.
• 1:31:13
  Dalton Smith: Other stuff is so buried in racks, like, literally, dude, you can't get to it.
• 1:31:17
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:31:18
  Dalton Smith: So I they had they they had to buy us another gimbal, a whole gimbal, because we were able to figure the camera lens out, but but we had to figure it out.
• 1:31:27
  Dalton Smith: And I remember doing it, and I'm in my garage, and it worked, and they wanted me to send them a picture.
• 1:31:31
  Dalton Smith: And I'm like, I cannot believe I just built another one of these freaking cameras in my garage.
• 1:31:36
  Dalton Smith: It's like I'm making little clones, you know?
• 1:31:38
  Dalton Smith: But yeah, the the A7S3 is the main workhorse.
• 1:31:41
  Dalton Smith: Um, and I did buy the ZCam E2F6 Pro.
• 1:31:45
  Dalton Smith: I don't recommend it.
• 1:31:46
  Dalton Smith: It's beautiful and it looks great, but frankly, um, other than the V mount being built in, their monitor is cheeks.
• 1:31:55
  Dalton Smith: And it is a great camera though, but it's a shame because if they paid a little more attention to um communication with their their uh consumers and stuff, they could they could be a big thing.
• 1:32:06
  Vipul Bindra: Dude, this has been an incredible conversation.
• 1:32:08
  Vipul Bindra: What's crazy is I didn't even get to half the things I wanted to talk to you about.
• 1:32:12
  Vipul Bindra: I'm sorry, and but clients client calls.
• 1:32:14
  Vipul Bindra: That's the the crazy thing for me is uh so it's not you, it's me.
• 1:32:19
  Vipul Bindra: I knew that.
• 1:32:21
  Vipul Bindra: No, but uh one of my clients really uh you know wanted me to hop on a call.
• 1:32:25
  Vipul Bindra: But this conversation has for real been been really awesome.
• 1:32:28
  Vipul Bindra: You know what I'd love to do, even though I know you're hard to get.
• 1:32:31
  Vipul Bindra: Hopefully you'll be available next season.
• 1:32:33
  Vipul Bindra: I would love to get you and David on the same one.
• 1:32:35
  Vipul Bindra: That'd be such an incredible conversation.
• 1:32:37
  Vipul Bindra: Maybe we'll try.
• 1:32:38
  Vipul Bindra: David, I'm no, I know he's listening, so uh, you know, put that in your schedule.
• 1:32:43
  Vipul Bindra: Uh before we go though, please tell people where they can find you, follow you, learn more about you, or ask you questions.
• 1:32:49
  Vipul Bindra: Thank you.
• 1:32:50
  Dalton Smith: Um, thank you for having me, bro.
• 1:32:51
  Dalton Smith: I really appreciate it.
• 1:32:52
  Dalton Smith: Um, NPI Productions, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook.
• 1:32:56
  Dalton Smith: And then I have not announced my new vlog yet.
• 1:32:59
  Dalton Smith: Uh, it'll be in the next week or two.
• 1:33:00
  Dalton Smith: So if you follow NPI, you'll see it will be a brand new YouTube channel.
• 1:33:03
  Vipul Bindra: By the time you see this, it is live.
• 1:33:05
  Dalton Smith: Yeah.
• 1:33:05
  Dalton Smith: So it'll be a brand new YouTube channel, uh, which was David's recommendation.
• 1:33:09
  Dalton Smith: And then if you want to follow me, the family, my like personal mental health stuff, that's the life of Dalton Smith.
• 1:33:14
  Dalton Smith: Um, and that's it, man.
• 1:33:16
  Dalton Smith: So I appreciate you guys.
• 1:33:17
  Vipul Bindra: Awesome, Dalton.
• 1:33:18
  Vipul Bindra: You are a great guy, and I love I'm so inspired by what you're doing and how you're going about it and the energy you have is just so contagious.
• 1:33:26
  Vipul Bindra: Uh, if I could only have half that energy, I'd be, you know, taking over the world.
• 1:33:30
  Dalton Smith: Well, thank you, bro.
• 1:33:30
  Dalton Smith: You're an inspiration too, man.
• 1:33:32
  Vipul Bindra: Thank you.
• 1:33:32
  Vipul Bindra: Mario, thank you again for being on the producer desk.
• 1:33:35
  Vipul Bindra: You are a killer, sir.
• 1:33:37
  Vipul Bindra: You have done great.
• 1:33:37
  Vipul Bindra: Thank you, guys.
• 1:33:38
  Vipul Bindra: And thank you again for watching another episode of Studio V Sessions.
• 1:33:42
  Vipul Bindra: Until next Thursday, we'll see you then.
• 1:33:43
  Vipul Bindra: Thanks.
• 1:33:44
  Vipul Bindra: There you guys.
• 1:33:44
  Vipul Bindra: Bye.